Become A Better Person
When I was actively teaching young leaders about leadership and organizational change, I would often tell my students that in order to become a better leader, you first had to become a better person. This often surprised them. They were focused on improving their positional leadership competencies, and getting things done. I, on the other hand, was focused on them becoming better people. They were focused on the job. I was focused on their life and the job. Because, as I have learned, when we change people’s lives at work, we are also changing their experiences at home. The same is true when we change their life at home, it also impacts their work life. So, becoming a better person is the foundation for becoming a better leader.
This all became clear to me during a lunch meeting when a young leader shared with me that she was overwhelmed, and starting to burn out from the endless stream of operational details bombarding her every day. As a result of her decision fatigue, she was becoming anxious, worried, and frustrated on a regular basis. I remember her telling me, “if this is leadership, it sucks.”
She then asked me an interesting question: “Should I apply for a new job?” I have been asked this question many times as an executive coach, and I have always answered this question with a question: “Will this make you a better person, mother, daughter, sister, or wife?” On this particular day, she stopped talking, looked out the window of the restaurant, and was silent for a long time.
Once she had turned back to me, I continued, “Once you have the ‘new’ job, what will your whole life be like?” Her description was scattered. I understood completely. I had been there once myself.
Many years before that day, I was invited to speak at a large, multi-day regional conference. Given I was one of the speakers, I got to attend all the other workshops for free. So, having looked through the conference workshop booklet, I decided to attend a workshop on planning, an area that interested me and something I did on a regular basis.
Once we were seated, the presenter asked us one simple question: “What will your life be like when you turn 40, 50, or 60?” I sat there in my chair and was stumped. I hadn’t a clue. At the time, I was in my mid-30’s, and being 40 seemed like a very distant future from where I was on that day.
She then asked us another question: “What do you want your life to be like when you turn 40, 50, or 60?” Again, I couldn’t answer the question. I was mostly focused on getting through the day, and my upcoming workshop at this big event. She then gave us the following categories, work, family, and personal, to help us begin to find the answers to these two important questions. What I realized was that I needed a picture, an anchor in the future by which I could pull myself through the current challenges before me. I also needed a sense of purpose and a plan in order to move forward based on clarity rather than reactivity.
Jim Collins writes, “Indeed, the great paradox of change is that the organizations that best adapt to a changing world first and foremost know what should not change; they have a fixed anchor of guiding principles around which they can more easily change everything else.” It is the same when dealing with prolonged uncertainty and critically important when choosing to become a better person over time. We need to clarify those guiding principles, i.e. that fixed anchor around which we build our lives.
Since this experience, I have routinely sat down and reflected on what I have wanted my life to be like when I have crossed a major ten year date, e.g. 50, 60, etc. I also have activated my “kitchen table cabinet,” my circle of mentors, advisor, allies and confidents, to help me in this process. I know I have many more miles to go in my life journey, and I know that my intent and focus play a big part of my dealing with the challenges before me.
Tasha Eurich in her book, Shatterproof: How to Thrive in a World of Constant Chaos (And why resilience alone isn’t enough) (Little, Brown Spark, 2025), which is a wonderful resource on so many levels, notes something very important about living and working in constant chaos, a common experience during prolonged uncertainty. She focuses on three things to help us thrive: “The first three-to-thrive need is confidence: the belief that we’re effective in our actions, capable of achieving our goals, and able to grow and learn new things…. The second three-to-thrive need is choice, means feeling free to function without pressure or threat, acting with agency and integrity, staying true to ourselves…. The final need is connection, the sense that we belong, get along with others, and experience mutual closeness and support.” As she continues, “Fundamentally, confidence keep us growing, choice keeps us authentic, and connection keeps us together.”
When I think about leaders becoming better people in order to become better leaders, all three of these elements are critically important, namely confidence, choice and connection. As we create plans to become better people, these three things need to become part of the plan. For when I have met leaders who are able to lead effectively in the midst of prolonged uncertainty, they all role model a healthy level of confidence, the capacity to consider different choices and the ability to make good choices, and the feeling of mutual closeness and support from the key people at work and at home. As Eurich reminds us, “When you get better, everyone benefits.” And this is the strong inner foundation for the hard, external work that needs to be done.
Rediscover Your Internal Strength
These same leaders also do one other thing, namely they separate their role from their definition of self. Typically at work, this starts by sitting down with their supervisor and clarifying their role and their responsibilities plus their expectations and their goals. However, there is another element to this process which is more challenging. As Ron Heiftz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky in their book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World (Harvard Business Press, 2009) explains, “Whatever role you are playing at any one time, that role does not represent all of who you are, even if it feels that way.” We forget that our work role is only a part of us. We, as a person, are greater than our jobs.
As the above authors continue, “When you make a distinction between the roles you play and yourself, you gain the emotional strength to ignore personal attacks your opponents hope will stymie your initiative…. though an attack may feel personal (and be intended as personal), it is not a statement about your character or your worth as a human being. It is a strategy and an attempt to manipulate you.” This is a common problem during times of prolonged uncertainty. People want you, as the leader, to assert control, order, and predictability even though, in most circumstances of this nature, that is not possible, or actually a smart choice.
Instead, I believe there is a wiser choice, namely we need to further develop our non-work identities. This is because when we solely define ourselves by our work, we loose that “fixed anchor of guiding principles,” which we will give us the capacity to adapt to complexity and uncertainty.
Many years, I spoke at banking conference in Oklahoma. The CEO, who was going to introduce me after the meal, had me sit with him, his wife, and his team. Over the course of the meal, he asked me a lot of questions: Who was your father?, Your mother?, Siblings?, Are you married?, Your wife’s name?, Your children’s name?, etc. When it came time to introduce me as the keynote speaker, he started by talking about my being a son and a brother, a husband and a father. At the end of my introduction, he shared that I was a consultant, executive coach and trainer in the fields of leadership, strategic planning and organizational change. This was a very moving experience for me.
Erin Reid and Lakshmi Ramarajan in their article called “Managing The High Intensity Workplace” in the June 2016 issue of the Harvard Business Review, write: “People in leadership positions can avoid the fragility that results from blind acceptance of ideal-workers by deliberately cultivating their own non-work identities: a civic self, an athletic self, a family-oriented self.” By developing a “multifaceted identity,” we strengthen our ability to tolerate challenging times and to create realistic and healthy expectations for ourselves and others. In short, when we live a life defined by more than our work role, we create a life that has greater levels of meaning, perspective, and purpose.
© Geery Howe 2026
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