Good Leadership Comes From Understanding Yourself

I’m fascinated with the concept of leadership. So it makes sense that I coach women who are leaders. Maybe it’s because it’s done so epically badly in so many places or perhaps because those who do it well, do it so wonderfully well, it gives me chills to watch them in action. But, in my quest to understand it I have found that I’m full up on information about it. I’m over the lists of effective leadership traits and I don’t love that compassion and listening are called soft skills when they are actually at the core of humanity. I’m tired of masculine and feminine traits being pitted against each other in a competition over what’s better. So instead of poo-pooing the ideas, I got up this morning with this thought: “Okay if I don’t like what I’m reading or hearing, what do I have to say?”

Here's what I came up with:

• Ultimately, to lead is to have others follow you.
• To do that, they need to trust you.
• To do that, you need to connect with them.
• To connect with them, you need to be willing to see them, to understand them.
• And, to understand others, you need to understand yourself, first.?

How I see is that good leadership comes from understanding yourself.?

That’s it.?

If you are willing to know yourself - I mean get into the grit of who you are to understand what you love, how you feel, what scares you, what motivates you, the cracks in your armor, your judgments, your vulnerability - you can get to your fullest capacity as a leader. If you aren’t willing, you won’t. You’ll go through motions, you’ll have some wins, a long career, but you’ll forever be in imposter syndrome and never know the depth of the impact you could make (beyond results, numbers, and dollars).

I should mention that you do not have to have a title to be a leader. You are a leader as a parent and as a friend. You are a leader as a call center agent and as a CEO. You are a leader as a yoga instructor or a dog walker. Leadership is how you show up - it’s not tied to an org chart and fooling ourselves into thinking we are suddenly leaders because of a promotion is just that, fooling ourselves.?

A leader is someone who is willing, progressively more self-aware, and wants to be connected to people. Here’s what I mean.?

Leaders are willing to know themselves.

This is a lifetime of work. It’s not an “I was in therapy for a while and it helped” moment. It’s not reading a book (by the way, those books are the authors’ ways of doing their own self-reflection - that’s their work, not yours). Self-work, examination, and self-inquiry personal and daily practices that can be done in a million ways from therapy to a course to journaling or meditation, etc. Some of my best work comes from when I choose to eat breakfast without staring at my phone and just being quiet.? But my question is this: If you’re not willing to understand yourself, how can you expect to understand others enough to move and motivate them???

Leaders are willing to be visible; they don't hide.

Leaders are willing to be visible, even if they look bad. Who has had a leader who hid in plain sight? Hiding leaders run teams and avoid decisions or conflict or difficult personalities. They read books and watch webinars on leadership and they can bury themselves in the doing of the work,? but never pull back the camera to see the full picture - that not only is their team not connecting, they are not connected with their team. Visible leaders face things out in the open and make try and fail in front of people. Visible leaders are compelled to be transparent because they know that others are watching and waiting for them and they feel a deep responsibility for that.?

Leaders are willing to sit with discomfort.

Everything is temporary. Whether you’re in a fight with a family member or your company has just lost millions of dollars, both scenarios require you to be uncomfortable.? A willing leader knows that whatever is a problem now will not be a problem in the future so they are okay to sit with uncomfortable moments in order to work through them. We are not born with this. We have to build this muscle and it’s uncomfortable as hell. Understand that willing leaders don’t relish in the discomfort, rather, they are uncomfortable and agitated just as you or I would be. But they move through it instead of dodging it or frantically searching for a bandaid to cover up the mess.

Leaders are okay with pissing people off.

Just by virtue of making decisions on behalf of others, as a leader, you'll piss people off. The willingness to do this - to serve, not please - is what sets one leader apart from another. No decision one person makes will ever represent the interests of all people - but a leader must be willing to make what they believe is the best decision at the moment. There will be upset and being able to take that on requires you to be grounded in who you are and why you made your choice. This ability, cultivated, not innate, is what keeps you from getting thrown or debilitated by what others think, in business and in life.?

Leaders trust themselves, deeply.?

Second-guessing and questioning your every move has no place in leadership, whether you’re leading yourself as an entrepreneur or leading many through turmoil. Trust in yourself requires you to listen closely to your intuition that’s been generated from experience and deep knowing. Trust comes from you watching yourself make mistakes and move forward or fail epically and give it another go. Trust in yourself is a choice and a commitment, and one you must make every single day, just as you choose to trust your business partner or spouse.

If you’re asking, “How can one person be all of these things?” let me help you feel better - you can’t.

But you can practice all of these things, which leads me to my last point:

Leading is a practice, not a place to arrive.

There is no end, no culmination of "perfect leader" or masterful application of all the tips and tricks you've read. The Buddha and software developers alike will tell you that. All things keep evolving and become more proficient, efficient, and masterful - that includes you and me.?

It takes effort?to stand up and be the tallest tree. Just because you got the director role doesn’t mean you’re fully ready to direct anyone or anything. Sorry, it just doesn’t. I wasn’t ready when I got my first director role and I had a couple of disrespectful team members who didn’t like me and over whom I cried multiple times. I wasn’t ready to stand up to that and be good to myself so I could be good to them.?

I also want to add that while I poo-pooed lists on leadership at the beginning and then went on to write a list (the irony isn’t lost on me), what I'm doing here is thinking for myself rather than having experts tell me what to think. That’s called choice...another thing that makes a damn good leader.