The responsibilities, challenges and pressures brought on by leadership roles can take a toll on your mind, body and spirit. Whether they’re internal worries and anxieties or external expectations and burdens, it is essential to become aware of these pressures before they burn you out and have a negative affect on your personal and professional life. From an outside perspective of those that depend on you, leadership may seem easy. Many people are envious of leaders because they see someone in a position of authority; with power, perks and privileges not privy to their own position. But the reality is that many leaders struggle with balancing these various pressures and maintaining a team’s values, culture and well-being.
For me, the most difficult part of leading is building and maintaining trusting relationships. I define success as the ability to build a strong network of loyal and dependable relationships. When I was younger, I was able to notice that all of the most successful people that I inspired to be like had a team built around them with people that they could trust. This has been my goal every aspect of leadership that I’ve taken on. But it certainly has not been easy.
In 2014, I started a blog titled “Life’s So Dope.” As read from the blog’s “Meet the Team” page:
“Bryant started LSD as an attempt to build a creative network around like-minded individuals. The website was developed as a social outlet for writers and artists to explore imaginative trends and pop culture styles.”
The blog featured opinion articles, music, photography, prose & poetry from myself and a few of my good friends, who at the time, were just finishing school and looking for platforms to express themselves and share their art. The blog lasted two years, the first article was posted November 2014 and it was an editorial piece on the importance of voting in the United States. The last article was posted in November 2016 and it was an editorial piece about how Americans bullied Donald Trump into the White House during the 2016 elections. Both articles were written by me but there was plenty of contribution from my teammates.
When I return to the LSD blog and read through some of our past posts, I feel an overwhelming sense of pride. Whether it’s Max’s short story “Cooker“, Troy’s review of Christopher Nolan’s 2014 hit film “Interstellar” or Ozie’s article “Dreams are Real“, there was an abundance of good quality content on that site. And yet, I still view the blog as a failed endeavor. We had almost 70 posts collectively, but over 30 of them were made by me. We had a radio show, thanks to Max. My friends, Graeme and Andrew had just started a sports podcast that we were featuring on the site. And we released a collaborative mixtape, #TREECITY from the newly formed Tree City Records (a team project that would later replace Life’s So Dope) But still, something wasn’t quite working with the blog and the more I tried to unite the team and get everyone together and collaborate, the further apart we grew. We each began posting less, we’d hold meetings that no one would attend, and it just seemed as though the LSD brand was slowly fading.
What I found, was that as time went by, I wasn’t able to keep the other guys interested and invested in the blog. As they lost incentive to write articles and their involvement decrease, so did mine. I appreciate the work each of the guys put into the blog and the Life’s So Dope brand, but ultimately, it was my first failed attempt to build a team. There are other reasons why LSD didn’t work out, particularly the allusion to the hallucinogen “LSD” which, at the time, I thought was more clever and harmless than inappropriate.
The website was a great experience for me but I still felt like a failure in the end. It wasn’t easy dedicating that much time and energy into something and then having to give it up on it.
Moving on from LSD to Tree City Records, I was looking to improve in the areas that I had previously failed in, and admittedly overcompensated. When we started the label, it was an attempt to localize a hip-hop music scene and at the same time develop a platform for our own hip-hop group “young kids” or “yk” and the individual artists we worked with.
Where LSD was flexible and had no real agenda, purpose or defined roles, TCR was intended to be structured and straightforward with distinct pre-determined positions.
I created an executive board for the label complete with a position for CEO, Label President, and Senior Vice President of Sales, Promotion, A&R, Creative Service and Artwork. I wrote up an operating agreement and created bylaws. We scheduled monthly meetings and recorded minutes. We developed a standard format for uploading songs to our platform, created social media pages and a website and designed and manufactured merchandise all for the Tree City Records Brand. And we created an LLC corporation, legitimizing our record label as a business.
But during this process, turmoil ensued.
The purpose of the label was to create a talent-based independent music group seeking to help our artists produce and distribute their work locally and digitally. We were to each contribute a minimum of $10/month that would act as membership dues. This initial joint investment was established to set up a financial base for us to operate on and to create a pool in which funds could be allocated for expenses at the request of anyone on the label. None of this worked out how I had planned.
For starters, the operating agreement, bylaws and executive positions were too defined and alienated individuals instead of unifying the team. It was my hope that everyone could be involved in whichever manner they chose, but I realized that you can’t force people into positions they don’t necessarily understand or agree with. Not only that, but the rigid structure provided by the bylaws was overly-confusing and not universally accepted. And the membership dues were non-existent. I couldn’t get people to consistently commit their time, energy, or money and although I had meant well, once again I was failing to build a team.
Along with these issues in the structure of the business, we had several creative differences among the team that temporarily split us up and caused unnecessary conflict. The label was never intended to have any creative control over artists. It was merely a platform for us to create and release content. The problem was that many of the members of the group felt like we weren’t releasing enough content on a regular basis and they wanted the label to follow dedicated deadlines for dropping new music. There were many arguments about how content was being created and released. Some of us wanted to only release music as singles, while some people were steadily working on projects.
