14 Jan A Tale of Two Leaders
I used to work with two women leaders. While much about them was very similar, they had a few distinct differences. One of them was a control freak who wanted everything done her way. She didn’t trust that anyone could do a job as well as she could. She was nice enough when she wasn’t stressed out, however, when she was stressed, she would get snippy, short and overreact. The other woman focused on her leadership skills every day, so she was someone people wanted to work with, someone who was respected and who got the job done by developing both herself and her team.
There’s a twist to this story. Both women were me (and I totally borrowed this idea from a book I’m reading)! I was super controlling for a big chunk of my corporate career. It wasn’t until I became more self-aware, and started actually working on my leadership skills, that I started to shift. Honestly, I didn’t know people worked on leadership skills in those days because I thought leadership was a position.
Even after I started to understand what it meant to truly be a leader, there were many days when I went back into my old programming, and then Barb-the-you-know-what showed up. It wasn’t until I made the decision to actually work on my leadership skills every day that things really started changing. I realized that to be a good leader, it would take practice. And to this very day, I practice … and sometimes, I still fall down.
I have the choice every day which of those two leaders I will be. It’s not up to anyone except me. If I’m not willing to put in the work to be a good leader, I certainly shouldn’t expect my team to put in the work to be good team members.
I don’t have all the answers. I never will because there is always more to learn. What I DO have is the desire to be a better leader today than I was yesterday. How about you?
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Have questions? Email me at barb@high5leadership.com.