Leadership is hard. Eventually, All leaders will confront this reality. Sure, leadership can be attractive and seductive, but that doesn’t mean it’s obligation-free. When you’re a leader, the demands on you are fast-moving and unrelenting. Your direct reports are wanting attention, fair treatment, growth opportunities, guidance, and recognition. Meanwhile, the people you answer to expect you to produce results. Ultimately, everybody serves somebody. This is true even if you stand at the apex of the organization. In publicly held companies the CEO answers to a board and shareholders. In privately held companies the owners often answer to siblings, a spouse, and/or a board of advisors. Unless you’re the top banana in a banana republic, you answer to somebody. And that somebody always wants something from you.
The three most common leadership pressures are the “Three Rs”:
- The pressures associated with being responsible to others,
- The relentless pressure of having to produce results, an
- The pressures associated with constantly having to perform in the role of leader.
The pressure points are not extraordinary or unusual. On the contrary, they’re rather commonplace and banal. Each pressure point is universal and familiar. Remember, hubris is stealthy. It is always preparing, behind the scenes, hidden in the ordinary landscape of your leadership life, waiting for an entry point. It is against the backdrop of the normalcy of these leadership pressures that can stay well hidden, ready to strike when you least expect it, for it is when you are under a tremendous amount of leadership pressure that you’ll be the most vulnerable to succumbing to hubris’s influence, and when you are most likely to do harm to yourself and others.
Leadership Pressures Forge Results
To be a leader means to get results. Getting results is a fundamental leadership pressure point, and it requires keeping everyone working productively. It’s a simple equation: the more productive people are, the better the results will be. And producing results, as a leader, is what you’re most responsible for. Your effectiveness as a leader will be judged on the magnitude and longevity of the results you get. Period. The pressure to get results is incessant and the strength of the results frequently impacts a leader’s mood and behavior. A leader is far more likely to be grumpy, curt, and abrasive when results are languishing than when they are flourishing.
A good number of Giant Leap Consulting’s clients are privately held owner-led companies. In fact, it’s almost amusing how easily you can tell the financial health of the company just by the mood of the owner. His or her disposition will be directly connected to the P&L. When profits are up, so too are the owner’s spirits. Conversely, when profits are down, the owner can become an irritable diva in search of a Snickers bar! The mood swings extend to the rest of the workforce.
The Leadership Role
Leadership is a role – a part you play in front of many audiences. The role comes with many demands. In the classical (and stereotypical) view of leadership, you are expected to carry yourself with a commanding presence so that people know you’re “in charge.” You are expected to have more experience and knowledge than those you’re leading and to have timely and accurate answers to their many questions. The expectations of the role carry a more subtle expectation: invincibility. You are expected to be strong to the point of being unshakable and invulnerable. You are a direction-giver, not a help-taker. When things get dicey, you’re expected to push interference out of the way and say, “I got this.”
Leadership pressures shouldn’t be avoided. Instead, leadership pressures should be embraced. Understanding the pressures associated with becoming a great leader can help you avoid the pitfalls that come with being the one in charge.
Next time you encounter leadership pressures, how will you embrace them?
This post is based on an excerpt from The Leadership Killer: Reclaiming Humility in an Age of Arrogance.
Image by Bernhard Stärck from Pixabay
