In a previous column, I offered some thoughts about self-centered leadership, viewing employees more as resources we use to accomplish our goals, rather than people we have been given the opportunity to lead, develop, challenge, and help grow. The problem, I suggested, is not expecting people to produce; the problem is when what they produce becomes the primary way we see their value and define our relationship with them.
I suggested a good question to ask yourself is this: What does healthy leadership require from me right now?
The answer will not always be the same. Some situations require empathy and patience, while others require courage and accountability. When emotions are high, healthy leadership may mean intentionally de-escalating the situation, recognizing that my response can either lower the temperature or make things worse. I may need to speak, or stop talking and listen. I may need to hold my position, or have enough humility to admit that someone else sees something I have missed. I may need to challenge another person’s behavior, or take a closer look at my own. Healthy leadership requires enough self-awareness to recognize the difference.
That is one reason curiosity has become increasingly important to me as a leadership discipline. The longer we lead and the more experience we gain, the easier it becomes to assume our perspective is the right one. Under pressure, that tendency can become even stronger because emotions, fear, ego, and our attachment to a particular outcome can cause blind spots.
Healthy leaders have to remain willing to ask what they might be missing, what assumptions they are making, and whose perspective they need to hear. Being willing to listen to another perspective does not mean surrendering our responsibility to make decisions. It means realizing that leadership maturity should make us more curious, not more defensive.
Look at those around you
One of the things Vanessa Van Edwards said at the recent Global Leadership Summit that stuck with me was the importance of the five people we spend the most time with. The people closest to us influence what we value, what we tolerate, and what we begin to see as normal.
That made me think about leadership. If the people around us do not care about healthy leadership, if they do not challenge us to grow, or hold us accountable for how we lead, how long before healthy leadership becomes less of a priority for us, too?
We need people who will encourage us, tell us the truth, broaden our perspective, and recognize when fear, pride, exhaustion, or emotion may be influencing us. Healthy leaders need healthy relationships, too, especially with people who help us continue becoming the leaders we want to be.
Thinking differently about my responsibility as a leader has not made me care less about performance. If anything, I think more seriously now about what creates sustainable performance. Healthy leadership should never require us to choose between caring about people and delivering excellence. We need people who perform, take ownership, and contribute to the success of the business. At the same time, we have a responsibility to create environments where people can learn, develop, become more capable, and grow into people who can contribute at an even higher level tomorrow than they can today.
Are you helping people become better?
Another question I have started asking myself more often is: Are people better because of the influence I have had in their lives? I am not asking whether people are always happy with me, whether they agree with everything I say, or whether every interaction is comfortable.
Healthy leadership sometimes requires conversations people do not like, and information they may not want to hear. I am asking something much deeper. Are people more capable, accountable, confident, self-aware, skilled, and better prepared to lead because of the time we have spent together? Have I helped them see something they did not see before? Have I challenged them when they needed it and encouraged them when they needed it? Has my influence helped them become better, or have I been primarily concerned with what I needed from them?
As leaders, we absolutely need people to help us build healthy, profitable, high-performing businesses, but I believe we should also be building people as we build those businesses. Leadership gives us tremendous influence over people’s careers, confidence, opportunities, development — sometimes even the trajectory of their lives. That influence carries a responsibility that goes far beyond what someone produces for us this week or this year.
Better leaders create a better industry
Maybe the question worth sitting with is: Are we doing our part to build a collision repair industry that talented people want to be part of, to build a career in? Or are some of the ways we lead, adding to the very workforce issues we continue talking about? Because we can talk about the technician shortage, recruiting challenges, and the need to bring more people into this industry, but we also have to be willing to look at the environments we are inviting them into. Are we creating opportunities for people to grow, challenging them to become better, and giving them reasons to see a future here?
The results matter. We need people who perform, take ownership, and help us build healthy, profitable businesses. But the people producing those results matter too. If we want to build a stronger collision repair industry, we have to build stronger people along the way.
When we forget that and put ourselves at the center, I believe we almost always get leadership wrong.
