Category: Coaching

I want to talk about finding your lane and sticking to it. What do I mean by that? It means that you need to find out what you are good at, what tasks are essential to you and what you need to focus on. You also need to find out what tasks are not for you and what tasks other people can help you with, so that you can become a more effective and productive leader. In other words, how do you reach the full potential that you have in your leadership? Here are some pointers:

• What are you passionate about? 
• What are you really good at?
• Where are you getting the opportunities? 
• Focus on areas where you can be consistent.

Prefer to watch the video, click here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvDMxJIXOn7KlwvE6LALvJQ

So, why is it important to find your lane ? I’m going to tell you a little bit of a story about somebody that I’ve been coaching recently. She’s an amazing woman and she has so much potential in her leadership. One of her positive traits is that she is a very willing worker. She will get in and help anywhere you need her to and she will work harder than anybody else I know but one of the frustrations for her was that she didn’t feel like she was growing in her leadership. She didn’t feel like she was getting opportunities to develop her leadership skills.

So, we recently had a conversation about it. I asked her,  “What area do you want to focus on?” “In what area do you think you have a particular gift or skill?” Initially, her response was, “I’m willing to do anything, I’m willing to help anywhere.” It’s an admirable quality and I appreciate the attitude but one of the problems with that attitude in leadership is that until you learn to focus, until you learn how to hone in on what you’re actually good at, you will not actually grow as a leader. 

You need to be able to identify the skills and the giftings that you have as a leader and learn how to make that your strength as a leader. Don’t try and be everything. The flip side of that is, you get some leaders who are control freaks. They are not necessarily trying to do everything because they have a willing attitude or they’re trying to help everybody but they just want to do everything because they think they are the only people in the world that know how to do it well.

Here’s a “newsflash” for you. You are not good at everything and if you insist on doing everything by yourself, what you are really doing is that you are preventing yourself and your team from growing. So whichever extreme you sit in, whether you’re a willing person wanting to do everything to help people or whether you want to do everything because you’re a control freak, either way you’re holding yourself back and you’re stopping yourself from leading most effectively.

So, let’s look at some of the pointers I mentioned earlier.

1. What are you passionate about?

How do you answer this ? You’ve got to do some self-examination, to figure out a little bit about yourself as a leader. The first thing you need to start asking yourself is, “What am I passionate about ? What really lights me up?”  Very often we get stuck on the things we do. Sometimes the things we do are not really our passion, they are just what we do because we are passionate. We really need to be able to dig deep and understand if what we do is our passion and whether that passion actually aligns with who we are, our skillset and who we are aspiring to be. 

Sometimes our passion is not necessarily our skillset and this is a hard one to swallow. I know, I’ve experienced this and I know other people have experienced this too. You can be really passionate about something you do but it isn’t the actual strength in your leadership.

2. What are you really good at ?

The second question you need to ask after passion is, what am I really good at? Either it will be something that you have trained for, that you’ve put hours and hours of work into practising and studying for or it will be something that other people tell you that you are good at. It could be something that you are comfortable with and that you do with ease, and that other people seek your help with because they know that you’re the go-to person in that regard. So have a look at where your passion and your skillset interact. That’s where you can really start to find your lane.

I’ll give you an example. When I was a younger person, in my teenage years and in my 20’s, I was very passionate about playing music and writing music. I was a guitar player, my heroes were people like Slash from Guns and Roses, Eddie Van Halen and Jimi Hendrix. I wanted to be a musician. That was what I was passionate about.  I believed that being a musician was what I was meant to be. I spent most of my 20s recording and touring,  trying to get opportunities in that field. What I eventually realised was, that although I was pretty good and I had moderate success as a musician, I certainly wasn’t of the calibre of the people that I admired.

The amount of work I put in to become a great guitarist was probably nowhere near what many of these other artists did. So, I had to come to grips with the fact that there was a mismatch between my skill level and my passion. I found that my skill level was letting me down. My skill level was not equal to my passion. I had a choice, I either had to put in some work to raise my skill level to a point where it matched my passion or I had to find a way to outwork my passion in line with something that was actually a skill for me.

What I discovered during that time was that one of the skills that I was pretty good at with my music was storytelling. As a songwriter,  I had learned how to tell stories in song. As a performer, I was really good at engaging audiences and telling stories. I discovered that my ability to tell stories was a strong skill set that other people noticed. It still aligned with my passion,  although it wasn’t necessarily the music part of it, it was the ability to be creative. 

So I actually went into public speaking and now, of course, I do a lot of public speaking. So what I found in public speaking was, that there was a part of my skillset and my passion that did intersect. That’s where I decided to put my energy and my focus. There was no point chasing music when there was no match between my passion and my skill set. 

So you also, need to do some deep self-reflection to ask yourself if you are passionate about something with which your skill doesn’t align. If your skill is not up there, you either need to do the work to raise your skill level or you need to analyze your passion because your passion and your skill need to intersect.

3. Where are you getting the opportunities ?

The other thing you need to ask yourself is, where are you getting the opportunities ? Sometimes we get opportunities in areas that we don’t expect or maybe they don’t align with what we originally wanted but they may be perfect for our skillset. I realized that I was getting a lot of opportunities to speak, but very few opportunities to play music. Because the opportunities were coming in an area that I could actually focus on, it gave me a chance to say, “You know what?  I really enjoy getting public speaking opportunities and I feel passionate about them!”

So I had to let go of one part of my passion and skillset (music), in order to fully embrace my public speaking opportunities. 

You may find that you are getting opportunities in an area that is not exactly aligned with the direction you thought you were going to go but that leads you to be able to become stronger in another area. I ended up becoming a school teacher. School teaching led me to become a behaviour specialist, being a behaviour specialist led me to become a leadership coach and that has in turn led me to become a leader of organizations and also run my own business.

I started off as a musician. But I  started getting opportunities as a speaker and storyteller, so I  transitioned into teaching others and now I lead my own business and my own organization. So you see, sometimes the opportunities lead you to things that you can become even more passionate about because they open up areas that you’re very skillful in and where you have the ability to make a difference and make your mark. You need to be pouring your energy into areas where you’re going to leave a mark – where you  influence people for good and where they can say, “We got there because of your contribution.”

When you pour all your energy into things that can be done by anyone else, you’re not leaving your mark and this is true of leadership.  If you’ve got a team and you insist on doing everything yourself, you’re not allowing your team to make their mark. You’re not allowing your team to do the things that they are really good at but you are also not giving yourself enough time to do the things that only you can do. You’ve got to be really aware of that. Don’t focus on everything, focus on the place where you have the opportunity and your skill and passion intersect.

