It’s Not About You

It’s Not About You 

Leadership requires an interesting mix of skills, knowledge and attributes to be done well. In my perspective, one of the most important elements is possessing the right mix of confidence and humility. 

Leaders need to be confident enough to make tough decisions, and confident enough to have conviction to maintain focus on how to implement the mission. At the exact same time, leaders must be humble enough to realize they will not always have every answer. They need to be humble enough to recognize blind spots and to lean on strengths of others in their team. Furthermore, a leader must always remember their origin story, their roots, and remain mindful of how, who and what led them into their leadership role. 

It is an artful dance, balancing confidence and humility. The best leaders make it look easy. But it never is easy; it requires focus, attentiveness, and honest reflection on a daily basis. 

Leadership almost always comes with a lot of attention, increased influence, and a high degree of visibility, which makes this balancing act more complicated. It is surprisingly common that a “reality distortion field” takes hold for a leader, wherein their perspective is warped by the attention, visibility, and influence that they wield. 

The power imbalance between leaders and their team members makes this more problematic as speaking truth to power is always challenging for subordinates. Positional authority is a real thing, and it brings an additional layer of complexity for leaders to manage. 

Even leaders who begin with the right balance of confidence and humility often fall into the pattern of confidence growing and humility diminishing as time passes. They get caught up in the trappings of the position. begin feeling more important than they really are. This can be very dangerous for the leader and for all whom they lead. 

I have seen it happen time and time again. If confidence outweighs humility for too long, leaders ultimately lose their effectiveness, and often, they straight-out lose their job because the trappings of the position fundamentally changed them. 

As such, a daily critical reminder is this: it’s not about you. Leadership is not about you. It’s about the position that you happen to be holding right here, right now. It’s an important distinction that can help you retain the essential humility that creates success for the organization, the people in it, and for you, too. 

So… here are a few questions, intended to prompt some curiosity about your balance of confidence and humility, along with some strategies for data-gathering to promote some reflection and/or action. 

Talk time - When you are in conversation with others, or when you are in a meeting, how much of the talk time is taken up by you? 

If you are in a 1:1 and talking more than 40-45%, or if you are in team meetings with several people and your talk time is over 30%, you are effectively drowning out other voices and diminishing contribution. 

Calendaring meetings - When you are scheduling meeting times or appointments with others, how do you go about that process? Are you organized and planful… or is your expectation that others drop their schedule to accommodate you as it works for you? 

Emergencies happen, this is for sure. But more often than not, it is possible to be planful and mindful of the work that your team is doing in support of the mission. 

Systems and processes - We all have preferences as to how we operate. Is your default approach working for everyone else in the team? For example, I recently heard a leader say “I don’t do email” even as everyone else in their team prefers email to communicate and collaborate on work. Because the leader will only use a messaging app, the entire team is forced to engage in a workflow that does not work for them. If there is not a clear organizational purpose for a workflow that maximizes productivity for all, leaders should consider flexing to what works for their team. 

Speaking truth to power - How do you intentionally set up conversations so that you hear the truth from your team, especially when it is in a difficult situation? How do you know you are getting their best thinking, even if it is in conflict with your conviction? 

Review your last several 1:1s and team meetings mentally. How often did your team question or challenge your thinking or assumptions? If the answer is never, that is a problem. 

Distributed leadership - Are you always up in front, or do you have your team lead the system in partnership with you? If you are not sharing the load, how will you have time to focus on what comes next? How will you grow the leaders in your organization? 

Oftentimes, it can feel easier to just take on session facilitation yourself, however, there is no better way to grow your team’s capacity and skill than to put them in charge of things.  I recently had the experience of putting my mid-level leaders in charge of an important set of professional learning sessions. It was hugely successful, and the sense of purpose and accomplishment that my team experienced was generative.

Spotlighting and attention - How often are you in the limelight as opposed to your team, your staff, and your students? When you review photos and collateral that are shared in print or online in social media, how strong is your footprint as opposed to focusing on students and staff? While leaders should have some air time, they need to be mindful of “less is more” in this regard. 

Outstanding leaders don’t take the spotlight. They hold up the spotlight and shine it on those around them - allowing them to shine more brightly.

If you apply this axiom, that it’s not about you… you’ll be mindful that leaders don’t improve and excel by focusing on themselves. They improve by focusing on fostering the conditions that make their team excel and improve. 

So… stay humble, my friends. And always, always remember: It’s not about you.