Leadership

The opportunity to help someone grow is a beautiful thing.

Helping requires openness and patience to walk alongside someone while they find their bearings. Helping also requires understanding and connecting.

This means asking more questions and giving fewer answers. Being more curious and less judgmental. Allowing the time and space for discovery rather than simply barking orders.

We can provide a North Star, we can provide guardrails for course correction, but once we start drawing the map for the people we hope to lead, we rob them of the chance to grow and increase the probability that we’ll have to draw the map for them over and over again. Not because they're not capable, but because we've shown them it's more important to follow orders than to experiment and fail forward.

If we find ourselves constantly needing to give prescriptive commands and micromanage, it probably says less about the ability of the people around us and more about our own shortcomings as a leader.

The great thing is, we’re allowed to give ourselves the same grace we give others and move forward despite our imperfection.