The ‘why’ of becoming a leader

It was not the first time my supervisor accused me of secretly thinking that I could do his job better than he could. He advised me, “You need to practice having a poker face,” often saying that I would surely lose all of my money in an actual game.

Despite little experience as an administrator, my strong references eventually afforded me the opportunity to become an acting administrator. Finally, I would be able to do things my way. Being an administrator felt like the sweet spot for me, and the “leader” designation provided a natural high.

It was not long after landing that dream job as an administrator in my own right that I began to read the faces of those who reported to me. I couldn’t believe that they secretly thought that they could do my job better than me, just as I had thought of my supervisor. This realization made me question whether or not being an administrator really was the right path for me.

In retrospect, one of the changes I made that helped sustain me during the times when I questioned my competence was to become less preoccupied with how others saw me and what they might think of me. I focused like a laser on the roles, goals, and day-to-day habits of our unit in support of students. My focus was so intense that an administrator from another area said that I was a zealot when it came to students. Yes, I was, and I took the comment as a compliment.

Having changed my focus, it became vivid to me that I had previously been preoccupied with simply becoming a leader rather than why I wanted to become a leader. While I had always approached my role with humility, it was naïve arrogance that made me think that I could motivate a staff to see the work of student affairs from my perspective and, in turn, change the way they had always done things.

If you begin to feel as if being an administrator is not for you, give yourself time. Among the lessons I learned during my first year as an administrator was that this is the time when we begin to learn who we are, where we should be, and what we should be doing.