One of the things that I wish I had learned in post-graduate, graduate, undergraduate, and high school was that a leader is someone who sacrifices.
There is a lot of talk about charisma and vision when it comes to leadership.
Doesn’t the word, after all, mean “one who is in front”? BUT what I have seen in the different leadership roles I carry and those who I have coached in executive positions in the workforce…is that there are multiple sacrifices leaders have to make if they want to truly lead.
If you are a leader, or aspire to lead others, here are some sacrifices I didn’t know I had to make.
1) Being Understood. In today’s world, many people assume what you’re thinking without seeing to understand. This true no matter if you lead or not. This is, however, compounded when you are a leader because you are constantly having to put your ideas and convictions outing the open for people to evaluate whether they want to follow you or not. I have found a majority of the people I have interacted with as a leader have misunderstood…not intentionally, but because they have operated from assumptions or simply followed their own path. Those that remained and want to follow are your people and resonate with your message. Celebrate that they are there!
2) Being Cared For. It is very rare for those in leadership to be cared for. For the few that see it as a gift to have you as a leader and who seek to understand, there are an even fewer amount of people who genuinely care for you as a person. Celebrate those people when they come in your life. Whether it be a small text saying “thank you” or a gift card…these people are a gift and even fewer than those who will stick around in the above point.
3) Being Able to Check Out. One of my roles is that of a pastor. That means our family is at church almost every Sunday. Truth be told, it’s a vital part of our relationship with God and we were at church regularly (like missing at most 10% of Sundays) when we weren’t leading. But we don’t have the luxury of sleeping in and recuperating from a very difficult week. The week my dad passed away, the weekend that my daughter graduated (with all the busy-ness and emotion of that!), when I was inundated with very emotional hours long conversations and meetings…I still had to show up. Leaders don’t get the benefit of not showing up when others depend on you to provide stability to a swirling world.
4) Being Just Who You Are. Every person that comes under your leadership will inevitably take all their past experiences with leaders in similar positions and compare you to them. It’s not a good or bad thing…until they don’t allow you to be who you are. I have had people take something that I said and overlay something a domineering or insecure leader from their past said and entirely misconstrue what I said. I remember one fellow in particular, who I had opened up to and been vulnerable with and who I had thought was a friend take one comment (again, out of the hundred and even thousands of comments we had exchanged) and allowed that one comment (that echoed something a stinky leader from his past had said…along with his own insecurities)…he allowed that one comment to cut me off from other friendly conversations and set himself against me as someone who was out to get him. Even after I explained what I intended and apologized for the confusion…he ended up cutting me off.
5) Being Entirely Balanced. I am a personal and business coach and I promote integration of mind, body, and soul…in other words, balance. Yet, complete homeostasis is not the actual goal of my coaching. Rather, it is prioritizing what is most important and most urgent now. In a similar way that a race car driver needs to accelerate into the turn (accelerating is the opposite of maintenance or balance, as typically conceived), we sometimes need to accelerate at intervals when issues present themselves. If someone is hurting, I need to re-allocate my time, as the leader and servant, to that person who is hurting…It can be easy to forget that the majority of people are doing fine (something you MUST remind yourself of and celebrate!)…As a leader, you are looking for discrepancies in the journey and putting energy there at certain times. You’re applying pressure to the wound to stop the bleeding…while the rest of the body is doing fine.
6) Work Bleeding Into Life. This previous point, of course, extends into your personal life. If you are a healthy leader (operative word “healthy”), you are leading because you care about a vision and you care about the people who God has blessed you with to lead. Because you care, when your people are hurting…you are hurting. As I have carried more, there have been more sleepless nights. I try the life hacks…and they can work. As a result of these hacks, my sleepless nights are pretty limited. BUT because I care, they still happen. I will wake up at odd hours with the person who is hurting on my mind and begin praying for them and for me to know how to best help. I think this is normal…and, believe it or not, healthy. It would be a strange thing, in my view, to be able to keep people’s hurts and hopes “at the office.”
My friend, if you lead…it is a privilege and an honor and a responsibility. Consider it pure gift…sheer grace. No one must follow you. They see something in you and your vision that they align with. Because of that, though you may feel alone at times…you are never alone.
www.matthewwireman.com