Manager, lead thyself...

First, I am quickly determining that I am really bad about keep up with a schedule when it comes to posting. This is something that I will have to remedy.

About a week before my job with CoolerSmart was eliminated, I had a bit of a brainstorm for running management and leadership workshops. I mentioned this to the wife as something that I wanted to start to develop just in case my training department was lopped off in another reduction in workforce move. Turns out that I was a bit prescient on this, as the job was eliminated a week later.

As I have been making moves for the last month to get all of my ducks in a row, I find that I am startlingly close to seeing my first round of workshops become a reality, something that simultaneously scares and excites me. But all of the standard, emotional drivel aside, it dawns on me that I also have to have a workshop prepared, polished and ready to go.

I have been trying to focus the presentation on hitting some key elements that will both create value for my customers and by poignant, something that is difficult to do given the time frame in which I want to deliver this. This is even more important for one of the workshops I am trying to run, a Greek Leadership Workshop for executive board members of sororities and fraternities.

So what is that one, key point that will really drive home how important it is that leaders take an active role in getting better? In thinking on this, I have come to one conclusion, the most important part of being a successful leader at any level:

You are never as good as you think you are. Get better.

Pretty simple. This is not to say that effective leaders are not confident people; quite the contrary, effective leaders must by very confident people. But that confidence has to be tempered with humility, else that confidence turns into blind arrogance, which is a dangerous position to be in.

This can also be one of the more difficult skills to master. For a leader to be able to check their ego at the door, listen to suggestions from multiple sources, give up credit, and be able to admit when they have made a mistake...well, it is no small feat. And most of us fail at this at least once a day.

The key is not to be perfect, but to realize that our own development will never end, and that we can always get better at our jobs. The only way to accomplish this is to realize that we make mistakes and that we are not God's gift to the world of management.

This was a difficult road for me to start down, but one that has made me much better at my job. I have been called a very confident person, bordering on arrogant at times. My first manager at REI had told me this because my "confidence", as she called it, was proving to be intimidating to some of the other managers and staff. This came as a surprise to me, as I have never considered myself a confident person. In high school, I was the guy who never asked out the girl, never got the phone number unless I was sure that she liked me.

When I first got his feedback, I brushed it aside as my manager being just flat wrong and that there was no possible way that I was arrogant (which is a rather arrogant attitude to take, ironically). Looking back, though, I can see how this was true and how this affected my ability to connect with my staff and be able to take criticism.

I had (and still have) a tendency to bull-headedly push forward when I think I'm right, and I approach most situations from the position that I am right. This, to a certain degree, I think has made me a better leader, because it means I have the stubborn streak to get things done. But what I have found is that when I allow for other possible outcomes, when I allow for the fact that I may be wrong (from time to time), that there is a much better connection with the people that I work with and that people are more willing to cede to my arguments (which, as we have established, as mostly right).

This was a hard pill to swallow, that I wasn't Mr. Popularity, that I wasn't the Patton of retail managers. It turns out that I was less Patton and more Michael Scott. The truth is that most of us, at least from time to time, are prone to reenacting scenes from Office Space. The only way for us to improve to to realize that we are never as good as we think we are. There is always something that we can get better at, and we can find it if we check our ego at the door.

-bw
www.brian-wiggins.com/auspex