Freedom Is Not Free...Neither Is Leadership

Leaders Are Not Free

Recently I have been bumping into many community leaders.  The nature of what I am doing right now brings me in front of many of them.  I have a project going on.  This project requires my presence to be in front of other business and community leaders.

One of the things I notice about the sincere corners of these leaders personalities is that they are completely aware of the fact that they are not free.  When the discussion circles the idea of freedom, they find it comical.  They do not especially consider their leadership work as part of something that creates freedom for their lives.  In fact, they uniformly agree that their leadership positions actually restrict their sense of freedoms.  They easily admit that their leadership work promotes falling in line and doing exactly what is expected of them to do, sometimes against their own better judgement.  This kind of work is not what many of us would consider, 'freedom' supporting.  I would agree.

Freedom is not free...neither is leadership.  There is an especially expensive price we all must pay to become free in our leadership ways.  In order to earn the right to lead, we must first pay the price of freedom.  It comes with a huge toll.  Once we find our leadership roles, we discover that we give up some of those freedoms we fought so hard to obtain.  Some of the lack of freedom we discover can be found in our lack of free time.  We cannot just go do what we want to do anytime we feel like doing it.  Our leadership roles come packaged with certain time requirements.  We certainly are not free to choose how we want to spend our time.  With leadership we inherit some serious time constraints.  We are not free to roam about the cabin, so to speak!  Our time is strictly governed.

Furthermore, the lack of freedom might be found in the personal anguish we must endure to get placed where we want to go, where we want to be and how we need to do what we do.  Our desire to lead our work responsibilities places us directly in line of some challenging decisions.  We discover how much weight leaders carry to conduct their business in a leadership fashion.  Many lives depend upon the selection choices that leaders perform.  The outcomes of those decisions carry a long list of huge responsibilities.  Leaders must learn how to accept this role with no regrets, no whining and thick layer of tough skin.  Leadership is not free.  It does not come without some personal anguish.  It never has and it never will.  Great leaders know and recognize they must pay this price.  The freedom to lead does not come free.

The lack of freedom might also be found in the added pressures we must absorb as we manage the challenges that have no obvious solutions.  Leaders do not always know what is the next best thing to do.  Some challenges arrive to their front desk with rotten options.  None of the immediate choices appear very good.  Many leadership decisions come with a "no-win" set of options.  Sometimes any choice selected will only guarantee a sour result.  That's why the leaders get paid the big bucks.  They must endure the sour reasoning why they must make some of the ugly choices they are faced to select.  Great leaders do this kind of work very well.  In many cases, others will never know how much these kinds of heavy decisions weigh these leaders down.  The price comes very high.  Freedom is not free.

In this day and age, many leaders find themselves placed in moral situations.  They discover they have walked right into the cross-hairs of a loaded perspective that is on the other side of their decisions making choice.  Once the confusion of the conflict is discovered, they must make a closing selection on which way they plan to decide.  A serious price will be paid.  Their morality is being tested.  Often times these types of moral situations get set on fire.  Freedom is not free...neither is leadership.

All of these mentioned realities were very evident in the hearts of the community leaders I have been meeting lately.  One of the things I notice about the sincere corners of the personalities of these leaders is that they are completely aware of the fact that they are not free.  Freedom does not come with leadership.  In fact, it comes with confusion, challenge and restrictions.

There Is A huge Price Paid For Leadership...Lost Freedoms.

When I was traveling on the speaking circuit over fifteen years ago, one of the topical subjects commonly covered was the idea of freedom.  Freedom was a common ring.  Many speakers covered this subject.  The idea of freedom has been a major subject matter for many motivational environments.  The link between leadership and freedom has somehow become a big effort.  Guess what leaders have found out?  There is no freedom provided by leadership positions.  Contrary to what most motivational speakers contend.

