10/26/2021

Leaders: Stop Trying to Be Heroes

It’s not what your employees really need from you

Imagine an elegant office somewhere in the Upper East Side of New York City. One after the other, top business executives discreetly slip into the comfortable waiting room a few minutes before the door opens. They fear crossing paths with someone they might know. When that happens, both people awkwardly look the other way.

This is the office of a renowned psychotherapist, and most of the business leaders who turn up there would rather keep their visits secret, even though more than one in five CEOs now seek therapy. (Never mind that even Richard Nixon’s psychotherapist pointed out that leaders who seek help in times of stress are courageous and serve interests broader than their own.) Unfortunately, for many business leaders, openly asking for help and exploring their emotions is still too often perceived as a weakness.

For decades, the traditional view was that to be successful, business leaders had to be infallible, unflappable, in control, and fearless. These leaders appeared to be born hero leaders, naturally endowed with supreme intelligence, coming up with brilliant ideas and directives from the mountaintop that lower echelons were then expected to execute.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Harvard Business Review.