Leader of the pack

I’m at peace that I’ll never be CEO of General Electric or a President at Disney. Sure, the free invitations to film premieres would be nice, the private jet whizzing you around the world would be cool, and the gold name plate above your river view office and incessant fawning of staff might even be quite entertaining for a while. But sometimes you know it’s just not what you’re all about. There’s a trade off with all these so called perks and if you’re just not wired for that world then that’s a lot of misdirected energy you’re expending trying to get there.

I was at dinner the other night and one of my friends mentioned that having been made boss of her team on an interim basis it wasn’t actually as much fun as she had hoped it would be. She’s a creative thinker, a journalist to be precise, and she found the bureaucracy and man management that comes with the role was preventing her from doing what she was good at and enjoyed – writing. Similarly, an email went round at work today telling us that a team leader had requested to step down from his role so that he could focus on what he liked best – servicing clients. Not all of us are cut out to be top dog or have that inner drive to be so. It’s become more and more apparent to me what I like and what I don’t like, regardless of what everyone else thinks I should or could be doing. We all need something to shoot for, otherwise the merry-go-round could get quite tedious, but as long as it's in keeping with what you're all about. I'm comfortable with that.