The interesting thing about leadership is that every mistake we make is on the backs of our subordinates. When we make wrong hiring or firing decisions human beings suffer. When we use hurtful words, human beings suffer. It’s not like playing with items where we might scratch the item or cause some kind of malfunction in the item, these are living breathing human beings. Everything we do to them affects the trajectory of their lives. Whether people are able to feed their families or not. Whether people are able to go home at the end of the day feeling satisfied and able to give of themselves to the rest of their family, or whether they go home depressed and tired.
We get to decide whether people will leave our organizations poised for success in whatever else they decide to do, or whether they will leave deflated and discouraged.
The decisions we make every day have such a great impact that I do push leadership on anyone too quickly. People have to be ready to take on that kind of responsibility. But you are already a leader, so whether you’re ready or not is no longer the question. What you must realize is that everything you do is important. Whether you choose to be your best and bring out the best in others or you choose to make everyone subordinate to you feel like useless rags, you get to decide.
You get to decide what you do, but you don’t get to decide the consequences.