Kirby Smart wasn’t where he wanted to be last week.

For the first time in three years, his Georgia Bulldogs missed the College Football Playoff and instead played in the Orange Bowl — knocking off Florida State, 63-3. 

Smart’s efforts over the last seven years to establish Georgia as one of the preeminent programs in college football have admittedly come at a hefty price at times — and it’s one we as leaders would be wise to keep in mind as we try to navigate our own teams through 2024. 

To Smart, great leaders of any kind must accept these three costs:

 1. You will have to make hard decisions that negatively impact people you care about

We often glamorize leadership and focus on the accolades and recognition that can come with elevating the performance levels of our organizations.

But reaching the upper echelons of our profession also entails a degree of sacrifice and a ruthless commitment to doing what’s best for the team, even if that means making choices that hurt some feelings on occasion.

It’s critical in these instances to exercise compassion and empathy, while also remembering that what’s difficult is often what’s right. Our priority is, and must always remain, the good of the team.

2. You will be disliked despite your best attempts to do the best for the most

There will always be skeptics who don’t understand our methods or the rationale behind certain decisions. 

Instead of trying to fight this or convince everybody of our logic, we’d benefit from coming to terms with it up front: We will not win everyone over. Find the people whose opinions we value and weigh these over anyone else’s.

3. You will be misunderstood and won’t always have the opportunity to defend yourself

When decisions don’t pan out, critics frequently emerge with suggestions, ideas and general thoughts about what we’re doing wrong and how they would operate differently if they were in charge.

But seldom are these people behind the scenes observing what we do every day, putting as much thought into the job as we are.

When skeptics appear, it’s not our duty to try to convince them of why we’re right. We’d be wise to instead have an inner circle of truth tellers who can give candid feedback and objectively evaluate our performance.

As we enter 2024, it’s important to remember that our job this year will be lonely at times.

But the elite leaders among us aren’t the ones who dodged adversity, challenge or a firestorm of criticism.

They’re the ones who faced these — and continued on.

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