“Influential leaders establish clear principles by which they and the team will make decisions.
Your set of principles is the clear point of view that you share with your team members to help them understand what you expect,
how you make creative decisions,
and how you want them to interact with the work.“
– Todd Henry
Herding Tigers
I remember the day I sat down at my then boss’s office a bit confused and uncertain. Recently being promoted to a manager of only two people for a couple of months, I quickly came to the realization that this job was very different. It was a lot harder. I was used to leading only me. For most, if not all of my life up until that point, I was in control of the output because I could control the input. Adding one other person to that equation adds complexity, variety and honestly, a little bit of chaos; it is disorienting.
In a moment of clarity and total honesty I simply said to my boss, “I have no idea what I’m doing.”
He chuckled and said “welcome to management.”
Later, he gave me one of the more impactful books I’ve ever read, Herding Tigers by Todd Henry about what he calls the transition from “maker to manager” and those words never left me from the second I read them. I had been a leader up until that point, but a shift needed to happen for me to succeed in what would become a more normal professional experience.
So much of my life up until that point was full of leadership moments where I would find myself in front of people, or leading a team in some way, but in most cases I was stumbling through what it actually meant to lead. Deep down, I was well aware that my capacity to lead was insufficient compared to what I believed it needed to be, however there was a tension I could feel mounting.
How do I lead in a way that is well informed and purposeful, but also in a way that is authentic to who I am?
For me to become a better leader, did that mean I needed to be someone solely different?
One of my biggest fears has always been losing myself to something, becoming unanchored to who I know myself to be. I have always wanted who I am to influence what I do, and not the other way around. It is possibly a function of pure laziness, but performing in a way that is outside of who I am seems exhausting at best, soul crushing at its worst. For me to become better at what I was responsible for, I had to unlock something deeper than a set of tips and tricks.
One of the things Henry lays out in the book is how to be intentional with the way that we lead while also being genuine to who we are as leaders, developing what had gotten me to the point I was at. Instead of becoming someone different, or instituting a new way of life, one of the things I needed to do was take inventory of what had been intuitive all along in how I was leading that seemed positive and name them. There have been principles that I was adhering to innately that I had not really even been self-aware of and it was time to give them their proper place.
Leadership itself has been written about, talked about, and taught at almost infinite lengths and while I do not claim to be the foremost expert on this topic, I do think I’ve developed over time some core principles that haven’t just made me a good leader, but help me be the leader I actually am which is a distinction we all need to come to grips with if we intend to pursue growth.
Over the next few entries I will be working through those principles and sharing with you what I do by way of who I am.
Then we will begin to ask questions about how and what that might look for you.