What Leadership Requires
The longer I lead, the less impressed I am by titles.
I'm impressed by what happens to people because you were their leader.
Did they grow?
Did they become more confident?
Did they learn something?
Did you recognize gifts they hadn't recognized in themselves?
Could they tell you the truth?
Could they disagree respectfully?
Could they make a mistake, learn, and recover?
Did you prepare them to operate without you?
That's leadership to me.
I've also learned that leadership will cost you something.
There are decisions people will criticize without ever knowing everything you had to consider before making them.
There are sacrifices nobody will applaud.
There are mistakes you'll have to own publicly.
There are people you'll pour into who may never acknowledge the investment.
And there will be days when you'll ask:
Why am I doing this?
That's why leadership disconnected from purpose becomes exhausting.
Purpose reminds you why the sacrifice matters.
But purpose doesn't mean accepting every burden people place on you either.
Stewardship still requires boundaries.
You are responsible for your assignment.
You aren't responsible for carrying everybody else's.
That's a lesson I'm continuing to learn.
And maybe that's one of leadership's greatest truths:
The leader is still being developed while developing everyone else.
I'm still learning.
Still refining.
Still getting some things wrong.
Still owning them.
Still growing.
And hopefully, still leaving people better than I found them.
"Leadership doesn't exempt you from mistakes. It increases your responsibility for what you do with them." — Maia Treleavenn