4 Surprising Realities That Infuse Meaning into Leadership
Organizations can’t give leadership meaning. Bosses and colleagues can’t give it.
Meaningful leadership is your responsibility alone.
Meaning is energy to run a painful race.
4 surprising realities that infuse meaning into leadership:
#1. Responsibility.
Do something where failure matters.
You cozy up to oblivion when you reject responsibility for meaningful things. One day you’ll look around and feel empty.
Someone said, “Not my monkey. Not my circus.” It is your circus. Don’t take everyone’s monkey, but when you grab a monkey grab one that matters.
Do noble things.
#2. Engagement.
Disengagement leads to oblivion. A person trying to do as little as possible ends up lonely and disenchanted. Getting by is going down wearing a blindfold.
Engagement means overcoming friction. It’s easier to do nothing than something in the short-term.
Hiding in your office and avoiding challenging situations moves you toward a blackhole.
#3. Control.
Choose behaviors that make things better. Leadership is trivial when you focus on things outside your control. Frivolous actions produce disappointing results.
You move toward meaningful leadership when your actions matter.
#4. Identity.
Identity determines behavior. The Stanford Prison Experiment demonstrated the power of self-perceptions. Participants who perceived themselves as guards became cruel.
Know yourself by embracing what you know about yourself.
Don’t ignore frailties. You know your own pain. Life is short, screwing up is inevitable, your strengths produce results and your weaknesses hold you back.
You know what you love and what you hate. What does that say about who you are?
Choose how you show up based on the realities you know about yourself.
Challenge:
You didn’t get up this morning wishing to be trivial. You yearn for relevance. The challenge is hammering it out.
You collide with personal hell when you fill life with frivolities.
Which of the above ideas most applies to you today?
What would you add to the above list?
Still curious:
“Do something where failure matters.” This sentence could have been the entire blog post. I love this – when our heart and soul are engaged, we are going to bring our best work – hard to be engaged if we don’t think what we are doing matters. Thank you for sharing
Thank you Travis. Now
I need to go do that. 👍
#1 Big on Responsibility and “doing something where failure matters”, powerful!
I have always felt Responsibility and doing something was always better than passing the buck and doing nothing! Great stuff as always!
Thank you for your blog! I read it every day, and it truly MATTERS! Today’s was a very powerful message for me, and of all days, on my birthday! I appreciate your sage words – a gift on a daily basis!