A letter to future me

Dear future me,

You've recently had the opportunity to participate in a leadership programme. This is the first time you’ve really examined your leadership style. Until now your self-assessments have been focused on what you’ve delivered. You’ve worked hard on making yourself a better do-er. This is the first time you’ve spent time, by yourself and with others, on how to become a better leader.

The most comforting thing you learnt was that you’re not alone. Regardless of type of company, you found that the expectations, challenges for leadership were the same. So the strategies, behaviours were broadly the same. You found this comforting because you felt vindicated in the approaches you took. But this felt uncomfortable too because you made those choices just because they seemed like the right thing to do. You feel uncomfortable every time there isn’t a theory or formula to base your decisions from. It’s kinda your thing to think of life as a mathematical transformation and be able to fast forward very quickly to the logical outcome.

Don’t worry about the theory. You’ve also learnt that leadership is over-theorised and under-practised. So continue to practise leadership as you would any other skill: mindfully.

You’ve probably forgotten how easy you found the very uncomfortable part of sharing the hopes, fears and details of yourself with your exchange partners. All that shared openness means you made real friends. Stay in touch with them. They are your cheerleaders, sources of ideas, and source of constructive challenge.

You probably remember how uncomfortable being observed was on that first day. The fact that the office was empty apart from you and your partner. The fact that you weren’t able to show off all that makes you proud of the company, because the shiny bits were elsewhere. The fact that you were on calls all the time, not doing exciting things with exciting bits of tech.

That was real life. You were trying to optimise real life and were surprised that you couldn’t. I bet you’ve tried again since. You’ll feel better when you stop trying and start taking each day as it comes, at the rate of one day per day.

Journaling wasn’t your thing, was it? You only wrote a few pages before you gave up in favour of mind sweeps and lists because there wasn’t really a “so what?” to writing that stuff down. But that’s beside the point. As you’ve found with mediation, writing things down makes you present with yourself. Being present reminds you that showing up is always the first step to “so what?”. And sometimes, most times, showing up is enough.

Before you took part in this programme, you were uncomfortable viewing yourself as a leader. You viewed yourself as a do-er with a long track record of doing and being a leader was still aspirational. You still thought that other people more senior than you were the actual leaders. You thought that the title of CsomethingimpressiveO awarded you the job of leading.

Through this programme you came to realise that you are already a leader. Others, both within your company and your friends in this programme, recognised that you lead. But whilst you should get over yourself your imposter syndrome, you should stay uncomfortable with being a responsible leader because that shows that you have the desire to do better.

I hope you’ve realised that being a responsible leader is who you authentically are. I hope you continue to improve how you and the people you guide make positive impact to themselves, their work, the company, their community and can see how all of this leads to making a positive impact to the wider world. And I hope you’re enjoying staying uncomfortable.

Best wishes for your ongoing journey,

Past (smarter) you.