(Image credit: Andriy Onufriyenko/Getty Images)
The following is adapted from Leap to Leader: How Ambitious Managers Make the Leap to Leadership (HBR Press, 2023)
Your job as a leader is not just to build a loyal following and inspire them to do great things. Your job is also to develop other leaders, to help them make their own leap into leadership. Part of the human condition is that we tell each other stories about our own lives. We may think we are objective and realistic, but there are common traps that people fall into. If you know them, you will be better equipped to mentor other leaders and yourself.
Fear of failure
People can feel paralyzed about making decisions, worried about making the wrong ones. Or they may feel stuck in a job because the uncertainty of leaving or doing something different can feel overwhelming. Or maybe they don’t put their hand up for a promotion, worried that they don’t have what it takes to succeed in that role. Or they may not resist their boss and share what could be perceived as a controversial opinion. In these situations, the important question to ask is, “What’s the worst that could happen?” For most people, the answer is that they could be fired. But often this fear is unfounded. And even if they get fired, people often land in a good place if they have solid skills and capabilities. So take the shot. be brave
What if the worst happens and you get fired? I’ve talked to many leaders who have been forced out of their companies, and they often say that what they feared the most turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to them. The more important question is whether you are putting yourself in a high-risk position where you could succeed or fail. Getting to that point means you have to accomplish something meaningful first.
“Reality is just source material”
I’ve been fortunate to hear a lot of wisdom over the years of interviewing executives, and few phrases have stuck with me like these five words I heard from Leila Janah, the former CEO of nonprofit Samasource against poverty, and LXMI, a skin care line (Janah died in 2020 at age 37, of cancer). In our interview, she was very open about the fact that she had a difficult childhood.
“My parents ended up getting divorced,” she said. “I didn’t have a very stable family life. When I was growing up, we moved twelve times. The most important thing to my parents was that we went to good schools, and we never had money for private schools. My mom would research the best public schools and we would move to those neighborhoods. But they were often wealthier neighborhoods where we really couldn’t afford to live. I would get my clothes from thrift stores. Kids can be very cruel, and if you’re the only brown kid, wear weird clothes, don’t have a TV at home, and your parents have funny accents, you’re always an outcast. It created scar tissue. I didn’t have a rosy childhood.”
But ultimately, she didn’t let adversity hold her back, because her view of reality was just source material for the stories we tell ourselves about our lives. “All of your background, your bad experiences and your good experiences are what you decide to make of them day by day,” he said.
People often talk about the importance of having a positive attitude, but it’s about more than having a sunny, glass-half-full view. It’s about making a conscious decision to choose which experiences to focus on and how to put them on the couch, to build the narratives of our lives. An important role that mentors play is to challenge the people they coach with the narratives they are telling themselves. You can often do this just by making people understand its logical flow and indicating that it may be worth a second look.
“I often say to people, ‘Help me figure this out,'” Dave Goebel said. “It’s an indirect way of saying that there might be a different way of looking at things.”
With this implicit question mark hanging over it, people will often see their own thoughts in a new light and pick up on negative or flawed assumptions in their narratives. If they don’t, then it may be necessary to take a more forceful approach and point out the flaws in their narrative, whether it’s a fear of failure or a particularly negative view of something. Steve Stoute calls the power of self-deception and rationalization “the most powerful drug, the most mind-altering drug by far.” Your job as a mentor is to be the antidote.
Don’t be a victim
Another common trap that people can fall into is that they start telling themselves that things are happening to them, that they are victims. It’s a particularly dangerous narrative, because it leads people to shut down, focus on the negative, and start feeling sorry for themselves. Yes, bad things happen. But there’s a world of difference between things that affect you and things that happen to you. The latter is the victim mentality. Any energy people spend feeling for themselves is ultimately wasted. Entrepreneurs are wired a little differently than most of the population. One of the key differences is that they tend not to dwell on bad news.
Consider the experiences of Seth Besmertnik, CEO of Conductor, a search engine optimization company. In March 2019, Besmertnik sold his company to WeWork back in the day when Adam Neumann, WeWork’s CEO, was considered a genius and the company was valued at $47 billion, on its way to world domination But WeWork’s IPO was scrapped after investors began scrutinizing its business model and raising more questions about Neumann’s leadership. Since Besmertnik had sold the company for a combination of cash and stock, Conductor’s very existence as a company was in doubt, because WeWork was zeroing out all expenses that weren’t part of its core business. Besmertnik then rallied to buy the company back from WeWork in December 2019, saving the jobs of 270 employees. He was able to exhale, but only for about three months before the pandemic hit.
I asked him about the key lesson from those roller-coaster years.
“There are times when you’re like, ‘Why is this happening to me?'” Besmertnik said. “But you can only be a victim for so long, and when you’re a victim, you don’t own anything and you don’t fix anything. Every challenge you face is truly meant to help you grow in some way. I know we will come out stronger and something good will come out of it. Sometimes it’s really hard to have that perspective when you’re in the middle of it. But when I knew things were about to break, I immediately said, “Okay, what’s the chance here?” We moved fast and didn’t hesitate. We turned something that was a terrible situation into this amazing result. There is always an opportunity, and as a leader, the faster you can look at problems differently, the faster the solution and the better the outcome. But it only happens when you take ownership of it. If you are a victim, then you will be. If you take ownership of it, you get there.”
Adam Bryant is the Managing Director and Partner of the ExCo Group, where he works with hundreds of ambitious leaders rising through the ranks. As the creator and former author of the iconic “Corner Office” column in The New York Times, Bryant has mastered the art of distilling real-world lessons from his hundreds of interviews into practical tools, presentations and exercises to help companies. deepen their leadership banks and strengthen their teams.
The opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
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