Solitude – ElPropósito3 min de lectura

A trait of the leader’s path

Who is a leader? I firmly believe we are all leaders and that leadership runs through the deepest fibers of our being. Whether we feel like leaders or haven’t discovered it yet is another matter. Anyone who takes responsibility for their own life is automatically leading themselves, and that’s the clearest sign of leadership there is. We’re all born with that great capacity. The catch is that it’s much easier to let someone else run our lives, but that’s a topic for another post. This time I’m thinking about the inner conversation that someone whose main job is to lead carries on alone, every moment of the day. That’s why I consider leadership a very, very solitary path.

In private, in that most intimate conversation, a leader lives each day across two great dimensions: worry and confidence. We can lose confidence in ourselves at some point because of a particular circumstance, and we can regain it thanks to the training we’ve received or built. Why is worry one of the dimensions? Because a leader doesn’t own the absolute truth and humbly accepts it. That makes the leader aware of depending on others to understand the playing field as well as possible. Worry turns into action as the leader recognizes the risk and knows how to measure it, and other people’s talent is put to its best use precisely when it helps reduce the risk on the field where the leader is leading.

A leader without confidence in the future would cease to be a leader: the hope, the faith and the joy of believing tomorrow can be better than today. That’s an innate trait of a good leader. Again, in private, in the solitude that marks every minute, every hour and every instant, the biggest question is: how do I keep hope and confidence in the future? One remarkably powerful trait of a good leader, where confidence is concerned, is equanimity in hard times and composure in the best ones. Confidence needs solid foundations, and those come from constant learning and continuous improvement in what we’ve set out to achieve with a clear purpose.

Maybe the title of this post isn’t the most inviting, yet it’s a reality we live every day, however surrounded we are by good teams, good colleagues, a good family, good friends and so on. The leader’s path is a lonely one, full of questions and short on answers. There’s very little time to find answers, precisely because we rarely get to sit down, reflect and think through the best responses to what we’re living. If we accept that our walk through this world is a solitary one, we must work all the harder to understand how much it matters who we surround ourselves with. Precisely because the path is solitary, one of the best strategies is to surround ourselves with the best.

Warm regards and all the best,

Rodrigo Baccaro

Author: Rodrigo Baccaro

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