Leaders Must Be Brave

I recently came back from Thriveal’s Deeper Weekend; a gathering of entrepreneurial CPA firm owners trying to challenge and learn from each other. One of the sessions at this gathering was from Jason Blumer about leadership and the struggles that he had with leadership and what he learned from it. He had four great principles about leadership that I wanted to share.

The four leadership principles are:

• Leaders Don’t Hide From Hard Things
• Leaders Move Closer To People
• Leaders Embrace Their Gifts
• Leaders Don’t Beat Themselves Over The Past

I would summarize these principles as Leaders Must Be Brave. I also believe that you can replace “leaders” with “teams” and this would also hold true, but it is especially important that the leaders embrace these principles. At our firm we have an internal mantra of “Lets Be Brave Together” that reflects these principles.

While I won’t go into each of these principles here (you will need to get that from Jason), the principle that I most resonated with and struggled with is Leaders Don’t Hide From Hard Things. I think it is easy as leaders to busy ourselves with things we excel at or things that distract us from the hard things. For me, it is easy to focus on the what I am good at and what I enjoy and ignore hard things as those hard things tend to highlight inadequacies or areas where we have missed the mark in the past. However I have found that when I go to the hard places and have a community like Thriveal and a wonderful team to support and encourage me, I am able to shine a light on those areas and work on those areas so I can grow and make those hard things less hard.

When you are the sole leader of a company, it can be hard to fully embrace your leadership. I believe it is vitally important that leaders have communities that can support them and let them know they are not alone. Find a community with other leaders in your industry and get involved in it. Share your struggles and learn from each other. Leaders must be brave and as we say in our firm, lets be brave together.