Not feeling like you’ve cracked it, but giving it a bash anyway is a mind-set that we, as leaders, would benefit from embracing, according to Steve Munby.

This was swirling round my head as I attempted the dreaded Ikea flat pack build on Saturday night. I opened it, separated out the parts, pulled out the instruction manual and tooled up… I can’t say I enjoyed the process and I certainly didn’t realise it was going to take me nearly three hours of my life to build a TOY kitchen…

But I did it.

Such is the thinking behind Munby’s 'Imperfect Leadership'. I listened again to him in conversation with Sarah Philp and Billy Burke as part of their 'Changing Conversations' podcast (well worth a listen if you haven’t caught up with it yet.)

The gist of Munby’s thinking is that we should celebrate the fact that we are not perfect as leaders because if we are able to accept this it allows us the inner strength to battle the dreaded imposter syndrome, or at least affords a degree of armour to protect us when the doubts start circling. It allows us to progress, albeit imperfectly.

Munby advocates for a degree of self-reflection as good practice and speaks of his own process of journaling / diary writing. He admits that in his busiest times he wasn’t able to journal every day but that he made time once a month to write down his reflections: what had gone well, where he struggled, what his thoughts were at the time.

And therein is the answer to self-improvement. Not perfection, just continuous striving to do better.

This idea of journaling chimes with what we advocate with the middle leadership programmes; we begin Aspiring to Middle Leadership and Middle Leaders Leading Change using a coaching wheel so each participant may determine their strengths and development needs. We advocate for journaling, for taking notes, for revisiting the wheel. We advocate for professional learning being a powerful tool that we can use to shape and improve our practice -  and we advocate that self-awareness allows us to determine our own direction of travel when navigating the learning on offer.

I’ve recently become a bit of a fan of Vince Lombardi. Lombardi was the legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers American football team and his beliefs on leadership positively dominate the internet. Just put in a search. One that resonates with me and one which we often overlook is the power of self-knowledge:

'Only by knowing yourself can you become an effective leader.'

From self-knowledge, Lombardi believed, we develop character and integrity – and that the acquisition of these traits leads to effective leadership.

Now I knew that any other member of my family could have made up that toy kitchen in a fraction of the time it took me to muddle through the process, but I wanted to give it a go and to ‘stretch my learning edges’ as Jennifer Abrams calls it.

Munby is clear that when it comes to leadership 'no-one is the finished product' and that our acknowledgement of this as a leader is helpful both to ourselves and of great encouragement to those in our teams, helping them to ‘give it a go’ even at the risk of making mistakes. Move away from the Mary Poppins ‘practically perfect in every way’ and embrace authenticity, honesty and courage.

'If we wait until we are ready for leadership / for promotion / for a life change then we could be waiting our whole lives.'

This is what I was thinking when I opened the assembly instructions for the toy kitchen. By the end of the ordeal there was a finished product of sorts (not sure why there were a few extra screws left over) that looked good and will serve the purpose for which it was intended.

Job done, imperfectly.

Watch: Education Scotland PLL video conversation with Steve Munby.