How to become the best leader people have ever worked for.

We’ve all been there.  Those leadership development courses where the first exercise is to make an exhaustive list of traits of a crappy leader, followed by the daring plot twist of then listing the traits of a great one.  The answers to the exercise arrive faster than your elderly parents to a domestic flight.  Then why doesn’t the equation make any sense?  If everyone understands what makes a great leader, then why aren’t we surrounded by them in every organization?  Worse than that, whenever I ask a client about the leaders that truly impacted them in their life, the number of individuals they mention fit a two-person bicycle. It saddens me to say that as an executive and leadership coach, I encounter truly amazing leadership far too rarely for my own comfort.  If you’re a client of mine reading this, don’t worry, you’re one of the rare gems :)

During my encounters with great leaders in my own life (and I’m no different by the way, I had just one leader who truly impacted me in my career), or in my coaching practice, what set them apart from the rest was not only obvious, but so compelling I could feel it in my body.  What does it feel like you ask?  It feels like love.  Or, for those of you who just gagged like a cat smelling a lemon, it feels like deep care and attention from someone who in their heart of hearts wants the very best for you, not only while you work for them, but for the rest of your life.  Screw it, its love, or a form of love, get over it.

Public Service Announcement: Reflecting on my past life in Human Resources, I feel compelled to clarify that I don’t want you to start loving your employees in certain ways.  Put down the perfume/cologne, return the comb to your back pocket and slowly back away you dirty devils.

I think one of the best analogies for great leadership is great parenting.  As a new father, I want my child to thrive in life.  I want him to feel deeply cared for, to have a place in the world, to find his true potential, to have the courage to change, learn, grow, and evolve into the best possible version of himself.  I want him to have a purpose that challenges and fulfills him.  To become strong in the face of adversity, humble when he succeeds and resilient when he fails.  I want him to become better than I am in every way possible.  Those desires come directly from the deepest part of my heart. 

So how exactly do you become the best leader a person has every worked for?  Simply put, once in a lifetime leaders deeply care for the people they lead in a way that exceeds their own personal agendas.  They care at the ‘who’ level, which means their level of care reaches past WHAT they want the person to achieve in their role, and HOW the person is developing the skills and competencies they need in order to achieve success in their current or future roles.  They truly want what’s best for the person and their life. 

I think it’s important to distinguish between deeply caring for the people you’re leading and liking them.  As a leader you don’t always get to hand pick your team, resulting in a wide variety of personalities.  Returning to the parenting analogy, there are times, if parents are being completely honest, where they don’t like their kids very much, and that’s ok.   They still love them and deeply care for them. The same principal applies in leadership.  You may not want to be stuck in an airport for 24 hours with EVERY member of your team, and that’s ok.   Focusing your efforts on being your child’s best friend can make certain aspects of parenting challenging, and the same goes for leadership.  When your role is to lead someone toward their potential, all you need is to care deeply.  Thinking back to when I worked for the one leader that truly impacted me, I remember feeling friendly with her, I respected her, I knew that she saw great potential in me (because she often told me that), AND she consistently made me uncomfortable because she was always focused on developing me and helping me learn.  This involved pushing me at times into the kind of discomfort that results in growth, empowerment, and self-confidence. She was willing to risk offending me in the moment, in order to be of service to me for ever.

I can remember opening a tough conversation with the executive team of the organization I worked for. My intention was to help them understand that the employees of the company didn’t feel safe to raise concerns directly to the executives and to determine why. I felt the conversation went amazingly well. I shared my intention, brought up the feedback in a way that allowed the team to remain open enough to hear it, and to begin questioning themselves. I left the meeting feeling proud of myself and my performance. Later that day, my leader asked me to go for a walk. She talked at length about what I’d done well, and expressed how impressed she was with the way I navigated my way through such a challenging situation. Then she asked me a question that I thought was odd. She asked if I had a problem with stillness. ‘What do you mean by stillness I questioned back?’. She said she noticed a difference in how comfortable I was when speaking, versus when others were speaking. She noticed that when it was my turn to listen, my body language became agitated (clenching my hands and squirming in my seat) as if I was at the starting line of a race anxiously waiting for the gun to be fired. She even mentioned that she observed a tiny sense of frustration from one of the executives as he attempted to express his perspective, and that he seemed to feel rushed because of the way I was listening. I thanked her for the feedback and said I’d think about it and get back to her.

Awareness is a bitch and the next week was a rather painful one. As I observed myself when trying to listen, I could feel the discomfort all throughout my body. I noticed my mind was racing from idea to idea of what I was going to say next, based on only part of what the other person was saying. Holy shit, she was right. She risked upsetting me in order to help me begin to learn how to truly listen with a level of stillness that provides others with space and comfort, and allows me to sink into the present moment using all my senses at once. I learned how to listen to the words someone was using, and feelings and true meaning behind their words. All of the relationships in my life deepened both at work and in my personal life.

Demonstrating deep care for a person and their life will give you the motivation to help them find their place not only in your team or organization but in the world.  It will give you the energy and courage to challenge, support and develop them in ways that you wouldn’t have noticed if you focused solely on their current or future roles.   It will help you to envision and lead them towards their true potential.  It will give you the courage and the willingness to lead them into the kind of discomfort that is only experienced by individuals who are truly experiencing personal growth.  Caring at the ‘who’ level will also help the individual trust you enough to allow them to do that.  Why?  Because they can feel the purity of your true motivation and they know it’s 100% in service of THEM.  That is how you become a once in a lifetime leader for someone.  That is how you become the best leader a person has every worked for.