Courageous Leader BLUEprint® – 21st edition

Welcome back leaders!

This is the 21st edition of our Courageous Leader BLUEprint® newsletter. 

Every three weeks, you’ll get quick, thoughtful leadership insights without the fluff.

Read time: less than 5 minutes

We’ve previously mentioned that leaders who are no longer willing to learn are no longer leaders.

Being willing to continuously learn requires humility.

Leaders do need some ego.

Leadership requires confidence. You make difficult decisions, accept responsibility, and operate under constant scrutiny.

But confidence must be balanced with humility.

I learned this lesson before my leadership journey even began.

Just before I promoted to the rank of sergeant, a boss told me something I’ll never forget.

He said “Charles, people are afraid to work for you.”

While this was difficult to hear, and some of the reasons he mentioned were factually wrong, it was a real-world lesson that people’s perceptions are their reality.

I could have easily tried to defend myself.

My first instinct was to explain why he was wrong.

Instead, I chose to see this as an opportunity to grow.

So, I put my ego aside and I got curious.

I began meeting with supervisors and asking them to mentor me and show me my blind spots.

This required a lot of humility because I didn’t like some of the answers I heard.

They helped me become more self-aware, and I’m forever grateful for that.

They also taught me that the journey to seek self-awareness is never ending.

Without their guidance, who knows how long it would have taken me to learn critical leadership lessons?

I also began meeting with my peers, some of whom I was about to be supervising.

This was even more difficult because these were people I’d worked alongside for years, and no one ever told me the things I was now hearing.

To summarize, my first experience in humility as a leader taught me three valuable lessons:

• Surround yourself with a team of trusted mentors

• Be genuinely curious and willing to accept their feedback (without getting

  defensive)

• Understand that the journey to self-awareness is a lifelong journey

Having mentors in my life has been a blessing.

The best mentors will refuse to help you justify your behaviors that are getting in your own way.

One of my most loved mentors would always be there to listen.

I would call to explain my leadership challenges. Challenges with my direct reports, my peers, my leaders, and so on.

He would listen. He would ask questions. And then after he better understood what I was going through, he would ask me a question that challenged my humility:

“Charles, how are you contributing to this problem?”  

Despite my continuous journey into self-awareness, sometimes I was still getting in my own way.

This was another valuable lesson in leadership humility:

Always look inward first.

Humility is about having the courage to consider that you might not be seeing the whole picture.

This week’s courageous choice:

Think about a leadership challenge you’re currently facing.

Before asking “What’s wrong with them?”

Ask yourself:

“How might I be contributing to this problem?”