My favorite part of helping people grow into themselves is those moments when they get it. When some concept that has been eluding them suddenly makes sense. When some hidden aspect of who they are suddenly becomes visible to them.
One key realization that nearly every leader I work with must come to is that their approach to leadership is unique from that of every other person’s. When I spoke with Thomas Peng, former Chief Information Officer of the Peace Corps, he mentioned something similar:
The way I lead is not the only way. Different leaders have different strengths that can be brought to the fore in various situations.
I was a technical manager, and my tech lead came to me saying, ” I’d like to grow.” For them, there was some kind of mysteriousness of a senior director or that level of leadership interacting with executives in that organization. In talking to him, I was like, ” Let me pull up the cover from that and explain what it is and why. What happens there and what’s successful. There’s nothing foreign about this. This is stuff that you can do.”
What happens with some folks when they look at leaders, they look at a particular leader or certain archetypes or mentors or people that they live up to, look up to. That’s good to learn from, but each of us has their own style. Instead of trying to aspire to a certain level, ” If I could only be like this person,” sometimes that gap is too wide or people feel that gap is too wide. I’m reducing the gap, creating situations where people can achieve, letting them take the crawl, walk, run. Crawling first, if that’s what they need, if they’re ready to leap, help ’em leap and have a soft landing. Creating those opportunities for people to really develop and grow into and grow confidence in their own leadership.
The person I was just talking about, when I left the organization, stepped in and is running what I ran before, and is being very successful. That’s important.
What have been the moments when you realized that your way of leading might be different from that of anyone else? I’d love to hear.