The Crossover

28 March 2010, 12am EST.
I turned 21. The Crossover.
Many people in the US celebrate their 21st birthday because from that day on, they don't have to worry about being drinking as underage consumers. Unfortunately for my excited underage friends (LOL!), my 21st birthday had a different meaning to me. In my home country, Zimbabwe, when people turn 21, they are given a key which is engraved onto a wooden plaque. This key signifies passage into adulthood: the person now has they key to unlock many of the adult world's doors for themselves and discover for themselves what the real world has to offer. And that's how I viewed my 21st birthday: some sort of transition into a more responsible and independent way of life (the fact that I live 7,000 miles away from home makes that transition a lot easier!).

When I though of this transition, I probably thought that at 11:59pm of my birthday I would have suddenly become more responsible, more certain of my goals in life, better organized -- all those fun resolutions people make week after week. As the day progressed, I figured that it wouldn't be so. My growth into adulthood wouldn't be a one-off event; indeed, my 21st birthday was only one point point in my continual development. That realization made me view leadership in a different light.

In itself, the 21st birthday has no real importance, it's just another birthday. But society has laden meaning on it and as such, as individuals we hope, like I did in the early hours of my birthday, that I would undergo a sudden transition. In a sense, I feel the same about positional authority. Many times I have felt when I suddenly gained positional authority that I would change overnight: I would be able to organize people better, obsessively attuned to the mission of my work or generally more assertive in my treatment of people. Of course, all of these transformations I may have desired did not happen overnight. And I may have been disappointed about it. However, as I think of my own natural growth and maturity, I see an interesting parallel with leadership. As we assume positional authority, or take part in training programs, we can hardly expect to change overnight. Growth and maturity are, to me, incremental processes that we need to absorb ourselves in. We need to accept our limitations and allow ourselves to grow to be the leaders we hope to become. The benefits of growth, slow and painful as it may be, are astounding. The experiences that we gain in the process serve to consolidate our growth and make us the effective, strong leaders we wish to be.