I've been thinking a lot about leadership, and one of the most key lessons I've learned is this: people tend to live up to our expectations of them. Not only that, but our expectations and perceptions of people tend to cause us to limit their ability to break out of those very expectations/perceptions.
Here's an example of what I mean: one of the guys that is in my circle of influence is a guy who I just did not expect to be a very good leader. I'm not sure if it's his personality or some bias of my own, but my perception has been that he's probably not a very good/strong leader. Note that I'm not talking about affinity; I like this person very much. But, for whatever reason, I've just had it in my head that he's probably not a very good leader.
As a result of that perception, I haven't given him the opportunities to lead (and, in the process, potentially prove my perceptions wrong). But recently I had occasion to give him just such an opportunity (mostly because I couldn't find anyone else available to do so, sadly). He knocked it out of the park. I was way wrong in my perception of him and his lack of leadership ability.
My initial instinct about this was something like, "Why hasn't he stepped up as a leader before now?" But, of course, my own perceptions prevented me from giving him any opportunities in which he could do so. So, my perceptions about him meant that he lived up to what I expected. That is, I expected him not to be a good leader, therefore what I saw was him not being a good leader. And, at the same time those perceptions prevented me from giving him the opportunities to either 1. prove my perceptions wrong (which he did), or 2. (if my perceptions had been right) grow into being a better leader.
This got me wondering how many other people I've done this with. Are there people that I'm holding back by not giving them the opportunities to lead or grow? Am I basing my perceptions of them on lack of evidence to the contrary, which is my fault in the first place for not giving them the opportunities to succeed or fail and provide just such evidence?
I guess what I'm saying is this: at least in this one case, I didn't even give this guy the chance to be a good leader because I was already convinced that he wasn't. I virtually guaranteed that he couldn't be a good leader by not giving him the opportunities to succeed or fail, and then justified it to myself by saying, "Well, if he really was a good leader, I would have seen evidence of it so far."
The ironic thing is that this obviously shows more of a deficit in my own leadership than in his. And I've been on the receiving end of being discounted as a leader without really being given the opportunity to lead. And often I haven't been given those opportunities based on people's perceptions of me that are often completely inaccurate. So I need to check myself that I'm not doing the very same thing to others in my area of influence (obviously I was, but I need to stop).
I need to make sure that I am developing leaders rather than stifling them or counting them out before they're even given a chance. I need to take chances and risks on people and get over my perceptions and biases in order to allow them to thrive. I hope this lesson might benefit other leaders as well.
