What if I’m not a good leader?

My new job isn’t going well… I think I was set up in my position really badly and got off to a terrible start. However, I also haven’t been able to turn it around. I feel tentative, confused, overwhelmed. And I really don’t know how to lead this team towards a bright and shiny future. I don’t feel I can manage the team the way I’m used to, and I don’t think the way I’m trying to do it is working.

I wish there was a clear direction for how to take a group that’s made up of apathetic primadonnas and grumpy curmudgeons and turn them into a happy, excited, prosperous group. Ok, “inspire them”. Yeah. How? They don’t trust me, I haven’t made a single decision that has gone unquestioned or unchallenged, and I’m flat out nervous. Tentative. I feel like they don’t like me, and I’m so much more withdrawn than I ever have been…

My Mother. Myself. Bipolar? Maybe.

Sometimes I wonder if I am becoming what I’ve always hated most about my mother.

Lately I don’t feel strong, I feel weak and helpless, and needy. Sometimes I feel so needy and insecure and obsessive about whatever it is that I’m focused on that I can’t stop running the problems over and over in my head. It’s a churn. Process. Process. Process. Endless circles of trying to solve the unsolvable problem. He said this. I should have done that. What if I had done something else? How could this be happening to me? Should I do X? What if I don’t do anything? Will I be ok? What should I do?!?!?!?!? And these thoughts consume me, and I talk to ND, and to my father, and to my mother, and to my friends. The same conversations, over and over. Never solved. Don’t know what to do. And sometimes I think that this desperate NEED is what my mother must have felt. When she called me 10 times a day. When she insisted that I help her with the comptuer. When she insisted that I go with her on a trip because she was afraid of having an anxiety attack. And I looked down on her for being so weak. I didn’t know. I’m glad for me that I didn’t know, but I feel sad for her.

I don’t really feel “ok” anymore. I don’t think I’m functioning well. I’m taking a cocktail of medications, and each feels lifesaving, and yet, I still don’t feel like myself. Where am I in there? I’m on Zoloft for depression – it has really helped me. Daytrana and Ritilin for ADD – it has REALLY helped me. Xanax for anxiety occasionally – it has helped me sleep sometimes, and to stop the churn other times, and every once and a while it will put the breaks on a full blown anxiety attack.

I always thought of myself as chilled out, but I think I’m a worrier now. When did that happen? When did I start worrying that every action I took could be a huge mistake that could alter the course of my life? When did I start thinking about my own death? When did I lose trust in my own abilities to handle my own life? When did I start to feel so helplessly out of control?

Victim is not a word I ever used to associate with myself, yet I feel like things happen to me in a way I never used to feel… I got laid off from one job, only to find another one that I liked but was miserable in the whole time. Why didn’t I see that I was happy there? Why was I so miserable, why did I think the company was so fucked up?? It really wasn’t. It really was a great company. And then the next job I think I didn’t know how to handle it. I was overwhelmed and didn’t see what I couldn’t do. And people didn’t like working with me, because I was miserable. And now I’m in a job where they think I’m on a power trip. And I’m misunderstood. Yet at the same time, I don’t think I really know how to collaborate. I know how to dictate, and I realize that I am difficult to work with. I feel so awkward sometimes. Like I don’t know how to work with my team. And I feel lonely.

I used to think my mother was weak and incompetant. I used to think she was so smart, yet wasted her life not taking care of herself. And I used to pride myself on my success. But I don’t feel very successful. And I worry that I’m becoming just like her. And that maybe, I am already just like her. And I am doomed to her faults because I can’t get control over myself. I know I need to let go, and that clamping down is making it worse, but if I let go, will I just drift away?

It’s so hard to not be GIVEN leadership

I took this job expecting to lead the department. There’s another person there who’s now my equal. This is hard, not what I wanted. The CEO is an asshole, totally insulting to me, humiliated me and wouldn’t listen at all.

However, I need to learn how to collaborate. I need to learn how to influence others without dictating. I don’t know these things. I have no model. I’ve been doing the Tony Robbins coaching thing, and here are my notes from tonight’s session. They profoundly affected me:

Two approaches to this work situation.
1. I can look at this in a way that makes me feel right and gives me short term solutions and I look for a new job
2. Or, put all of it aside and look at what can I learn from this, and how did I contribute to this position, and how can I use what I learned to have a better situation next go around. Take ownership.
a. Collaboration, yet I’m upset about not being in a high position.
b. I’m feeling victimized – victim thinking does not give me any choices.
c. What people default to when they don’t like, the put all the attention on themselves and how they feel, and then they have 0 ability to influence the other person.
i. So first, understand what could cause someone to react the way they are. What would cause him to feel this way, and how can I help him with that? Really find out what he’s up to. Try to understand his goals, and what’s critical and important to him.
ii. If you want to sell something to someone, you put aside your product and outcome for a bit and put all your attention on what makes you tick and what you’re about, and then looks for how to match your product to that.
3. I chose to put this out to the universe, now what am I going to learn?

6 Human Needs:
All people will find a way to get these needs met, but they may not be the most positive or productive.
1. Need for connection and love
2. Need to be different, separate and unique + significant
3. Need for certainty, consistency
4. Need for variety and uncertainty
5. Need to grow
6. Need to contribute
So what’s happening is that we have a propensity for some more than others. It’s all a matter of degrees though. How am I getting my needs met? The more I get them met based on ME the better.

3 Messages Today:
1. I have to go on with the other parts of my life in spite of how I’m feeling at work. I know I don’t feel like it, but I’m going to break this pattern. It will not tear down my other goals no matter what I’m feeling like at work. I’ll still take care of my health.
2. Whenever I want to influence someone, I have to be the one to change my behavior. I can influence you authentically, understand you, what you’re up to, what you really want, and I try to match that by helping you see that if you do what I want it will help you get what you want. GET SOMEONE TO MOVE FOR THEIR REASONS – AND TO DO THAT, I HAVE TO UNDERSTAND THEIR REASONS.
a. Have to let go of my own outcomes for a bit. Focus on their outcomes.
3. I have a great need for significance. The way I start learning how to create significance in some additional way. I can’t always get someone to tell me I’m great, I can’t always seek it.
a. I can use this job to become amazing at collaborative work.
b. Even if I end up being a leader, even the best leaders need to move into collaborative mode, so I have to be able to transition into collaborative.

TAKE A MOMENT AND BE PROUD OF MYSELF FOR WHAT I HAVE ALREADY LEARNED.