When you are in charge, however imposing your principle duties may seem, the most difficult problem you face is often the struggle to maintain perspective. That is, to remain focused on those duties, rather than to allow the hopes pinned on their accomplishment to deteriorate into hopes abjectly pinned on you.
It’s bad enough when others replace a collaborative focus on the project, under your direction, with a passive dependence on your magical insight and unerring acumen. But the problem rises to almost insurmountable dimensions when, under the unrelenting pressure of such disorienting faith in your personal ability, you fall prey to it yourself.
Once that happens – or even merely becomes an issue – clarity dissolves into confusion, and your decisions and actions become at least as much about you as about the actual matter at hand. When your putative status as a singular leader competes with your work in the minds of you and your team, your effectiveness is at an end. Your faux influence may retain some momentum, but that simply means that you’ll ultimately take more people down with you.
Leadership is not a solution, but rather is a problem when it is directed at impressing your personality on the organization, as opposed to cultivating and mobilizing the insights and acumen of your team. If you are having a powerful, productive personal influence on your outfit, fine. But if you then focus on that instead of on the work, you will lose that influence.
It’s a real danger. It can come from your own misguided self importance, or from the projection of that onto you by your advisors or staff. It happens at all levels of business and government. It is one of the side issues you must manage intelligently, in order to prevent it from coming between you and the core issues.
Keep a sharp eye out for this problem – in you and others, at work and in the community at large.
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Today’s tip: Speaking of influence and effectiveness, please see this piece by Wally Bock about someone who genuinely exhibited both.
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4 Comments
That’s why it is nice to keep a ‘thorn in your side’ personality around. Helps pop the swelling head.
When you are the boss, every report you get is filtered through the lens of at least one person’s self-interest.
Hello Fred,
It is a good idea, isn’t it, to have people around who think differently than you – even aggressively so, as you suggest – to help avoid creeping group-think and to test proposals.
Thanks for adding this – and for your own work and writing at your terrific site!
Hello Wally,
True enough! – And all the more reason to consciously manage the situation.
Thanks for stopping by!
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