Leadership - What It Is. My #OneWord, 2 of 3

Recently, in the middle of a run while I was listening to Ryan Hawk's The Learning Leader Show featuring Simon Sinek, I came to the revelation that leadership isn't about solving other people's problems. Instead, leadership is about providing the conditions and supports so that other people can grow.


Fast forward a few weeks and I was, again, listening to Hawk's podcast while out on a run. This time his guest was Patrick Lencioni. And this time my takeaway from the episode was that we need to embrace the tough stuff. As Brene Brown might say, we need to 'Lean In' to both the good and the bad.

Enter my #OneWord for 2020. Confidence. We are able to embrace the tough stuff, when we have confidence.

I didn't need a crystal ball to tell me that I'd encounter conflict in 2020. It's never been my goal to avoid conflict. The goal isn't even to always solve the conflict. My goal is to meet conflict with confidence. Let's be okay living in conflict.

This seems like an appropriate place to refer back to Ryan Holiday's work, Stillness is the Key, where he shares the strategy of the American soldier and United States President, Ulysses S. Grant. "He (Ulysses S. Grant) knew he just needed to stay the course. He also knew that losing hope - or his cool - was unlikely to help anything" (p.71).

Speaking of United States Presidents...I'd challenge you to find an individual in a leadership role who isn't fond of the words spoken by Theodore Roosevelt said in his speech, The Man in the Arena.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

*This is the second of a brief, three part series that I've written to share some of my thoughts on leadership and confidence, my #OneWord in 2020.