THE IMPORTANCE OF SURROUNDING YOURSELF WITH SUPPORTIVE PEOPLE

If you want to go fast, go alone. if you want to go far, go together?- African Proverb?

There’s a saying that Leadership can be a lonely place”, and although there are many rewarding aspects to effective leadership, it can sometimes be discouraging being in a position where you have to resource yourself and lead others through trying times. This is one way in which leadership can differ from being part of a team where disappointment and discouragement can be shared amongst peers. In the event that you are unable to share your discouragement with your immediate manager, then you’ll have to manage those challenging feelings in a resilient fashion.??

There is some truth to the saying that “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” and although that’s not entirely true, you will learn and grow a lot with the trials of leadership in the same way that resistance training over time builds muscle and strength. There are countless leaders that will tell you numerous stories of where they’ve felt like giving up and throwing in the towel, but they didn’t. When they look back now on those trying times and consider those early leadership challenges in their career, those feelings are nowhere near as ominous as when they experienced them. And although it is the case that sometimes leadership can feel like a very lonely vocation, you don’t have to go it alone.??

I was delivering leadership training to a group of millennials in the service industry and heard from management between training days that one of their star performers had had something of a meltdown and left the business overnight. It was such a shame that this bright star had felt so overwhelmed with pressures both in work and his personal life but had not made the effort to reach out to very supportive management who could have easily guided him through the difficult patch. As Winston Churchill said: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal”. Success doesn’t last forever, and neither does failure, but because this emerging leader never shared his struggles with management (and a ‘burden shared is a burden halved’) they weren’t able to give him an objective perspective or any great advice for navigating his way through what he would one day look back on as a small storm.?

It’s important for the success of your leadership journey to surround yourself, both in the business and outside the business, with people who can cheer you on when you are doing well, and who can also guide and support you when times get tough.?