Empathy

If Integrity is the cornerstone, then Empathy is a very strong counter weight. I wouldn’t consider myself balanced as a leader if I hadn’t learned how to have Empathy, both for my team and for those around me. And while Integrity did tend to come naturally to me, Empathy was something that took some hard lessons for me to learn.

Grace

People are going to fail. A lot. You are going to fail. Maybe even more. When you fail, give yourself grace. This one was really hard for me to learn. I still struggle with it. When others fail, give them grace. It came much more naturally for me to forgive others than it does to forgive myself.

You need to give grace when you witness failure, and you need to improve where you lack the most. Usually people tell you to play to your strengths. With grace it is the opposite. If you have trouble giving yourself grace more than others, then you need to work on yourself. If you have a much easier time with yourself than others, then you need to focus on how to have more grace towards other people.

That doesn’t mean there is no accountability, but how you treat people isn’t about accountability. How you help them through their failure isn’t about responsibility. Likewise, you aren’t being more accountable or responsible by not giving yourself grace when you fail. You aren’t helping anyone by not helping yourself.

Perfection

There’s no such thing as perfection. It’s ok to strive for it. Just know that you can never attain it. Don’t kill yourself, or your team, trying to reach it, either.

Let your team see you fail. Show them how you process it, how you handle it. I fail every day I think. Failure is natural to me. I make a mistake; my team sees it; I recognize it and usually say I’m dumb; I fix it and they watch me fix it; then we move on.

The culture of your team is more important than being perfect at everything and never making mistakes. Spend more time building your team’s culture and less time trying to make sure everything is right all the time. Make sure your team is ok and that they like the culture you have. Don’t take it for granted.

Playing to Your Weaknesses

You’re going to hear a lot of people say to focus on your strengths, and mostly ignore your weaknesses. You can’t ignore them. You don’t have to dedicate so much time to turn them into strengths, but you do have to devote enough time, focus, and energy into them to stay balanced. Empathy was and is a weakness of mine. EQ in general is something I struggle with constantly. But the point I’m making is that I’m actively struggling with it, to improve. I refuse to let it be so much of a weakness that I’m not a balanced and capable leader.

Years ago I participated in a group exercise with a bunch of other leaders that were part of the same department I was in. The exercise was kind of one of those personality tests but this one focused on illustrating 4 different aspects of your brain and used colors to illustrate the concepts. I was yellow, blue, and green. Yellow was “strategy and vision”. Blue was logic. Green was process. I was basically equal on all three. The other color was red, which I basically had none of. You can probably guess that red was about people. Red was empathy, relationships, etc etc. All the stuff I’m not good at. When we had the chance to share our results with each other, I told Drew, a colleague that worked with me a lot. He looked a little puzzled, maybe even slightly amused, and told me that if he had to guess he would have thought red was my strongest color, not my weakest.

The reality is, I know that I’m not good with “people stuff”. So because I know I’m not good at it, I start with the “red”. When I have a conversation, I start with asking how someone is, or see if they need help with anything. I do the “people stuff” first, consciously, because I know I’m bad at it. That’s how you play to your weaknesses. My other strengths come naturally to me, so as a conversation or engagement goes on, the other aspects come into play usually without having to put much conscious thought into it. I don’t have to really think about strategy or vision because my brain is just wired to figure that out. Logic and Process is really easy for me too. Not people stuff, though, not Empathy.

Focus on what you aren’t good at first, then move onto what you’re good at. That doesn’t mean you have to be amazing at it, but you have to put effort into it.