Highs & Lows Method

Working in a team is great. You feel equal. You are surrounded by like-minded. The only challenge is to have a boss, but even that is tolerable because, against the boss, you are a team. You stand together and share.

Regardless of the comforts of being in a larger team, most want to promote, but few understand the consequences. They are being singled out in a group, and to be named as their manager puts them under the leadership spotlight. Everything you do and say, or you don’t do and say, is under the mercy of your team’s understanding. They can appreciate or criticize it, depending on the conjuncture of the moment.

It is not only going up that is challenging, but it is becoming sandwiched between your team and your new boss. When we think of being promoted to a manager position, we seldom remember the squeezed space that comes with it; after all, this is not the part being marketed.

Before, you used to talk and share your emotions, wins, and losses easily with your peers. You are now being a manager; even versus your peer managers, you need to keep the face. The expectations from a leader are different. One needs to stay calm, be resilient, feel powerful, well act as a leader at all times. No free passes are given to leaders.

Take Marcus Aurelius, for example. He was the world’s most potent when he became the emperor of the Roman Empire from 161 to 180. As soon as he reached the top, he realized that being an emperor was indeed just a job. During his time, he faced many challenges: the Antonine Plague, which was the Empire’s first pandemic, the Parthian War, and the Germanic Wars. But despite all, he could see the more significant challenge: how to be a good man.

« Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one,» he said. And he started writing the Meditations for his guidance and self-improvement. The Meditations is his guidance to all of us, showing how to be courageous, purposeful, patient, humble, generous, empathic, and strong no matter what we are facing. The Meditations was his diary and became the landmark of the stoic philosophy with the four pillars: justice, wisdom, courage, and temperance.

It is up to us to follow the footsteps of Marcus Aurelius with great modesty and try to become the good man that every team deserves. Only then the loneliness of leadership will transform into deep fulfillment. Only then worth the challenge.