An important part of any leader’s job is ensuring that people work together in accord. There are times when that happens naturally, but without strong leadership it’s easy for your team’s goodwill to fall apart under serious disagreement or a time of high stress.
In the workplace and elsewhere, those in leadership a position should be thinking about self-respect—both their own and that of others. When everyone maintains a healthy level of self-respect, people are confident in their work. They take risks and innovate. They admit their mistakes. Trust levels tend to be high, and communication and collaboration are smooth.
But self-respect has an evil twin: a sense of entitlement, which often looks like self-respect taken to its furthest extreme. As I speak to groups and travel between engagements, I hear a lot about these people and the harm they do in the workplace. They understand the rules but insist that they should be exempt. They push their way into every conversation, are slow to share credit, and make looking out for themselves—even at the expense of others—a top priority. They may consider themselves special because they’re older, or younger, or have a graduate degree, or came from a higher-status background. But for whatever reason, they’re focused entirely on their own success and have no desire to play by other people’s rules.
As the holidays approach, we’re always reminded of what may be the worst boss of all time: Ebenezer Scrooge of the Dickens classic A Christmas Carol. So tightfisted that his name has come to be a synonym for a miser, Scrooge pays the lowest wages, provides the worst working conditions, requires the longest hours—even at Christmas!—refuses to give to charity, and is deeply unpleasant. Pre-redemption, Scrooge must have been a lot for even the saintly Bob Cratchit to bear.
When I speak at conferences and meetings, every once and awhile I notice one or two people who aren’t participating in the sessions but set up in the hallway or lobby, balancing a phone and laptop and looking grim. If I have a chance to catch up with them later, most often I find it’s a deadline or crisis that’s cropped up unexpectedly.
High-pressure situations can happen anytime, anywhere. Maybe it’s a predictable crunch time that rolls around every quarter or year, maybe a request from an important client on a difficult timetable, maybe an error or an audit or an unexpected staff shortage—or more than one of these together.
We live in an age of nonstop distraction. Email pings, social media outlets beckon, news is reported on a 24/7 cycle, and there’s always a new cycle of blogs and websites to catch up on. It’s easy to go down the rabbit hole even after a legitimate work-related search and emerge at the end of the work day having spent much of the afternoon wandering around online. The recent rise of productivity systems isn’t a coincidence—unless you have an extraordinary level of discipline, it’s a real challenge to stay focused.
If you’re in charge of a team or an organization, the scope of the challenge is even greater—and the stakes even higher.
If you’re like most of us, there’s someone in our workplace who—let’s face it—gets on your nerves and drives you crazy. Whether it’s an employee who knows it all, a client whose poor planning skills make everything a crisis, a senior executive with a huge ego, or a board member who can’t stay on track, the end result is the same: Stress. You worry about what disruptive thing they’ll do or say next, and about your ability to control your own responses—not to mention what others might do. It’s almost like middle school for adults.
It’s difficult to know how to handle these people/situations. You may find yourself reduced to dealing with their behavior one crisis at a time, walking on eggshells in between. It’s exhausting and it detracts from your performance—and your team’s.
When most of us think about leadership, we see ourselves empowering people, bringing them together, inspiring your team to do great work. And certainly those high points make the calling to leadership feel fulfilling.
But, as with any field, there are elements that are more challenging to get through.
In our interconnected era, it happens all the time. A snarky comment appended to an email from the boss, accidentally sent using “reply to all” instead of “forward.” A flirty text directed to the wrong person. Or, in the recent case of a BBC journalist, making headlines after an accidental tweet announcing the death of (still very much alive) Queen Elizabeth. Talk about a bad day!
Such mishaps make for funny stories—as long as they don’t happen to you. But even a minor incident can undermine how those around you perceive you and how much they trust your judgment. And especially in a professional setting, those perceptions and that trust are assets that are well worth protecting.
Setting the bar high to become a good leader for yourself is not a bad thing; but even Superman needed help from Lois Lane every once in a while.
Betsy’s known for her reliability. She’s great at working independently and can be trusted to complete projects that have been assigned to her. Her boss knows that when a last minute task comes up, he can always depend on Betsy to take care of it. In many ways, Betsy is a dream employee, and while she likes being the “go to” gal, she realizes that she’s close to burnout.