Thick skin?
During a recent interview with a friend and prior colleague, I posed two questions I had asked several others. What is leadership? And, What do leaders do? At first, his response threw me a bit. However, after pondering his answer, I can honestly say I don’t disagree. Or, more to the point, I do agree.
According to this interviewee, leadership is a burden. He did not paint this in a negative light. Although a leader wants to be there and wants to do things for their people, sometimes the energy that it takes can be overwhelming. Leadership takes time, patience, and understanding, and I would even go so far as to say very thick skin.
I think we can all agree that leadership comes from multiple directions and levels. However, I am focusing on the one who is not only responsible for the people of their organization, but they are responsible for the success of the organization and their team(s). This leader is the one who puts it all out there and helps their group(s) to flourish and grow. However, sometimes they are beaten up themselves.
Read the literature or any book about leadership. As a leader, you must have poise, character, empathy, integrity, innovation, vision, flexibility, authenticity, awareness, and courage, to name only 10 of the litany of other traits recommended by leadership authors. The leader described in much of the literature sounds to me like a superhuman. They cannot react negatively to the situation, or others will shut down. They cannot display frustration because their teams may shut down.
So what happens when the team challenges a leader’s flexibility? What happens when the team challenges a leader’s empathy? What happens when a team challenges a leader’s innovation and ideas? They must have thick skin. They must be willing to take the brunt of everyone’s anger, confusion, and frustration. Thick skin allows them to hold their own and that of their people.
