Nobody’s perfect.
And yet sometimes when it comes to leadership, we seem to forget that. I’ve been guilty of it myself; crafting job adverts that describe someone with the ideal blend of strategic insight and hands-on operational skill that I need to solve all the problems on my plate (and in the universe). There might be a few questions at interview about development needs and learning from failure to test for self-awareness (or arrogance), but really what we want are leaders who tick all the boxes.
Who are these unicorns who can do the long list of things the books say you must in your first however-many days? These visionary yet grounded leaders who empower, set direction and are in control… but not too much.
Twenty years of leadership has revealed a much messier picture to me. I’ve managed and coached many high-performing leaders whose beauty and strength lay in their imperfection. And I’ve been on senior teams where the quest to achieve more together than we could alone was never a straight-forward meshing together of all our respective super-powers and contributions.
So how do we set and hold stretching leadership expectations, without creating an unattainable myth?
😼Let the cat out of the bag. I think there’s some power in just naming the fact that getting everything ‘spot on’ is impossible. You won’t spend every single day being that ideal blend of all the leadership skills you’ve ever read about. Leaders are human too.
🏃Pace yourself. There’s always something to work on at every stage of our leadership journeys: letting go of control, handling conflict, managing upwards… Next time you get a piece of feedback on something that you (or others) think you should be better at by now, try to drop the ‘should’ and be open to the learning. The race is long, and we all take different routes.
🙉 Don’t stagnate. Be careful of letting imperfection become an excuse for not listening and growing. By all means, examine feedback carefully and decide what you want to act on (see above), but watch out for the “It’s just the way I am” response.
💖Trust yourself. I was going to put something here about creating space for failure and vulnerability (for yourself as a leader and with your teams or colleagues), but I’m coming to the conclusion that building those safe spaces starts with doing the internal work of knowing and trusting yourself. No amount of being asked to be brave or shown that failure is invited will work if my inner critic is raging unchecked in my ear.
I realise having written this that I’m probably just adding to the cacophony of advice that you’re getting on how to be a leader (however imperfect), so my parting shot is to say that sometimes we might just need to shrug 🤷 and commit to doing better tomorrow.