4. Focus on areas where you can be consistent.

Finally, you need to focus on the areas where you can be most consistent. This is really important.  One of the things I see with young leaders- and this was true of me when I was a younger leader as well- is that you want everything to happen now but real growth and real leadership happens over a long period of time.

So you need to focus on something that you can keep practising and developing over a long period of time. Great leadership and great success comes with the passage of time. If you are trying to do things inconsistently and are unable to sustain or commit to something for a long period of time, stop doing it. If you can’t do it consistently over one, two, three, four or five years then it’s never going to become something that is really significant for you. It’s never going to become something that you’re really excellent at and you’re never going to be able to leave your mark. Focus on the things you can do consistently and remove the things that you cannot do consistently. 

One of the things I was inconsistent with was the social media posts for my business. When I was first starting out, I couldn’t post consistently. I found it very hard, so I set myself a goal of doing one post a day and that was it until I got to the place where I could actually hire somebody to do my social media and put up three posts a day. I just did one post a day because I knew I could be consistent with that.

So you’ve got to stick to what you can do consistently until you can take the next step. The next step with my content producing was, recording one video a week. That was all I could manage at that stage until I was able to get a production team; somebody to edit my videos and somebody to post my videos. Until I had this team working for me, I could only manage one video per week. 

Now, I am producing multiple videos and blogs a week because I have a team that helps me. I’ve got people that edit my blogs,  post for me on social media, edit my videos and get them out there. These are scheduled tasks that I can’t do without my team.

The reason I delegate these tasks is because I understand what I’m good at and what other people are good at so they can help me. I’m good at talking to a camera, I’m good at producing content. I need other people that are good at doing what they do, to help me do everything else consistently. If you are not at that level and if you can’t be consistent, then just do the things with which you can be consistent. Start to bring other people into your team and build that team so you can go for the long haul. 

You’re never going to leave your mark if you don’t focus on the things that you’re passionate about and skillful at doing- skills that give you opportunities to influence others. As well as being passionate and skilled you must be consistent in what you do. 

So these are four tips to help you become a more effective leader and grow in your leadership. 

If you would like to learn more about effectively growing in your leadership, why not check out our FREE Goal setting guide. See below for details.

https://leadcommunicategrow.com/free-goal-setting-guide/

5 Steps to Set Goals that Work

In this episode we are going to talk about procrastination, why it is a problem and how you can overcome it in your work life. If you have a habit of putting off the important for later and you find it hard to focus and get stuff done in a timely fashion then this is going to help you. 

Prefer to watch the video, click here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl10qA0yqJk

Now I am going to admit, I am a recovering procrastinator. Procrastination was a big problem throughout my college life, I always put off important tasks until the very last minute. One time when I was studying for my final exams, I would wander around the college, which was a live-in situation, I would look for people to go to the shops with me just so I did not have to study. So everybody else except I was studying, They would tell me, “You need to go and study,” but I did not want to study, I wanted to go to the shops. 

So I’d find some hapless soul that I could convince to go to the shops and they would end up delaying their study for my sake, and that made me feel better about my procrastination. The problem was, that my work didn’t go away. You have probably found yourself in that situation. You put off things that you know are important until the very last minute and you put yourself under tremendous stress and pressure to get it done quickly at the last minute and this often causes real problems.  

Research has shown that if you are a procrastinator and tend to do things at the last minute, while you may get things done, the quality of your work is greatly affected. If you want to become a more effective operator in whatever field you are working in, whether I am talking to teachers or leaders you need to learn how to manage procrastination so that it doesn’t affect the quality of your output or product. 

Why do we Procrastinate ?

First of all, let’s think about why we procrastinate ? What is it about procrastination that even makes it a thing?

Well alot of it has got to do with the way your brain functions, your brain has two parts to it, the learning part and the automation part. That is the simplest way I can explain it, if you want to understand this more, read a book called “Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow.” It gives a really good explanation; but basically when your brain is learning something it has one function where it is processing information.

It is hard work for your brain to learn new topics and do something that you don’t do out of habit or in a routine. Your brain is always looking for shortcuts and opportunities to make things speed up or automate. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this post on Facebook. They write out a whole sentence and take all the vowels out of the words and there are only consonants left, but you can still read the sentence. Well, that is your brain taking shortcuts with reading, your brain has already learned that there’s a whole bunch of words that it can recognize even if there are no vowels.

It will automatically process those words to help you read and think faster, but before you get to that point, you actually have to learn the words. You have to do the hard work of memorization and that’s what your brain doesn’t like to do. Your brain doesn’t like to do the hard work of learning and that’s one of the reasons why we tend to procrastinate. 

When we come up against a task, a topic or an activity that we know is not natural or is going to take some effort, our brain’s natural protection against stress is to say “Let’s do this later.” Stress causes a great deal of pain to your brain, the stress hormone cortisol is designed to help you get out of dangerous situations but it’s also quite toxic to your body. So your brain tries to avoid stressful situations by procrastinating.  

Unfortunately, we learn this as young people and form habits of procrastination. We learn to opt for instant gratification versus the long-term gratification. We avoid the stress in the short term and we end up pushing that stress down the road but it ends up still coming back and still being a problem. So if you are at the place in your life that you want to try and deal with procrastination and you want to make it less of a problem for you, then I’ve got four tips for you that have helped me. You will have to keep on coming back to these tips if you want to really overcome procrastination, I have found them to be very effective. 

How to Overcome Procrastination.

1. Learn to remove unnecessary distractions.

The first thing is, you need to remove unnecessary distractions. We work in a world that is filled with distractions, ranging from our smartphones to our facebook, the pop-ups that our computers give us, to the accessibility that everybody has to us via email, phone, Messenger and a myriad of other types of  communication. So there’s a constant barrage of distractions that will stop you from focusing on what you need to do. 

Tim Ferriss has written a brilliant book on this called “Four Hour Work Week.” It absolutely changed the way that I looked at my work week. One of the number one things he says is, to turn off your notifications. Get rid of your distractions when you are working, don’t leave multiple tabs open. How many of you have 20 tabs open on your computer and you flick between Facebook and what you’re doing. Well, what you’ve got to do if you want to become more efficient and procrastinate less is, get rid of all your tabs. Get rid of all your notifications, turn them off so that you can just focus on the task that is at hand. 

Most new computers actually have a function where you can actually zoom in the window that you’re working on and it removes all the other distractions on the page. It removes the top tabs, your battery bar or the bottom task bar and it just creates a full screen of what you’re focusing on. 

