I’ve written previously about my view of the three most important metrics to measure a business’s health. They are employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and cash flow. While each of these is important, the latter two are difficult for an individual to change quickly. Employee engagement, however, is something that is in the hands of every leader, every day -- whether you're managing one, ten, a thousand, or ten thousand.
But being a leader doesn’t mean you can’t ask questions; good leaders are, by definition, voracious learners, relentlessly probing the people around them for ideas and insight. They are voracious relationship builders, too, really getting to know everyone in the business who can open their eyes to the “who, what, and when” of the job. Obviously, you don’t want to seem clueless. But you do want to appear deeply inquisitive about every aspect of your business and passionate about what your people think it will take to win. Those traits won’t undermine your authority. They’ll enlarge it.
But business these days changes too fast and has too many variables for any manager to ever have the sustained sense of security most of us yearn for. Indeed, part of being a leader today is being able to live with an uh-oh feeling in your stomach all the time.
Instead, consider the proposition that feeling a bit overwhelmed and under-informed is a positive thing, for both you and your business. Everyone knows that too much confidence can lead to arrogance and a kind of “that’s how we do it around here” inertia.
Leaders should look and act like leaders for the sake of their people’s respect and confidence and the organization’s momentum.
Being in charge of something new starts the game all over again, no matter what you’ve done before.