Are you willing to stop telling the little lies that keep you feeling comfortable and safe, and secure you know “what good looks like” when it comes to being a leader?
The capacity to stop telling those lies is the key to your leadership success. When you go there, you cross the line between comfortable and uncomfortable—with yourself and with others—that makes your leadership impact go through the roof, your relationships have a deeper level of intimacy, and your team performance skyrockets. Here are three little lies you need to kick.
Leaders are superheroes
I loved Batman and Wonder Woman as a child, but the superheroes we grow up with give us expectations about the role of leaders. Is that really what good leadership looks like?
Too often as leaders, we think that we need to save the day like Batman saving Gotham City. And the problem with that is that Gotham City never learns to save itself. The same is true for us as leaders. If we’re always putting on our cape and saving our people, saving the day, how do they ever learn and grow and build their capacity to save themselves? To understand how they can contribute to saving the day? Do you recognize this hero pattern of leadership in the way you lead yourself, your people, or the performance of your team?
What might an alternative be? I’m a real Marvel fan and I love that in the Marvel series, there’s this idea of the anti-hero, a flawed character, who is on a journey. They don’t have all the answers, can’t always save the day, but are doing what they can with what they’ve got right now; they’re being the best they can be in any given moment.
As an anti-hero leader, we’re accepting of our imperfections, open to change, and willing to engage with what’s unfolding in front of us. Rather than jumping to conclusions and judgments, and assuming that people can’t or won’t contribute, we hold a space to see what’s emerging.
Maybe it’s time to take off our capes.
It’s all about you
I was in a high-level virtual meeting of peers that I respected and admired. In these kinds of situations, it’s not often that I will raise a hand and put my voice into the room—it’s more my style to listen, learn, and only contribute when I really feel I have something to say that adds value. But this was one of those times, so I raised my virtual hand to contribute. I waited . . . And I waited . . . And I waited. But I wasn’t invited to share my contribution.
I was so angry. No, more than that, I was embarrassed. I felt I’d been ignored on purpose, that it was a power play by the person running the meeting to keep my voice out of the room because they had a personal agenda against me. I was so triggered that I had to go off-camera and take a few deep breaths to calm down before I could rejoin. Even then, my attention and emotions were still elsewhere. I was hurt, sulky, and sat in judgment of everyone and everything that was said.
This is what happens when ego gets in the way. It prevents us from seeing what’s going on. We personalize things and assume we are the target—the center—of everyone’s attention and actions. And this prevents us from seeing the truth—from seeing what’s real.
To be our best, we need to let go of what author Michael Singer calls the “ego mind” that personalizes everything so that we can see and interact truly with the reality in front of us. Because the reality is that we are not the center of anyone’s universe other than our own.
Despite what our ego and accompanying “internal radio” may tell us, nobody is listening, nobody is interested, and nobody cares about what is going on with you, because they are the center of their universe—not you. The sooner we accept this, the sooner we can stop contracting in on ourselves, and start expanding out into the world. Maybe it’s not all about you.
Not right is wrong
You know that you need to rise to the leadership challenges and opportunities ahead. You’ve tried all the traditional ways of leading and feel drained, stressed, and frustrated because nothing seems to be changing for the better. And you’re being asked to do more with less: less time, less money, and less support. You’re burnt out and your people are, too. It feels impossible. I get it. What worked before isn’t working anymore. We need a new approach to lead. One that means we emerge better from our experiences rather than broken through them.
Yes, really. It is possible. What it takes is a complete shift in orientation from effortful activation to complex navigation, from deep dives into the latest leadership trend to a level of understanding that supports us to be agile and responsive to our changing context. Because there is no silver bullet. No one thing will do everything to meet the demands of the complex reality we’re navigating (not even psychological safety).
This is why as leaders, we need an ecosystem of ideas and an experimentation mindset to meet the constantly shifting demands and priorities of our work. A practice of reflecting and assessing our actions and their impact means we are learning forward, expanding our understanding, and growing our wisdom.
None of that happens in the safety of our comfort zone. And it means we won’t always get it right. And that’s okay. Maybe not right, isn’t always wrong.
Dissolving the little lies is a critical part of going there. Leaders who do stop playing small and staying safe, stop pretending they have all the answers, stop listening to the unhelpful voice of the ego, and stop looking for the one thing that will solve everything. And, because they do this, they unlock possibilities for themselves and their teams that simply weren’t available before. And maybe that’s what it looks like to lead exceptionally.