CHAPTER 4

Leadership Is a Decision—Make It

Several years ago I was working with a group of senior leaders at a large construction company. We were having a lively conversation about leadership when someone asked me, “Hey, Vince, what is leadership?” I said, “Leadership is a decision.” It was the very first time I had said those words out loud. It was an intuitive response, in the moment. But right away Earl, one of the participants, snapped, “Well, I never got to make that decision!”

Earl was the senior vice president of engineering services. He had started out as an engineer, but the organization soon offered him a supervisory role and a series of promotions. Earl said that he accepted each of these promotions without thinking about whether he truly wanted a new role or if he was really ready to commit to it.

I looked around the room. Everyone was listening intently. It seemed like Earl's story was striking a chord with the other leaders.

Earl explained that he thought taking on those leadership roles was the logical thing to do. From a practical perspective, it was the only way he could make more money and get more prestige within the company. But he said that every time he took on a more senior leadership role, he moved further and further away from what he really loved to do: engineering.

I have told Earl's story a lot and have been surprised by how many leaders say they've done the exact same thing.

Although making more money, expanding your skills, and having more impact are all somewhat valid reasons to be a leader, they are no longer enough in today's world of business.

Every day you have opportunities to make a leadership decision. But do you answer that call? Many times making the leadership decision to lead isn't easy—it's easier to stay put and play it safe. But staying put makes you an empty chair leader and keeps your organization stuck.

Why Doesn't Anyone Want to Be a Leader Anymore

I have met a lot of people who relate to Earl's experience, and most of them are about Earl's age. I have also noticed that the younger generation isn't as willing to take on a leadership role just for perks or prestige.

My team and I worked with a software company a while back to design and deliver a two-day leadership program aimed at 30 people they had identified as high-potential leaders. To begin the project, we interviewed these “hi-po” leaders. What we found was quite surprising: The majority of them didn't want the label of a high-potential leader. In fact, leadership had pretty negative connotations for most of them. They thought being a high-potential leader would just mean doing more work. They felt busy enough already, and being saddled with more leadership tasks (including dealing with difficult employee performance issues) certainly didn't appeal to them. They did the math and figured out that all the extra work wouldn't really be reflected in their salaries. And they didn't want to take time away from their families to put in those extra hours. That wasn't a sacrifice they were ready for or wanted to make.

The executive team was pretty surprised—and frustrated—to hear this news. They had assumed everyone would want to be a leader. They figured that these employees would be proud to be tagged with the hi-po leader label. But the more we talked to the hi-pos to figure out why they had such negative views of leadership, the more we realized it was the executive team that was the problem. They were the model for leadership in that company. They all worked 60 to 80 hours per week. They were always on planes traveling the world. When you saw the current executives from afar, as the hi-pos did, all you saw was hard work and personal sacrifice.

The executive team soon realized that they needed to do a better job of demonstrating to the hi-pos all the rewards associated with the leadership roles—the gratification that comes from serving customers, building great teams, and creating a successful business.

So we changed the focus of the two-day leadership development program. Instead of a launch program, we created a process to help those would-be leaders better understand what a leadership role is really all about—the good, the bad, and the ugly. The participants loved this approach. They were grateful for the chance to decide for themselves whether to step into these new roles. They soon started to realize they had been focusing only on the downsides of leadership. After that two-day event, all but five of our potential leaders decided to continue. Those who opted out did so mainly for personal family reasons but asked to be considered again once their young children were older.

Something is changing in our organizations. Younger employees understand that leadership is a decision and that it needs to be deliberately made. I saw this recently with one of my own team members—a smart, personable guy who had been an informal leader for a while. When his manager and I offered him a formal leadership role, he said, “Wow, I'm really flattered. Thank you so much. Do you mind if I take a couple of weeks to think about it?” Honestly, both his manager and I were a little surprised to hear this. I remember thinking to myself, “Listen, buddy, in my day when someone gave you a leadership opportunity, you just took it. No ifs, ands, or buts.” Even I am having a hard time letting go of this outdated perspective on leadership.

We met with him again after the two weeks were up, and this time he said, “Thanks so much for giving me the time to reflect on this big decision. I needed to think carefully about this. Both my wife and I have big jobs, and we also have a young family. I needed to know before committing whether this was the right thing to do for my family. I have thought it through, and I'm in.”

