Leadership: Be Careful What You Wish For

During my experience of the last fifteen years working with top executives of varied nationalities, I have been fortunate to meet a number of inspiring leaders. I also regularly meet many accomplished executives who aspire to higher positions and greater responsibility than they have at present. And here, for what it’s worth, is what I've learned: Many executives want to be leaders, but very few want to do the things good leaders must do.

Some of the unhappiest people I know are those whose aspirations for a high-level leadership position were finally satisfied and who only then found out that they didn’t really want to actually do what the position required. They had spent several years climbing their way up and upon reaching their goal, discovered that the realities of life at the top were a far cry from what they had imagined them to be.

Because of my management consulting profession, I’m often called to provide career counseling or coaching for people who aspire to leadership positions. My advice is usually both encouraging and cautionary. On the positive side, I tell them that being a leader of a company or a region or an institution is the most enjoyable and rewarding job. But I also share that my profession has allowed me to meet and to work with a vast number of unhappy people who worked hard and made enormous sacrifices to become directors/GMs/CEOs or presidents, simply because they believed that was what they were supposed to do, and in the process gave up their chance to do what they really wanted to and were really good at.

Unfortunately, we tend to view leadership as an external event. We only see it as something people do. Leadership is not simply something we do. It comes from deeper within us; it comes from values, principles and life experience. Leadership is an expression of who we are. It comes from within, from the inside, and it is a way of being.

Major leadership roles are typically given based on achievement. Those include successful business operations results, such as profit, demand for product, market share and satisfied employees. All this is OK. However, the core questions are: Where do the external results come from? Is there more to the results? What is the core source of external results?

We all have met the best salesman who had been promoted to a sales director and failed. Similarly, the best physician won’t necessarily make a good hospital director, and the best engineer won’t necessarily make a good division president. There is no shame if a person simply decides that she/he is not cut out to have power and authority over, and responsibility for, a large number of followers.

Leadership is not merely a function of achieving things. Many aspiring leaders aren’t aware of the fact that leaders must frequently subordinate the things that they are most interested in—or that they feel are most important—to the urgent and sometimes trivial demands of others. These may include dealing with financial analysts, higher-up bosses’ visits, the politicians, the media, various committees or organizers of the company every day. I always tell those who aspire to top leadership roles that in a role of influence you will have to deal with a broad spectrum of people who think that you owe them something in addition to your other responsibilities.

Some leaders I meet, who are by all external measures a great success, are not happy. Something is missing. They are stressed. They will say, “Everyone thinks I am a big success. My friends, my family, also my neighbors think I am successful. But I am miserable. I am unhappy about what I have to do. I get up and go and do every day what is demanded of me. I am reacting to circumstances my whole life. I was successful in my first job, then promoted and again and again. I liked it. But now I question my life. I am not sure what to do, but I have this sense of urgency to take my life back.”

What happened? Many leaders are like athletes. I like to compare natural athletes with top executives. Gifted athletes win; they have mastered external performance. But they also take time to rest and to prepare for important tournaments. Leaders, too, need to step back from their daily activities. They need to pause and discover new ways of leading, being and achieving. And not all natural athletes are good coaches. They often have a difficult and frustrating time as coaches. Why? Because they do not fully comprehend how they became great. Leaders, too, need to reflect and comprehend their success so far in order to prepare for their next chapter and to be able to share their experience with others.

If the next chapter is a leadership role, a true leader will have to stop doing some activities that led to her/his previous success and start doing some others. When a person first attains a top leadership position, she/he is often dazzled by the status, money and the deferential treatment which come with it; indeed, these may well be the things that motivated her/him to seek the top job in the first place. But soon these external glories fade and the person is left with the daily realities of the job – the nitty-gritty day-to-day leadership. This is the moment the person should ask, “Do I simply want to be a leader, or do I really want to do what is demanded of a good leader?” If it’s the latter, this individual might contribute something great and lasting to her/his followers and the organization they represent. But if she or he only wants to be a leader, the sooner such leader is removed from office the better for everyone concerned, including the leader herself/himself.

As they say, “Be careful what you wish for”. And wish it for “the right” reasons.

To sustainable leadership!