Turn off the notifications of your email, you do not need notifications on your email. This was a game changer for me. I did this six years ago and I haven’t looked back. You don’t actually need to check your email more than a couple of times a day. You’ll still see everything that’s important. You will realise that those incessant dings and red dots on your phone actually make you less productive. 

Turn off the notifications on Facebook and Twitter and all of your social media so that when you are working, you have less distractions and you are more focused on what you are doing. If you are in an environment where there are a lot of distractions, like people who distract you or you work from home, get into a place where you have less distractions –  a place where you don’t have people coming and asking you to do stuff.  Don’t have the TV,  youtube or other noises going on. Get in a place where there’s less distraction and you will be more focused.

2. Tackle one task at a time

The second thing is this, you need to tackle one task at a time. Researchers at Stanford University have shown quite definitively that our brain does not multitask. I know there’s an old adage that says, “Women can multitask and men can’t.” Well here’s the thing, none of us multitasks. What our brain does is work sequentially between each task that we think about or pay attention to. The brain has a switching time between those tasks, so every time we have to do multiple things, our brain takes time to switch in its focus and to catch up with what the new task is.

The reason we say that women can multitask better than men is that they are much quicker at switching. That’s a whole other conversation, but because women can switch between the left and right brain much quicker it appears that they can multitask. They’re not multitasking, they’re still working sequentially but they just do it a lot more efficiently. 

Either way, if you pick one task to work on and do it to its completion before you start another task, what you will find is,  that you eliminate that switching time and make yourself more productive and more efficient. By having multiple things on the go that you keep on switching between, you are going to make yourself far less efficient. Something that could take you an hour to do will end up taking you five hours just because you didn’t focus, you didn’t remove distractions and prioritize one task at a time. 

3. Use a Timer

The third tip is this, use a timer.  This may be hard for you to do at first. I know that many of the younger generation, who work on my team or in my church,  find it really hard to stay focused for long periods of time. They  have grown up in a world with lots of distractions and so they’ll often have youtube running in the background while they’re working. They’ll have their snapchat popping up while they’re working and this is a huge distraction.

So when asked to do one task at a time, they become very uncomfortable with the silence. Maybe you’re like that. You become very uncomfortable with the lack of distraction. Well here’s what you do, if you want to focus for long periods. You’ve got to set yourself a timer for work. Figure out a reasonable amount of time that you can stay focused. 

A good starting point is your age plus three minutes. Let’s say you’re 17 years old, plus 3 which is 20. So for 20 minutes, set yourself a time and say, ” I’m going to work with no distractions on one task for 20 minutes.” When that timer goes off, give yourself a break. We’ll talk about breaks in a moment. Let’s say you’re 25, give yourself 25 minutes plus three minutes and set yourself a timer. Work for that period of time. Then gave a break.

If you saw my video on Parkinson’s Law, you would realise that when you set a time limit for your work, you become more focused and more efficient. Your brain understands that when there are time limits and time constraints on your work, it needs to focus harder. By using a timer and avoiding distractions, you will actually find yourself becoming more efficient. 

4. Give yourself a break.

The last tip which I’ve already alluded to is, give yourself a break. Once you break down your workload into blocks of time, what you can do is give yourself a regular break. Now that doesn’t mean go and have a break for 30 minutes. Give yourself a five minute break, get up, take a walk around or go and get a coffee. Do something just to break the pattern because you’ve got to reward yourself for focusing. 

Your brain loves rewards and so, if you give it a reward for focusing at the end of your 25 minutes, you’re saying, “Well done! I focused for 25 minutes, now I’m going to get myself a coffee.” Now your brain knows that the next time you set yourself a task, it’s going to get a reward and so it will have a tendency to work more efficiently because it understands there is a reward at the end. So give yourself regular breaks, don’t try and work for three, four or five hours at a time.

What you will probably find is, if you break down those long time periods into shorter segments, with breaks in between, you will work more efficiently and accomplish more than if you work for several hours at a stretch with no breaks. 

Whether you jump on Facebook, look at a youtube video or just walk around,  plan for your breaks. You’ll waste less time, be more focused and more efficient in the way that you work. 

So these are the four tips that I found have helped me as a procrastinator. It is really important if you want to up the quality of your work and how you operate. You need to deal with procrastination, you need to remove distractions, do one thing at a time, set yourself time limits based around your ability to focus and keep increasing that time as you get better at it. Always remember to give yourself regular breaks and reward yourself when you focus and get your work done. I’m sure you will become less of a procrastinator and more efficient as you work, if you follow these four tips. 

If you would like to learn more about effectively growing in your leadership, why not check out our FREE Goal setting guide. See below for details.

https://leadcommunicategrow.com/free-goal-setting-guide/

5 Steps to Set Goals that Work

Here it is, five ways that you can establish culture in your organization and why it is so important for you to know how to do this.

1. Identify your Values.
2. Live out your Values. 
3. Teach your values. 
4. Enforce your Values. 
5. Watch out for Drift in Culture

Prefer to watch the video, Click below https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcbeQDS3Yg4

Let’s start with the “why’. Why is it important to know how to establish culture in your organizational team? I want to direct you to a more in-depth analysis of this. I did an interview last week with my brother Sunjay Stevenson, who’s somewhat of an expert on establishing culture in a leadership context. So I’m going to put the link in the description below, make sure you click on that and check out the full conversation I have with Sunjay. 

One of the reasons why you need to know how to establish culture in your organization is because culture drives the way you do things. As a whole, the way that you do it will be what others are going to experience. Whether they’re your customers, clients, volunteers or whoever is participating in what you do, they are going to feel your culture long before they buy into your vision. So the way in which you do stuff is going to portray the heart of your organization. It’s going to portray what’s important to you and your organization.  

Most people will evaluate your organization and your leadership based on what they first initially feel. It’s important how they interact with you and how you execute whatever job or function that you do within your team and organization. so it’s really important that you know how to establish culture. Every organization has a culture. Every team has a culture whether you’re proactive about it or not culture can just creep in if you’re not intentional about it. You can establish a really negative, toxic, counter-intuitive and counterproductive culture to what you’re trying to achieve if you’re not intentional. 

So if it’s going to be the thing that people feel and experience about your leadership first you want to be on top of it. You want to be ahead of it, not just let it happen by accident. If you’re not intentional, it’s going to happen without your knowledge and it could be detrimental to your leadership in the long run. So that’s a little bit of an overview of why you need to establish cultures.

1. Identify your Values

The first thing you need to do to establish culture is, identify your values. Your values are your non-negotiables. They are the things that are most important to you as a leader and for your organization. The values are your compass heading, a certain way you do things. Now there might be different ways of doing it but because of our value system, we do it in a certain way based on what we think is most important to get the job done. 

