The Essence of Leadership

‘The conductor of an orchestra doesn’t make a sound. He depends for his power on his ability to make others powerful.‘

Every decision I made was wrong.

I was drowning in a pool of my youthful ignorance with no life preserver.

Thrust into a major leadership position at the ripe old age of 20. My immediate supervisor had just been very publicly fired and it was my responsibility to step up and take the reins. It was now my job to ensure that a billion dollar submarine was prepared to safely navigate the unknown waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

No pressure…

I couldn’t let my team down. They were counting on me to have a plan of action to effectively lead them into this new existence. Without an effective plan, we would run the risk of hitting another submarine, another ship or an underwater mountain. I knew theoretically what I was supposed to do and in my arrogance, I charged forward giving orders and direction with no feedback.

That worked out brilliantly!!!!

I did what I saw the leaders before me do. In the absence of knowledge, they guessed. They took the limited information they had and made a decision. When questioned on the viability of the plan by members of my team, I took their feedback as challenging my authority. I immediately got defensive and I doubled down on my significantly flawed plan and spoke with conviction about the direction we were going….knowing deep down that I was completely overwhelmed and unequipped. I knew that I couldn’t display weakness in that moment because I was the leader. The leader must be confident, strong and most of all right.

I was soooooooo wrong…

As I presented the plan to my department head and my Commanding Officer it was very clear from the outset that it was woefully inadequate. Afterwards my department head asked me if he had made a mistake putting me in the leadership position. I embarrassed myself and my team and I was running the risk of getting fired on my day off. It was one of the greatest failures I had ever experienced. As a technician and worker, I was really good at my job which led to my selection. My leaders believed that I had the potential to be a good leader and I was not transforming that potential into kinetic. Broken, frustrated and exposed, the thing that happened next changed everything I knew about leadership.

When the student is ready…

In the midst of my sulking one of my mentors asked me a simple question: “At what point did you utilize the collective ability of your team to develop the plan?” He explained to me that the job of leadership isn’t to show how awesome I was as the leader but that it was about the results that your team collectively produces. I was so concerned with how I would be perceived in the leadership position that I lost site of the objective. I immediately humbled myself and went to my team and together we worked through the night to develop a plan that actually worked.

It is a becoming.

I believed being a great leader meant being the one out front. Being the single point failure. Being the smartest person in the room at all time. Being the center of attention. That it was all about me. That’s the thing, the long held beliefs about leadership with the leader at the center is a broken model. When I removed myself from the equation, the answer was revealed. Like the conductor, my impact isn’t felt in the doing but in the equipping.