The Best Leadership Advice I’ve Received
The best leaders I worked with and for shared a common thread: extraordinary humility. These were people with real authority and real competence, yet they were easy to approach and quick to own a mistake. I asked one of them how they balanced assurance in their role with openness to being wrong. Their response has stuck with me, and it’s the single best nugget of advice I can pass on to you: “Remember: you were appointed, not anointed, to your position.”
Unpack that phrase and you find deeper meaning.
1) Remember where you came from
Recall your roots as a touchstone for your values. Remember the hard work, the long hours, and the lessons learned along the way, especially the ones that came from failing. No leader has ever been successful alone…it’s literally impossible. Every project, every mission, and many tasks rely on the team working for the leader to translate guidance into action.
So, somewhere behind your title is a supervisor who accepted risk to give you space to do your thing, a colleague who covered a gap, and a team that operated without needing hand-holding. It’s not being humble to mention the success wasn’t because of you, but was a team effort, because that is the truth. Speaking of being humble…
2) Humility is an imperative
Being “anointed” implies some literal divine blessing for the role you will play. That you deserved, and earned, the right to be in that leadership position. Being “appointed” means you were selected or directed to do that job by someone who weighed their options and made a call. Therefore, you can be “un-appointed.” To put it another way, the mission before you is NOT about you. It is about the mission itself and those you lead.
This changes how you handle the small moments. It shapes how you take criticism, how you respond when someone brings you bad news, and how quickly you say “I got that wrong.” A leader who believes the seat belongs to them will defend it. Don’t be that leader who fumbles through an answer when you clearly don’t know it. Say that. Say you don’t know but you will find out. You will earn credibility by doing this, and if you worked for someone like me you’d know some questions we already know the answer, know that you don’t know, but are gaging how you respond.
But in all ways: conduct yourself as a leader who knows the seat is on loan will spend that energy on the work. Conduct yourself with the understanding that your service is a privilege, not a right, bestowed upon you.
3) Remembering you are appointed forces you to deal with others authentically
When you stay in that mindset, you are more effective because you gain credibility and trust from those around you. “What you see is what you get” is a reputation that takes years to build and one performance to lose. People can tell when a leader is managing their image instead of leading, and they adjust what they share accordingly. Information slows down. Problems surface later than they should. Look, we all have times where we are uncertain and we have to embrace the “fake it til’ you make it!” mantra. In one of my assignments my XO said “Sir, you are sometimes wrong, but never in doubt”. I obviously hid well my uncertainty then!
Recall the best leaders you’ve wanted to work for again, and I’ll bet they are not much into themselves and somehow make you feel you are the reason they are in their position. They ask real questions and they credit others publicly. They also tell you the truth when it is inconvenient (as Brené Brown says, “Clear is kind.”)
4) An appointment usually has an end date
Whether it is a two-year assignment, a board term, or simply the day someone decides it is time for a change, the clock is running from the moment you start. Even if you are a CEO or Executive Director you serve at the leisure of your board so don’t get comfortable. Your health or life changes could insert themselves into your mental timeline of your tenure in that position. You have little time to waste on politics or personal gain in the job. Every hour spent protecting your standing is an hour not spent on the mission, and the people you serve will feel that trade even if they never say so.
As a practical matter I think people in manager or higher positions should set themselves on a two-three year timeline in new leadership roles. Spend the first six months understanding the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for the team and mission. Use that time to validate key performance indicators or make new ones. Goal set with the team. Spend the next 12-18 months finding stride and getting the work done. Innovate as needed, but nail the fundamentals for sure. Then give some consideration to succession planning for the mission and position. Don’t build things that will fall apart shortly after you leave.
Final thoughts
No effective leader makes themselves so essential to the success of their organization that their absence diminishes results. The proper orientation is what I call a “putting yourself out of a job” mentality. A first step in doing that is to remember: it’s not about you.
If you want a quick check on where you stand, ask yourself two questions. Would the people around you tell you when you are wrong? And if your appointment ended tomorrow, would the work continue without a scramble? If the honest answer to either is no, the fix is rarely a new strategy. It is usually a return to the phrase this advice started with: you were appointed, not anointed.
