“Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort to lead.”
Seth Godin
I have a friend who refers to leadership, “the brotherhood of the miserable”
Fairly accurate words.
To be cliche if it was easy everyone would be doing it.
From the outside it is a world of meetings, sending emails, walking around wearing nice clothes, looking at your phone frequently, etc.
In reality it is a soul crushing, gut wrenching experience where the win’s are few and the losses feel like they are many.
With leadership everyone thinks they can do it, many people say they are doing it, few people actually do it well.
The world is full of egocentric, self-preserving leaders who are in it for the title and money. We don’t need any more of those.
To be an impactful leader who is remembered well after they are gone one must be courageous.
Leadership Requires Discomfort
It is only through discomfort that you are able to grow. Grow yourself, grow your team, grow your business.
Ben Horowitz says, “If you make decisions that everyone likes all the time, those are decisions they would have made without you, so you are adding no value.”
Adding value is essential to being a leader.
Letting bad behavior go unchecked, putting programs in front of people, putting financial returns over fairness. All of these can impact a leader’s ability to influence their team or organization.
Systems often wonder why they have engagement problems, sometimes the solution may be a couple of hard decisions away.
Leadership Requires Courage
Sometimes as a leader we have to do hard things. This may be saying no to a situation that would impact our character. Some of this may be calling out bad behavior of a valued team member.
Sometimes it is the courage to make a hard business decision that may result in the loss of jobs or shuttering a program.
The worst thing a leader can do is delegate the hard decisions to someone else to avoid the consequences coming back on them.
Making someone on your team a scapegoat is amateurish and weak. You may think you have concocted the perfect plan, but your team can see through it.
True leaders always accept ultimate responsibility.
A leader will never be successful if they base their decisions on what is best or easiest for them. The courage comes from taking risks and making decisions in the best interest of the team and company.
Embrace being Human
The one thing you share with your team is your humanity.
If they see you as human and understand you struggled with a difficult decision they will be much more likely to support you, even if things go south.
If you are an absent leader and the team feels like the decision was made in isolation without concern or thoughtfulness for the front line, then you have made your job much more difficult.
True leaders embrace discomfort equally as much as they embrace comfort.
No one said it was easy.