Why good leadership is so difficult

Over the years, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to be in leadership positions and can attest that enjoying the spotlight provided by being a point person can be much more challenging than it’s rewarding. 

Making decisions often becomes becomes the necessary and constant evil on a daily basis. With it, the path to decision-making is paved with landmines and while one learns to avoid them as much as possible, accidents become a statistical price to pay. 

In other words, leaders have to accept that in the process of moving forward and deciding, failures are unavoidable and must be accepted as part of the landscape. It seems to me that the more decisions a leader – or anyone, for that matter – makes, the better their quality and, over time, the failure rate is likely to go down. 

The greatest difficulty is in getting going, in ramping up the process, and in deciding, there’s often much pain and nail-biting in store for the decision-maker when outcomes go sideways. 

So here you have it. There’s never any free lunch. Everyone wants to be, or be seen as a leader, but very few are willing to take the heat if things turn out badly, so herein lays the reason why so few heads of state are cut out to lead. 

The leader in training has to accept that the path will be arduous and all the criticism and that there will be plenty of boos waiting around the corner before savoring victories...