So you need to identify your values. Your values are really found in two ways. They are the things that you are most passionate about. When you think about your leadership or your organization and you say things like, “I really want to be leading a team or organization that looks this way or feels this way”. The things you are really passionate about will indicate to you what you prize highly over everything else. That can be one way of identifying your values. 

The other way you can identify your values is by seeing what frustrates you when you look at your team. It could be the way things function when you look at your leadership. Are there things that bother you? Maybe you say “oh I hate the way we do that or I hate the way that looks”. If you’re really passionately opposed to a particular way of doing things that also helps you identify what your values are. You need to flip that and say “if I hate it that way what would it look like if it was done the right way”.

That’s how you start to shift your idea of what’s important and what’s not. If there are things that you let slide then maybe you haven’t placed high importance on values. If it doesn’t come out in the way that you lead and the way that you operate then you might find that it’s not a value. It has to be a real internal passion for you to be a value. So that’s the first thing you need to do, identify your values.

2. Live out your Values

The second thing is you as a leader need to live out your values. If you can’t operate with integrity and adherence to your value system then nobody else will follow it. Culture will not stick if the leader doesn’t place high importance on culture. If you are a leader that values punctuality with your team but you always turn up to meetings late then your culture will not stick.

First and foremost you have to be able to model values. When you live it, it shows the importance of it. Then your team and organization are more likely to follow it. That’s really important, learn how to live out your values. If you’re not living your values then you can’t expect your team to do.

3. Teach your values

So the third thing is this, you need to teach your values. You need to explicitly explain to your team and your organization what your values are. Why are your values important? What does it look like when everybody is hitting those benchmarks of value? When people are operating the way that you want them to operate, they will know what it looks like because you very clearly taught them. You taught them that this is what it will look like. You told them what it will feel like when we are executing our values in this way. 

So you have to explicitly teach, don’t leave it to chance. Don’t leave it to accident and hope that people will just catch on. Not everybody shares your values and if you want them to share it you’ve got to first model it and then teach it.

4. Enforce your Values

The fourth thing is this, you need to enforce your values. How do you enforce your values? It’s simply this, if you’ve taken the time to model your values and teach your values then the third aspect of that is you’ve got to be willing to correct team members. Correct members of your organization if they do not adhere to your values. You’ve got to be prepared to have difficult conversations. You’ve got to be able to say “hey we don’t do it like that, it doesn’t fit with our value system”.

You need to have those conversations where you talk through the lack of adherence to your values. That will set people against your culture or it will start to weaken the culture in your organization, so make sure you’re willing to enforce values.

If you want to set culture you have to enforce it. You have to follow through and be prepared to have difficult conversations. If you’ve had a couple of friendly chats with your team and they’re still adamant they don’t want to adhere or that they’re not abiding by the culture that’s important to you then you need to be able to have those difficult conversations. Conversations about whether the position is a good fit for them. Don’t shy away from difficult conversations or confronting people on whether their values are consistent with what your organization and leadership values are. 

If you avoid them those people will poison the rest of your team. I think it’s Gary Vaynerchuk that says this “If you’ve got a top performing team member who doesn’t adhere to your culture or your values, get rid of them immediately. It doesn’t matter how much money they make for you. It doesn’t matter how well they perform. If they’re not willing to play ball they will end up poisoning your whole team, you won’t just lose one high performing team member. You’ll lose six, seven, eight, nine or ten because you never address the lack of adherence to values and cultures. So it’s really important that you enforce your values. 

5. Watch out for Drift in Culture

The last one is this, always watch out for drift in your culture. Be willing to recalibrate your team and recalibrate your organization. Reflect on how those values are working for you. Sometimes your values need to be tweaked. Sometimes your culture needs to tweak.

As human beings, we start to drift away from our in our initial compass headings. It’s a little bit like when you’re piloting a plane or even a boat. You take a compass heading but then you always have to keep correcting back to that compass heading. Other forces will push the vessel away from its compass heading; It’s the same with culture, there will be forces within your organization that are always looking to push culture to the side, maybe not intentionally but it will drift.

If you’re growing as an organization sometimes your values don’t scale with you or grow with you. Keep on readjusting or re-evaluating your culture and values to ensure that you are staying in the direction that you want. If you’re starting to drift you need to pull the organization and your team back to their focus. It’s really important that you remember people are going to feel your culture before they buy into you as a leader or your vision. 

So if you can create an environment where people feel what you’re passionate about and understand the things that you’re not passionate about, you will find that they’re more inclined to buy into what you want them to. They’re going to execute it in a way that’s going to help you achieve all the goals that you have for your leadership. I hope that was really helpful.

Make sure you check out the interview with Sunjay Stevenson. I’ll post the link below. He goes right in-depth on establishing culture and building teams. It’s a really insightful interview.

Interview with Sunjay Stevenson – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKpaRltY-WQ

If you would like to learn more about effectively growing in your leadership, why not check out our FREE Goal setting guide. See below for details.

https://leadcommunicategrow.com/free-goal-setting-guide/

5 Steps to Set Goals that Work

In this blog we are going to look at the topic of standing out as a leader. I want to give you three ways that you can stand out, especially if you’re in a new organization, trying to make your mark as a leader.

1. Create Relationships

2. Establish the discipline of self reflection

3. Have a clear understanding of where you are heading

Prefer to watch the video, click here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiizf0lBoPs

These three things that you can do straight away, will help you to gain credibility, influence others positively and start leading effectively. How do you build good connections and establish rapport with the people that you’re leading?

1. Create Relationships

The first thing is this, you need to focus on creating relationships. When I come into an organisation for the first time, I spend the first few weeks getting to know people. I spend lots of time just walking around getting to know my team members and the people that I have to work with. I inquire about the job that they do, how they do it, what they like about the organization. Ask them what their hopes are, where they see themselves going etc. Whatever it might be, just get to know them and build relationships.

Relationships are the foundation of trust. If you can’t build trust within an organization, then as a leader you’ll never develop influence. Influence is really the key that unlocks the door to leadership. If you can’t influence people to go in a particular direction towards the goal that you have, then you’re not leading. But, before you get to influence, goal setting, vision or telling people what to do, you need to build trust equity with them. Trust comes through building relationships.

So the first thing you need to do if you want to stand out as a leader, is to take the time to get to know your people. Show them that you care about them as individuals and build healthy relationships.

