SUSTAINABLE LEADERSHIP

Which version of leadership do you want to buy into?

Is it the one where the former military leaders tell you how tough you have to be?

Is it the one where you’re so charismatic that you inspire cult-like devotion?

Or maybe the one where you’re supposed to be a parent, therapist, coach, astrologer, and cheerleader all in one?

As a matter of fact, you can discard all of these models if you want to. If you’re in a leadership role, it is just that -- a role. You have a job to do, and it is not necessarily more important than any other. You don’t have to consciously project some idealized, charismatic image. You will get better at the work through doing the work, just like with any job, and that’s how you will change over time.

When you bring things back down to earth and treat a leadership role as ordinary, you stop having to prove that you deserve it. You see more clearly what the role is asking of you, stripped of all the extra narrative baggage. Every interaction is simpler without that weight.

When you check out at the grocery store, the cashier is playing the role of cashier, and you are playing the role of customer. Your relationship with someone who reports to you does not have to be all that different. Yes, there is a power difference, just like the cashier is the one who gets to run the conveyer belt, but because your power exists structurally, you don’t have to wield it. You and your team operate within the system, just as you know which side of the belt to stand on at the grocery store.

The power you have gives you the responsibility and the opportunity to show up as a person, not “the boss.”

In the Sustainable Leadership Partnership (yeah, it’s a mouthful, sorry), we use the day-to-day problems you face as the training ground for effective leadership. From the specific situations, we extract the principles and learn the skills. Setting expectations, delegation, accountability, handling uncertainty, clear communication — these are just some of the skills we can practice from using the work already on your plate as fuel.

Meanwhile, live sessions reinforce progress and help to build momentum.

What we might work on:

• Clarifying roles and ownership of the work

• Delegating work without having to re-do it later

• Setting standards that are grounded in reality, communicating them clearly, and supporting your team appropriately to reach them

• Managing agreements instead of exhausting yourself trying to motivate people

• Building accountability structures that make expectations and consequences clearer and fairer

• Giving feedback without overstepping

• Making leadership decisions based on what the role requires rather than what makes you feel the most like a good boss

What you might notice as a result:

• You spend less time compensating for issues and more time preventing them.

• People bring you fewer problems that they are capable of solving themselves.

• Your systems, processes, and agreements work on your behalf.

• Delegation starts freeing time rather than just creating more work.

• Feedback conversations are more ordinary and less emotionally loaded.

• You’re able to do the work you are uniquely qualified to do.

You’ll probably experience more satisfying working relationships, and less anxiety that someone is going to find out that you don’t know what you’re doing — partly because you do know what you’re doing, and partly because you’re not afraid of someone looking behind the curtain. It’s a lot less of a concern when there’s no curtain to begin with.