We don’t coddle people. We care for them.
Some leaders are soft. They mistakenly believe that being nice is always the best choice. Unfortunately, they miss the point. The goal of leadership is not being nice. A leader’s calling is to make the people around them better. Sometimes making someone better means we care about them more than we care about being nice.
When you look back on the coaches in your life who had the most impact on you, they probably weren’t always nice. They probably told you some hard truths about yourself or your performance. Those truths may have stung when they said them. But they said them because they cared. As my friend Colonel (Retired) Craig Flowers says, “We don’t coddle people. We care for them.” Sometimes the most caring thing you can do for someone is to challenge them.
When we care about someone, we want what is best for them. We see who they could be or should be, and we challenge their current choices. We engage in uncomfortable conversations because we truly believe that is what is best for them.
Being nice may feel good to us and to them at the moment, but are they better as a result of that nice conversation? Don’t get me wrong, we must always treat people with respect and value who they are. But again, one of the best ways we can show respect for someone and value them is to push them to be more than who they are currently being.
In my decades of coaching people how to coach people, I run into too many leaders who hesitate to say the hard truths. Some leaders water down the truth in an attempt to be nice at the moment. Many times, it is not because the individual can’t handle a challenging conversation, it is because that leader is uncomfortable initiating that conversation.
When leaders avoid challenging people because it makes the leader uncomfortable, that is a selfish choice on the part of the leader. Why? That leader just placed their own comfort before the other person’s growth. When a leader does that, they are falling short of their calling.
Does challenging the other person always seem nice at the moment? Probably not. But it is perhaps the most caring thing a leader can do for the person they are called to lead and develop. Leaders, don’t shy away from these moments. These are the moments we put their growth before our own comfort. That is one way Leaders of Character show they care for the people around them.
Questions:
Who needs you to challenge them to get better?
What has prevented you from doing it already?
Here is a quick assessment that will take you 5 minutes to figure it out. Nobody will ever see your results but you.
Warning: If you are not going to be honest with yourself this is a worthless assessment.
To take the assessment use the QR code above or go to www.MYCHARACTERTEST.com
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