Leadership: What I Wish I Knew When I Started

For over 20 years, I have been leading in one way or another. But it wasn’t until 10 years ago that I really started investing in myself as a leader. Let’s be honest, it wasn’t until I had an “official leadership title” that I started to take my role as a leader more seriously. If I could go back 20 years and tell myself what being a great leader really means, there are three pieces of advice I would give myself.

In this week’s video, I’m busting the myths that I held as a new leader and sharing the advice that I wish I had known when I started.

Myth #1: I Have to Have All the Right Answers as the Leader

So, let's start with myth number one: that I have to have all the right answers as a leader.  Wrong. Leaders do not have to have all the right answers. Leaders simply need to be able to figure out how to find the right answers. And when we say right answers oftentimes, we believe that there is only one right answer. I also don't think that's true anymore. Matter of fact I know that that's not true because a lot of there might be more than one great solution. And the only way that we figure out what that solution to our problems is, or our challenges are, is to experiment. So to make a decision, pick an idea and move forward and try them out and see what happens.

Myth #2: Failure is Not an Option

This leads to myth number two: failure is not an option. That's not true either and I do mean that actually isn't true. As leaders, we often believe that failure is not an option. Not only is that not helpful thinking, but it’s also actually not even true. Here's what I mean by that. Here's what I've learned about outcomes not turning out the way that we imagined that they would: things just didn't turn out the way that we imagined they would. That isn't failure, that's just a learning opportunity.

Can learning opportunities be painful? Absolutely they can be really painful. Matter of fact we can hurt others by the unintended consequences of decisions that we make. And those stick with us for sure, but that doesn't mean we failed.

Now, when I think of failures, I simply think of massive learning opportunities for us to do things differently and perhaps never like that again. So, in that way failures are okay in the sense that they're simply learning opportunities for us to grow and to learn and to improve, whether personally as an individual or as a team.

I did not complete my first Ironman. Now does that make me a failure? No, it makes me a person who did not complete her first Ironman. Was I super disappointed? Yes, very disappointed but it doesn't make me a failure and it doesn't make my attempt at trying an Ironman failed, right? I just didn't I didn't finish.

Myth #3: I Have to Figure it All Out Before Involving Others

Myth number three is that I have to have everything worked out before I engage anyone else in the process. That is the biggest myth and lie that somebody has fed us over time about leadership and what it means to be a great leader, what it means to be an effective leader, because here's the deal the best ideas, the best ways forward, come out of having a group of diverse people at a table where there are people with different skills, different expertise, different passions, different experiences, and different backgrounds all sitting around the table and sharing all that it is that that we can bring to the table. When everyone at the table is able to show up as themselves as their authentic selves and bring all that they are to the table and allow their authentic selves to speak into the reality of what's going on.

Say you're facing a challenge right now and you're just really not sure what the best way forward is. The absolute best thing to do is to gather a diverse set of voices around the table and have everyone speak into it and see what ideas emerge. Each of us comes to the table with kind of a set of blinders on. I bring my background, my experience, my knowledge, and my identity and that's going to be utterly different from the person sitting next to me and across the table from me.  And when we all get to bring our best selves to the table and really look at a challenge for what it is and speak into it and come up with some ideas about how we might go about that challenge, that is a million times better than me as the leader thinking that I have to come up with the best solution possible before I involve anyone else in the process.

We have huge misses when we approach leadership like because there are gaping holes in our ideas. Let's face it, we might have some great ideas within us and so do others.  So, when we empower others to share their voices and bring their authentic selves to the table and those great ideas get to sit together at the table and we get to brainstorm freely without judgment that's when some of the best ideas are formed.  So, it honestly is the biggest lie that as leaders we, by ourselves in our office at our computer behind our desk, have to come up with the best ideas before we engage anyone else's thoughts. No, as leaders we get to empower everyone to bring themselves to the table so that we get to come up with the best ideas.

So, if I could go back and tell myself even just those three things and debunk those three myths of leadership a lot of pain and anguish and humiliation would have been saved. But here we are and here I am. So, to be honest this is why I became a leadership consultant and this is why I love working with leaders and pastors and churches because I love empowering leaders to become the most effective leaders that they can possibly be, serving the people that they work with, serving their teams, serving their churches, their organizations, their companies, so that we can leave a lasting impact in this world that honestly is crying out crying out for effective leaders. And if this last 13 months hasn't informed us of that then I don't know what will.

In fact, I am so passionate about leadership that I went and got my Doctor of Strategic Leadership because I genuinely didn't want to just learn about leadership from my own experiences, granted they have been very informative in my life and helped me become a better leader, but I actually wanted to really spend some time studying what it means to become to be an effective leader through the lens of Scripture and how Jesus informs leadership as well as leadership best practices. And this is the reason that I became a leadership consultant: to get you the leadership answers that you are looking for so that you can become the most effective leader in your sphere of influence so that you can leave a lasting impact.