Why "Nice" Leaders Quietly Destroy Their Teams

Compassion without courage doesn't create healthy leadership. It creates passivity. Early in my business journey, one of the things that I did many, many times is I vacillated from being way too much lion or way too much lamb. In fact, believe it or not, that's actually normal. So if you started this journey of becoming a fully integrated leader and one part lion, one part lamb, and you find yourself being overly still one way or overly still the other way, I want to tell you that you're on track. I don't want you to get discouraged because the process of integration takes time. You're bringing two specific archetypes together in wholeness, in congruence, all at the same time, which is why you need to understand what the other side is doing. What does it mean to lead by passivity? What does it mean to lead when you are really structured in such a way that you want to be of service and you want to help people, but all the way to the point of where you self-abandon, or what's known as overfunction? So much of my journey, as I've mentioned before, is going from one to the other. I spent my early first decade, if you will, trying to operate from insecurity and fear and control and dominance. And then I— once I realized that that was a problem, I very quickly shifted gears and I said, okay, well, whatever you guys think, that's what we'll do. And then I realized that that is actually abdicating your assignment, or if you're using King theology, you're abdicating your throne. In other words, you're giving away the very thing that is part of who you are and why you are as a leader. You see, every single leader, whether operating in boldness or in compassion, has both strengths as well as a blind spot. And part of integration is simply bringing balance to your energetic outflow as a leader. So for the sake of this particular video, I really want to lean into what it means to lead in a passive kind of way, or as we would call it, an immature lamb. You see, the lamb side of leadership is essential, but without the lion, it collapses into avoidance and people pleasing. So the first thing I want to do is I want to break down what this looks like if you're over-functioning or being a people pleaser as it comes to the imbalanced lamb or the immature lamb that we call it. And the first thing you have to understand is compassion can simply be nothing more than conflict avoidance. Some leaders believe by being compassionate, it also means avoiding difficult conversations in their entirety or difficult circumstances. And I can promise you, if you're going to be an integrated leader and you'll be a fully aligned leader in such a way, then inevitably what you're gonna have to face is making the hard choices at the right time, but with healthy boundaries. And so much of what we want to do when we're operating in this imbalanced lamb is we want to avoid all the hard conversations or the hard decisions altogether. Maybe there's a bill or some kind of invoice you need to pay that you've been putting off. Maybe there's a relationship that you've been putting off because you don't want to have the hard conversation. Maybe there's a team member right now that honestly could use a course correction. But because you don't know how the conversation would go already in your own mind, it's holding you back from actually having the the first place. You see, imbalanced lambs have a hard time confronting the problems because they fear of damaging the relationship or somehow losing something of value, not realizing that grounded leadership doesn't put things at risk. It puts things in perspective. Over time, unresolved issues begin accumulating step by step, piece by piece. And again, I've learned this the hard way, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to bring this up in the beginning. The reality is, is if you lead by all lion or all lamb, you're going to put yourself at risk. When you put yourself at risk with the imbalanced lamb side of things, you do nothing but compound the problem before it explodes. So by simply pushing it away, pushing it away, pushing it up away, pushing it away, other problems, circumstances, conversations, and stuff compound on top of that. And the next thing you know, now you have a detonation-like event, a volcano of explosion, so to speak, that ends up wreaking chaos and destruction as you're trying to find your ground again. So what we want to do is we want to have compassionate courage. On a regular basis. You see, true compassion does not avoid truth, it delivers it. But it delivers it with character, capacity, and integrity. It also delivers it with respect for dignity across everything. Your dignity, their dignity, the organization's dignity, your client's dignity. It restores dignity while also having difficult conversations. Now, the second thing I want you to be aware of is passivity creates and compounds dysfunction. When leaders avoid addressing problems and confusion, they quietly spreads throughout the entire organization on a regular basis. This quiet spread ends up operating much like a cancer to the body. Over time, it begins to poison and poison and poison. You see, team members begin guessing expectations because there's no clarity, there's no conversation, there's no connection. So as a result, there's no clarity, so it's never ever provided because there's a lot of confusion. And a lot of abdicating of the throne. So much of what's important is understanding that small problems can grow into large issues simply because no one is actually willing to address them early and honestly. What conversation right now are you holding back? What decision right now are you holding back? What are you avoiding right now in your business, in your leadership, and everything that you're doing? What are you avoiding and why? What are you scared of? Think about these types of questions because these types of questions ultimately give you clarity. And then I want you to ask a reverse question. What would it be like to go ahead and solve this issue, have this conversation, identify this need without taking an identity hit as a result of it? What would it mean to your nervous system, to your safety, or to your security to get the conversation out of the way that needs to happen? The reason being is because the way human life actually works is we will build up a fear response and tell us things