Several years ago, I was driving home from a meeting late at night. I was doing that thing you do when you are finishing a long day, when you play back everything that happened like it’s a movie that you’re watching in your mind. Re-hashing the day’s events when one is tired and semi-emotional is not the best way to spend time; in fact a friend of mine likes to say “Just roll the credits, man, roll the credits” when she knows I’m doing that. Still, it’s a hard habit to break, thank-you-very-much-Pete-Cetera.
I was reviewing a particular meeting I had facilitated that mattered a lot to me. I really wanted the attendees to think I was good at my job, and more than competent at my responsibilities. I had spent quite a bit of time preparing for the meeting, but didn’t feel that my output matched my goal. I felt disappointed that I had failed at increasing the attendees’ respect and affection for me (my true goal). Whether or not the official agenda had been accomplished seemed secondary to the fact that my successful transference of a great impression didn’t seem to have taken place.
I started making plans for what I would do at the next meeting (to REALLY knock them out), when I heard a question. The question came from that part of my brain I like to think of as: The Source. Sometimes, when I’m talking to my kids, I call it Where The Right Thing To Do Lives. As in, “Really? Who told you to do that? Was it The Right Thing To Do? No? Someone else, then? I thought so.”
The question was this: “Is it your job to impress them?”
(“Them” being the people at the meeting.)
“Or is it your job to love them?”
Oooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwcccccccccchhhhhhhh.
I mean, really. What kind of a question is that?
It’s like when my husband asks me if I want to be right or happy.
And I’m like, have you met me?
The thing about self-leadership is, it’s not about image management. Not really so much at all.
A good self-leader might have a great public image. (Tim Tebow comes to mind.) Or, they may not. (As Charlie Sheen has shown us in great detail.) Other people may be impressed by them on a regular basis. They may be successful in all kinds of ways that our culture recognizes as significant.
But true self leadership is not about self-aggrandizement or self-promotion. It’s not about getting as many Facebook friends as you can as if that says something about you other than the fact that you find that important. It’s not a contest to see who can make the biggest splash or leave the deepest mark.
Self leadership is about love, not attention. It’s about loving and leading yourself first; taking responsibility for and working on yourself and then faithfully exerting your hard-earned influence over others. A good self-leader does not want a meeting to end with people talking about how great she was, but about how awesome the meeting was. For me to use the meeting to make myself feel important didn’t serve the attendees- or the purpose of the meeting- well, and a true self-leader would put that purpose above his or her own self-serving agenda.
I arrived home suitably chastised, and newly committed to working for the good of those I lead. My goals adjusted; not in ways that arbitrarily or unhelpfully minimized my contributions, but in directions that supported the goals and possibilities of others and of the meetings themselves.
The next meeting of that particular group? I think it went well, or at least better than the last. I can’t really remember. Guess I wasn’t really focusing on me.
P.S. If you liked this post, you’ll REALLY like this article by a guy way smarter than me: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/opinion/31brooks.html
P.P.S. See what I did there? I made it about him. Not me.