I remember sitting at my desk at 6 am, having worked all night. I was exhausted but proud, thinking: this is what success looks like 🤦♂️.
Because, when I first started working after university, I worked very long hours. Always on weekdays, but usually on the weekends too. I was proud of this and gained a great sense of achievement because I was working hard.
When I looked around me, many colleagues were routinely working late nights in the office and regular, if infrequent, ‘all nighters’. Friends working in investment banking regularly ate breakfast, lunch and dinner in the office. Everyone was working long hours, so that felt like a real achievement. And so the thinking went that we must have been doing a great job.
Then I started paying more attention to the goals that my boss set me. He would set out a list of tasks or outcomes to nail for the period. I would work hard (usually in the form of long hours) and I would usually nail those goals and accordingly receive a bonus. My sense of achievement shifted from putting in long hours to hitting the goals I was set.
When I started working at the third or fourth company of my career, I took on more responsibility and autonomy. In this case, I no longer had a boss that set me specific goals. This is hardly good practice, but it did give me the autonomy to develop my own goals in broad alignment with the organisation’s priorities.
I kept working pretty long hours, but no longer in an environment where this was the norm. Hence I felt no peer pressure to stay late. I only stayed late if and when I wanted to. My hours fluctuated according to my engagement with the goals I was working on. Whenever I could, I would pick goals that were important to me. Perhaps because they were aligned with topics that interested me, presented a real challenge and/or felt like they’d make a genuine impact on the world around me. When I achieved these goals, it felt great.
As time progressed, I started managing teams. Then teams of teams. And – for a period – an entire organisation. This allowed me to discover a whole new realm of achievement and satisfaction in my work. Not as someone who directly achieved goals myself, but as a leader who enabled their teams and team members to achieve goals themselves.
This is where I find myself now. I no longer measure my achievement by the hours I put in, nailing the goals that others set for me or simply by the direct impact I have on making the world a better place. I want to focus my efforts on enabling others to make the world a better place.
True leadership is therefore less about what we do, and more about the difference we inspire in others.
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