that all these bad things are going to happen. Or we'll go the other direction, say all these good things are going to happen. The reality is, is truth is often found in the middle. Seldom is it as bad as you think it's going to be or as good as you think it's going to be. That's why you need to understand that courage takes practice. And all you got to do is take the first courageous step right now. You've got to be careful to understand that what starts as kindness often becomes organizational dysfunction disguised as compassion. Real compassion doesn't lose respect. Real compassion doesn't lose dignity. Real compassion does not cause fear. Real compassion causes grace, mercy, and connection. That doesn't mean a firm boundary won't need to be communicated and held. It just determines the communication style itself. Now, one of the third things I really want to break down for today is you need to understand that a real mature Lamb. When we're talking about integrated leadership, we're looking at the best qualities of both the lion and the lamb specifically. And the number one quality the lamb has is it protects people, but it doesn't protect comfort. So much of what gets in your way as a leader, and I'm saying this loosely, as in I have been there many times, is comfort. We don't want to upset the apple cart. We don't want to get out of our comfort zone. We don't want— so what happens is we never build the muscle memory of actually having difficult conversations or making difficult decisions. And it all comes down to comfort-based fear. We're telling ourselves that the worst thing is going to happen, and as a result, we get lost in it. So when you set out to have compassion leadership, you need to understand you're actually protecting the well-being and the growth of the people on the team. By avoiding things, a lot of times what we're actually allowing to have happen is what Dave Ramsey would actually call sanctioning incompetence. When we don't take action within our own team, when we don't have the conversations within our own team, inevitably what you find that happens more than anything else is the rest of the team begins to underperform because they're not being led. Instead, the chaos is leading. So there's no trust, there's no safety, and there's no reason for them to maintain high standards if other people on the team, including ourselves, aren't maintaining the same high standards. The other thing I want you to realize is sometimes growth requires uncomfortable conversations on accountability on the regular. The best thing you can do is begin to have those on a regular basis but begin to do them with regular confidence and regular humility. And as a result, by doing this, you're going to create what's known as honest feedback loops, both for you as a leader, as well as them as individuals, as well as the team. These feedback loops help improve rather than remaining stuck in unhealthy patterns. That's what we were trying to do. We're trying to disrupt a dysfunctional, chaotic, unhealthy pattern within the organization. And as I've said many times, it starts with us. Sometimes we have to be the buck stops here approach, and we have to be so hungry for learning this new leadership level, that we are relentless in it. Real compassion focuses on what helps people grow, not simply what keeps people comfortable, especially us as leaders. Now we've broken down a little bit more about what's at stake. Let's talk about what it really looks like. You see, healthy leadership requires courage. Courage allows leaders to address difficult issues with clarity and respect. There's a boundary. Boundaries create stability by defining what behavior aligns with the organizational values This includes you. This includes being available for your own team, especially your leadership team, to hold you accountable for your own shortcomings. There's nothing wrong with that. It also means courageous leaders communicate expectations openly instead of allowing confusion to grow continually. When courage and compassion work together, teams feel both guided and supported. Notice that when we started the video, one of the things we were talking about is no one feels guided nor supported because we're taking inauthentic action. Or we're not taking action at all. Now what we're saying is, is we're going to set the expectations, we're going to define the standards, we're going to communicate both the expectations and the standards, and we're going to hold all of us accountable for that. And if a difficult conversation or a difficult decision needs to be had, we're going to step up as leaders and be the first ones to walk into the forge willingly, be the first one to take that step, to walk in and engage and bring that challenge to a successful conclusion. At the end of the day, integration creates safe authority, not controlling authority, not passive authority, balanced, safe authority. People feel safest under leadership that combines honesty with empathy, not honesty and no empathy, or control and no compassion. Leaders who balance strength and compassion create environments where truth can ultimately be spoken for without fear. This balance builds a team because team members know they will be treated fairly and respectfully, but also be held accountable and responsible to their own decisions and standards of the organization. Integrated authority creates cultures where accountability and care can exist and cohabitate together. I hope this has really challenged you to neither be all lion or be all lamb. Instead, over the last several videos, I've wanted to encourage you to take ownership of your own leadership style. So here's what I want you to do. If you got a lot from this video, do me a favor, would you share this with a friend, a friend who's also struggling with their own organization, a friend who's also struggling to lead with integrity and lead as an integrated leader, because I believe we can change the world with one integrated leader at a time. In the meantime, if you haven't already done so, please check out the One Part Lion, One Part Lamb podcast. Man, we've had some of the most incredible guests with some of the most thought-provoking content you can possibly understand.. And if you still want more content on how to actually create integrated leadership, how to grow an organization, you can check right here. Until then, I'll see you in the next one. God bless.