We are humans on a leadership journey.

I owned and operated a Chinese restaurant for six years and then spent 20 years in corporate America as a Finance professional. As a 23-year-old immigrant business owner, I developed my leadership skills through trial and error, with plenty of reading and experimenting. In my early career as a Finance forecaster, delivering both good and bad news, and later as a leader in executive teams, I had the unique opportunity to observe and learn about leadership and lead from the front-row seats.

I realized that the true power of leadership comes from the people being led. We can’t lead or influence on an island alone. If a leader has no one willing to follow them, can they truly be considered a leader? The very essence of a leader hinges on the presence of followers.

While leadership is about our connections with others (interpersonal), it also demands a deep understanding and growth within ourselves (intrapersonal). As leaders, making sense of our circumstances and business situations must intertwine with finding and sharing meaning – for ourselves and those we lead. Our purpose and the joy of leading emerge at this intersection of sense-making and meaning-making.

Clayton M. Christensen, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, wrote a timeless 2010 HBR article, How Will You Measure Your Life?, that resonates with me (linked in the comment section). When I first read it years ago, it clicked. His advice to apply business strategy frameworks to our personal lives is practical and transformative.

Consider this: We all live with finite time (faceless countdown clocks) and limited resources. We can perform a personal SWOT analysis, assess our life portfolio (family, work, community, beliefs, etc.), and define success measures for ourselves. As we own our lives, WE – not others -decide what success looks like. We could have a healthy bank account but be bankrupt in life.

Clayton M. Christensen’s Framework for Life

Create a Strategy for Your Life

Success in life begins with a clear purpose. During a period in my career, I worked 80-90 hours a week. This led to burnout, which became a wake-up call for me to reassess my life. Discovering my purpose and what truly mattered to me motivated me to take back control and reclaim my life.

Allocate Your Resources Wisely

Time, energy, and talent are finite. As leaders in life and work, we must constantly decide how to allocate these resources. It’s easy to prioritize immediate, tangible results (short-term ROI) – a shipped product, a closed sale, a promotion – but these short-term wins can come at the expense of long-term fulfillment.

Cultivating authentic relationships doesn’t yield immediate gratification. However, the returns, the long-term ROI, though delayed, could be profound and fulfilling.

Create a Culture with Intentions

As parents, we might be tempted to use “power tools” like coercion to secure cooperation from our children. However, these methods lose effectiveness as children age. Instead, we need to consciously build a culture of mutual respect, self-esteem, and resilience.

Coercion stifles engagement, initiative, innovative thinking, and loyalty in the workplace. How much time are we investing in showing our employees that we care, value, and respect them? Are we providing the clarity and resources they need to achieve high performance and creativity?

Avoid the “Marginal Costs” Mistake

The slippery slope of “just this once” is a trap many fall into. As Christensen notes, small compromises can lead to repeated deviations from principles. It’s easier to live by our principles 100% of the time than to make exceptions. Define your values clearly and draw the line in a safe place. If you feel conflicted, ask yourself which personal values of yours are being violated.

Remember the Importance of Humility

Humility is not about self-deprecation but respecting others and recognizing their inherent value. True humility stems from a strong sense of self-esteem and self-worth – a confidence that allows you to lift others up rather than put them down. Self-esteem may come from extrinsic rewards, but self-worth is the intrinsic drive that helps us build a sense of agency and self-efficacy.

Choose the Right Yardstick

Think carefully about how your life will be judged and align your daily actions with that metric. As a leader, parent, or friend, let your impact on others be your guiding yardstick.

As the world races to integrate AI into our lives, cultivating our emotional intelligence (EI) has shifted from a nice-to-do task to a must-do task. The seismic changes brought by AI, which make business sense-making faster and easier, allow us to focus more on meaning-making – for ourselves and those we lead.

After all, we are humans on a leadership journey – and the story we write is ours to craft. Let’s transform our leadership journey into a fulfilling life story.

* The views and opinions expressed in this content are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any organization I am affiliated with.