There was also an unclear division between what was considered the record label and what was the music group. I believe that this was the main source of confusion and stress. We weren’t making music together and that was frustrating for all parties, and when we did get together, it was to discuss label business which only led to further arguing. My solution to this was to appoint someone else as head of the group while I maintained control over the label. We decided that “Young Rob” would lead “Young Kids” because he essentially founded the group and had unofficially held us together in terms of collaborative effort. While Rob worked on planning a collaborative mixtape featuring everyone on the group, Ozie and I focused on developing the business and brand of Tree City Records.
While everyone had good intentions behind how they felt the label should be run, there was an overt tension and miscommunication between us that caused us to bicker over problems that I felt weren’t any real concern. For me, it didn’t matter if someone was releasing singles or projects or if they released them weekly or sporadically. My main concern was in developing the space in which the content could be created and the platforms on which the content would be released. But this was hard to explain as our medium of communication at the time was through text messaging and Facebook messenger.
During this time, I was also burning myself out both financially and emotionally. Without the monthly contributions from other members, many of the label expenses fell on me, which was fine because I was mostly making decisions that affected expenses, but still, it grew to be a terrible burden. I was also becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of effort and assistance from the rest of my label mates. It seemed like I was expected to do everything; engineer studio sessions, mix and master music, plan meetings, upload finished content, post on social media, work on web designs for the website, create artwork for releases, develop merchandise, network with other artists and resources, and contribute to the content being released.
I felt like I was constantly being pulled in all different directions and like my work and efforts weren’t appreciated by the rest of the guys. I realize now that this was a sense of entitlement that I felt and I was unknowingly turning myself into a victim to rationalize and justify this feeling.
This was my first real lesson in team building and leadership. I understood what had went wrong with LSD and tried very hard not to make those same mistakes with TCR, but what I didn’t consider was how much I’d be affected by the fine line between leadership and friendship.
It can be tremendously upsetting to feel like you’ve let down or disappointed your team, especially when that team is composed of close friends and respected peers. It can also be incredibly difficult to be disappointed by your friends when you feel like you’re doing everything in your power to help them succeed or set them up for success. This is a feeling I’ve carried with me for a long time and still struggle with today.
Working within the restaurant, I’ve tried to reinforce a positive and cooperative culture. Culture is a powerful element that shapes work behavior, work enjoyment, work relationships, and work processes. I have brought many of my friends and family in to work here and because of that I have many close relationships with those under my supervision. This would seem to be a good thing, having an already established relationship with employees that exists beyond the workplace, but as it turns out, it’s actually more demanding and damaging. Both friendship and leadership are dependent on devotion and loyalty. But loyalty requires responsibility and commitment. When you’re actively working to cultivate an environment of accountability, it can be incredibly depressing to have employees who are unreliable, untrustworthy or irresponsible, especially when those employees are your friends.
I’ve always believed accountability is essential to any friendship. But when you hold another person accountable, you submit to the process of making yourself vulnerable and susceptible to their judgment. This is a difficult course to navigate when you’re in a position of authority. Walking the line between leadership and friendship, I’ve found that vulnerability means being honest with how you feel, having those tough conversations, and accepting that you’re not always going to be the good guy. It’s easy to give in to the need for instant gratification when you are constantly looked upon as a role model, and while every leader should hope to be liked by their teams, it can be difficult to find a balance between being liked and being respected. A lack of respect from your team will lead you to doubt; doubt about the direction the company is moving in, the decisions you’re taking, and your own capabilities and worth as a leader.
While I don’t believe any of my employees or friends aim to disrespect me or my authority, I can’t ignore it when it occurs. Take for example an employee who is consistently late despite being given multiple warnings or second chances. How many times do you forgive this behavior before corrective action becomes a necessity? Toxic behavior can be hard to tolerate as it leads to a “Fool me once” mentality. As a leader, you have to hold everyone accountable for the same rules and policies, and that can be difficult when dealing with friends who are co-workers. Another example that might lead to feelings of disrespect, imagine you have a long-time employee who intentionally violates a uniform policy, you give them a warning the first time it happens, and maybe even another if it happens again, but at what point is this person’s insubordination deliberately disrespectful? If you’re sure you set a clear standard and expectation from the beginning, it’s likely that they’re willfully disregarding your authority because they don’t respect you or the policy outright. How does that affect your relationship with that person outside of work? How does that affect your relationship with other employees?
You have to consider these questions when you’re in a position of leadership. You have to be honest and communicate with your people and set realistic objectives for yourself and your teams. This is the requirement of balance. Great leadership calls for respect and great friendship requires compassion. Like friendship, true leadership is reciprocity. It is the practice of sharing and exchanging, knowing how and when to give and take with generosity, compassion and respect.
But most importantly, you can not surrender to feelings of despair and indignance. As a leader, you must focus on finding balance within your role and the people around you. This balance will come as you continue to develop yourself as a competent leader and a supportive friend. A competent leader is focused on the goal, ensures a collaborative climate, builds confidence of team members, sets priorities, demonstrates sufficient “know-how” and manages performance through feedback. Effective leadership is dependent on these competencies. A supportive friend is a good listener. Regardless of whether they have different values or opinions a supportive friend will trust their friends to be able to come to them whenever they need to talk and will remind them of their strengths when they forget. Don’t fret when you find yourself feeling overwhelmed or personally drain by the expectations of leadership. Just continue to practice generosity, compassion and respect for those around you and focus on being a competent leader and a supportive friend and hopefully things will find a way of balancing themselves out.
Sincerely, MGMT
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