This is an exciting moment to be alive. It’s also a confusing moment to know how to be a healthy human and a leader. Unique pressures are biting at our ankles. Some of them are relatively new. Some of them are as old as time.
If you’re reading this I bet you’re a leader. You think about how you behave and respond and how that affects others around you. You want to impact more people. Our culture craves authenticity, but we struggle with self-awareness. We need a leader-awareness movement. We are often clueless how the pressures of life and leadership are affecting us and those we serve.
These silent assassins are floating around our lives and our cultures. If we don’t actively combat them they wear us down from the inside out and win the war of attrition.
Comparison
We’ve never had more avenues to compare ourselves to others than we do today. In fact, social media is built on the comparison game. Your life, your vacation, your team and your organization will look like midgets compared to the giants you’re looking up at. Be careful; it’s a silent killer. Comparison breeds envy, kills creativity and strips us of generosity.
What can you do about it?
Recognize the areas where you’re tempted to compare. Write out a list of these areas. When you become self-aware about your insecurities and the comparison that follows you’ll be able to combat your desire for comparison.
Avoid social media when you’re tired. Fatigue makes us insecure. When we’re tired and insecure our social media feeds will invite us to compare and wonder why we’re not crushing it like others are. Only scroll when you’re awake and aware.
Information overload
The amount of information on any leadership topic is overwhelming. We don’t need more info; we need clear paths to the right info. We need the discernment to know what information we’re looking for and how it can help us grow. Every growing leader today must become a curator of information.
What can you do about it?
Let trusted voices curate for you. Make a list of a few people you trust and rely on their curation of new resources. When multiple trusted voices in your life recommend a podcast or book subscribe to it or order it.
Pseudo-connectedness
You have “friends” and followers galore on social media, but who will you call when you’re struggling? We have the illusion of deep friendships today but very few friends. We convince ourselves we’re highly connected, but we’re actually loosely connected to a lot of people. Social media gives people three, four even five ways to contact us today which can be exhausting. Pseudo-connectedness leads to social fatigue. Ironically, it also leads to loneliness.
What can you do about it?
Recognize social media as pseudo-connection, not true connection. Start by realizing social media can be an effective tool, but won’t deliver deep relationships.
Invest in a few close friendships. Work to identify and deepen a few relationships in this season. Effective and fruitful leaders need friends. Don’t try to go it alone.