Great leaders excel at everything?

"Our goal for today is to help our audience become better leaders by simultaneously excelling in four areas of their lives: work, home, community and self."

This is the introductory sentence to the Harvard Business School interview, posted on YouTube (see below to watch the whole video). The speaker is Steward Friedman, author of leadership books and articles.

I don’t know about you, but that intro sentence alone makes me choke. “Excel?” How about “survive?”

I’m busy running my company, and, yes, I do identify my own success with the success of my business, but, really, am I excelling at work and home, let alone community and self?

The speaker (and interviewer, by the way) assumes that our life’s goal is to become the best leader we can be. Learning to excel at the other three areas – home, community and self – will help us become better leaders.

And on MY tombstone, I want to see the words, “She pulled it all together. She excelled at everything. But at the end of it all, she was a Great Leader.”

Perhaps I’m being a little harsh. It does grate, just a little, that the reason we might want to join a non-profit board is that, ultimately, it benefits "the company." The main reason we may want to pay attention to our mind, body and soul is to improve our “performance at work.”

I’ll let you watch the video to hear the rest of his argument, but his recommended exercises – determining your core values and the legacy you’d like to leave, among others - are worthwhile activities, no matter if you’re struggling for survival or on the verge of perfection.

As managers, even mid-level managers, we ARE leaders. The people around us watch us. Whether we like it or not, we set the tone of at least some aspects of our work.

We have the power to make coming to work a high point of someone else’s day; or the thing they least enjoy doing.

Our praise and words of encouragement can shape the behavior of the people around us as certainly as the sound of the doorbell shapes the behavior of my dog.

We are all leaders. Whether excelling at this task should be our biggest aspiration in life is certainly debatable, at least to me.

But I do agree with Stew on this: when we are true to ourselves; when we know clearly what is important to us in our lives; when we have focus, commitment and passion, we’ll be awesome, powerful leaders.

Even if our tombstones just read, “Beloved wife and mother.”