Leadership and Self-Acceptance

This past Sunday the Corner Office column in the Business Section of the New York Times featured an interview with Bob Brennan, C.E.O. of Iron Mountain. He stated that command-and-control leadership is dead. This is how he described the culture he is creating in his company:
“ We want managers to display confidence and optimism, and give constructive feedback, never destructive. And managers need to seek constructive feedback themselves.”

Brennan is talking about leaders who have high self-esteem as reflected in the practice of self-acceptance. They are being real about themselves. Self-acceptance enables us to hear critical feedback or different ideas without becoming hostile or adversarial.

Self-acceptance is not something we think, it's something we do. You don't have to like everything about yourself in order to accept who you are. If we can't accept something about ourselves, we cannot make changes, because we can't change something that we deny exists. Paradoxically, self-acceptance is necessary to make changes, but is not about changing ourselves.

It's only when we stop judging ourselves that we can have a more positive sense of who we are and increase our self-esteem. And it is in this way that we can become more effective leaders.

Effective leaders practice self-acceptance and support self-acceptance in the culture of their workplace. The benefits of having employees who give and receive constructive feedback without defensiveness creates the type of safe environment where people are action oriented, can respond quickly and comfortably to change, and focused on their goals.

Here are some of the behaviors that support self-acceptance, and therefore high self-esteem in the workplace:
* Be present when speaking with someone, give them the experience of being heard and accepted
* Maintain a tone of respect
* Describe undesirable behavior without blaming
* Speak honestly about your feelings
* Develop a toleration for mistakes
* Reward success and ignore failure as much as possible

Remember, successful leaders have high self-esteem, practice self-acceptance and promote this as part of the workplace culture.

"Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them."
Albert Einstein