TwentyEighteen

It’s interesting. Or perhaps ‘it’s funny’ is a more appropriate way to put it. As a man, you are not judged on your success but the measure of your mistakes. As CEO, your score of success is measured by profitability, number of employees, size or grandeur of your office space, how big or well known your clients are, how happy your employees are, etc.

As in life, people are slow to point at your success but fast to judge where you have missed the mark. At the same time, you have to survive this measure personally, professionally, internally, externally and realize early on that the outcomes are only yours. No matter who your number two is, regardless of if you have an ‘off’ day, you must always advance, and never retreat.

It is my belief that there are not enough support groups out there or books written about the personal burdens a CEO must carry. I’m not here to start breaking it down into subcategories of a woman, minority, ‘uneducated’, undereducated or inexperienced CEO. Every leader was once inexperienced. And it would be a lie if one ever told you that they never had fear of failure.

We are constantly looked to for the right answer. There is no room for guess work. Only intuition and gut feelings about predictions of what we tell ourselves is the correct course. You can not train to be a leader. It is a natural ability you have to be born with. You must possess a keen eye for talent, a desire to gamble your team on a proper trajectory and you have to trust your own decisions.

To go a step further, you have to inspire your team to trust you. They have to know that every move you make is with their best interest. Each of us will tell you, we hire people smarter than us to question our decisions. This is true. However, it is a constant struggle and often our vision is 10 miles down the road and the problems at hand are out of our focus.

And therein, lies the rub.

First, we are humans and we were all once an employee starting out, answering to others for our actions. Even when elevated to an executive position, we still struggle with our human errors. We are still weighed down by the burdens of faith, personal life, and the image of success by which we are judged.

Second, we have a strong desire to trust our direct reports. Implicitly trust that in your absence, they will think and act as you, to the best of their ability. It was not until becoming a father I learned the important lesson of nurture vs nature. However, what I learned left more questions than answers. In one instance, I believe I must allow for mistakes to be made in order for growth to occur. Of course, this is something people quote on instagram as if it were an epitaph. The reality is, you have to trust enough to allow mistakes to become learning opportunities. Yet, you also have to be strong enough to tell people no, even if it means crushing something they have put a lot of time and thought into. Weakness and success are never two words that should be used to describe a leader. Rather, strength and unwavering dedication to others is. Why not success? Because anyone can be successful in the loosest sense of the word, but it takes much more to maintain strength and even more to dedicate your life to people you pay to show up.

Third, we get tired. We get annoyed and we get worn out. We let yesterday’s mistakes cloud the judgement of today’s solutions. We develop a handicap that impedes our recovery each time someone we trusted lets us down. We become frustrated with what we see as a lack of respect for the organization. Why is it so personal to us? Probably because our sacrifice to build something is (appears to be) forgotten and lost as each new person joins the team.

I often joke with everyone about where we started. A 350 sq ft office space with 3 desks and a printer. There was no bankroll or loan supporting our losses and each day brought new challenges and sacrifices. Then we expanded with plastic folding tables and really uncomfortable folding chairs.

But, I am not here to throw guilt on the passion. I am here to advocate for our need to work through our burdens and issues with someone who can help us see through our cloudy and murky journey.

It is already 2018 and I feel I have made the greatest leap of faith and the best decision. I decided I do not have all the answers and I need someone who can help me see the reality. I need help forming what I want our values to be at Tuleburg. A person who has experience helping CEO’s determine how they want to ‘show up’. At the end of the year, I started working with an executive coach. Something I resisted for years. A confidant, who, when I am feeling the burdens of life, work and success, I can talk through my feelings and help form a clearer vision of what I represent.

It is not easy task to lead. I know I can speak for all leaders when I say it is hard to maintain the 100% performance level day in and day out. We want so much to be unaffected by the pitfalls and speed bumps we encounter on our path. We feel alone most of the time and that no one really understands what it’s like. At the same time, we regret when we allow these factors to impact how we show up each day.

I know that some of you reading this will say “not me” and that’s fine. Maybe you haven’t reached that point of growth yet. You still have all the answers. I resisted help and I encourage you, even if it’s just a slight feeling, to look for your person to help you find the balance before you burn out and it is too late.

In my next blog, I will share the values I developed based on my conversations with my coach as I align Tuleburg and myself for 2018. Happy New Year Fam.