Empowered Leaders Embrace Their Imperfections
Lets face it, most leaders are perfectionists. It’s part of what makes someone excel at their work, striving to be the best. This mentality, however, comes with significant drawbacks, even health issues. Letting go of this need to be “perfect,” while not easy, can be very liberating.
This excerpt from a Forbes article caught my attention recently…
When you open your heart and accept your vulnerability, you can be realistic about your goals and unlock your full potential. Once you have dealt with an imperfection, it frees you to focus on the solution instead of the problem, look for the upside of a downside situation, pinpoint the opportunity in a difficulty, be chancy in challenging situations instead of letting fear of failure hold you back or step back from roadblocks and brainstorm possible stepping stones.
When your ego is out of the way, you can be more creative and find endless possibilities to job and career problems. You won’t ever stop making mistakes, but you can stop denying them or covering them up. Choosing the path of humility and courage, instead of ego and pride, makes you a stronger leader in the workplace and a more loving family member at home.
That is really great advice in my opinion. We all make mistakes, and that will never change! Choosing to embrace that fact, to be courageous, and say, “I messed up!” or “I’m a hot mess, please forgive my mistake,” feels very liberating. AND totally goes against our instincts, but paves the way for personal and professional growth and learning.
In my favorite author Brene Brown’s book, The Gifts of Imperfection, she captures the reason why this shift in mindset and behavior is so hard. Admitting to ourselves, and others, that we are not perfect makes us feel vulnerable and self-conscious. And those are not traits of leaders - or least that’s what we’ve been told. Wrong! Turns out, being vulnerable and authentic are exactly what we need from our nonprofit leaders, especially now, when the world is so filled with such uncertainty.
You may recall a previous blog post on our website “Leader’s of Hope” . Leaders who don’t hide the uncomfortable truth, or hide mistakes, and instead address issues honestly and with transparency - are actually more effective and inspire hope in their team. So, you may be wondering, how do I go about initiating this transformation to a more authentic version of myself? I don’t really know, but I have some ideas that I will share with you and try myself!
I think starting small is probably the best approach. One idea I have is to identify areas where I am not proficient or struggle with and ask for help with them! It’s actually liberating that now in my 40’s I can comfortably say to colleagues, “I’m bad at this” or “This is not one of my strengths,” instead of trying to figure it out on my own - which is my tendency as a people-pleaser. It’s exhausting trying to be good at everything, and its not really efficient either! So I encourage you to try this as a first step in “self-authentication” - I think I just coined that term!? Embrace those flaws and imperfections, they make you who you are and as leaders we must lead by example. What better example to set then of being a real human who accepts themselves and others for who they are!