Chapter 55.
Inspire Inner Stability

Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple, and it is also that difficult.

—Warren Bennis

People look so hard for stability. All the leaders we coach and work with on some level or another are secretly trying to find more stability in their work, in their careers, and especially in their companies.

But the key to stability is not to look outside yourself for it. It’s useless to try to find it from your company or from your industry. It only works to look inside. You need to turn the mirror around so you can see yourself. You need to find it inside your own enthusiasm for work. And sometimes that inner enthusiasm must be built from scratch, from improvisation.

Psychologist Nathaniel Branden puts it this way: “Chances are, when you were young, you were told, in effect, ‘Listen, kid, here is the news: life is not about you. Life is not about what you want. What you want is not important. Life is about doing what others expect of you.’ If you accepted this idea, later on you wondered what had happened to your fire. Where had your enthusiasm for living gone?”

Ask yourself the following questions: Do I feel good about myself at the end of the day? Am I proud of my leadership today? Do I feel that wonderful, little feeling that I get when we’ve had a good day and we feel like we’ve really nailed it? If so, that opinion is vital (and visible) to the people I want to motivate.

If you can consciously build that level of confidence in yourself as a leader, then you can put stability into your career. That’s where real stability comes from, especially in this era of rapid-fire external changes.

The marketplace changes, each industry changes, the whole world changes. Every morning as we open up the newspaper or turn on the news, something radical is different. Something important will never be the same.

This rapid change is terrifying to unstable people. Unstable people wish things would just stay the same.

Even if the company comes up with a new compensation plan, new pricing for customers, new ways of hiring, or anything that might look like future stability, I still can’t go to sleep. Change happens.

Does anything motivate people more than to be in the presence of a leader with inner stability and self-esteem?

We build self-esteem in small increments just like athletes build strength. They don’t do it overnight. They do it day by day, adding a little more weight to the bar, adding a little more distance to the run. Pretty soon, they are magnificent, powerful, wonderful athletes.

The same is true with leadership; it happens the same way. A little bit every day—a little better at communication, a little better at delegation, a little better at servant leadership, a little bit better at listening to people and executing plans. Getting 2 percent, maybe 4 percent, better. No more than that.

But it’s conscious and it is inspiring to be around.