Do continual years of service make you a better leader?

I am convinced that I am a better leader after having served in a leadership position, taken a break for an extended period and then resumed the same leadership position.  The initial service in the role provides an introduction that can only be gained by experience.  The break brings perspective on what is and what is not critical for both the position and organization.

I believe this to be true with my volunteer church leadership.  I served in two volunteer leadership positions one with a service orientation and one with a shepherding emphasis.  The first stint in the role was over a period of 5 or 6 years.  Then due to increasing responsibilities and travel in my professional role along with having a young family I stepped away from this position.  Now after a 2-year gap, I have resumed the shepherding position.  The first time I served in the position, I felt I needed to have answers.  I needed to provide strong guidance that provided results.  If I was a good leader, the church should grow.  This second time around my perspective has changed.  I see my role as to ask the staff questions.  I am to be a source of guidance that allows them to accomplish more, not provide specific directives that drive results.  Instead of trying to make results happen, I am looking for the direction where we are seeing success (which in the church world is called blessing) and encouraging us to follow that path.

I believe this would be true if I rejoined the City Council or took on any other leadership role as a public official.  There is an interesting dynamic when serving in the role of a public official, especially at a local level.  It is a unique honor and a position of trust.  It is one I did not take lightly and having served, understand some of the difficult decisions you are required to make.  I also realize the small amount of appreciation you receive.  It also becomes a pretty small circle of concerned individuals. The things you work on are important, especially to those working on them.  As such, they take on an air of importance or criticality.  Now that I am on the outside looking in, many, maybe even most of those issues garner very little public attention.  Understanding this would prove to empower to do what it best for the community I serve without as much angst with each decision.  Granted that does not allow for a decision to be made without an understanding of the consequences for all, nor is it intended to demean the importance of those decisions as many, even most have real implications for real people.  Another concept I left with was that as long as I have a strong rationale for a decision with an understanding of the multiple facets of an issue, which I can articulate, then the vast majority of people will respect you.

I believe this to be true with my professional position as CEO.  Granted, I did not fully disengage or take an official break; I did spend 14-month stretch without a sales manager, which forced me into a more managerial role.  It required me to travel more and spend valuable time with customers.  We’ve had a full-time sales manager again for six months, which has allowed me to return fully to my role as CEO.  However, it has changed.  The primary thing I gained from the experience was remembering of the importance of the customer relationship.  The customer was always important, but I had become somewhat disconnected from the relationship.  Having people in that relationship management role had allowed me to work on many other aspects of the business.  Now I have to remain resolved to fulfill my duty as CEO with an emphasis on the customer relationship.  Taking on the CEO role, I felt it was my role to determine the strategy and once determined to make it happen.  While that is still true in a general sense, I am going about it differently.  I initially had a managerial mindset, where I set the objective and then through a series of weekly meetings tried to make sure everyone was on track to execute the stuff I had laid out.  I now see myself as a solution provider.  My job is to provide direction and possibly even a solution, then empower my team to implement that solution.  Not as I instruct, but as they see fit.  I, alone, cannot cover enough ground to make sure every solution, whether it be related to customers, product or internal operations, is implemented in detail.  I do have a team that can carry them out, leading to many benefits.  Primarily, I feel like we are getting more done.  Instead of trying to manage multiple problems, I have a group of people who have each been empowered to implement solutions to 1 or 2 things each.  It allows me to address more problems.  Not having to manage problems in an ongoing fashion I can engage with more individual issues.  I am less stressed because I feel we have much broader coverage of the issues we face as a business.  There is less fear or regret associated with the feeling that I am ignoring problems or people that need my support.  Maybe this is because I am truly supporting them.