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Stay on course
The journey to leadership is long, and to stay on course and not get pulled off you need a compass. You need to know where you’re going, and then you need to know when you’re getting off track, as I was back in my Honeywell days. It was about my ego of chasing a title rather than being a value-centered leader who was making a difference in the world. I think you have to go through those difficult times on that journey. The idea of “true north” is to have an idea of what’s most important to you, your inner moral compass if you will. And if you get pulled off by people with bad values, or you’re chasing money, fame, and power instead of trying to make a difference, that’s when you sense, hey, I’m losing it here. Or you have a team of people around you who will point that out to you as well.
And it’s on that journey where you learn about yourself. That’s why I think it’s important to have a lot of different experiences during the course of your career. As we say, “rubbing up against the world” to see what do I like, what don’t I like, what’s the real me, and how do people respond. And learn about my leadership, get knocked down, and say, I didn’t do a good job there, what can I do to get better?
Gain self-awareness
Having self-awareness is crucial. I had to learn that the hard way. I went through many years of my life not being very self-aware. People like my wife would say Bill, you have blind spots. And I’d say no, no I don’t have blind spots. I was so blind I couldn’t see my own blind spots. Blind spots are things that others see about you that you don’t see about yourself. I wasn’t good at reading audiences and knowing how people are interacting and how they’re seeing me. I was seeing myself as I wanted to be seen, not as others saw me. I think that’s true of a lot of leaders.
There are two ways—actually three—to go through that and gain self-awareness. The first is you have to process your life story and know who you are, where you came from, and deal with your crucibles and find growth opportunities from them.
Second is to have some form of introspective practice. I recommend taking 20 minutes a day to do something introspective. This morning I got up and meditated, and it helped give me perspective on the day and the week that I’m going through. Could be that you go for a jog, take a long walk, pray, keep a journal—there are many ways to be introspective. I think it’s critical in this 24/7 world where everyone’s hurried and running all the time not to let the important get squeezed out by the immediate, and not to be just doing a task list.
I think it’s essential that you get honest feedback and have a group of people around you who will tell you the truth. Maybe at work, or maybe people who aren’t at work, maybe longtime friends. Somebody you can go to and say hey, how should I handle this? How do you think I did? Give me some feedback. You need that honest feedback. If people see you going off and getting caught up with what your title is or just trying to earn money, you’ve got to have people in your life that say hey, Bill, this isn’t the real you. I see you striving for something that I haven’t seen before. You need people like that, people who have trod that path before, who have gone down that road, and can say hey, I can see what you’re getting into here, let me give you some advice. That’s invaluable.
So those three things: processing your life story and your crucibles, introspection, and some form of honest feedback and truth tellers on your support team.