If you are familiar with Brené Brown, you may know that she ends podcasts with a lightening round of questions, and one of them is this: What is the leadership lesson the universe keeps making you learn over and over?
Here’s how I perceive myself as a leader (key phrase being I perceive myself) …
- I believe in surrounding myself with experts in their field. My role is to provide the tools and the cover so they can be creative, take risks and do great work.
- I care deeply about my team, their lives, their health, their growth and their connection to purpose.
- I’m always looking for new ways to incentivize, reward, recognize and build play moments into the work.
- I believe in transparency and openness.
- And I put great effort into building trust (Patrick Lencioni, Stephen MR Covey, etc.).
Side bar… have you ever been in a discussion with a romantic partner and no matter how intentional you are with your words, you have that moment in the conversation when you think in complete bewilderment: “That’s what you took from what I just said?” I believe the same is happening constantly in our working relationships, we just don’t always know it.
Enter the anonymous survey around workplace culture. I do this annually along with other measures throughout the year (If anyone wants a copy, happy to share). When the results are in, I trot up to my computer arrogantly thinking, “We are in such a good place, I’m sure these survey results will indicate that.” And BAM – There are people in my organization that don’t trust leadership. There are people in my organization that don’t feel supported. There are people in my organization that don’t believe they can freely express their opinions. Every. Single. Time.
So, I push the computer back and roll through all the emotions. I’m the worst person ever. I shouldn’t be doing this job. I need to rethink everything. And lets be real, there’s even the walk through anger that looks something like… What do these people want from me? or Will it ever be enough? It would also be easy to push it down the chain of command and tell myself, must be the managers, but that would be a special kind of cowardice because setting the culture takes the entire team – but it begins with me.
Eventually I get back to the reality that this work is never done. I know that we come to this work family from hundreds of different backgrounds, with differing values, varied past traumas and nuanced triggers. Regardless of how I approach the art of leadership, I have a responsibility to stretch those muscles and continue learning, reading and working to be a better leader each day.
What’s the leadership lesson that the universe keeps pushing in front of me? To never stop checking myself and to lead with unwavering humility. The people on my team deserve my very best.