Being a Leader — Pleasure or Pressure?
Written by: Nadine Zeinoun Khoury, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
How many of you had always dreamt of being an Executive or Senior Director in some organization, only to find that actualizing that dream added much more pressure to your life than true pleasure?
What do you think could be the cause of all this pressure?
In addition to all your great points and observations, one thing that has caught my attention when working with such leaders is the unrealistic “high level of expectations” they have placed on themselves.
The need to always be right! The need to always know everything and have all the answers! The need to be the expert within the team! The need to be distant from team members, so they don’t take advantage of you! The need to always stay strong and never show your emotions or your weaknesses and vulnerabilities... and the list goes on and on and on!
How would you feel if you had all the above beliefs? I personally would suffocate from the pressure!
So, what can you do in such a situation? How can you relieve that pressure that is taking a toll on you and even impacting your performance?
The first and most important point to start with is checking your perceptions and beliefs about Leadership? What is a Leader to you? And how would an ideal Leader behave? How would he/she deal with his team? How would he/she express their feelings and emotions? What are their perceptions about failure and vulnerability?
My guess is that your beliefs about leadership and how an effective leader “should be” might be a bit off track. You see, our beliefs and perceptions about concepts and situations dictate our feelings and behaviors around them. If we have acquired some perceptions about a Leader (from our environment, other leaders, books, trainings, courses…) that put pressure on us and don’t serve us, then the only way to relieve this pressure is by changing these perceptions and beliefs and turning them into beliefs that serve us as leaders.
What is worse than the pressure these “false Leadership beliefs” put on us is the fact that having such beliefs will also push us to become the leader we “should” be rather than the leader we “want” to be. This, of course, will drive us off track from our authenticity and who we truly are as people. And believe me, there is nothing worse than feeling like you cannot be yourself, and you are wearing a mask 24 hours a day!
So, take that decision now and start looking into your current beliefs! How are they adding pressure to you as a Leader? And how can you adjust them? If you find it difficult to do that, I would love to support you by offering a FREE 45-min Co-Creation Session to help you co-create your empowering beliefs!!! Grab that chance NOW and book through the below link:
Nadine Zeinoun Khoury, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Nadine is a Leader in Emotional & Conversational Intelligence. After growing up in the Lebanese Civil War and having witnessed its drastic consequences in terms of hatred, polarization, disharmony, and low productivity at the country level, Nadine shaped her mission into dedicating all her efforts and her God-given strengths to unleashing teams' productivity through compassion, peace, and harmony. Having experienced the challenges of creating harmony as a corporate leader in the pharmaceutical industry, Nadine now works with corporate leaders struggling with disengaged teams that seem disconnected and do not take any initiatives. Nadine helps them become outstanding, emotionally intelligent leaders capable of exceeding business objectives while inspiring productive, harmonious, and happy teams who are keen on taking initiatives.
