Setting the Ideal as a Leader

"Leaders bring the weather," is one of my favorite quotes lately. I'm sure you have been in a meeting where the leader walked in (or dialed in) and the tone immediately changed. For the better? For the worse? Either way, this is the weather of that leader in that moment. Of course, we all hope we bring the sunshine to our teams, but do we?

As we look to become more evolved executives, the most important thing we can do is sort out what type weather we want to bring. Exploring this brought me to explore the difference between setting an ideal and expecting perfection.

As evolved executives, we should push the standard higher, expect better "weather" in our teams and ask people to stretch themselves. BUT, the slippery slope begins when nothing is ever good enough, when we can't celebrate wins or we accept nothing that isn't perfect. You can see that the first (setting an ideal and pushing for it) will motivate teams; while the second (being a perfectionist) will demotivate teams.

Evolved executives hold a high standard of being fair, empathetic and productive. They want the organization to function well and teams to collaborate to achieve innovative ideas with exciting outcomes. That's an ideal. The real world can approach this in some fashion but rarely hits on all aspects. But this should not preclude celebrating when something is headed in the right direction. So if your team is showing collaborative tendencies more than ever, or if someone figured out a way to make a process more efficient, don't forget to celebrate the win!

It's an imperfect world and what we can do is to continue to push upward to better conditions and outcomes for everyone. And rather than picking on when something doesn't get all the way to 100% of our ideal, we can celebrate the progress along the way to that ideal.

Evolved executives strive for progress, not perfection.