Acting Like Yourself

When I was in college, this acquaintance of mine would come up to me and say, "You aren't acting like yourself today." I would turn to him and ask, "Who am I acting like then?" He would say, "I don't know, but not yourself."

As leaders, we have a lot of people pushing and pulling us in the direction that they want us to go. There are demands at work, at home, from coworkers, stakeholders, board members and family. Moreover, they all have opinions on what you should and should not be doing and how you should or should not go about achieving your goals. In addition to that, they have opinions about how you should act or what you should or should not say. They may even threaten to tell something you did to embarrass you or make you feel you must behave or make decisions in a certain way.

The truth is, no one knows you as well as you know you. It seems like a simple concept to grasp, but so often we forget about ourselves.  We forget to act like ourselves. Decisions are made based on board members or what is expected by our bosses or colleagues or alumni group or peers or families. The reason we don't know who we are acting like is because we have somehow lost who we are in the midst of pleasing and meeting the goals and the demands of others.

In healthcare, we are especially prone to this people-pleasing, help-everybody, fix-it mentality. We put the wants, care and needs of everyone else above ourselves. Then, if we cry out, we confront the demands, we want something different, then we fear the result will be push-back, bullying, harassment, defamation. However, if we spend so much time pleasing everyone else, helping everybody, fixing everything, we have little time left for who we actually are as leaders.

As a leader, you have to have a core set of values of who you believe yourself to be. Those values can change over time, because as we all grow and learn we change. Still, there is a core sense of self that occurs. A sense of self that has to be unwavering as you move through your time as a leader. That sense of self has to be a person that you like, that you want to be, that you admire. The only guarantee is that no matter what you decide are your core values is that someone will criticize you, try to change you, ostracize you for your beliefs, challenge your decisions, and maybe even try to take your job. Still you must stand firm.

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Being true to self also means giving yourself permission to fulfill your own needs. As leaders, we spend so much time trying to meet the needs of others, the organization, the community. We forget to give ourselves permission to be someone that we need. We need to please ourselves, to help ourselves, to fix ourselves. Every day you should take time to address what you need. There should be a core group of people with whom you can trust to share your thoughts and fears and hopes and goals without fear of repercussion. We like to call these individuals "sounding boards." Basically, people who get you and where you are going.

Finally, being true to yourself means letting yourself be flawed and imperfect sometimes. The flaws and imperfections are what make you vulnerable to the human condition. We have to grant ourselves permission to not try to reach impossible perfection. Impossible perfection is that place we idealistically believe exists where everyone is happy with every decision and we have met the needs and wants and pleased and fixed and helped as many people as possible. It's the assumed top tier of the leadership self-actualization pyramid -- something we can strive for but cannot reach. Perhaps, that is not the true top of the pyramid. Maybe the true top of the pyramid is knowing we did the best we could every single day and we let ourselves be leaders...and humans.