Afraid of Heights

People look up to leaders. People want to emulate leaders and be like them. Does this reality energize and inspire you or does it turn you off? Are you threatened and scared of being put on a pedestal or do you accept that as part of the gig and intentionally mitigate it in a productive and positive way?

Knowing that you are an example and acting in a way that honors that role is so important in leadership. This doesn’t mean you have to be perfect – no one is. Holding yourself to a standard of perfection is dangerous on so many levels. We complicate this issue and bring confusion and fracture to our organizations when we don’t handle the pedestal we’re put on well. Leaders get elevated – it’s a fact. We are just people like everyone else. We fail like everyone else. We disappoint like everyone else. But the moment you take the step forward from the crowd, you become a focal point of attention whether you like it or not. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It can create good pressure for us – healthy pressure that pushes us to new levels of performance and in turn, pushes those we lead to new levels as well. Of course, this all depends on how we manage expectations and how vulnerable we choose to be while we’re on the pedestal…and how often we intentionally climb down. Here are some keys to remember:

1.) Expecting perfection from yourself teaches others to do the same

This sword slices many ways. In expecting impossible perfection from ourselves, we give others permission to expect this impossibility from us as well. It also teaches them to expect perfection from themselves. This is neither healthy nor realistic. Let yourself off the hook. Expect your best from yourself. Expect the best from those you lead. Leave perfection in the back alley. It has no constructive place in our lives and it just sets EVERYONE up for a nasty crash.

2.) Transparency empowers everyone

Be real. Let those you lead into your process in healthy ways. Be a leader in trying and in failing. Then be a leader in getting up again and trying it differently. It is impossible to teach others how to succeed if we don’t teach them how to fail well. Let’s stop making a tragedy out of failure. This has been so destructive in our society over the last few decades. We publicize the big wins and we publicize big failures – but not in a way that helps people learn from them and move on. When we make failure a spectacle to be gawked at and distanced from, we breed a culture of terror that drives us to hide with anything but a finished, perfect product. Failure is part of the process. Until we can get comfortable with that fact, we will be slow to success. When we know failure is inevitable we can prepare for it. When we are realistic about the unavoidable, we can calibrate expectations to align better with reality as well. And we can teach people who have just failed what to do NEXT. Let’s demystify success. When we show others how we got there – and continue to get there – there’s a lot more success happening all around.

3.) Leaders walk ahead – they don’t fly

The easiest way to come down from the pedestals people put you on is to visibly, intentionally be relatable. Don’t present an illusion of mystery about leadership. Be clear. Be real. Be human – IN FRONT OF those who follow you. We are only meant to be a few steps ahead encouraging those behind that they CAN follow. We shouldn’t make it rocket science. We shouldn’t create difficulties for those behind like it’s some sort of monumental accomplishment for them to do what we do. The better we get at remaining close to those we lead without plowing too far ahead, the better we will get at staying off pedestals. It is a natural tendency for those who follow to elevate leadership to a place we don’t belong. That’s why as leaders, we need to be equally intentional to redirect their attention off of the sky and onto the task ahead. That’s where we should be – just ahead – showing the way to go.