Do You Sometimes Feel Like an Average Leader? (#292)
The Confident Leader
BOOST YOUR LEADERSHIP IN UNCERTAIN TIMES
Many of you lead well, deliver results, and still grade yourselves as having failed.
“Comparison is the thief of joy.”
— Commonly attributed to Theodore Roosevelt
This Week’s Edition
When good leaders count their otherwise average performance as a failure, it breeds leadership doubt.
Clarify Your Thinking
Do you have an accurate, objective way to evaluate your leadership performance on any given day?
Most people do not. They rely only on how they feel to measure their performance.
Often, that assessment is less than fully accurate.
Let’s assume you believe your average leadership performance is an eight. Anything less must be considered a failure. So, even a seven has to be counted as a failure.
In reality, on a scale of 1 to 10, your average is a five. When a five is your average, that same seven is marked as a success.
That changes everything.
Think about it this way…
If your internal scorecard is inflated, every average day feels disappointing.
Disappointment, repeated often enough, starts breeding doubt.
Become more accurate. Your average is what you can produce on a consistent basis.
Old Thinking:
If I did not perform at the highest level today, I underperformed.
New Thinking:
If I know my actual average, I can accurately measure today. And accurate measurement gives me a real path to growth.
Thoughts Lead to Actions
The goal is not to think more highly of yourself than you should.
The goal is to evaluate yourself accurately enough to determine how to improve–take your game to the next level.
Here’s how I want you to start doing that:
1. Determine Your Real Average
On a typical day, how do you actually perform as a leader? Not your ideal day. Not your best day. Your normal day.
Spoiler: you are average, but it’s your average based on your strengths, skills, talents and abilities.
2. Stop Comparing Your Score to Someone Else’s
Your average is your average. It is not another leader’s middle, peak, or finish line. More often than not, I see a leader’s average blow others away. It’s sufficient!
3. Name the Biases That Distort Your View
Negativity bias causes some of us to hold impossibly high standards absorbing every shortcoming personally.
4. Redefine Success Correctly
If your average is a five and you perform at a seven, that is growth. That is success. That is evidence that your game is rising.
5. Raise Your Average Over Time
The goal is not to live on occasional spikes. It is to develop consistency so that what used to be an eight becomes your new average performance–your new five.
That is leadership development.
That is why this matters.
If failure breeds doubt, then accurate assessment calls out success, which breeds confidence.
Everyone would agree we need a healthy dose of confidence from time to time.
Boost Your Performance
In this week’s video, I walk through how we mismeasure our leadership performance, why good leaders are often harder on themselves than the people they lead, and how to establish a more honest internal scorecard that grows confidence instead of doubt.
What’s Your Opinion?
What do you think your real leadership average is right now? Share it with me at at robin.pou@robinpou.com.
If you are going to be a leader, you might as well be a good one. Don’t let doubt count you out. Have a confident week!
Robin Pou, Chief Advisor and Strategist
We live to make bad leadership extinct so forward this newsletter to others who strive to be confident leaders.
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What is “The Confident Leader”?
During the Covid-19 Pandemic, I began a video series called “Panic or Plan?” It was designed to equip leaders to navigate the doubt they experienced and to rise in the confidence they needed to lead during turbulent times. It took off. I then started this newsletter to equip leaders in the same fashion each week for the doubt that crashes across the bow of their leaderSHIP.