I thought to myself, “This guy is much smarter than I was at his age.” He knows what it means to be a leader. He appreciates the demands and the pressure. This is why he wanted to make sure that he could really commit to doing the work and becoming a great leader. He took his time to reflect and then made his leadership decision.

Why You Need to Make the Leadership Decision

The first term of the leadership contract begins with the idea that leadership is a decision. There isn't much point in discussing anything else about leadership until we get this clear. Too many theories about leadership just assume that everyone wants to be a leader. But this is a faulty assumption—one that we often are not truly aware that we are making.

We need to replace this faulty assumption with the idea that everyone needs to decide whether they want to be a leader. If we do that, we will end up with leaders who truly want the role and are prepared to do what is necessary to help their organizations succeed. We also help those who don't want the role find other ways to add value in their organizations.

One of the reasons you need to be more deliberate in making leadership decisions is that organizations have changed. In the past, companies were much larger than they are today, with many levels of managerial roles throughout the hierarchy. The good thing was that all those roles acted as effective stepping-stones, enabling individuals to nicely progress from one leadership role to another. Because you could see the stepping-stones ahead of you, each move seemed like a natural and logical step to take and you really didn't have to do too much thinking about the roles you were taking on.

However, companies today are leaner and flatter. The stepping-stones are gone and have been replaced by giant leaps. So when you take on a leadership role in today's world, you don't see the next steps at all. What you do see is a big chasm between your current role and the role ahead of you. It's a significant leap and is one of the primary reasons why there is such a high incidence of failure among leaders assuming new roles.

Much of the research has shown—whether it's at the front line, in the middle, or at the executive ranks—that a significant percentage of leaders derail within a year or two of accepting new roles. I believe it's because they don't deliberately make effective leadership decisions. They don't fully understand what they are taking on and instead make the leap blindly, underestimating the demands and expectations. You may get seduced by the new title, the status, the money, and the perks. You may make assumptions about what leading will really be like but your assumptions may be wrong.

To me, it is a lot like being a first-time parent. No matter how many parenting books you read or how many stories you hear from your friends and family, you can't truly understand it until it's happening to you. And then it hits you—during the 3:00 AM feedings or after your fourth straight sleepless night. Then you know how challenging being a parent really is. The other reason you need to be more deliberate in making leadership decisions is that we've always assumed that everyone wanted to be the leader and we have ended up glorifying leadership roles above others in our organizations. We give leaders more money, more perks, more prestige. But in reality, we've never really let people decide whether they want to take on a leadership role. As a result, I've seen many leaders who don't make the conscious decision to lead. Instead, they just accept the roles they're given. Over time, they become ambivalent or reluctant leaders like Earl. Many feel trapped. They have the title, the prestige, and the money, but the role doesn't excite them. They don't have the passion for leadership.

In his book, Passion Capital, author Paul Alofs states that passion is a powerful emotion that leaders use to build lasting value in their organizations. However, without a high degree of passion, you erode your effectiveness as a leader. Without the passion for leadership, you may then find you're always questioning and second-guessing yourself. What you may not fully appreciate is that everyone around you knows it. They can smell the indecision, the tentativeness, and the uncertainty you project.

It's important to note that in the past we may have been able to get away with weak leadership because our world was less complex than it is today. We could get by with individuals who didn't make the real decision to be leaders. But things are very different today. Ambivalent or passionless leaders just aren't strong enough to take us through this complex environment. There's too much at stake today. Those who lead solely for personal reasons aren't going to be effective either. We need to make sure that all leaders consciously and deliberately make the decision to lead and make it for the right reasons—we need leaders who bring a strong sense of passion to their roles.

The Two Kinds of Leadership Decisions

Athletes have to make lots of decisions on the field (or on the court or on the ice). In the midst of the action, they have to be able to decide again and again how to move their team closer to victory. Coaches and players can also call a time-out when they believe there is a particularly important decision to be made, one that they can't make in an instant.

Like athletes, leaders also make dozens of real-time decisions in the middle of the action. These small “d” leadership decisions come up many times in a typical day. And then there are the timeout moments. These Big “D” leadership decisions are the critical moments in your career when you have to pause and be more deliberate about the choice you are about to make.

