Self-Awareness & Self-Acceptance (Cancer & Leadership: Part 4)
by Matt Monge
A couple interrelated ideas that I wrestle with–as I suspect others do too–are the ideas ofself-awareness and self-acceptance, and specifically self-awareness and self-acceptance in regards to leadership. This is an ongoing conversation in one of my grad school courses; it came up within the context of a larger discussion of transformational leadership and servant leadership.
If we want to become better leaders, we have to continue learning how to become more appropriately human, if that makes sense. This is true of all aspects of our life, and is certainly applicable to our leadership within organizations. I’ve argued before that leaders need to be OK with having faults, and bold enough to be open about those faults. Vulnerability is foundational to building trust, but it’s also in many ways foundational to being human.
As I mentioned in a previous posts here, here, and here; cancer was pretty tough to accept, and has been a formative experience for me. I know I was fortunate that they caught it; with kidney cancer, by the time symptoms show up, it’s often too late. I’m even more fortunate that my kidney cancer was not as severe as the various types of cancer that others have suffered and continue to suffer through so courageously. Even still, during that time, it was hard for me to look in the mirror and know that the cancer was lurking on and in one of my critical organs. And if I’m honest, it’s not just every November this comes to mind.