Advice for Bad Leaders
You have Took the First Step, You Know you are a Bad Leaders
Many times in a person’s career, they reach a fork in the road and they must decide if they take the easy path or the more challenging one. Most people take the easy path and tell themselves they are taking the tougher path and then they justify their decisions. Then if they don’t get to where they want to go, they play the victim card.
The first step in turning a leadership career around is knowing that you have problems. The next is getting someone to help you understand what behaviors are causing you the biggest problem. This might be someone in HR, and Executive Coach, or a smart circle of friends but you need feedback.
At my biggest fork in the road in my career I had to make some very tough choices. At one of my lowest points in my personal and professional life I made the decision to listen to those most important to me and make hard decisions to change the way I worked. I changed my behaviors. My ideas and energy and drive was great but my behaviors were not.
To make this simple, imagine 3 columns with these headings: Good behaviors, bad behaviors and De-railers. The first two columns are clear, things that make you better and things that make you worse. The third column are the behaviors that get you fired, lose your station in life or both.
At 50 years old, divorced, paying alimony, a house payment, 2 kids in college, and one more the way to college, and living in a small little student apartment and alternating between hamburger and tuna helper each night I finally listened. I was ready to not be in this place anymore.
I had been living my life with my de-railers in the good behavior column. I actually believed that some of my behaviors were a strength when in fact they were the number one reasons why I was stalled in my career and having a do over in my personal life.
It took me over a year just to accept that they were actually bad behaviors and then a long time to consistently, if not, permanently, eliminate them. This was no easy task and many days I still debated with myself if this was a good or bad behavior.
Fast forward to today. I found the perfect partner and she and I have been married almost 10 years. We have a big ,merged family and my career had a big growth spurt and finished my corporate work life at the top my game.
But his all started with being honest about my own behaviors and then doing something about it.