Both types of decisions are important. Big D leadership decisions come at critical times in your career and force you to reflect on who you are as a leader and whether you are ready to take on a new leadership role. Small d leadership decisions are made in the moment and may seem minor compared with Big D decisions, but over time, they can also have a considerable impact on your effectiveness as a leader.

It is important to clarify one point. Leaders make all kinds of decisions, such as where to invest for growth, which suppliers to use, and how to manage customer issues. These are typical business decisions, and there is a lot written about effective decision making for leaders out there.

What I'm talking about here is something more specific. It's those decisions you have to make about your role as a leader both at critical times (Big D leadership decisions) and in the day-to-day experience of leading (small d decisions). These leadership decisions shape how you ultimately show up as a leader. They will also dictate how others will judge your effectiveness as a leader.

Big D Leadership Decisions

In December of 1968, the astronauts on Apollo 8 were the first humans placed in a lunar orbit. Their primary task was to take photographs of the moon and identify possible landing sites for future missions.

As their spacecraft drifted from behind the moon, they saw the earth rising above the lunar horizon. Astronaut William Anders quickly took a picture of the amazing scene.

The image in his photograph would represent the first time that we were able to look at Earth from space. Up to that point in time, our view of Earth came from maps and globes—images of countries divided by lines and colors. Anders's photograph showed us the planet as it really is—a sphere. Many believe this was a turning point in human history because we fundamentally changed how we viewed ourselves and our planet.

Historians have used the term turning point to identify key moments in history, like the Apollo 8 story, that change the flow of history in a significant manner.

Leaders also experience these moments in their careers where they are about to assume a more senior leadership role. It is important at these critical times that leaders pause and reflect on what they are signing up for.

As leaders, our careers evolve over time. If we are successful, we gain roles of increasing responsibility. Through this journey, we have come to learn that there are four critical times that are particularly important for leaders.

These four leadership turning points demand that you take some time to think about what has changed in your leadership role and, more important, how you must change to be successful as a leader. At each of these four leadership turning points, you must pause and deliberately make a Big D leadership decision.

• The first turning point occurs when those in your organization tell you that they see you as someone with leadership potential. This happened to me when Zinta first told me I had leadership potential. I immediately paused to understand what her words meant to me and what I now needed to do to become a leader.
• The second critical turning point occurs when you take on your first supervisory role. When this happened to me, I quickly realized that from that moment on, I was responsible for others. My focus changed from everything being about me and my performance to supporting the performance of others.
• The third critical leadership turning point is when you assume a mid-level or senior management role. The demands of leadership change considerably, and how you see yourself also must change. When I had one of these roles, I realized that I needed to change my approach to leadership from driving the performance of my team to ensuring I was able to work across the organization with my peers to drive the success of our entire organization.
• The final critical turning point of leadership occurs when you assume an executive role. I recall when I first started my executive role at Knightsbridge. I felt the weight of my obligation to our board and shareholders. My responsibility to my team and colleagues across our company also increased dramatically.

Each of these moments is a turning point in your career. Each represents a significant shift in what is expected of you as a leader. Not only does your role change, but you must change. You must be clear about what is expected of you and the ways in which you must alter how you lead in order to succeed. You can't just jump into the role full of naïve enthusiasm or assume it's another career move.

Instead, you need to pause and make sure that you are clear about the changing demands of the role. You must also be certain whether you are truly prepared to live up to them to ensure that you will succeed when you take the leap. And that is ultimately what a Big D leadership decision is all about. If you don't take a time-out to deliberately make these Big D leadership decisions, you may sign up for something you are not prepared for, and this may affect your ability to succeed in the new role.

Small d Leadership Decisions

Alfred E. Kahn was a highly regarded American economist who was known as the Father of Airline Deregulation. We can thank him and his ideas for all the low-cost airlines like Southwest that have reshaped the airline industry. Kahn was also known for a simply brilliant idea referred to as the “tyranny of small decisions.” He wrote an article in the mid-1960s in which he described situations where a number of innocuous small decisions (those that appear small in the moment) cumulatively can result in an outcome that is not desired. In other words, a number of small decisions, each appearing insignificant in the moment and made in isolation of one another, can result in a negative outcome. This simple yet powerful idea has been applied to market economics, environmental degradation, political elections, and health care.

