How do you judge your success as a leader? Micheal Scott from the office would say whether everybody likes me or not. He has a famous episode where he agonizes over having to fire somebody, and in the end his last sentence to the fired employee is, "I just hope we can remain really good friends after all this."
The cold hard truth is not everybody will like you or your decisions as a leader. You must have a different filter for making your choices. Trying to get people to like you, will be counterproductive in actually getting people to like you. You will behave differently than who you really are. Then the people around you will like somebody you're not, which is unsustainable, or they'll see the charade and you'll lose tons of respect.
You can't make decisions based on what people think of you, but you do have to be sensitive to the general emotions of your team. There is a balance between strong leadership, and ignorance to other peoples needs and emotions.
A strong leader has to know who they are before they make decisions. How do you make your decisions? How do you balance being a team player, yet making the right decisions?
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