How To Prevent Your Own Growth
Posted on January 02, 2011 by Ronald T. Brown, Ph.D.
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Studies show that many leaders are unintentionally preventing themselves from becoming exceptional leaders.
Why does this happen? The Harvard Business Review identified 5 major barriers:
Barrier 1: Overemphasizing Your Personal Goals
True leadership is about making other people better. While effective leaders have personal goals — the narrow pursuit of your goals can subconsciously lead to self-protection and self-promotion, neither of which will foster the success of those you lead.
Effective leaders do not focus on protecting themselves - but seek to engage and support the members of their team. "The decision to focus on others can feel dangerous..., but if your goal is to lead, our advice is the same no matter who you are: First, get over yourself. Start with a commitment to make another person, or an entire team, better — and then develop the skills, and find the resources, to pull it off."
Barrier 2: Trying To Protect Your Public Image
Another common impediment to effective leadership is being overly distracted by your image — that "ideal self" you have created in your mind. Protecting your image takes a lot of energy, leaving little left over for the real work of leadership.
When you try to protect your persona, your effectiveness will suffer. (The need to be seen as intelligent can inhibit learning and risk taking. The need to be liked can keep you from asking tough questions, or challenging existing norms. The need to be appear decisive can cause you to shut down critical feedback loops.)
Leaders must choose between image and impact, between looking powerful and empowering others. They must choose, in effect, between impersonating a leader and being a leader.
Barrier 3: Turning Your Competitors into Enemies
One particularly toxic behavior is the act of turning those you don’t get along with into enemies. But as you turn others into caricatures, you risk becoming a caricature yourself.
Take a hard look at how you interact with various colleagues whose agendas seem opposed to your own. Recognize that these colleagues are real people, who can possibly be turned into your allie.
Barrier 4: Going It Alone
The road of leadership, by definition, is unsafe. It leads to change, not comfort. Therefor, effective leaders choose to surround themselves with a strong team - a team that helps provide perspective, grounding, and movement.
Barrier 5: Waiting for Permission
Patience can be a valuable leadership tool. It provides a leader with discipline and hope.
But patience can also be a curse. It can undermine your potential by persuading you to keep your head down and soldier on, as you wait for someone else to recognize your abilities, and usher you up to the next level of responsibility or authority.
The problem with this approach is that healthy organizations reward people who decide on their own to lead. "Most of the exceptional leaders we’ve studied didn’t wait for formal authority to begin making changes. They may have ended up in a corner office, but their leadership started elsewhere. In one way or another, they all simply began to use whatever informal power they had." This is a lesson for every aspiring leader: You must chose to begin.
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