Today I talk about the leaky faucet of leadership, and this whole thing starts with a story about my dishwasher at home. About a year ago it started leaking about once every ten times we ran it. It was a nuisance, but I had no idea how to diagnose the situation. So I ignored solving the problem for good, and my husband wasn’t pushing for that either. We told ourselves it would go away, but of course it didn't. Many months later, our neighbors knocked on our door with a big water gush coming through their ceiling. At that moment I realized I had never once considered the small leak we'd been living with might be a problem for someone else.

That's exactly what happens in leadership. We leak our negativity, our fear, and the pressure we're under (or put on ourselves), onto the people around us. We tell ourselves it was justified, the situation called for it, and that we had to be direct but not full of grace. But every time we do these things without addressing it, we're leaking what is unresolved within ourselves. We're putting people on alert and they wonder if they have to brace for how we will treat them tomorrow.

The leaks don't blow up all at once. They add up. The boss who's tense around board meetings, and takes it out on the team. The relationship with a crack in it, that you hope will miraculously resolve itself in time. The unfair treatment nobody ever calls you on because that's high risk for them. When left unaddressed, a small leak becomes the reason you get passed over for a project, the reason a team stops trusting you, or the reason you stop recognizing yourself in the mirror. By then you’ve lost the thread of understanding why and how it got to this.

I think about the old adage about a plane flying 1 degree off its chartered path. If this is never corrected, it will land somewhere completely different than planned. The same is true for how you lead. A small daily drift away from the leader you want to be doesn't feel like much at the moment, but it compounds into someone your team doesn't fully recognize or trust.

The work of course-correcting isn't perfect, and it’s unrealistic to think you will never get off course. The work is about catching the leaks early, doing the repair, and asking yourself how have you been acting over the last few months (or perhaps years), and if that makes you proud or not.

Episode Highlights:

• What a leaking dishwasher teaches us about ignoring small problems.
• Why leaking your stress, fear, or pressure onto your team erodes trust even when it feels justified in the moment.
• Three questions to identify your own leadership leaks: (1) Where are you draining energy? (2) What relationships have cracks? (3) Who have you treated unfairly?
• The 1 degree rule and why small daily drift changes who you become as a leader.
• How addressing leaks and doing repair work builds stronger trust and engagement with your team.

Quotables:

• [01:03:54:05 - 01:04:11:23] "You're putting your employees on alert: what if she leaks that tomorrow and makes me feel bad? What if she leaks that next week and puts all this pressure on me?"
• [01:13:10:10 - 01:13:38:08] "People don't come and say to you, 'That thing you said to me yesterday really hurt me.' Because that's not a behavior that's been rewarded or accepted. As a leader, you have to do that assessment yourself."
• [01:12:23:15 - 01:12:27:16] "That 1% shift is a big deal to the people that are impacted by it."
• [01:13:38:08 - 01:13:46:06] "Can I be my own best friend? Because when I can actually correct it for myself and how I treat myself, I can actually do better for others?"

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Theme music by Adrian DiMatteo: https://adriandimatteo.com