Deadlines and leadership

I came across this insightful and engaging read from a PhD in clinical psychology on the impact of deadlines and leadership. If you care about these two issues, I urge you to have a read.

I am usually baffled by all the fancy recommendations on how to be successful. To me, it’s very simple. First and foremost, don’t be an asshole. If you manage to do that, you already go a long long way. If you grow old and don’t realize you are an asshole to others or don’t have family or friends tell you that, you’ll have a bigger problem than your career.

Furthermore, in my book, leadership is not about age or title or years of experience. It is about nurturing others, being the last to take credit and and being the first to shoulder the blame. Otherwise, why would others put you in a position of authority? If a manager never grows you, doesn’t acknowledge your work and always places the blame on you, will you consider manager a good leader? Or will you just deride the person as someone that just happens to have authority over you?

In addition, I believe leaders should also have compassion and interpersonal skills. I remember the time when I was lucky enough to be in a managerial position in Vietnam. While I received positive feedback on being a leader, I admittedly failed spectacularly as managing my staff and firing one of them. The experience taught me how difficult it was to have leadership skills. It’s not just about “being the head of a team or an organization”. It’s about how you took a bullet for the team, how you nurtured your folks, how you shared the credit, how you managed the interpersonal relationships and how you dealt with difficult conversations.

I know I failed, at minimum, at two of those. But I would love to have a chance to be in a managerial position again, this time in the US.