The Hardest Person to Lead by Mike Bolton

 The hardest person I have ever had to lead was myself.

 As a leader we have to have a higher-level self-awareness than the people we are tasked with serving and leading.

I heard the story of a leader who attended a training where he was encouraged to go back and share with his team his weaknesses and shortcomings. He refused and gave the passionate explanation that leaders should never show any weakness or admit any fault or shortcoming.

 His final question was, “if I share this information, what will the followers think of me?”

The training facilitator gave a great response to the question. He said that the followers would have a greater level of respect for the leader because they were already aware of the leader’s weaknesses and shortcoming, they just wanted to make sure the leader knew them as well.

 The best way to lead well, is to be aware of our strengths and weaknesses.

No leader has all the strengths and abilities to succeed alone, that’s why they need a team of people who can succeed together.

A great book that can help is “Strengths Finder 2.0” by Gallup with Tom Rath. This book has an online code to take the test and view the results. In life and leadership, we need to play to our strengths (80%) of our time & effort and delegate as much of the rest as we can (20%).

 When we delegate our weaknesses and play to our strengths, we will make room for others to grow and the team will have greater success (impact and influence) in business and church.

 © 2022 Michael Bolton of CCAL (Canada Coalition of Apostolic Leaders)