When The Past Hurts A Leader
Be careful following a leader just because he has gray hair. The tenure or the age of a leader does not always signal wisdom. Here is the question:
Is the leader growing in wisdom or growing in fear?
A lot of people let the past keep them from moving forward. But when a leader is dominated by fear, everyone they lead focuses on the past and becomes stuck in the present as well.
How does your past affect you?
Whether I am a leader that is growing in wisdom or one that is growing in fear has a huge impact on the people I lead.
At work, I will create a culture of risk avoidance. Avoiding failure can become the goal instead of growth and progress.
At home, I will create an environment where my kids are so protected from failure that they crumble when the inevitable failure comes later in life.
Fear: Watch For The Signs
As a leader at work or at home, I need to watch for the signs that fear is in charge. There are hundreds of signals that I should recognize. I present to you a short list below:
- The fearful leader is indecisive and continuously looks for more reassurance.
- The fearful leader wants a guarantee that nothing will go wrong.
- The fearful leader will not move forward without a guarantee.
- The fearful leader argues as if the POSSIBILITY of failure makes failure LIKELY.
- The fearful leader does his child’s science project because other parents are doing it and the boy might get a lower grade.
- The fearful leader always finds the objections, but rarely finds the benefits.
- The fearful leader consistently refers to the mistakes of the past as a reason not to move forward.
- The fearful leader says, “I was wrong once. I don’t want to be wrong again.”
- The fearful leader consistently waits for other teams or families to make a commitment before making the commitment himself.
- The fearful leader will not allow team members or family members to make mistakes, no matter the size or impact.
Growing In Wisdom
Wise leaders do not allow the mistakes of the past or the possibilities of negative results in the future keep them from moving forward.
The wise leader grows in wisdom by evaluating her decisions, the good ones and the bad ones, in hindsight. By asking herself questions like:
- “What went right?”
- “What went wrong?”
- “What did we miss?”
- “If I could do it over again, would I?”
- If yes, “How would I insure the outcomes were better?”
When a wise leader has a decision coming in the future, she uses the lessons learned from her past decisions as a filter and not as a roadblock. Even if she is anxious about the outcome, she uses the unease to be sure the lessons of the past are applied in the best way to insure success.
Wise leaders always have a healthy bit of caution when approaching an important decision. Wise leaders do not go into decisions with blind abandon.
- They examine all the possibilities.
- They examine the long-term impact of success and failure.
- They evaluate the risks and the benefits and make a decision.
- They do everything they can to increase the probability of success.
- They look at each decision as another opportunity to grow in wisdom.
My past should have a huge influence on the decisions I make in the present. I am wise to evaluate my decisions based on my experience in the past. But, I am fearful if I consistently let my fear keep me from moving forward in my life.
The Bottom Line:
Whether I am leading at work, at home or both I need to ask myself:
“Am I growing in wisdom, or am I growing in fear?”
Just because a leader has “been there and done that” does not make him wise. He may take every experience and use it as an excuse to maintain the status quo and therefore prevent the growth of others around him. That is not wisdom.
The fear that dominates that leader can hold back entire companies and generations of family members. The culture of fear will permeate the work place and the home.
It is a wise leader who uses the past as a filter for her decisions and no as a roadblock. Don’t let fear be your roadblock to wisdom and growth.
Question:
What other questions leaders ask after a failure?
What other questions leaders ask after a failure?
1) PLEASE can I have my job back???
2) What do you mean you want a divorce? I thought things were going ok.
3) OK, God, what are you going to do to me next?
Ok God, what do I need to learn? What am I missing? Who do I need to ask for forgiveness? Are all good questions.
There’s a pronounced tendency in large organizations to promote fearful leaders rather than wise leaders to positions of authority. The unending economic recession seems to have aggravated that pattern, as though leaders are even more fearful now than before. The predictable result is that our large organizations, private and public, are nearly incapable of innovation. We seem afraid to try anything different from what our immediate predecessor did. And it’s hard to see anything in our future capable of reversing this pattern. It’s sad to see, as our culture used to be pretty good at doing new things.
I agree. Stagnation is rewarded because it seems safer than innovation. The larger the organization, the more fearful people become because they forget it was innovation that got them their. The mindset often becomes more about staying where they are instead of continuing to grow.
Hello Dave,
Would you consider appropriate to substitute the words “leader” with “manager” and “fear” with “insecurity”? I have worked for three corporations and about a dozen managers. I had one of those in each company. So the math comes out to be something like 25%. These managers were invariably the worst ones. They never really led either, even though they think they were doing or could do it!
Managers manage resources and manage the status quo.
Leaders lead people and lead change.