“If you don’t believe the messenger, you won’t believe the message.”
— the Kouzes-Posner First Law of Leadership
When you are in a leadership position, all eyes are on you. People are listening to every word you say and studying your behaviors, on constant watch for inconsistencies. Are you asking for effort you don’t put forward yourself? Are you enforcing rules or corporate values that you don’t follow or display in all areas of your life? People want to know.
This fact applies both inside and outside the organization. People want to see that you are who you claim to be. On our best days, we have the strength to set the pace we demand from others. We tell ourselves that we believe in and live by the words of the gospels we preach. On our best days, it is easy to tell ourselves we love selling industrial cleaning supplies, or whatever. But herein lies the problem. There will be times we don’t.
There are times when it is all we can do to drag ourselves into the office to face our grumbling employees. There are times we go to work so worried about our kids we can barely pay attention in meetings. There are times when that migraine or lower back pain hurts so badly we can hardly be patient with our people, and we’re too exhausted to care.
I don’t care who you are, or how young or strong, tough, good-natured or moral a life you want to live. Life is going to hand all of us a boatload of opportunities to totally blow it. We will all face times in life that drag us into dark places and bring us to the very brink of what we think we can bear. The longer we live through these experiences, the more realistically we come to see ourselves. Many leaders develop a case of imposter syndrome on their way to this breakthrough. In fact, I haven’t spoken to many ministry, nonprofit and business leaders who haven’t known this struggle. Here’s the formula: watching eyes + acknowledgement of personal flaws and shortcomings = imposter syndrome and fear.
When you find yourself lacking, when your energy is flagging and your relationships are strained, when you’re standing in the spotlight worried sick about the mess in your head, this is what I want to you do. First, trust your goodness. You didn’t make it this far by being a bad person.
Second, pay attention to the direction of your thoughts. Are they leading you closer to who you want to be, or taking you further from that ideal? Third, listen for the answer in your heart. Somehow, when we look deep inside and calculate the direction our lives will go if we follow our current pathway of thought, the heart always answers back truthfully about what we should do. And, as the saying goes, the truth will set us free.
Part of being a trusted messenger is possessing the humility that comes from knowing no one is a worthy messenger all the time. Sometimes the clouds cover the most magnificent mountain, yet the mountain remains. Hold steadfast to what you most deeply want to be in life.
Wait. Listen. And then, most importantly, move toward that aspiration. Move forward without fear. Carry your shortcomings without shame. People want to follow leaders that are together with them, with the same dirt on their hands and fighting for the same cause. When we finally accept that even while grappling with our lower natures, we’re still worthy, our fears fade. But as always, the choice is ours to make.
Daniel Flowers is president and CEO at Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank
