Insecurity is Hurting Your Ability to Lead

Insecure leadership is ineffective leadership. 

Recently I was talking with an athlete who is a key leader for a highly successful program. After moving into a key leadership role he expressed frustration that despite feeling like he was doing everything he could do to embody the program standard, he still felt like the coaching staff was unfairly hard on him. 

Often he would be criticized for minor infractions of the program standard. It seemed the spotlight was unfairly on him and the constant challenge to his leadership was causing him to second guess, lock up, and feel insecure in his leadership contributions.

Every leader has periods where they struggle with confidence and insecurity. It’s part of the deal. In fact a healthy tension must exist in the life of a leader. It would be nice to be a maverick, lone ranger, so emotionally calloused that you were completely untethered to any need for affirmation, but a life in that posture can quickly become a life of unhinged hubris. We need feedback. We need coaching. We need the other inputs. A great leader welcomes it.

But there is a fine line between needing some direction, and needing affirmation. A lack of affirmation will always lead to a state of being unsettled and insecure. When we’re in this state, insecure leadership will always be the undesired outcome. 

Like a check engine code on your car’s dashboard, the signal comes in the form of insecurity. The code is an affirmation failure in the engine of your inner life.

What Is Insecurity Really?

Insecurity is the constant need for affirmation. 

It’s the opposite of standing firm. It’s wobbly and only kept upright by people’s praises, admiration, attention and words, interest, or opportunities. 

If you anchor your life in affirmation you will become a slave to chasing it every single day. Your thirst will only be quenched in receiving it from interpersonal relationships, often from the people who mean the least to you in life. You will rarely feel the emotions and think the thoughts of confidence. 

External affirmation and internal confidence do not mix. 

Affirmation consists of four major vices. Approval, Attention, Admiration, and Assurance. To break free from insecurity, we must all reflect on the impact of these four, and begin to engage with personal systems in our heart and mind to live and lead freely. Here are the four,

1.) Approval - The need for people to AGREE with you. Both your opinions and your decisions. 

This is the impossible expectation that everyone will not only give you the benefit of the doubt but will agree with your logic and decision - even if it costs them! It is impossible to get the approval of everyone you’re leading. The expectation that everyone will approve of you and your decisions needs to be squashed on day one of leading. If you want unanimous approval (even from your bosses) do not take a leadership role, ever. 

Are you needing people to approve of you and your decisions? If they did would it truly solve the confidence issue you’re experiencing?

2.) Attention - The need for people to look your way.

There is a fundamental human desire for attention. It’s rooted in our hardwired need to be known and loved. However, an insecure leader looks for attention in all the wrong ways. Affirmation in this form is a crazed desire to be noticed, especially for the “secret sauce” we think we possess. When this vice is running our lives we enter every room thinking everyone is looking at us. We assume everyone is thinking about us as often as we think about us. We live life like a middle schooler entering the cafeteria without a table to sit at. The truth is, most people are indifferent to you. They don’t know your record, they don’t know you failed the other day, they don’t know the state of your organization. They don’t even care. They’re tending to their own lives (and so should you!)

Are you feeling unnoticed and overlooked? If they looked your direction would it really solve anything for more than 48 hours?

3.) Admiration - The need for people to think you’re smart, or special, or virtuous or something. 

Affirmation in this form is an ego reach wanting a social payoff for private disciplined living. Instead of a virtuous life being the reward as an end of itself, our ego wants to be admired. Born out of a desire for attention, the need for admiration grows like mold. It will always hinder our ability to be a true servant leader. This is the outcome thinking for people who have failed to realize the work is always the reward. The end game for all the discipline and upright living is what you have, a quiet life, drama free existence, sleeping well, contentment. You’ve already been paid your due. You said no to all those destructive things in life to be admired? Or was it really to live peacefully? 

If you were publicly admired, would it really change anything in your desire to live life the way you’re living?

4.) Assurance - The need for people to think you’re on the right path. 

They affirm your direction and confirm what you see. We all need to seek counsel from wise mentors and guides. But even the best trail guides can’t fully assure you danger doesn’t lie up ahead. No one knows for certain what the future holds. A secure leader has a ruthless acceptance of all possible outcomes. When we lack courage we chase signs of “certainty” in the form of other people’s opinions. 

“You think I’m good, right?” 

“You think I can make it, right?” 

“You love my idea, don’t you?” 

“You think I’ve got pretty good chances, right?” 

“I’m doing a good job, aren’t I?”

We don’t ever fully have certainty. A lack of certainty around an outcome or a path isn’t a sign something is off, it’s a sign you’re in the arena. 

No one can out affirm your level of courage. In fact, the more courage and decisiveness you have, the less you’ll look for affirmation. 

Courage is not a predictor of certainty - but neither is affirmation. 

Are you searching for certainty when you really just need some more courage? What happened to trusting your gut?

Confidence Is An Inside-Game

The world is not going to rearrange itself to meet your needs. The people in your life are not going to reorganize their lives to constantly tend to your instant need for affirmation. You may have a spouse who has made a lifelong commitment alongside you to work through these realities with you. But no one else is going to go to those lengths to work through this with you.

For this young leader, and all of us who are on the path - it’s in our best interest to settle the this affirmation thing. Affirmation is a mental, emotional and spiritual thing. It will always erode confidence.

No one can affirm you at the level you need them to. Words will come and go. Relationships will ebb and flow, but a constant source of affirmation, approval, attention, and admiration is available to you.

It’s a private thing. Work in the dark. Work on the inside of our lives. Time away from the noise. 5G will never facilitate it, in fact, it will always block the signal. 

Where are you anchoring your life? Your career? Your craft? Your confidence?

You can’t plant in desolate ground and expect a flourishing garden. When we attach our confidence in anything other than our true identity and our commitment to mastery we will always be unsettled with how the experience of life feels. 

Slow down.

Drink deeply from the well.

Stay The Course,