Welcome to the fifth installment of the 10 Things You Do Not Know About Leadership. In this weekly, series I cover topics that tend to be overlooked, forgotten, or completely misunderstood. By sharing with you, it is my hope and belief that I help in eradicating many of misconceptions that come with leadership.
5. LEADERSHIP IS A LONG & ARDUOUS JOURNEY
No matter where you are on the path to leadership, one thing is certain; it is not going to be an easy journey. Actually, it will a long and arduous journey. They kind of journey that will test your mettle and will challenge you every step of the way. Count on it.
The journey of a leader begins early in life and continues on until the sun sets. Hopefully, someone will pick up the ball where we left off and run with it but more times than naught the ball sits where it lays. Sad but a harsh reality. However, not any sadder than the noise a tree makes when it falls in the forest. If no one is around, then no one knows it fell or that it made a sound along the way down.
The difficulty of the journey rest solely on you. Your positive attitude towards how you approach your leadership journey will not shorten it but it will make it better. Rest assured that if your attitude is anything less than positive your journey will be longer and even more arduous than it should have been.
It is always about your attitude and your dedication to the commitment you made to be the best leader you can be. However, no one should be selling you on any kind of QUICK solution or EASY to follow steps to Leadership success. Charlatans, Snake oil salesmen, grifters, or whatever you want to call them because that is exactly what they are.
No quick and easy will ever get you there. Actually, quick and easy will NEVER get you even close. It is NOT reality. Believing in the Quick and Easy means you will believe in just about anything. It also means that you are NOT ready to be a leader. It means you want shortcuts, you want shortcuts where no shortcuts can exist. The easy way is not what will make you a true leader. All it will do is make you a very bad manager, especially when you realize that the quick and easy you seek is nothing but a pipe dream and a complete waste of time, energy and resources.
In any organization, bad managers are held without a doubt held accountable when they are found out wasting resources and time. Then the same applies outside of any organization, wasting time and resources are signs of individuals NOT ready to handle the responsibilities they may think they are prepared to handle. However, all is not lost. You can hold yourself accountable and press that reset button, learn from your mistakes and get yourself back on track.
Achieving any level of leadership should take a long time. There are NO SHORTCUTS to hasten the process. There is no “one and done” when it comes to leadership. Either you put in the work and get what you deserve, when you deserve it or you do not put in the work and you will get exactly what you deserve; nothing.
The length and difficulty cannot be stressed enough and even then, there will be many that will either attempt to shorten the process and fail or not take the seriousness of the situation and fail. The sooner you learn and accept the fact of this being a long and arduous journey will get you to the finish line right on time.
-Dave