Here's a classic example of the tyranny of small decisions. Imagine a situation where a number of herders graze cows in a common field.¹ Each herder acts independently from one another. They make what they believe is a rational decision to allow their cows to graze freely on the field. They are motivated primarily by their own self-interest. However, what they don't realize is that all the other herders are making the same decision, not fully appreciating the overall impact. Then suddenly one day everyone realizes that the field has been depleted and is no longer suitable for grazing. The small, seemingly easy decision to allow cows to graze without considering the broader implications illustrates why small decisions matter.

This idea also applies to you as a leader, through the many small d leadership decisions that you make (or do not make) countless times each and every day. Although these decisions may appear to be small compared with Big D leadership decisions, they, in fact, play an important role in shaping who you are as a leader. I find, however, that many leaders don't appreciate the importance of these small d leadership decisions.

Consider, for example, Curt, a controller in his organization. His days are constantly filled with too much to do, putting out fire after fire. In these moments when a small d leadership decision needs to be made, Curt knows what he should really do as a leader, but he's too busy to pause and be deliberate. He thinks to himself, “I'll let this one go by this time. I'll make this small compromise just this once.” Before he knows it, compromise after compromise has become his regular pattern. He never fully appreciates how his personal leadership effectiveness is eroding and how he is inadvertently letting his team and organization down.

It's in those small moments, when you are under pressure and feeling overworked, that you still have to make the right small d leadership decisions.

Consider a few of the following typical situations that you find yourself in on a regular basis as a leader:

• You are in a meeting and an important issue arises that you disagree with. What do you do? Do you challenge it, or do you let it go?
• A colleague is demonstrating bad behavior that is inconsistent with your company's values. What do you do? Do you provide feedback now, or do you wait for the next opportunity?
• A project in another area of the company is off the rails. No one seems to care. What do you do? Do you confront the issue, or do you ignore it because it's really none of your business?

You may find yourself in countless of these small, almost innocuous moments on a regular basis. In isolation they may not seem that important. It seems logical to you that you can comprise, let the issue go, or ignore it—just this one time. Yet, these small d leadership decisions add up to something truly significant: your identity as a leader. They have an impact on your credibility. They tell your colleagues whether they can trust you—or not.

Now imagine if this is happening not just with you but with other leaders in your organization. Imagine the collective impact of leaders showing up every day and comprising on these small and seemingly harmless situations. You can start to understand why organizations struggle to drive sustained high performance and innovation.

It's time you start taking these small d decisions seriously. It's time you become more deliberate in your decision making so that you don't create the unintended or negative outcomes of failing to make effective small d leadership decisions.

To achieve this goal, when you are leading and confronted with a small d decision moment, what criteria do you use to help you? First, it helps if you have already made the Big D leadership decision. When you have already committed to be the best leader you can be, you are always behaving as the leader. That's the lens through which you are looking day to day, so making small d leadership decisions won't be as challenging. Second, it helps when you are clear on your obligations as a leader (we'll cover this topic in the next chapter). Third, it's also helpful to use your organization's core values to assist you in making effective small d leadership decisions.

Taken together, these three ideas create a powerful and practical approach to help you make effective small d leadership decisions. The next time you find yourself in that moment when a small d decision needs to be made, ask yourself:

• How must I show up as a leader in this moment?
• What is my obligation as a leader in this moment?
• What do my organization's core values dictate that I do in this moment?

Once you can begin to internalize these questions into your day-to-day leadership, you'll find yourself being more deliberate and consistent as a leader. You will provide the necessary leadership that your organization and your team need from you. You will begin to forge a strong reputation as a credible and deliberate leader.

Big D and Small d Leadership Decisions—Clarity and Commitment

Ultimately, Big D and small d leadership decisions both require clarity and commitment on your part. You need clarity about what you're taking on when assuming a leadership role. You need to be clear on the following:

• What's the role really about?
• What are the expectations?
• What will success look like?
• What value must I bring as a leader?
• What impact must I have?

