For generations the mothers in my family asked the children before leaving for school, “Do you have on clean underwear?” Or, “Make sure you have clean underwear on in case you get into an accident.”
I am not sure anything is clean after an accident and what underwear has to do with it . . . but my mind evolved from clean underwear to asking “is your leadership heart clean”?
The heart of a leader sustains life of an organization. Here are a few areas’ to reflect on your Clean Leadership Heart:
- Are you intentional in growing yourself, others, and organization?
- Education, Innovation, Space for Creativity
- Are you helping others UP the ladder?
- Mentoring, Modeling
- Do you allow others and yourself to get dirty?
- FAIL is an awesome four letter word and should be part of your organizational process, let your people get curious, let your people get dirty
- Do you create space for risk?
- An organization cannot grow and create innovation without planned risk
The heart of leadership is not who comes out on top clean, but who comes out on top with a team who is dirty with knowledge, wisdom, confidence, and respect of each other of a job well done and well fought.
Success is not for the weak of heart and that is why leadership is dirty! As stated, “If success was easy everyone would be successful.” Everything worth setting a goal toward is not easy and if it is/was easy for you go back and reflect on the few questions above you may have a few people to thank.
I challenge you to come out dirty with knowledge, wisdom, and the confidence to trust and respect your team!
Cheers to Dirty Leadership Hearts!
Look UP & OUT my friends,
Tracy Worley