My Biggest Leadership Regrets
Leadership is not for the emotionally fragile. It can shatter you into a thousand pieces if not you’re careful. Leading has a way of revealing our biggest weaknesses. Many leaders didn’t realize how much it makes you confront your own personal failings. How much of leadership is having a mirror held up to your face. Even more challenging? That mirror and your reflection is in public. There’s no where to hide those uncomfortable truths about ourselves. We have to confront our mistakes, our humanness in front of the team. This is hard stuff.
Being responsible for the work and well-being of others is like being in an intense obstacle course that tests your endurance. It’s a constant juggling act managing responsibilities to the team, getting your own deliverables done while driving a larger strategy for key aspects of a company. As a leader, felt pulled in a million directions, stretched beyond all capacity. This made it much harder to do the deeper inner work required to learn from my mistakes. While I tried to carve out time to reflect every week, it fell off the list at times. It’s a shame too, that time was essential for introspection. When I made time for that reflection I caught my mistakes earlier.
Here are four mistakes I regret along with a bit of advice.
