Leaders - Give Yourself a Break!

Strong leadership is a hard job. . . demanding and seemingly never-ending.  The temptation is to believe that to be truly good at it - one just has to keep going and going.   That's not the case. . .strong leaders need to have the ability to constantly challenge themselves. . . and give themselves a break.

Here are a few things in which I have found comfort:

Sometimes, You Just Need to Take Yourself Out of the Game.    In sports, the highest performing players seldom play the entire game. . . I believe the same dynamic should be true in the workplace.   To continue to be a strong player. . . sometimes you just need to take yourself out of the game.  If you don't, you are subjecting yourself to dramatically diminishing returns on your investment of time. You need to rest and re-charge so that you can continue to excel.  The good news here is taking yourself out of the game  will force the critical subjects of delegation and management responsibility to your  next reporting level and help develop your bench.

You Don't Need to be Right All of the Time.   Sometimes we place such high pressure on ourselves that we need to be right, even to the point of defending our actions that, quite candidly, were not right.   The good news here is that  NO ONE is right 100% of the time so it's not even in the realm of realism that you should always be right.  So, give yourself a break - it you made a mistake, or an error - you're human.  You can own it, learn from it and move forward.

The People Who Work for You Can Do More.   We get so inside of our heads, and our own task management, that sometimes we don't give any credence to the idea that the people who work for us can do more.   One of the important lessons I learned is that I was often acting as a "work dam" preventing work that should have been done by other managers from flowing to them by doing it all myself.   They, consequently, were not gaining valuable experience they needed.   The good news is that many people do want more responsibility and the only way they can learn that is through actually doing.  In other words . . .delegate.

You May be Doing a Better Job Than You Give Yourself Credit For.    At times, we can be our own worst critics.   Let's face it - it is the  norm in most enterprises to call out that which isn't right and to just take for granted all of the good work that is done.   The key to good leadership is the balance of being able to recognize that which can be done better and that which was done so well it is worth repeating.   Take a few minutes, sit back, and see all that you have done that has gone right.  It will do your soul good.

The good news in all of this is that you are the person who has the most power in making these things happen.   So, for crying out loud, give yourself a break - you deserve it.

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Brent Frerichs is the author of "Courageous Questions, Confident Leaders" available for e-readers, tablets and PCs on Amazon Kindle.