James Robilotta has held a variety of roles in his life from student leader to student affairs professional to stand-up comedian, public speaker, and personal life coach. Those experiences have given him the opportunity to lead, be led, and help develop new leaders, which ultimately led him to a powerful realization: "I see a problem in today's developing leaders-they think they need to be someone they are not to get what they want. This mentality negatively impacts the way they communicate and build relationships with their peers, coworkers, and supervisors."
James can see this fault because it's one he's admittedly had himself; for example, in high school he took on multiple leadership roles not because he was committed to being a leader but because of how it would look on his resume, and in college, he tried to dress well to fit in with popular ideas of what it meant to be "fresh." Fortunately, James became aware of these faults and changed, as well as learned to laugh at himself and use these stories as examples to illustrate the importance of his message on leadership. Now in his new book, Leading Imperfectly: The Value of Being Authentic for Leaders, Professionals, and Humans Beings, James argues that the mistakes we make and our imperfections are where we learn our most valuable lessons; those character flaws are what eventually mold us into being successful leaders who are unafraid of sharing our imperfections.
The idea of imperfect leadership resonates for James because it gives us a human place to connect with others. He states that allowing ourselves to be imperfect "increases open and honest communication between all levels of the hierarchy because you will then be leading from a place of support and understanding instead of one of fear and pressure."
