The Cost of Leadership: Giving Up Hurt Feelings Associated With Being Misunderstood

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “To be great is to be misunderstood.”

I would borrow his words and add that to lead is to be misunderstood. 

Every leader seeks to be understood through how they communicate, coordinate, and collaborate together. And within a cooperative environment of ideal team players that are humble, hungry, and relationally smart, it seems that this should be possible.

The good news is that for the most part, it is! But when leaders are agents of change or are pressing forward to innovate, misunderstandings are going to occur. And sometimes it hurts.

We all communicate through the lens of our own experiences. Those experiences, if we are not self-aware, can create biases that color how we scan the world around us. When we enter into moments of change and uncertainty, we carry with us our own individual set of expectations. And when there is a gap that exists between those expectations and reality, relational difficulties ensue.

Even the most well-intentioned cooperative team members struggle when there are misaligned perceptions with leadership. Those perceptions are the direct result of individual expectations. In a very real sense, misunderstandings occur because we all scan for and see things differently.

That is why it is so important for leaders to communicate, coordinate, and collaborate effectively. Even when things are tough and feelings are hurt. 

Leadership is doing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, regardless of how we feel about it at the moment. As leaders, we have to give up whatever perceived “right” we feel like we have to respond with negative emotions when we are misunderstood. Our focus has to be on something other than our feelings in those moments. And that requires massive amounts of both self-awareness and self-regulation. 

No matter how hard we try, we are going to be misunderstood. When that happens, it is how we choose to respond that either creates a barrier or builds a bridge with others.