August FAQ — Leadership Questions and Challenges
One Friday each month, I dedicate the post to looking at some questions I have heard recently from developing leaders. Sharing those questions and my thoughts about them is a way for me to spread the information to as many leaders and future leaders as possible. If you have a question about leadership, or just a situation you would like some additional insight on, please email me at Effective Retail Leader. Let’s take a look at this week’s question.
This month’s FAQ is a little different, I’ve had several questions come in that, I thought, would lend themselves more to a lightning round of answers versus a full article on the subject. I think I have touched on the principle of most of these in previous articles, but I thought here I would share more of my personal thought s as a quick response to these question. Here we go…
What is your favorite leadership topic?
Hard to narrow that down to a single favorite. I just finished a series of articles on personal accountability. That is definitely at the top of my list. I believe it is such a critical skill to own your own actions and outcomes. A lack of personal ownership will be a barrier to long-lasting success. We all make mistakes, there is no reason not to own up to them, learn from them, and work hard to avoid those mistakes again in the future.
Other topics I love to read about, learn more, and talk about are developing others. It is the critical role of leaders…develop other leaders. And, time management. It is a fascinating topic that has limitless possibilities and not perfect answer. Time management is truly in the eye of the beholder. We each have to manage our own time based on what is most important to us.
What do you think is the most difficult part of being a leader today?
We live in a complex world. There is an incredible amount of information coming at us at all times. I recently heard a statistic that is staggering, and almost unbelievable. It stated that the amount of information created from the beginning of recorded time through 2022, is now created every two days in new information available. That is unreal. Yet, when you stop to think about all the content that is being created across the social media platforms, websites, news stations etc., there is a lot of ‘stuff’ being created. As leaders, we have to manage through a lot of that, ensuring we are addressing what is most important.
For that reason, it can be easy to lose sight of what is important to our teams and how to best connect with them. That balance of empathy and building trusting relationships along with managing to performance expectations can feel impossible. How do you break through and build those connections when there are so many other distractions around us? How can we look past the possibilities of a misstep ending up on someone else’s social platform? It is not easy, and I think that is one of the most difficult things we face as leaders today. The goal posts seem to continually move, there is data overload, and the need to engage and build trust with our teams is more critical than ever.
What do you think is a big obstacle for young leaders and developing their skills
Beyond managing what I mentioned above, many new leaders feel both internal and external pressure to move up quickly into expanded roles. In many cases, that can come across as being entitled, not putting in the time that maybe previous leaders have had to do in their careers. There is a sense that just doing some time, and making the effort to learn affords them the right to have growing titles and earn more quickly. That is not always the case. In life, there truly are very few shortcuts. Hard work, commitment, and consistent results still matter, and make a big difference.
Additionally, the idea of humility has, and remains, an important characteristic of successful leaders. We cannot take ourselves too seriously. We all make mistakes, and we should acknowledge and learn from, as I mentioned above as well. Humility places us there. It makes us human. It connects us to others. People work for people.
Hopefully, you found some benefit in the quick answers to a few great questions. I had some fun thinking about these and capturing my own thoughts. I will probably come back to this format in the future for future FAQs to share. As a reminder, if you have a leadership question you’d like some insight too, email me at Chris@effectiveretailleader.com.
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