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Leadership as a Novel Notion, Part II
I recently wrote a piece on leadership in my past tense, noting how I need to show up as all of me. Rather, I feel the call to bring the whole of myself to leadership as opposed to the 110% game — holistic rather than overdrive.
Can you relate?
Maybe it’s age, maybe it’s the time we’re living in, but I know it’s time to be invested if I’m going down this road. I feel this way in all things. Perhaps it’s because I was once one of the many people who struggled with making commitments and keeping them. I feared success and became my own self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. Yet failure is a great teacher, especially when you flip the script and fail because you’re out there trying new things. Trying new ways to be. Trying to evolve.
The question is this: who are you attempting to lead?
If you’re being a leader to others in an office or leading your children, you’re always leading by example. The times when you think no one is watching or no one will remember are key moments. It’s all about the little things. It’s the little things we remember the very most over time; it’s the little things that make up a whole person.
We can do this for ourselves, too.
There are several schools of thought out there in the world that subscribe to becoming who we want to be by imitation. Vision boards and mimicry are good for the dreaming part of the process, yet how do we live it? There has to be a way to transform the self — and that’s with a core notion. The belief in something, the seeing ourselves as we truly are to know how we might grow. How else can we know what to develop?
Growth can be transmutation, too — the complete overhaul to a system. Foundations do crack after so much time and it’s prudent to examine them just as you would in a house. Who are we if not our own houses? Foundations, while absolutely vital, may change over time. It’s called growth. Soil, the foundation for plants, gets tilled and reconstituted; don’t you think we need the same nourishment and care?
Being a leader for ourselves begins with not hiding from ourselves. We can start with a basic list of the four biggest strengths and weaknesses; the first four we think of are usually right. The fun part is getting the same number of each. There are people who believe they have no weaknesses just as there are people who trust they have no strengths. It’s time to break up that nonsense and get even. Not in a revenge way but in a leveling the playing field way. A fabulous starting point.
How would we change if we could?
The trick is we always can.
Even in situations where the die has been cast, you have the right to change your mind. It’s not easy but it’s simple. That’s why it’s so hard to do — we want to overthink everything, to parse out every detail before making a move.
Fail faster.
The best teacher is trying something. We can do this.
