Episode 24 Notes | To Lead or Not to Lead

Here are five questions that every aspiring leader should ask before entering the C-Suite.

1.    Have you maximized the role you are currently in? What have you accomplished?  A critical component of leadership is confidence.  I’m not talking about the “I believe in myself. I am the greatest!” kind of confidence.” Although that helps as well. I am talking about confidence in your ability to get things done and I am talking about the kind of confidence that comes from experience.  There are critical moments as a leader when you will need to revisit a battle from the past and pull from the lessons and experiences to develop a strategy for how to move forward.  You need to know when push comes to shove, you have what it takes to get things done.

2.     What do you want to accomplish on the next level?  Leadership is only a title without vision.  The primary question of leadership is where are we trying to go? What are trying to accomplish? What outcome will make all the extraordinary obstacles and daily challenges worth it? Does the destination warrant the discipline that you want the team to exercise? These are key questions. We are living in a generation in which everyone has an opinion, and everyone wants to be a boss.  Getting people to follow is harder than it’s ever been. But, we find that people are willing to follow a leader who promises a vision that they think is worth the fight - even in some cases, when that leader is clearly not a good person or capable of really providing what they promised. If that wasn’t true, con artist would never be successful. Vision is important and the ability to communicate that vision is a compelling way is even more important.  But, if you don’t know where you want to take the people, you aren’t ready to lead them.

3.     Are you organized and structured? Do you have a plan? Now, once you have a vision.  You’ve got to have a plan. You’ve got to know what key steps or objectives must be achieved to make that vision a reality and you must have a plan to systematically get your team from one step to the next step. You also need metrics and tools to monitor your progress, which will allow you the ability to make course corrections before things get too far off track. Organization is key.  One of the first things that I did as a CEO was to make sure that we had a plan for processing our financials monthly so I would always know where we were in relationship to our budget and our actual financial performance.  I knew that this knowledge would be critical to my ability to steer the ship in the right direction. Then, I set up a system for monitoring monthly client outcomes in much of the same way.  This allowed us to make course corrections as needed or in the worst-case scenario, inform key stakeholders significantly ahead of time, on the rare occasion, that it became evident that hitting our targets were not likely.  Without organizations and structure, success, particularly sustainable success, is highly unlikely.

4.     Are you willing to take responsibility for the action or inaction of others? If you are unable to take responsibility for your actions and be accountable for the mistakes and failures of your team, you aren’t ready for leadership, or at least not integral or ethical leadership.  There is a saying among leaders, “We win. You lose.”  It simply means that when there is a win, we are expected to share the credit, and this is reasonable because it takes a group effort to do anything well. The team will say “We did it! We won! We built it! We raised the funds!”  All of which is great.  But, when there is a loss, the narrative changes to “You lose. You gave us a bad strategy. It all comes down to leadership. The leader has the ultimate responsibility,”  “We win. You lose.” is a common refrain of leadership. If you are prone to casting blame when things go wrong or taking credit for other people’s work when things go wrong, you aren’t ready for leadership or at least not good leadership. 

5.   How do you handle criticism? Listen, my friend when you become a leader, you will be criticized. You certainly be criticized when things go wrong but, oddly enough you will also be criticized when things go right. More often, than you think, you will be attempting to celebrate a success when someone will tell you how you could have done this or that to make it a great outcome even greater.  There is always the staff member or board member who believes their greatest contribution is playing devil’s advocate.  It simply comes with the territory.  That is why, in preparation for leadership, you need to build your self-esteem, strengthen your support system, and have a plan for regular self-care.  In the area of self-esteem, it is critical that you know who you are and what you bring to the table. You can’t do it all and you shouldn’t even try. Having a healthy respect for both your strengths and weaknesses is important for leadership.  It is also important that you have a strong support system where you can be honest, vulnerable, and respected despite your mistakes outside of the office.  These people will tell you truths that you may not want to hear but need to hear while being a soft place on your worse days.  It may be only one, two, or three people. But you need to know who they are and nurture and protect those relationships. Finally, you need to know what relaxes and refreshes you and make plans to do those things regularly to keep your emotional and mental tank full.