Freedom

Every leader has a sphere of influence. Within that sphere of influence, you have tremendous freedom. You set the tone for your organization. Sure, you have to live within corporate bounds, but that still leaves lots of room for innovation. For all the times you said: "If I were in charge . . ." you are now in a position to implement your ideas. Enjoy it!

Take freedom a step further and extend it to your organization. Free staffers from the "givens" that impede their creativity. Watch the organization bloom under fewer restrictions.

How many times have we all heard: "We don't do that here"? Should that stop you? My response has always been: "I am here, and I am doing that, so we do do that here." Sometimes it takes courage, daring and spirit to break through the miasma of corporate culture. You are free to set the tone.

Learning

Effective leadership requires the ability and desire for continuous learning. Leadership is a wonderful classroom for the study of people and their motivations. Helping your staffers demonstrate appropriate behaviour — working as a team rather than at odds with one another — will lead to their success and yours. It's a delightful feeling when your efforts reduce dysfunctional actions. Enjoy your growing understanding of what it takes to motivate the individuals in your group.

You may feel challenged to find joy when you are making the tough decisions so prevalent in today's business world. But tough decisions build character. Learning to make them with the right perspective will help. Have empathy for those impacted, and realize this is just a business decision - not life-or-death decision making. Respect what you have learned. Feel the satisfaction of having completed a difficult task, if nothing else.

Life

The joy of leadership can extend to your personal life. The daily grind of business can be debilitating to the spirit even in the best of times. Taking that home will only spread the pain. Learn to use the end-of-day commute to recalibrate your perspective and return home in good spirits. There are so many things to be thankful for in our lives that we tend to take them for granted. Take the time to enjoy the relationships, the material blessings, the opportunities we have for recreation and the life skills we have attained. Sure, there are challenges in everyone's life - some of them quite significant. But joy can be found in even the most difficult lives. Look for it!

I've always been fond of Henry Ford's aphorism: "Obstacles are those frightful things we see when we take our eyes off our goal." Yet sometimes we become so focused on the objective that we lose sight of the joyous things in life. There is really only one obstacle to finding joy in leadership: ourselves. Joy is always there, but we may have blinded ourselves to it or not let ourselves pursue it. This should be a relatively easy obstacle to remove. Find that 5-year-old in yourself and experience unfettered enjoyment of even the simplest things.

Before retiring in 1999, Patricia Wallington was corporate vice president and CIO at Xerox. She is now president of Florida-based CIO Associates