You will also need a strong degree of personal commitment. Ask yourself:

• Am I up for this?
• Am I fully committed to doing what I need to do to make my team and company succeed?
• Am I able to handle the heat that I will be exposed to?
• Am I prepared for the hardships that will come my way?
• Am I committing for the right reasons, or am I doing this only to feed my ego?

Let's go back for a moment and think about the leadership turning points to gain greater clarity as to what changes at each one.

First, you will find at each turning point that the amount of complexity you deal with increases. At times, it may feel like the complexity is increasing exponentially. You have to be able to tolerate ambiguity and the pressure it will impose on you. If you are lucky, you'll be in an organization that will help you through this. But most leaders will need to face this challenge on their own.

Second, you will face considerable scrutiny, which just keeps on increasing across the four turning points. You must be open to it, yet develop a thick skin so it doesn't undermine your confidence as a leader. I believe that the increased scrutiny is a function of the fact that leadership really matters today. There's a lot riding on you—so you better not screw up! First, your peers are scrutinizing you to see if you really are high-potential material. Then your employees analyze your every word and action. Then colleagues across the organization who think you're making their lives harder than necessary, weigh in with their own views of your performance. Finally, board members, customers, analysts, and shareholders will scrutinize your every decision and every move. The spotlight keeps getting brighter.

Third, you will experience regular and ongoing points of realization that make it clear to you: You are accountable. There is no room for excuses as a leader. You must bring the solution, not just the problem. Although obvious enough in concept, it isn't always obvious in practice.

Fourth, you will realize you must demonstrate increasing levels of professional maturity. As an emerging leader, you will find that those around you will want to see you show up as a leader. At the front line you will need to rise above the noise and drama of the people issues and bring a leadership presence. At the middle you will need to be an ambassador of your organization. This implies being levelheaded and having a strong sense of poise. Finally, at the executive or C-suite level, your professional maturity (or lack of it) sets the tone for your entire organization. You will need to have a real executive presence because your personal reputation is tied so closely to your organization's reputation.

You will also come to understand that the degree of impact you must deliver increases dramatically at each turning point. For example, as you become a more senior-level leader, your impact is more widely apparent. The flip side is that so are your mistakes. You will feel a self-imposed sense of urgency to have real impact (or at least you should feel it). You will come face-to-face with your core obligations as a leader, and you will need to take them seriously.

The reason you need clarity and commitment in making Big D and small d leadership decisions is that at each turning point the heat rises, such as the knobs on a gas stovetop. Each knob has a lo to hi setting, and at each turning point of leadership, the knobs keep turning closer and closer to the highest setting. At every turn, the flame gets higher and hotter—the heat increases. You feel the pressure.

This is why you can't take on a leadership role simply because it feels like the next logical step. This is why you can't jump at an opportunity because it's going to pay you more, give you more perks, or offer a better title on your LinkedIn profile. This is why you can't simply click Agree without understanding what the fine print of the leadership contract is about. This is why you need to pause and truly understand what you are signing up for as a leader, because at each turning point, the pressure and heat increase considerably. In my experience, this is often the fine print of leadership that many never truly fully appreciate.

A Real Leadership Decision Is Visceral

What you will also find when you make the decision to lead is that the change in you will be visceral—you'll feel it and know it, and so will those around you. Leadership will ooze out of every single pore of your body. And when you make both the Big D and small d leadership decisions with clarity and commitment, your game will go to another level. Let's consider a few examples of this visceral change.

When Is a King Not a King?

King George VI of Britain ruled from 1936 to his death in 1952. His story is interesting because he never expected to inherit the throne. In fact, he spent most of his life in the shadow of his elder brother, Edward. When Edward became king, he struggled with the role. He then abdicated the throne to marry Wallis Simpson, an American socialite. Suddenly, George was thrust into a leadership role. He ascended to the throne after considerable controversy when his brother stepped down from the role. George's story was portrayed in the Oscar-winning movie The King's Speech. It shows King George VI struggling to fulfill his role. He has a stuttering problem that affects his personal confidence and his ability to speak clearly in public, and it holds him back. George is indecisive and tentative—he is the king in name only. But he manages to change that. Near the end of the movie he must deliver his first wartime speech. Given his speech impediment, delivering such a critical speech at that moment in England's history is extremely important for him and for his country. Although he is under tremendous pressure, he succeeds and delivers a powerful speech. The reaction is overwhelmingly positive.