2.  Establish a discipline of self reflection

The second thing I think you need to do is to establish a discipline of self reflection. What does that mean ? When you go into a new organization you need to ask yourself the question; “Were the problems I experienced today because of me or is it something that needs to be tweaked in the organization?” Very often when we come in with fresh eyes we just see the problems. We say, “Oh that needs to be fixed.” It may not need to be fixed, maybe you just have to ask yourself, “ Why do I think it’s a problem ? Is it an issue with me ? Maybe I just need to let go of what I’m thinking; maybe I need to just see things from a different perspective.” 

Very often things exist in organizations and in teams because that’s the way people have worked for a long time. To come into a new organization and say “Oh, that’s got to change,” but not take the time to understand why it’s there or why it even exists, will put you at odds with the people that you have to lead. It will also cause you to be an unreflective leader. It will make you believe that your ideas are the only ideas.

So you need to have a rigorous self-reflection discipline where you ask yourself regularly, “Does that really need changing or do I need to change the way I’m viewing it ? Maybe it’s not a battle that’s worth fighting, it might not be a change that needs to happen right now.” This only comes through self evaluation and reflection.

3. Have a clear understanding of where you are heading

The third thing, is to have a clear understanding of where you want to be heading. You need to be able to communicate this in a measured way. You need to have a clear vision of where you want to head, have goals that are consistent with what you want to achieve.

If you go in there and start implementing your vision, goals and strategies too quickly, without having a clear understanding, you might find that nobody is ready to follow you. So, you’ve got to have a clear direction, you’ve got to know where you’re going but learn how to communicate it in a way that brings people along with you. 

There are 3 keys to communicating your vision and your direction well. First of all you’ve got to be communicating what you’re trying to achieve. Secondly,  you have to explain how to actually do it. Give your people a breakdown of the steps that are going to be taken to get there. Thirdly, you need to explain why it’s important. If people can’t see the “why” that’s connected to your “what” then they’re not going to do the “how”. 

People need to have a good reason for buying into you and your goals, changing the way they do things and following you. So when you’re setting goals, make sure that you are clear about where you want to head. Communicate the ‘what’ and ‘how’, but most importantly, you need to communicate the ‘why’.

These are three things that I think you can do to stand out as a leader, especially if you’re in a new organization. Try  to build rapport and influence with a team, spend time building relationships and developing the discipline of self-reflection. Don’t be too quick to identify all the problems within the team. Get clear about where you’re going but also know how to communicate it well. By communicating the ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘why’, you will find that most people will want to go along with you.

I hope that these tips were helpful to assist you to stand out as a leader. If you enjoyed it, give me a comment and let me know what you liked about it. If there are any topics you want me to cover in our next blog make sure you let me know in the comments.

If you would like to learn more about effectively growing in your leadership, why not check out our FREE Goal setting guide. See below for details.

https://leadcommunicategrow.com/free-goal-setting-guide/

5 Steps to Set Goals that Work

How to Lead Without Ego? It’s so important that you don’t become an egotistical leader, nobody likes egotistical leaders. Here 4 keys to help you.

1. Have Good people Around You
2. Get over Yourself
3. Share your Success
4. Be a Constant Learner

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It’s so important that you don’t become an egotistical leader, nobody likes egotistical leaders. Nobody likes to follow them and you may not even realize that you are a bit egotistical. I know if I’m honest with myself I have an enormous ego. I think I am God’s gift to the planet and I have to keep that in check all the time. If you’re honest with yourself, if you’re a leader there’s a good chance that you think that of yourself as well. The problem is that not everybody sees the world as you do. 

Not everybody thinks that you’re as amazing as your mum had told you. You’re going to have to learn to lead with some humility and keep that ego in check. Ego is important for getting the job done as a leader. You don’t want it to lead you because it will become destructive for your team. 

1. Have Good people Around You

So how to lead without ego? The first thing is this, you need good people around you. You need to have a team of advisers and a team of people who will speak honestly to you. A Team that can call you on your stuff. If you don’t have people in your life that can keep you grounded and focused on the main thing, you’ll find that your ego gets the better of you. Sometimes you will behave in ways that you don’t even realize and it might be doing damage

One of the examples that I sometimes reference is Steve Jobs. An amazingly brilliant innovator but lost his company because he thought he was so amazing. He couldn’t see the people around him that helped him be amazing. His company ended up pushing him out. It wasn’t until later that he came back and was able to really take Apple to the next level. So just be careful that you don’t let your ego get in the way.

The only way you do that is to listen to the people around you. You have to have people around you that will pull you back down to the ground, not criticize you. You don’t want people who are going to tear you down but keep you grounded.

In Australia, we have this thing called “Tall poppy syndrome” where Australians tend to cut people down if they become successful. If you get a little bit ahead of your group, people will tear you down. They will either do a character assassination on you or just ridicule you. That’s not what I’m talking about when I say people to keep you grounded. I’m talking about people that you trust. People who will give you honest feedback, critique you on how you’re going and help to keep you in touch with reality. 

My wife keeps me grounded. If I go and present a speech or give a talk, and I ask her how it was she’s not afraid to say to me “honestly it wasn’t your best one, I didn’t like the way you did this point”. Most people won’t say that to me, my team usually don’t feel confident enough to tell me that I wasn’t on my game. If you’ve only got people around you that are always saying “oh you’re amazing or you’re doing a great job” You might give yourself a false sense of your competence which then leads to arrogance and costly mistakes. You need people that can be a little bit honest with you, not cruel or nasty but honest. That will help you not to lead with your ego.

2. Get over Yourself

The second thing is that you need to get over yourself. Yes, you need to be confident as a leader and you need to believe in yourself. You also need to keep in check with how significant what you are doing is in comparison to the challenges around the world.

I love the story of the Olympic swimmer Susie O’neal. She talks about the day that she was going into one of her gold medal swims. It was an Olympic swim and she was really nervous. She called up her husband and said I don’t think I can do this. Her husband said, “well put it into perspective, you’re not curing cancer right now you’re swimming in a swimming pool.” 

He was able to keep her in check. He helped her put it into perspective so that she didn’t inflate the importance of her events so much that it crippled her performance. She ended up going on to win and of course getting the gold medal but to perform at your best t’s really important to get over yourself, not over inflate your self-importance.

Few of us are inventing the cure for cancer or changing the world in significant ways. We’re all trying to change the world a little bit but just keep it in perspective. There are a lot of people doing a lot of good things and you’re just one of them. Don’t get ahead of yourself, I’m not trying to tear you down. We’re talking about ego here and that’s what I have to do sometimes for myself as well.

