“My boss is younger than me!” Have you ever said this or maybe heard it said by someone. This is something that I often shrugged off as a a young leader in my field, because I was thinking, “What did my age have to do with anything?”. I often thought to myself “well good for them”, or “Why does it matter?”. As I grew in my leadership and in my understanding of myself I realized more than the age it really had a lot to do with the maturity of the leader.<\/p>\n
Leadership maturity is not just a buzzword; it’s the cornerstone of a thriving workplace. “Rare Leadership in the Workplace” by Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder offers valuable insights into what it means to be a mature leader and how such maturity can positively impact your team and organization.<\/p>\n
Leading is a process of development of one’s self and of the leadership environment. Leadership is not for the faint of heart and certainly requires skills, and as Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder write, it requires maturity. They wrote in their book, Rare Leadership in the Workplace,<\/p>\n
“Many people who are good at getting work done individually lack the skills and habits to lead well. The lid on the effectiveness of most leaders is not a lack of task-related skills. It is also deeper than processing “people skills.” The real lid on leadership effectiveness is related to maturity skills. Put simply, immaturity sabotages leadership effectiveness; maturity grows it.” (1)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I have worked under the leadership of very task oriented people who found themselves in leadership roles who maybe lacked maturity. I witnessed in these settings the high turn over of staff and the sabotage that frequently occurred. It was an unhealthy workplace and in the end the leader was unable to keep leading as the organization was struggling. She gave her life to the organization and had little experience beyond this small corner of the world.<\/p>\n
I have often found that my biggest conflicts come with people who are more immature or have a narrow worldview. This was even true with my father. There was a point as a preteen I said to my mother “I have outgrown him.” I was trying to communicate that I felt as though my maturity and ability to read and understand situations had surpassed his maturity level. We would often butt heads in my teen years as following his leadership from this place of immaturity became a huge struggle.There is certainly something to be said for a leader who leads from a place of maturity and authenticity.<\/p>\n
As we grow in our leadership it is important to not just grow our skills and our understanding of how leadership works, but to also find joy and grow in our own maturity. It is in this growth we will become better leaders.<\/p>\n
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- Warner, Marcus, and Wilder, Jim. “Rare Leadership in the Workplace: 4 Uncommon Habits for Increasing Trust, Joy, and Engagement in the People You Lead.” Moody Publishers, 2016.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“My boss is younger than me!” Have you ever said this or maybe heard it said by someone. This is something that I often shrugged off as a a young leader in my field, because I was thinking, “What did my age have to do with anything?”. I often thought to myself “well good for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2863],"class_list":["post-33425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-warner-wilder-dlgp01","cohort-dlgp01"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33425"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33427,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33425\/revisions\/33427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}