During a Q&A session at a conference, someone asked, "What has been your greatest challenge as a leader?” "Leading me!” he answered, "That has always been my greatest challenge as a leader.” Now some in the audience were surprised by this response.  The more experienced leaders were not.  Like me, they could trace many of their failures to their own personal leadership mismanagement.  Isn’t that also true for you?  If I could kick the person responsible for my problems, I wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week!

Most people use two totally different sets of criteria for judging themselves and judging others. We tend to judge others according to their actions. It’s very cut-and-dried. However, we judge ourselves by our intentions. Even if we do the wrong thing, we let ourselves off the hook if we believe our intentions are good. That’s part of the reason we allow ourselves to make the same mistakes over and over again before we are willing to make real changes. Now that’s something to think about!