3. Share your Success

The third key is that you need to learn to share your successes. Whenever you accomplish something there is always a team that’s behind you. You need to look at that team and you need to be able to share your successes. You need to be able to share with the people that helped to get you there. The people that supported you, the people that encouraged you. You need to make sure that you don’t make it all about you. As the leader, you’re often in the limelight. You get a lot of the accolade, a lot of the praise but remember there are people that got you there. 

If you share the success with them it will help to keep your ego in check.

There’s a moment in a recent Garth Brooks documentary that I watched, its a really fascinating documentary. While he’s accepting a grammy award he said in the documentary that at this point he and his wife were having some real difficulties in their marriage but as he made his speech he paused and said to his wife from the stage, “no matter where we end up in our relationship i want you to know I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.” He was sharing the glory and the success of his music with the person that had been his biggest supporter and fan. His wife helped him get there and that’s really important. You need to remember the people that helped you get there and that will help to keep your ego in check. 

4. Be a Constant Learner

The last thing you need to do is be a constant learner. If you constantly push the boundaries of what you know and feel confident in you’re never going to be in the position of feeling like a genius. If you live in that place where you feel like you’ve accomplished everything and you are the best at what you do, then what you will find is that’s where ego takes over. You start to just live in that place of “oh look at me I’m so amazing, look at how good I am” 

If you’re a constant learner and push yourself to do new things that you’re unfamiliar with, you’ll always be in a place of feeling uncomfortable with your confidence. I’m not so good at this, I’m still learning. Your ego immediately gets brought back into place if you keep pushing the boundaries and the limits of your growth. You should try to be in a place of learning so you don’t feel too confident that your ego gets in the way. So be a constant learner.

That’s four ways that you can lead with humility or lead without ego. Make sure you’ve got a team around you that keeps you on the ground. Make sure you take the time to get over yourself. Keep yourself in perspective with the rest of the world. Share your successes with the people that help you achieve everything. The last one is this, always be a learner. Be a constant learner and grower, you won’t ever get so far ahead of yourself that you think you’re god’s gift to the world. 

This is really important if you want your teams to buy into you and engage with you. If you recognize this in yourself I encourage you to take the time to do something about it and be a more effective leader. I hope that this has been really helpful for you, let us know in the comments what you thought. If there are any topics you want us to cover in later episodes just let us know. We’d love to help you with appropriate content. If there’s someone you know that would benefit please share this blog with them.

If you would like to learn more about effectively growing in your leadership, why not check out our FREE Goal setting guide. See below for details.

https://leadcommunicategrow.com/free-goal-setting-guide/

5 Steps to Set Goals that Work

 

Creating a workplace where your team feels safe enough to innovate and create is paramount to a well-functioning team. Make sure they know it’s ok to make mistakes, you value their contributions and encourage them to take risks. When you do this your team will work over and above for you.

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We’re going to look at three ways that you can create an environment where your team feels safe and feels encouraged to do their best. Three keys to create an environment where your team feels safe with you. 

What do i mean by safe ? I’m not talking about physical safety although that’s important. You need to have occupational health and safety as a priority in your organization. What i’m talking about is creating an environment where your team feels safe to make mistakes. They feel safe to innovate, try new things, ask questions and engage with their leader. 

I’ve seen too many environments where the team members are too scared to do anything outside the box. They’re too scared to innovate or try new ideas because they’re scared of the repercussions that they will get from their leader. They’re too scared to ask questions and ask for clarity from their leader. 

Maybe they’re working with someone who’s a bully or somebody who doesn’t engage with their team in a meaningful relationship. So what ends up happening when you don’t have an environment is team members will dial themselves back. They will stop themselves from innovating, from pushing the boundaries and working over and above for you as the leader.

If you want a team that is fully engaged, and willing to go over and above their call of duty, give their best, be innovative, think on their feet and push the boundaries, then you need to create an environment where they feel safe to do so. Here are three ways that you can do that.

1. Make Sure Your Team Understands Its Ok To Make Mistakes

The first thing is you need to make sure that your team understands it is ok to make mistakes. It is really important that when a team member makes a mistake you don’t immediately jump to chastising them. Don’t immediately jump to yelling at them, telling them off or punishing them because they made a mistake. You need to make sure that you handle mistakes in a way that makes your team feel like it’s ok to make a mistake, we’re going to talk it through and we’re going to fix the problem.

An easy way to do this is; if you see a mistake you can just go to your team and say “hey I notice you’ve finished this, tell me about why you might have done it this way? What it does is highlight the mistake but gives them an opportunity to explain why they’ve done it that way. Rather than saying “why did you do it this way” and getting angry take the time to hear from them first. They may have a very valid reason for doing it the way they did it. You might find that the problem wasn’t theirs, it was yours. 

When you take the time to listen to them and they feel safe, it gives you an opportunity to retrain or talk through the way you want it without them becoming defensive or closed off to your perspective or expectations.

Maybe they’ve failed to meet the expectation. By saying “hey tell me about what happened here”, it gives them an opportunity to talk positively into the situation. Now you understand what they’re saying. You understand why it was a mistake and can address the solution positively… “next time what I’d like you to do is focus on this…etc.” Your team member will hear “ok you made a mistake but I’m not angry, let’s do better next time”. As a result, there is a much higher likelihood of your correction sticking and being implemented.

When your team feels safe about making mistakes, it doesn’t mean they’re going to go out of their way to make more mistakes. It just means that they will be able to give themselves more fully to the job without having to walk on eggshells. They won’t be worried about failing and will be able to give themselves more fully to the task. Fear and anxiety can be paralyzing. IT will cause team members to hold themselves back from doing their best work, make them defensive, and impact not only production but also innovation.

2. Value Their Contributions

The second thing is to value their contributions. Very often your teams will bring ideas and innovations to you. While at times they can be a little off track or not quite in tune with the direction you’re trying to head, don’t be too quick to dismiss them. Take the time to listen to them. Take the time to appreciate them even if it’s an idea that you don’t want to use. You can say… “hey look I really appreciate you bringing that to me, I can see you thought about this a lot”. Or “thankyou for that idea, it is something that i have considered and we have got a solution we are going with but I appreciate you taking the time to think about these problems. KEep bringing your ideas to me.” 

Don’t be dismissive, don’t ridicule their ideas even if their ideas are not things that you will end up implementing. What this will do is foster a culture of innovation and creativity. When you have that kind of culture it will eventually lead to great ideas that help you and your organisation move forward. When that starts to happen, make sure you give them credit. If any of your team come up with a great idea or solution that you start running with, make sure you let everybody know whose idea it was.

