When you got the message that you were being promoted into a leadership position, I’d guess you were excited. Promotions usually mean more prestige, more opportunities, and more money. People congratulate you, offer to buy you lunch, and your picture appears in the company newsletter. Good news all the way around.
Then there’s the reality. Tasks are dumped on your desk with lit-tle or no explanation attached. People are clamoring for your time and attention. Meetings on subjects you’ve never heard of fill your schedule. Those who report to you expect you to solve their prob-lems, resolve their conflicts, and even deliver feedback messages they’re too afraid to deliver themselves. It’s time to think about your feelings.
Leadership is more than a skill set. Real leadership is a combi-nation of well-honed skills combined with an open and gracious spirit. How you feel about being a leader will always influence how you act as a leader. People who believe that leadership is their right, who believe that their title demands the respect of others, or who believe that leaders should always have the final say are carrying feel-ings about leadership that will constantly get in the way of their effectiveness as a leader. Closemindedness is usually a result of an unwillingness to explore the feeling side of an issue. How are you at exploring your feelings about being a leader?
It’s perfectly okay to have conflicting emotions about being a leader. Excitement mixed with apprehension. Confidence colored by fear. Certainty alongside doubt. Pride with anger. It’s not about either/or, it’s about and. Leaders who identify all the emotions that can go along with leadership, study the full range of those emotions, and learn to tap into the appropriate emotion for the right situation
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are ahead of the game. Leaders who try to convince themselves that dealing with emotions (their own as well as those of others) isn’t part of their job are just kidding themselves.
So, how do you feel about being a leader? Like the previous ques-tion, your answer to this question will change with time and expe-rience. In this case, feelings being what they are, your answer might be different from one minute to the next. That’s not the big prob-lem. Understanding how your feelings at any given time are influ-encing your behavior is one of the greatest challenges of leadership.
Without an honest, routine check of your feelings about leadership, you shortchange yourself as well as the people who follow you.
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3. What do you want to be remembered for?
When my daughter, Miriam, went to college in Milwaukee, she worked at a bakery. Vann’s Pastry Shop was legendary for its spe-cialty cakes, Danish pastries, and bread. When Mr. Vann died, his obituary in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel started with the follow-ing: “Calling Bob Vann a baker would be like calling Frank Lloyd Wright an architect.” When you die and someone puts their fin-gers on a keyboard, ready to write about you as a leader, what do you hope they’ll type?
There is a philosophy that says you should always start with the end in mind. An obituary is definitely an end, and I’m certainly not suggesting that it’s the end you need to have in mind in order to answer this question. But what about asking yourself, “When I move to another position, what do I want my team to say about me as a leader? What do I want to be remembered for?”
Create a list of characteristics you admire in a leader. The combi-nations are endless. Compassionate and a great listener. Creative and fair-minded. Uplifting and supportive. Enthusiastic and
knowledge-able. After you’ve identified at least fifteen characteristics, highlight five of them. Are these the five you’d be happy to have people use to describe you? Keep working your list until you’re convinced that you have the five you believe are the cornerstones of your leadership style.
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When you stop learning, stop listening, stop looking and ask-ing questions, always new ques-tions, then it is time to die.
—Lillian Smith, American author
Now, think of your leadership actions over the last week. Did you devote your time to these behaviors? If this had been your last week as a leader for this team, how would they describe your final days as their leader? It isn’t enough to identify, think about, or even talk about the things you want to be remembered for. It’s only how you act that will count in the end.
Mr. Vann was a baker, but he was so much more than that. I asked Miriam what she remembered about him after we read the obituary.
She said he taught her that discipline is required to produce a con-sistently superior product, that working as a team can be fun, and that finding out what you are good at is important in life and work.
A very nice legacy for any leader.