As he reflects on the speech he has just delivered, he realizes that his role will demand that he do this regularly. In this moment, he finally understands what he has to do as a leader. And what is captured beautifully in this scene is that at his point of realization, his whole demeanor changes. He now projects a different energy and sense of confidence. When he takes a moment to thank his speech therapist, Lionel Logue, for his help. It is at this moment that Logue bows and addresses him as “Your Majesty” for the very first time.

Once King George gained the clarity he needed as a leader, commitment naturally followed, which in turn gave him the personal confidence to be a leader. The king of England truly became the king of England. Again, it was a visceral change. He knew it, and so did everyone else.

“This Is My Class!”

As I reflect over my own leadership career, I also knew when I had to make a leadership decision. Those moments always had a sense of clarity that led to a deep-seated sense of commitment. I knew exactly what needed to happen, what I had to do, and what I had to have my team do. I felt I was uniquely positioned to lead the way forward. However, this is not to imply that what I had to do was easy or that I never felt uncertainty or a sense of insecurity. Like all leaders, I had some tough situations to deal with. But when you fully decide, you know what's ahead and are prepared to do whatever you need to help your company, your team, and your customers succeed. That's the power of a leadership decision.

What I've also learned is you are not the only one making a decision. Your followers do as well. When you have clarity and commitment to your leadership decision, your followers will feel it. And if your decision is made for the right reasons, they will follow you. They will decide as well.

I experienced this early in my career. Soon after I left my first job, I started my own consulting business. I began doing more speaking and facilitation work, and I wanted to learn how to be very good at these tasks. I was able to work with a leading global leadership development company that was known for having an intense and excellent approach to developing speakers and facilitators. I was accepted into the development program, and after many months of training, I needed to complete the last part of my development, which required me to teach two full courses with an experienced facilitator.

For my very first course, I was paired up with Don, a senior executive at the company and one of its most successful and popular leadership facilitators. He was one of the best that I've ever seen in action. Don was smart, funny, and had charisma with a great executive presence.

And then there was me: young and inexperienced but full of good intentions. I was thrilled and scared at the same time. As we began our program and our first class together, I could sense the participants forming an immediate bond with Don. They knew the deal. He was there to coach me and guide my development. The participants were kind to me, like people are kind to a sick animal or someone less fortunate. It was probably my own insecurities, but I could feel the climate in the room change when Don was up in the front working his magic, compared with when I was up front fumbling my way through the material. This went on for three weeks and then something happened. The company went through a shake-up, and Don was no longer an executive with the organization. He was, however, allowed to continue to work as a facilitator and program leader.

When I arrived at the next class after all this happened, Don was obviously not a happy man. His frustration was visible. He did not have a good night. His negativity influenced his facilitation. After the class, word got out about what had happened and the participants sympathized with him. Week five came, and it was more of the same. But now I could feel the class starting to get irritated with Don. Although I was progressing, I still had a long way to go to get to Don's level of mastery. Then at week six something happened. Don was really in the dumps, fairly disengaged, and essentially going through the motions. The class was now becoming disappointed in and less supportive of Don.

Halfway through that evening's program, the mood of the class was at an all-time low. No one was participating. We were only halfway through the program, and I knew that if Don didn't turn it around, the participants would stop showing up and demand their money back.

At that moment I realized what I had to do. I could feel it in my gut and in every cell of my body. I needed to be the leader of this class. I said to myself, “This is my class!” Once I declared this in my own mind, I found that I immediately relaxed. The nervousness and insecurity that I typically felt was now replaced with confidence.

I'm sure the class felt it, too. I became the leader, and they could look to me for the remaining six weeks of the program. And the participants responded. I could tell they were beginning to see me as the course leader.

Don and I never formally mentioned anything to the class. I made the leadership decision and changed the way I showed up. Don noticed and let me take over. In the end, the course was a huge success. The participants appreciated the experience. Don also thanked me for helping him through the last six weeks of the program. In fact, by the tenth class, he got his groove back and we worked together as co-facilitators and as peers.