Don’t take the credit for yourself. Value them and it will mean they will feel safe about bringing more ideas to the table. They will also buy into you as a leader and be more willing to help you achieve your ideas and dreams.

3. Encourage Risk Taking

The third thing is to encourage risk-taking. Give your team permission to think outside the box. You might set a task and say “ok this is the way i want you to do it, this is the mode that we usually do it but if you have a way of doing this better I want to hear about it”. Give them permission to think outside the box, to think beyond themselves. What you’ll find is that you get a better collection of ideas. 

If the only voice you ever listen to for ideas is your own then you’re selling both yourself and your team short. If you allow your team to push the boundaries of what is considered possible you will find that they come up with some great ideas. You’ll find that they innovate more often and more effectively. This in turn will help you get out of your own way and start scaling beyond what you are able to innovate only on your own.

If you can learn to create a safe environment where your team can innovate and feel safe to make mistakes and to be their very best around you they will give your their bet, give you permission to lead them, and help you achieve all that you aspire to. Fail to do this you will only serve to put a lid on your leadership and the potential of your teams and organization.

If you would like to learn more about effectively growing in your leadership, why not check out our FREE Goal setting guide. See below for details.

https://leadcommunicategrow.com/free-goal-setting-guide/

5 Steps to Set Goals that Work

Just because you’ve got a title it doesn’t make you an effective leader. You’ve got to actually develop the skills and the relationships that come with becoming an effective leader.

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I’m going to give you four essential skills for beginning or aspiring leaders. If you’re just starting out on your leadership journey there’s a whole bunch of leadership books out there. Not all advice is right for the place you’re at in your leadership and sometimes it can be hard to sift through the information to get to hat you need to know. I just want to give you four tips that you can focus on that will fast track your leadership and make you a more effective leader as you’re getting started.

Here’s the reality when you’re getting started as a leader you usually have very little influence. That means you have very little ability to influence the people around you. You’re usually trading on your position. If you’ve been given a position as a leader it doesn’t mean people will automatically begin following you. You have to build trust and relationships, to have some kind of influence with the team. And that takes time. The title alone is not enough to make you a leader. That’s the beginning level of leadership. So here are four things that you need to focus on to do this in an effective way.

1. Build Positive & Effective Relationships

The first one is this; I talk about this a lot you’ve probably heard me talk about it but I can’t say it enough. You need to start by building positive and effective relationships with your team, superiors, and colleagues. You’re essentially leading up, sideways, and down. All directions need positive effective relationships. So the number one thing you need to do when you start out as a leader is: get to know the people that you work with. Get to know the people that you lead. Spend time getting to know them personally. Spend time getting to know what their challenges are. Spend time getting to know what their fears, hopes, and dreams are. Understand who they are and what makes them tick.

Understand them as people. That is going to then give you an insight into what their needs are. Once start feeling the needs of people around you whether you are their leader or whether you are their subordinate, you can then start filling their needs. When the people you are trying to influence understand that you care for them and are willing to work for their benefit, they will give you opportunities to influence them and to lead them more effectively. So build relationships! 

If you don’t know how to build relationships effectively that’s where you start, You must learn the art of a relationship building. I’ve got a bunch of content on my page about building relationships and even in my leading for success mastery course. So if you need some resource head on over to check that out.

2.  Be Self Aware

The second skill is self-awareness. If you are not a self-aware leader that means you don’t know what it’s like to be on the other side of you. You don’t know your flaws. You don’t have an awareness of who you are as a leader. You need to focus on that, you can never lead other people if you can’t lead yourself. If you don’t know what your failures are, weaknesses or your blind spots, then you are never going to lead other people effectively. 

Start focusing on your own personal growth. Start focusing on getting upskilled in the areas that you know you have blind spots in. Develop a self-awareness so that it never comes as a surprise if somebody comes to you and says hey I don’t like what you’re doing, I don’t like your attitude or you need a character adjustment. That should never come as a surprise to you. As a leader, you should always be aware of your own deficiencies and your own needs for self-improvement long before anyone highlights it as a problem.

If somebody’s highlighting it, it’s too late. Become self-aware, learn what makes you tick and do something about it proactively.

You can read more on this in my post #1 Relationship Holding You Back

3. Communication

The third thing is communication. You need to learn how to communicate with different people effectively. When you lead, you’re going to be leading different personalities. You have a particular personality yourself and each personality type needs a different mode of communication to get through to them. When you’re dealing with a dominant personality type you need to be able to speak very directly,  factually, and with little emotion. When you’re speaking with an inspirational or influential person you need to be able to build a relationship with them. They’re all about the relationship, you need to ask them what’s going on in their personal world. If you haven’t figured it out yet I’m using the disc model, D-I-S-C… So If you’re dealing with somebody who’s Social they care about the emotions. They care about the heart, what makes people tick, and If people are ok. So if you are not aware of how they feel then you won’t be able to communicate effectively. Then there’s the cautious person. The “C” personality type is all about the details. You need to be able to communicate details clearly and succinctly so that they understand exactly where you stand and where you are going. 

Communication is key especially when you’re casting vision or expressing your expectations. If you can’t communicate a job clearly and effectively so that people understand you, then take it in and act upon it then you will find your leadership is frustrated. Nine times out of ten when I work with leaders who are having frustrations with their team, it’s usually because they don’t know how to communicate with their team. So you must learn how to communicate effectively.

4. Integrity

The last thing is integrity. Leadership expert John Maxwell says this “Charisma will get you in the door but integrity will keep you in the room”. If you don’t have integrity or operate with honesty, truthfulness and trust then your leadership journey will be very short-lived. You will not last as a leader and you will not be able to upskill or upscale as a leader if you don’t operate with integrity. Sooner or later cutting corners and being deceptive or dishonest will catch up with you. It will sabotage and undercut your leadership. It will undercut the trust with your team and that will undercut your ability to influence them. Always operate with integrity and honesty. Be a transparent and open leader. 

Don’t be a leader that has secrets. Don’t be a leader that operates in the shadows or operates deceptively or manipulatively. That is always going to undermine your leadership in the long term. So be a leader of integrity. Work on your character if that’s an issue.  Read more about integrity here.

That’s four skills for a beginning or aspiring leader that you can start implementing immediately. 1. Learn to build relationships first. Build good relationships with everybody that you are in contact with. 2. Develop self-awareness. Know what you are like as a leader what your weaknesses are and start your journey of personal growth. 3. Communication. Learn to communicate with different personality styles and learn to communicate clearly and succinctly for whatever you are trying to get done. 4. Integrity. Make sure that you operate with the utmost integrity and honesty at all times. 