Leadership does not provide added freedoms.  In fact in many normal cases, it limits much of the previous freedoms once enjoyed.  Once a position of leadership is obtained many freedoms become limited.  Leaders soon discover they have lost much of their free time.  Leadership requires higher levels of time chip investment.  Time freedom becomes squeezed down.  Motivational organizational efforts that promote freedom concepts fail to offer this reality to those working to grow up into higher levels of leadership positions.  Higher levels of leadership immediately forces time to become squeezed.  Obviously, freedom is not free.

What about risk?  How much weight to responsibility is added when a leadership position is obtained?  A good deal!  Risky decisions become part of the leadership make-up.  Someone must be held accountable for those decisions.  That usually means that the leaders absorb that risk.  Leaders become the ones we hold accountable.  They take on the burden of proof, the burden of evaluation and the burden of performance.  These three components bring with them a lot of new risk.  Motivational agendas do not like to cover these truths as well as they may need to be covered.  The truth is, risk of performance increases with higher levels of leadership roles.  Leaders lose a gob of previous freedoms once they elect to move up the leadership scale.  Leadership does not come free.

If you are a business leader and you find your leadership running a bit less free than you had expected, wake up.  Somewhere along the trail you were mislead, misguided or misinformed.  Leadership does not bring on more freedoms.  Contrary to popular belief and desires, leadership adds stress, risk, pressure and more seriousness to time management than any non-leadership position can ever provide.  The two, leadership and non-leadership positions, carry completely different responsibilities.  Leadership is less free.  Get used to it if you desire to lead.  Get used to it if you are placed into a position of leadership.  It comes with the territory.  It is unavoidable.  Pony up and face that reality.

I remember many years ago serving on an SBA (Small Business Administration) board of directorship.  Our role at that time was to become the screening committee for all of the people who wanted to begin their own business model.  Many of those people approached the SBA to secure help, funds and guidance in their effort to begin their first new business venture.  This chapter of the SBA wanted to develop a board of current business owners and have them interview and discuss those new efforts with the willing people who wanted to begin their first business venture.  It was sort of a 'think tank' directed at discussing the realities of owning your own business model, prior to actually getting one going.

My role with that board was to discover what the main purpose was that helped to motivate these new business owners to go out on their own.  I would meet with the applicants in a private session to discover why they wanted to try their own business.  My questions were simple.  Why do you want to build your own business?  What do you expect to receive with this new business attempt?  What personal goals are you trying to achieve?  They were simple questions.  It was the answers that were not so simple.

The number one reason why people elected to go out on their own and try building a business of their own was because they wanted to be their own boss.  I usually smiled at that one.  Once you own a business you own nothing.  You have a set of new bosses that expect you to do your job well.  The banker for one.  The accountant for two.  Your suppliers for three.  Your taxing entities for four.  Your legal complexities for five. Your employees for six.  Your facility and equipment for seven.  Then somewhere down that line of governance comes your own good.  The importance and reality of you being your own boss falls well down the line of requirements you must meet.  You might be lucky enough to become placed on the scale of importance somewhere around the position of seventh or eighth.  That is why I usually smiled at that answer...they wanted to be their own boss!  Welcome to leadership.

The number two reason why people wanted to go out on their own and try building a business of their own was because they wanted more free time!  Need I say anything more?  How about good luck with that one!?

The number three reason why they wanted to go do their own business was to earn more money.  Oh my.  What a shock they have coming, right?  I can recall many a week when my income was zero when I owned all of my business ventures.  I had built up a ton of equity, however, but it is hard to eat equity at each meal.  New business owners better have some heavy cash set aside to make sure they can feed that new business until it gets its winning cycle in place.  Cashflow is king and it often times does not like to show its face in a small business.  This is especially true with a new start up.  Good luck with earning more dough.

Let's face it, if you are in a leadership role you have discovered how much it cost.  Face this reality and get on with becoming a great leader.  Quit worrying about who is in charge and who governs who.  Leaders are not placed into that position to become free.  Their role is to lead, not be free.  There is a huge difference.  Recognize it and move on.

Until next time...