Musings at Altitude

I’ve been thinking a lot about partners lately – my partner at home; my partners in life; my partners in business – not in regards to changing those partners (hope my wife didn’t jump to that conclusion!) but in regards to how partners when chosen properly create enormous upside in life and in business, and when chosenly poorly create a great burden that has to be overcome before any joy can be achieved.  In my thinking, I look back on all the times in my life when things just seemed to click, and in every case, things clicked when I felt incredibly fond of my team, my peers and my overseers, and thus an incredible level of force multiplying occurred.  On the opposite side of that, the times in my life when I seemed to be mired in quicksand were times where I felt disconnected from my team, my peers or my overseers, and when I didn’t feel like a partner in the mission needing to be accomplished but instead felt like a tool being used or a pawn being placed. 

At home, I have a partner and a co-leader that has been an incredible blessing to me.  We don’t always always agree with each other, but we do always love each other and definitely always respect each other.  In business, I’ve had partners and co-leaders that have been an incredible blessing to me, and I’ve had partners and co-leaders that have been an incredible burden on me.  I truly enjoyed the former and extricated myself out of the latter, but in every case I loved my partners even though in the latter I struggled with respect at times.  In leadership situations, I’ve been blessed with key senior executive team members that took the burden of the transactional components of business off of me and allowed me to focus on vision and strategy.  I love every one of them for that, and I greatly appreciate the intimacy that’s been shared and the accountability that’s been accepted by every one of them.  In each of these areas of my life, I have cherished partners in my leadership endeavors.

But many people struggle with partners in leadership.  I’ve heard many times from many people that “it’s lonely at the top”, but does it really have to be that way?  I’ve seen lots of leaders take over bad situations – turnarounds in a sense – and the first thing they do is bring in a trusted confidant to be part of their senior executive team.  Maybe that’s their way to counter the loneliness at the top.  I’ve seen other leaders bring in coaches and advisors to provide mostly private counseling and maybe that’s a way to counter the loneliness at the top.  Personally, I either bring in or create from within a tight team of people that become my confidants and I try and share everything.  Certainly, there are times where critical decisions will be made that require some solitude during the decision making process, but that should only come after the issues have been thoroughly discussed and debated. 

Leadership itself shouldn’t be lonely.