Deciding Not to Lead Is an Important Leadership Decision

People often ask me, “What if you decide not to be a leader?” I believe this is also an important leadership decision to make. Big D leadership decisions are important because what you do as a leader matters. But if you make those decisions lightly, if you feel pressured to take on those roles, if you do it only for the money or the perks, then you run the risk of becoming an empty chair leader. You can fake it for a while, but eventually your lack of clarity and commitment will start to show. So the question comes back to you: Do you know yourself well enough to decide whether leadership is for you? Do you have the maturity and courage to say no? I believe we need more people to have the kind of self-awareness and personal maturity needed to make good leadership decisions, including the decision to turn down a role that is not right.

Steve Wozniak had the courage to say no. Long before he appeared on reality TV, Wozniak was the engineer who invented the first Apple computer. He was a programmer at HP when he was approached about the job at Apple. He knew he didn't want to be a corporate leader, so he was worried about joining a new company. But Apple promised him that he wouldn't have to go into management—he could stay at the bottom of the organization chart as an engineer. Apple turned to Mike Markkula, a successful angel investor, to run the company, and they let Wozniak keep doing what he did best. Although Wozniak didn't have the title, he was still an important technical leader in the company.

The Steve Wozniak story demonstrates the self-awareness that is necessary to make a leadership decision. Wozniak knew how he was wired, what he liked and didn't like to do, and where he could add value.

Keep in mind that your leadership decision can change. I was working with a client named Barb, the chief human resources officer of a global energy company. One day we were talking about some high-potential leaders in her company. She shared a story about one of her direct reports, Marcela.

In their development discussions, Marcela said to Barb, “I have been observing you in your role. I have seen you interact with our chief executive officer, other senior executives, board members, and the unions, and I can see how much pressure you are under. You know, I don't think I'm ready for this right now.”

This is a great example of the work leaders need to do to gain personal clarity. Barb picked Marcela out as a hi-po, but Marcela didn't just stop there. She studied the demands of the role she was being groomed for, and she had enough self-awareness to know that she wasn't ready for it. That takes maturity and humility. Every organization needs more leaders like Marcela.

Marcela then spent the year reflecting on what she wanted to do. Like a great leader, Barb continued exposing Marcela to broader opportunities that gave her more information and insight. Then after 12 months, Marcela decided she was now ready. She had both the clarity and the commitment required to become a great leader. Barb was also confident that Marcela was ready for the right reasons.

Unfortunately, not everybody is as mature as Marcela, and not everyone has a boss like Barb. I've worked with plenty of leaders who have wanted to take on senior roles so desperately that they jump at the chance, not really understanding the demands of the role, only to falter months later. You must be self-aware enough to know whether you are ready. You also need to have the maturity to make this decision. You have to take this decision seriously—it's your responsibility to your organization and ultimately to yourself.

Final Thoughts—Get Your Act Together

All the great leaders I work with describe times when they made the conscious decision to be the leader. They relate experiences and situations that forced them to pause and think differently about who they are as leaders and what they are expected to do in their roles. These are the leaders who always seem to have their act together. It is pretty obvious that they are deliberate about the Big D leadership decisions they have to make. They also pay a lot of attention to the small d leadership decisions because they know just how important they can be, too. Whether you are making Big D or small d leadership decisions, you need two things: clarity and commitment. You need to be clear about what you are deciding, and once you have decided, you need to be committed to being the best leader you can be. And when you do that, you are fulfilling the first term of the leadership contract.

Reflect—Leadership Is a Decision

As you reflect on the ideas in this chapter, think about your answers to the following questions:

1. Have you ever jumped into a leadership opportunity without really appreciating what you were getting into? What were the implications? What do you know now about the role that you wished you knew when you first took it on?
2. What are the major complexities of your role?
3. Who is legitimately scrutinizing you? How are you handling it?
4. What are your leadership accountabilities?
5. How are you showing up as a leader? How are you getting in your own way of success?
6. What impact are you having? What value are you truly bringing as a leader?
7. When have you been in a situation that forced you to make the Big D leadership decision?
8. Think about the small d leadership decisions you find yourself in. What guides you when making these small d decisions?