If you want to find out more about how you can do this I recommend that you check out my website, LeadCommunicateGrow.com. Have a look at some free webinar LEAD Like a Boss. I go in-depth on a lot of this content and you can also check out the interviews I’ve done recently especially one with Dr Jeff Rickenbach. He is a psychologist and expert in personality disorder. He talks about how to communicate with different personalities so I know that that’s going to be really helpful for you.

Don’t forget to let us know what you thought in the comments and if you have a topic you’d like us to cover next time we’d love to hear from you.   

If you would like to learn more about effectively growing in your leadership, why not check out our FREE Goal setting guide. See below for details.

https://leadcommunicategrow.com/free-goal-setting-guide/

5 Steps to Set Goals that Work

Whether you are leading an organization, a team or you’re just trying to lead your family more effectively. The number one key that I believe will help you become a more effective leader is this, you need to learn how to lead yourself.

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Today I want to talk to you about the number one key for becoming a more effective leader. Whether you’re leading an organization, a team or you’re just trying to lead your family more effectively. The number one key that I believe will help you become a more effective leader is this, you need to learn how to lead yourself 

What do I mean by leading yourself? It means that you need to understand what makes you tick as a leader, what are the pressures on you and what are the ways in which you react as a leader. What are the ways that you respond to situations as a leader and how does that affect the people that you lead. If you don’t have self-awareness or you don’t understand your positives, negatives, weaknesses and strengths and manage them effectively you will never be able to manage those in your team. It is really imperative that you become a leader that leads themselves well. I want to just look at three areas that you can give attention to in order to become a more self-aware leader.

1. Triggers

The first one is that you need to learn how to manage your triggers. So what do I mean by triggers? Every one of us has things that set us off or that make us frustrated or angry. What are the things that frustrate you? Maybe it’s a person in your workplace, the way that people do things in your workplace, the way that a particular team member interacts with you or maybe it’s a personality type. Whatever it is, you all have triggers that affect your ability to lead at your full potential. If you don’t know what those triggers are and if you don’t know what sets you off then other people will start pushing your buttons.

This is especially true if you’re trying to lead difficult people. Often difficult people know how to push your buttons, they already know your weaknesses. They already know what sets you off and they use that to their advantage to control you. The last thing you want is for anybody else to be controlling you in a negative sense. The only way to avoid that is if you learn to control yourself in the areas that you know you struggle with. One of the things that I understand about myself is that if I haven’t slept well and I’m tired then I become grumpy. Now if I notice that I’m grumpy I also know that I will start to become short with my children. I’ll start to become reactive with people that annoy me and that’s not a good thing, that’s not going to help me lead effectively.

So one of the things that I have to do is to have a mechanism if I feel myself getting upset or if I’m feeling myself getting frustrated. Because I’m tired I might need to go and get a coffee, I might need to have some quiet time. I’ve got a little chair in my room at home and if I’m really tired and I feel like the kids are starting to irritate me, rather than taking it out on my kids I’ll retreat to my bedroom and sit in my chair. This helps me to relax, have a coffee, get my head in the right space before I start interacting with them again.

In your workplace, you need to have some kind of routine where you can eject from a situation if you feel that you’re being triggered. If you’re feeling emotionally reactive to a person or a situation you need to have some kind of routine, maybe take a walk around the block or go get some lunch. Maybe you just clear some time in your calendar where you can just be alone and you can just calm yourself down and figure out what’s going on. Whatever it is, don’t let those triggers be controlled by somebody else. Manage your triggers well. 

If you manage your triggers well, you’ll be a more effective leader because you’re leading yourself.

2. Emotions

The second thing you need to understand is your emotions and this is kind of connected to your triggers. You need to be able to control your emotions. There is nothing worse than an emotionally reactive leader. There is nothing worse than a leader who hasn’t got the ability to manage themselves emotionally. Now if you are somebody who recognizes that you have a tendency to emotionally react whether it’s getting angry, upset, offended or flying off the handle or maybe taking things personally. That is going to harm your credibility as a leader 

There’s an expression in church circles, I do a bit of leadership in church circles and one of the expressions is “Don’t bleed on your sheep”. What that means is don’t let all your emotions out on the people that you lead. You’ve got to be careful that if you’re emotionally reactive that you don’t allow those emotions to get the better of you in the situations where you’re working with your team. They’re looking up to you for cues, they’re looking to you for instruction and they’re looking to you for direction. If all they’re getting is emotional outbursts or emotional reactions it’s going to cause them to lose confidence in your leadership ability and you’re going to find it harder and harder to influence them effectively.

They will see you as an emotionally volatile person, if you become an emotionally volatile person everybody walks on eggshells around you nobody tells you the truth nobody actually speaks to you straight and you don’t need that as a leader. You need your team talking to you straight, telling you the truth and knowing what’s going on. That is going to be determined by how you manage your emotions, so learn to get your emotions under control if you are an emotionally reactive leader. 

3. Well-Being

The last thing is your well-being. This really feeds into both of the other ones because it’s your job to look after yourself. If you don’t look after yourself then that is going to leak into your physical well-being, how tired you feel, how much energy you have. That will then leak into how you handle stress, how you handle stress will leak into how you manage your emotions. How you’re managing your emotions will leak into what triggers you or what sets you off. 

So if you are not caring for yourself getting enough sleep, eating properly, exercising and doing all the things that you need to do to keep yourself in check physically, emotionally and mentally then what it’s going to do is have this knock-on effect. It’s just going to cause you to become an unregulated unstable leader. When you’re an unregulated unstable leader people don’t trust you, people don’t want to follow you. You will find it harder and harder to get things done. Take the time to care for your well-being, take the time to assess the way that you work.

Now if you have a long day at work and it’s affecting your sleep or it’s affecting your rest, then you might need to modify the length of time you spend in the office. Find time for rest, rest is important. If you know that your eating habits are out of whack and that eating causes you to not think clearly or maybe feel lethargic and tired in the afternoons then we need to talk to somebody who’s an expert in nutrition and help them to figure out a diet that’s going to help you think and perform at your best. If you don’t move, I mean especially if you’re in a sedentary type job, if you’re not moving then it’s going to affect your emotional stability. It’s also going to affect your physical energy and well-being. Take care of your well-being, it’s your responsibility to lead yourself. 

When you take care of your well-being, manage your emotions, know your triggers and have them under control you’ll be a more effective leader because you are learning to lead yourself.

If you would like to learn more about effectively growing in your leadership, why not check out our FREE Goal setting guide. See below for details.

https://leadcommunicategrow.com/free-goal-setting-guide/

5 Steps to Set Goals that Work