You Don't Get to Look Good and Grow at the Same Time

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you think about anything in your life that you've gotten better at, there are these periods, they're clunky, they're clumsy. We feel insecure, we feel like we're an imposter or fraud in some way. And that's, in particular, true about soft skills/ communication skills and especially when learning to have better accountability conversations with direct reports, peers, customers and other leaders.

Anyone who has ever been in a relationship knows that as you're trying to navigate that territory of getting to know another person and getting close with them and creating dialogue -- it feels awkward, it feels weird, we don't feel like ourselves. 

When we translate over into the workplace. When we're in a leadership position, it gets even more problematic because you think, "Oh, I can't show these people that I don't know what I'm doing. I can't show these people that I don't have the answer." And in particular, if we have a technical expertise, if we're a good engineer or a good accountant or a good marketer or a good technician, and we've made a whole career out of having the answers and knowing how to solve problems, that makes it doubly difficult.

So this idea of really just accepting that when it comes to the people side of the business of getting feedback and becoming a coach and becoming a mentor and opening up dialogue and building trust, it's okay to feel like a beginner. In fact, if you feel like a beginner, you're probably on the right track. 

Accountability conversations, obviously enough, they're not things that only happen at work. They happen in our life. They happen in our relationships and if you think about the people who you've come to respect and the people that you've come to trust in your life, oftentimes it's those people who are willing to have that conversation with you or willing to engage with you and share with you something that they're seeing or something that they've observed or ask you a question about something in a way that might not be so comfortable. Right? 

Those are the people that we often call our best friends. 

That's what leadership is all about. Leadership is not about making the most number of friends. Leadership is not about being nice all the time. It is often about stepping into moments that other people would rather say, well, "I'm not going to go there."  

But you as a leader, because this is about you and your life and your values, to say, "You know what? I could avoid this conversation but I'm not going to, not just because this person needs to hear this feedback, but because that's who I am as a human being. That's who I want to be. 

I want to be somebody who enters into those moments who lives up to their values, who says, you know, I see something and I think that person could be doing better than they are and I'm going to say something about it and I'm going to lean into those conversations because that's who I want to be."

Accountability, if you think about it some more, it's not about work. It's not about tasks. It's not about the things that are in our inbox. It's about who we are. It's about the type of people that we want to be. It's about the relationships that, we want to have, where we can stand in ourselves, and look back on the moments that we are at this organization or in this relationship. And we can honestly say to ourselves, "Hey, I've been the best version of me that I know how."

Click here for a related post. How to Navigate Difficult Conversations

Stay curious and hungry,

 

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
SMART DEVELOPMENT

 

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