How Do You Lead the Toughest Person in the Room?

As a leader, we all seem to have that ONE person who’s tough to lead. They can be hard to read, stay positively motivated, and be receptive to new and innovative ideas. So how do you lead the toughest person in the room?

Before that question can be answered, you need to correctly identify the toughest person in the room. The answer may surprise you.

I’ll let you in on a secret, the toughest person in any room to lead is typically you. It’s always going to be you and always a full-time job.

As leaders, we must manage our priorities, discipline ourselves, protect our integrity, and the list goes on.

My friend and mentor, John Maxwell, says that we are tougher on ourselves than we are on anyone else. We are always the toughest person to lead because of two reasons:

We don’t view ourselves the way we view others.
We judge others by their actions and ourselves by our intentions.

Because we are tougher on ourselves, a disconnect often occurs with skewed results of what outcomes we think we should obtain on an unrealistic timeline. We use a different ruler when we measure our expectations of ourselves compared to the expectations we have of others.

If someone were speaking into your life the way you speak to yourself when things go wrong, chances are, you’d feel incredibly demotivated possibly even not show up to work.

In your leadership role, you give your team grace as you help and guide them. You work on your skills in motivating and empowering your team to achieve more.

We’ve already established that you’re your own toughest critic. Therefore, in your leadership role, who’s going to motivate and empower you? How are do you lead the toughest person in the room, when that person is you?