7 skills your boss won’t teach 🧭
↩️UNFOLLOW University — August 25, 2023
Happy Friday!
Last week, I shared the 7 Signs of Weak Leadership, a newsletter based on one of the most popular articles I’ve written to date. It posed a simple question: Why do so many competent, motivated people become such weak leaders?
I received a number of thoughtful responses from some very experienced business leaders (thanks!). Here are a few worth reading:
“I believe their past success enables them to migrate to an arena of complacency.”
“When self-preservation is the ultimate goal, the compromised leader rationalizes their actions no matter what, forgetting what real leadership is.”
“Their focus shifts from turning the ship around to abandoning the ship.”
“It’s easy to manage when things are well. However, you need an entrepreneurial spirit to get through the tough times.”
“They become emotional leaders and ignore the facts that are in front of them due to hard decisions that must be made.”
“They forget that they were hired to grow the company not babysit the company.”
“Their egos get in the way and they stop trying to improve themselves along the way.”
It’s easy to forget that the weak leaders we criticize for being complacent, distracted, emotional and egotistical are real people. So while I criticize “them” I’m also talking about me.
Like you, I am both undeniably weak and defiantly strong. Launching UNFOLLOW as an advising and training business has allowed me to convert past learning into actual lessons. That’s exactly what the next few weeks are about.
There’s an entire generation of emerging leaders who are redefining success on their terms. We are building the blueprint for a truer way to work, lead and succeed without sacrificing our mental, physical and relational health.
In the companies and organizations where courageous leadership lacks a prototype, we will become one.
👻 It’s scary work. We are each afraid of different things and respond to fear in different ways.
❓ It’s lonely work. Uncertainty creates the conditions for true leadership to take place.
🌪 It’s rough work. Fear and doubt are the unwritten parts of our job description.
🖤 It’s hard work because it’s heart work.
You’re invited. Bring your fear, inexperience and insecurity with you. It means you’re human.
🤯 Radical Truth
Fear is not a force to avoid but a feeling to manage.
Fear is the raw ingredient for courageous leadership. Our internal and external responses are predictable indicators of how we work and lead when things get hard.
Do you accept the truth or deny it?
Do you take action or avoid it?
It comes together like this:
I call this a Courage Compass but a more accurate name could be Fear GPS. Fear is the starting point but our response becomes the finish line. Which description reflects your most recent response to a challenging situation?
Conformity - Denial became action. I wanted to be accepted by a person or team so I became agreeable to behaviors and ideas I don’t believe in.
Complacency - Denial became avoidance. My lack of awareness became a lack of action because I was over-confident in myself or my team.
Cowardice - Truth became avoidance. The fear of facing a really difficult challenge prevented me from even trying to solve it.
Courage - Truth became action. I acted on my beliefs and did what I knew to be right despite risk, fear and doubt.
As Mark Twain captured succinctly, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.”
Your boss can’t teach skills they don’t know. So each week we’ll practice an act of courage in order to master the 7 mindsets of strong leaders.
Conflict - Weak leaders avoid confrontation. Strong leaders are so comfortable with healthy conflict they promote, protect and model it every day.
Ownership - Weak leaders outsource their decisions. Strong leaders outsource their thinking and give power away to their teams while taking full responsibility for outcomes.
Understanding - Weak leaders manage by consensus. Strong leaders know when to walk alone and when to walk with the team to create mutual understanding.
Results - Weak leaders focus on events and emotions. Strong leaders focus on results and relationships, minimizing distractions and maximizing accountability by focusing on the critical few priorities.
Alignment - Weak leaders crave approval. Strong leaders create alignment in their personal and professional lives by defining success for themselves without forfeiting integrity.
Growth - Weak leaders assume they're strong and won't change. Strong leaders acknowledge they're weak and embrace healthy opportunities to rest, relearn and restart.
Empathy - Weak leaders see feedback as a pain. Strong leaders see feedback, dissent and candor as gifts that guard the emotional intelligence of both teams and leaders.
⚡️Courageous Question
How would your team say you respond to fear? How would your spouse or a family member say you respond?
🗣 Wonderful Words
“Fear is an important consultant, but a lousy boss. Courage is a wise leader. Get behind it.”
🙏🏽 Prayer Package
Lord, where I’m weak, show me new ways to work that honor your design for my life. I’m grateful you don’t need to remove my fear in order to reveal your plan. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
🎵 Courageous by FEARLESS BND 🤎
🛠 Practical Tool
View the PDF version of the Courage Compass here. Next week we’ll dig into the first skill, Conflict, and assess where you are on the compass.
If you’re new to UNFOLLOW University you can learn more about me here or check out my previous posts.
See you next UNFOLLOW Friday!
Sign up for the ↩️Unfollow University newsletter
Every Friday I’ll send you 5 courageous ideas to help you redesign your work life by making better career decisions:
🤯 Radical Truth - A story from me
⚡️ Courageous Question - A challenge for you
🗣 Wonderful Words - A quote worth remembering
🙏🏽 Prayer Package - A moment of meditation
🛠 Practical Tool - An actionable resource
