The True Impact Of Leadership.

12:17pm, sitting in my car. 

I’m late coming back from lunch again. I don’t want to go back. The two 22 ounce Icehouse’s I just drank don’t help with my motivation.  I know that as soon as I step back into my workcenter, there’s going to be a problem.  

Everyday, more and more, I’m questioning if I should just drive back home and never look back. 

AWOL?

Yeah, who cares. Anything is better than working in this mess.

I loved my job. The actual work that i was completing. I wanted the chance to work on electronics and make a difference in an organization bigger than myself.  I wanted to do something with purpose. 

I had the opportunity to go to just about any school I wanted after graduation. I chose the Navy because I thought submarines were cool (ehhh…) and I wanted to go against the grain from everyone else I was around.  The military wasn’t that good of a look in my community and definitely in my family.  I saw the ability to grow up in a structured environment that would challenge me.  I hadn’t been challenged in school. Things came easy for me in school. 

But there was one thing about life that I definitely understood; 

Nothing about life was easy.

I just spent four years of my life in an organization that was supposed to prepare me for the realities of adulthood; meanwhile, my thesis, was that the preparation afforded,was woefully inadequate.  

To confirm my suspicion, I had none other than my tribe (family friends, acquaintances, etc) to observe. My tribe elders lived for what amounted to about 22 hours: the time period after work on Friday until Saturday night. This terrified me as a newly aware teenager. I surmised that if I went the route of everyone else, I would live my entire life for 22 hours.

So I bucked the opinions of my tribe and left the comfort of my community to pursue what I felt to be a purposeful endeavor.

I struggled mightily early on as I attempted to merge my perceived rules for how the world worked into a completely foreign construct of honor, courage and commitment. Once I submitted that my understanding of the world as constructed was inadequate for my forward progression in the Navy, things got better…until they didn’t.

Through the lens of honor, courage and commitment I formed my beliefs on what a leader was supposed to embody.  I knew intuitively that as the leader goes, so does the team. I also knew that to be a part of this team that I had a role to play and there were no insignificant team members.

Until I was told I was insignificant….

Every. Single. Day.

I showed up to my first submarine motivated, energetic and focused. 

13 months in and I’m drinking in the parking lot during lunch.

To be clear, those were my ignorant choices.  I allowed the stimulus of bad leadership to cause me to deteriorate emotionally and medicate in an unhealthy way.  I don’t blame the leadership I had in a negative light anymore.  I believe people do the best they can under the conditions they are in.  

The word blame, gets a bad wrap.  We typically frame blame under a solely negative perspective.  I blamed them for something I was in complete control of, myself.  Instead I blame them for helping me find my passion. I blame them for showing me how not to treat people. I blame them for revealing all of the land mines in the battlefield of leadership. I blame them for igniting a passion for leadership that will never be extinguished.

Before these challenges I never understood the gravity of leadership.  I never comprehended the 2nd and 3rd order consequences of good or bad leadership.  

Leadership, good or bad, impacts our lives greater than we recognize.  

Imagine you have continual negative interactions with an incompetent leader. You spend your entire day frustrated and beat down. Your energy levels are running on fumes because you are utilizing the majority of your emotional and mental energy to restrain yourself from hitting them or just storming out of the office.  

That frustration carries over to the commute home in the form of road rage further depleting your energy reserves and then you finally get home. Since you have no energy, your patience is gone and every little negative thing is magnified by 1000.  

You try to relax with one drink, that turns into 4 and you eventually fall asleep due to sheer exhaustion.  You wake up after horrible sleep only to face another day with only a third of the energy you actually need to be at your best.  You forgot to help the kids with their projects. You didn’t notice your spouse cooked an amazing meal. 

You are still being negatively impacted emotionally hours after you have left the office; all because of bad leadership.  

Now, imagine months, years, decades of this cycle.

This is why leadership matters so much.

My passion is to help thousands of aspiring leaders become better for the teams that they lead. Not just for the team but for the families, for their livelihoods, for their sanity.

I’m just delusional and obsessed to believe that I can make it happen.

Unsung Leader