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Transcript
Does being a bad leader make you a bad person? Now that’s an interesting question because depending how you answer it will determine a lot about you as a leader and the results you get.
Think about it. If a leader thinks that being quote unquote a bad leader are not being able to lead well, makes them a bad person and reflects on them as a person, how are they going to act? Well they’ll probably be defensive. They want to protect that image they have as a leader.
So when people give feedback, again, they may get defensive and argue against it because they don’t want to hear it because it shows them as a bad person. Or if they make a mistake or don’t know something, they’re less likely to admit it because then it will reflect negatively on them, not just that they can’t lead well or they made a mistake or whatever it may be, reflects on them as a person as being a bad person.
The goal then becomes to protect your image as a leader, to protect your status and doing whatever that takes versus doing what’s needed because you don’t want to in any way show yourself as a bad person.
In other words, that’s really a fixed mindset.
How we should phrase the question
But to really answer this question, we probably need to rephrase it to, “Does your level of leadership reflect on you as a person?”
To really answer that question, we need to look at what leadership is. Leadership simply is the process of guiding people toward the goal through influence. You are pointing a direction and you’re helping your people get there.
It’s a skill that you can learn. It’s not something you’re born with. It’s not some magical thing that if you ate cottage cheese or your mother ate cottage cheese seven months before you’re born, you’re born a leader. No, it’s something that’s practical that you can learn. It’s a skill made up of different skills.
And if you learn those skills, you learn the principles behind leadership, what makes effective leadership, then you can be effective. Just like guitar or carpentry or other things, the more you learn it, the principles, the more you practice it, the better you get.
The answer to the question
That leads us to the answer of the question. If you are not good at guitar, does that make you a bad person? If you are bad at plants and they always die, does that make you a bad person? If you’re not good at constructing things yet, you’ve just started, does that make you a bad person? Well, no, you just haven’t learned the skill of how to do it well yet. It’s the same with leadership.
Your level of leadership, whatever range you’re in at the beginning, middle, it does not reflect on you as a person. It just reflects how much you’ve learned and how much you’ve practiced. If you wanna get better, you just practice more.
I think that’s one reason sometimes people put up those fronts is that they think it’s a reflection on them when it’s really not. It just shows at what level of leadership they’re at.
And so then people get really defensive like we’ve talked about and try to put on the image and pretend they’re a great leader and don’t want to listen, don’t want to learn because they don’t want in any way to be seen as a bad person when it really has nothing to do with that. Unless you’re acting unethically, of course, has nothing to do with that.
It’s just what level of skill you’re at and you just need to learn and practice more. And if you see it from a growth mindset that you’re always trying to learn and grow and get better versus a fixed mindset, you’ll accept that feedback, you will listen, you’ll want to learn, because you want to get better.
View it the right way
I encourage you not to see leadership as a reflection or your level or people’s reaction to your leadership. Or if someone tells you that you have a lot to grow in leadership, don’t take it as an insult, just take it as, “Hey, I need to learn more,” not as a reflection on yourself.
If you want to grow as a leader, then look where you’re at, look what you need to learn in, the areas you need to learn in, and just start growing in those. Pick one and work toward it. Ask for feedback from people. Listen. See how you can grow and get better.
There’s tons of articles on my website, theexceptionalskills.com that will help you do it. I have a newsletter, Leadership+, that’s about a weekly newsletter that gives a lot of information that you can learn.
I encourage you just do what you need to do to continue to grow.
Don’t see your level of leadership as in any way a reflection on you as a person, but to see it as a skill that you need to learn and grow.
