My toughest challenge as a leader

Leading teams and leading myself has been a natural exercise in my life. I think I could consider myself a natural-born leader.

This doesn’t mean that everything has been smooth, perfect, or without problems. On the contrary, I have faced uphill leadership challenges that looking retrospectively I think I could have been more prepared or humbler to tackle differently.

But it is what it is. I can’t go back and try another way of doing things.

Moreover, all these learning experiences are integral to how I exercise my leadership, and I feel proud of the journey and somehow prepared to lead creatively enough to bring out the best in the people around me.

If somebody will ask me what is the most challenging leadership role I faced, I will undoubtedly say being a father of a couple of teenagers.

This is my toughest challenge as a leader. Period.

It is not a cliché. It is a great challenge.

Let’s look at it under the filter of creating psychological safety, one of the key aspects of leaders today.

Understanding that psychological safety is:

The feeling and belief that you can freely share your thoughts, opinions, and ideas without fear of being degraded or shamed.

A playground for experimentation and exploration.

The safety net where to fail and bounce again without harming oneself

It is tough for me because the pain when they fail is stronger, learning how not to be judgmental is hard and the need for me to be more companion than directive is clear yet very challenging.

Now let’s read the four stages of psychological safety (developed by Dr. Timothy Clark) but looking at them from a parenting perspective:

Stage 1 – Inclusion

In this first stage, you feel safe and accepted for being who you are.

Stage 2 – Learner

In this stage, you feel safe to learn, ask questions, and experiment.

You feel open to giving and receiving feedback (and you even feel safe to make mistakes).

Stage 3 – Contributor

At this point, you feel safe to make a valuable contribution using your skills and gifts.

Stage 4 –Challenger

This stage involves feeling safe enough to challenge the status quo when you see an opportunity for change or improvement.

I believe I am creating psychological safety for my kids, but I can’t say where we are. Asking directly to them would be the only way to answer that question.

However, I’m sure that being aware of the need to build it, recognizing my limitations, and the efforts I make to be coherent between my words and actions are a great guide and thermometer to my toughest leadership role ever!

My final thought is that providing this environment for your coworkers, your employees, and the people that collaborate with you is indeed challenging. Yet, doing the same for your kids is f**king hard!

If somebody will ask me what is the most challenging leadership role I faced, I will undoubtedly say being a father of a couple of teenagers.

This is my toughest challenge as a leader. Period.

It is not a cliché. It is a great challenge.