My grandma Betty’s house smelled of lilacs and bacon. Her favorite dusting powder and her favorite breakfast food blended to form a smell all her own that permeated her one-bedroom apartment. I’m sure she didn’t realize the unique olfactory experience she greeted her visitors with.
We become nose blind to the smells we are often around. We recently rented a vehicle that smelled of dirty diapers. By the third day, we weren’t sure if the nasty smell had dissipated or we had just grown accustomed to it.
Similarly, we are often blind to how others experience our leadership. Have you ever met someone who thinks they have a gifting they clearly don’t have? Or, is unaware of a strength they possess? I think back to my first round of pastoral interviews as a new seminary graduate and reflect on not just how little I knew about the content of the job, but how little I knew about myself.
If we are going to be the leaders God calls us to be, we need to grow in awareness of what are our leadership strengths and weaknesses are. Until we know our superpower and kryptonite, we will never be the leaders God has called us to be.
Betsy Timbers’s article, “7 Qualities of a Great Leader” is a good place to start. In it, she compiles research on leadership that provides great fodder for all of us. Timbers reports that the seven qualities that differentiate outstanding leaders are:
1. Self-Awareness: “They try to see themselves through others’ eyes.”
2. Ability to connect and collaborate: “Successful leaders actively involve others in making decisions that affect them and, likewise, they give credit to others where credit is due.”
3. Leading through clearly communicated, passionate, and optimistic vision: “They help their teams understand not just what to do, but why they are doing it and why it matters.”
4. Being open to diverse thinking and ideas but also being decisive: “The availability of so much data today and the speed of processing that data even in real time allows for more input into decision-making, but leaders must have a good sense for when they had enough data to make a good business decision.”
5. Capacity to be agile, adaptable, and flexible: “They have the capacity to improvise when necessary, and they’re open to change and new challenges.”
6. The ability to empower and continuously motivate those they lead through individualized consideration: “A truly effective leader empowers their team members to accomplish the businesses’ objectives, and achieve their full potential.”
7. The ability to innovate and lead innovation: “Creativity and innovation go hand-in-hand, and great leaders provide a welcoming home for original, imaginative thinking.”
I would encourage you to take the list and rank yourself 1-7 on what you perceive your strengths to be. Take it to a peer, someone you lead, and someone who supervises you and (without giving them your list) ask them to rank you.
I am naturally “nose-blind” to my own leadership odor. I’ve found that one of the best ways to discover my superpower and kryptonite is through conversations with those who experience my leadership.
So, what’s your superpower and kryptonite?
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Photo by Ameer Basheer on Unsplash