It ain’t easy, this thing called leadership!

You can read or hear or talk about leadership, and it sounds simple. But when you come face to face with a tough decision, or difficult employee, easy it’s not!

Have you ever asked yourself why?

Leadership is complicated for most of us. That’s a fact. There are pieces of the puzzle that we don’t know about, or forget about, or don’t quite know how to go about making them fit into our own leadership style.

Maybe you need to get a better handle on the critical pieces of the leadership puzzle: confidence, courage, and compassion.

Confidence is the belief that you can do what needs to be done. Confidence is required to move swiftly as a leader. Being unsure causes you to question yourself, to have second thoughts, to hesitate. Those you lead see your every move. They sense your uncertainty. Everyone finds it easier to follow a leader who is sure of herself.

Courage is doing what must be done. For example, you may have the confidence that you can tell an underperforming employee there will be no pay raise, and to do so in an appropriate way. However, if your courage is not strong, you may many not give this person what his performance deserves. Instead, you decide a modest pay raise is appropriate. You make him happy, and in doing so, you tick off your high performers. Go ahead and face it. Leadership requires courage. When a leader has courage, people want to follow her.

Compassion means showing kindness, consideration, and respect. Can you sense its importance in this example? You can give constructive feedback harshly, or you can give it with compassion. Which works better? Compassion always wins out. People want to follow a leader when she shows compassion.

The bottom line is this: those you lead will gladly follow . . . when you lead with confidence, courage, and compassion. It’s a truism!

Where do YOU stand on these three pieces of the leadership puzzle?

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