Loving Monday: When Showing Up Involves Taking a Risk
Most all of us will show up bodily at work today.
But will we be there in spirit?
With business leaders being as embarrassingly insecure as they are, there can be enormous risk in fully showing up at work.
To enthusiastically contribute one’s skills, talents, gifts and passions in many workplaces is to inadvertently remind one’s supervisor that they do not possess those same attributes.
A few—might I add, smart—leaders celebrate having team members whose skills complement their own.
Most, though, seem distressingly threatened.
Hence the tragic risk of showing up fully.
I have a friend whose initiative, creativity, and hard work ethic is being interpreted as aggression, arrogance, and an effort to make others look bad.
Go figure. Is it his job to make his boss feel more secure? Of course not.
But can he ignore the reality that someone with more positional power than him keeps misreading his style and contributions? Absolutely not.
Some of us end up laying low, if not hiding, in order not to ruffle feathers or be misunderstood.
Everyone loses when this happens.
How can you  be both true to yourself and take into account the perception challenges insecure leadership poses to your efforts?
How can you both muster the courage to show up fully at work and also participate in the shaping of how those efforts are perceived?
Such are the risks of choosing to show up in spirit as well as in body.
The risk may not pay off. Such is the unpredictable nature of other peoples’ insecurities.
On the other hand, the risk may both earn you the respect of your supervisor and set a healthier tone for an entirely new way of working together.
You’ll never know until you try. You already know that waiting for your supervisor to change is futile.
We need to you to show up today. Do yourself and the rest of us the favor of taking that risk.
On your side,
- Karl Edwards
