Human nature is flawed. We are not gods, or God, by any stretch of the imagination.

And so we drag our imperfections and our flaws to our work, our relationships, and our organizations. They show up in how we treat each other, and treat ourselves. They show up in the decisions we make. They guide what we value, and what we dismiss. 

I see a lot of leaders struggle to hide or lie to themselves about their imperfections and flaws, afraid that those flaws disqualify them to lead.

Great leaders waste no such energy. Great leaders embrace their imperfections as a fact of life, an inescapable feature of human nature. They understand that being imperfect and being ineffective are not the same thing. 

Great leaders aren’t perfect — they’re effective. They simply don’t allow their own personal flaws to destroy the effectiveness and motivation of others. Leadership, in many ways, is about getting ourselves and others where we need to go in spite of our imperfections. 

More simply, we must work daily to rob our imperfections of the power to make us ineffective.

Our success in life and work — and, ultimately, our happiness — depends on our ability to transcend our flaws, not to reach some unattainable state of perfection, but to get things done well, and move others to get things done well.