You’ll know you’re really leading when you start coming up against the shit that wasn’t in the brochure. You know, the stuff you learn about leadership when you’re actually leading, like the stuff you learn about parenting when you’re actually a parent. Like a DEFCON 5 baby blowout where poop goes up to the back of their necks! That’s the real–defying gravity–shit that wasn’t in the brochure. Leading people has its own similar experiences.
Nobody tells you when you take over an underperforming team that raising the bar and expecting excellence can label you a jerk in the eyes of others. You get a few months and a few resignations down the road and start asking yourself whether or not you did the right thing by establishing expectations and maintaining accountability for the work. Nobody tells you that you’ll become your own biggest critic, gaslighting yourself while wondering if the team was better off without you. They weren’t. People may have felt better off, but mediocrity is no one’s best, even though comfort may bait some people into thinking it is.
Nobody tells you that when you become a leader, people will immediately view you in a different light. Suddenly, your friends don’t know how to talk to you, you stop getting invited to happy hour, and that group text goes dark because a new group text (without you) has been created. You stop being a part of the inside jokes, and you start being the butt of them. But you don’t know that because nobody tells you this stuff. You just feel it because you know what the conversation looked like before, and you know what it means when a group goes silent when you walk into the room.
Nobody tells you that’s just rude, they tell you, “Leadership is a lonely place.” No, it isn’t. Loneliness is a lonely place. Isolation is a lonely place. Feeling stupid because you’re the butt of the joke is a lonely place. Feeling unwanted or unwelcome is a lonely place. But none of those things need to be a part of the leadership transition. They are a sad feature of human nature. They aren’t unique to leadership. And your friends and colleagues who cannot support your leadership transition are no friends at all. But nobody tells you that when you become a leader.
Leadership is a team sport. Nobody tells you when you become a leader that you are amongst the legion of leaders trying their very best, all while making honest mistakes along the way. Nobody tells you that you’ll see some of the highest highs in leadership and some of the lowest lows. Nobody tells you that when you hit those lows, it’s ok to feel it. Nobody tells you it’s ok to cry if you feel like crying and that it doesn’t make you weak. It makes you a human being. And nobody tells you that persevering through the lowest lows will give you some of the greatest joys of your life when you lead people to their highest highs.
Nobody tells you that those people holding on to rose-colored views of a reality that never really happened were the same people bitching about that past when it was their present. So when you’re working those 16-hour days to get everything right, ceding your time to one-on-ones and team calls to over-communicate vision, goals, and direction, all while getting blank stares and glib responses, rest assured that you are building a high-performing the right way. That team will eventually meet and exceed those yet-to-be-achieved mountaintop moments, and the people who give it a chance will celebrate the growth and the achievement right there with you because nobody tells you that your people really want to be led by you.
And that’s why I’m telling you this now, though I suspect you may not believe it until later. But that’s ok because nobody tells you that they can tell you all of this, but you won’t understand it until you live it. That is, after all, the difference between knowledge and understanding. Because maybe you were told all these things already. Maybe you knew. But now you understand. And not only are you a better leader for it, you’re a better person.
So if you’re reading this right now, and you’re feeling overwhelmed by the shit that wasn’t in the brochure, you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be, leader. Persevere. Wisdom awaits on the other side and you are not alone. We are right here with you.
