Leadership is not a role one can take on lightly, I’ve said this before, but I think is worth repeating. If we want others to believe in us and to willingly follow us, we must give them something worth following. At home, we cannot ask from our spouse and children, or from our parents, something that we are not willing to give. It always boils down to self-leadership. We reap what we saw.
When it comes to skills, it is easy to feel overwhelmed if we feel we lack what we need to move a new project forward. One of the things I love the most about coaching is that along with performance goals, because we are ultimately high performers, there are growth goals associated with them, that we need to identify and develop in parallel to make those performance goals a reality.
As life gets busy with goals and projects, we tend to maximize the time we dedicate to them and more often than not, we leave certain things sitting in the back burner. I’ve personally experienced seasons at work in which between the workload and hectic business travel, I don’t pay attention to hydrating well or getting enough sleep. Sometimes my meals consist of the closest fast food restaurant Uber eats can supply or even in some occasions, just a vending machine on the go.
As leaders we are always creating something. We create opportunities, we create a vision, we create solutions and creativity is a requirement for high performance and dedicating time to enjoy our hobbies, allows for that creativity to flow freely.
Doing the hard things, the ones that make us uncomfortable, will become second nature once we learn to act – leaders are first movers. Instead of overthinking and anticipating everything that could go wrong, focus on all that can go great while keeping a realistic but positive approach. Remember that self-believe comes first. How can we expect others to believe in us, if we second-guess our every move?
An analogy I love using when illustrating this point is that same as before take-off the flight attendant, during the safety briefing, explains the use of the oxygen mask in case of depressurization of the cabin, we must put our mask on first, before we can attempt to help others put on theirs.
Our continuous growth, will support our efforts to support the growth of our people, these two, are intrinsically linked. This is not solely linked to the marketplace, but it applies to our family and friends as well. And growth my friend, has to be intentional, it doesn’t happen by accident. It takes planning, it takes time, and it take consistency, it takes sacrifice, but the results will be worth it!
We tend to romanticize the idea of having all our ducks in a row before getting started, but what happens in this case is that more often than not, procrastination kicks in, and if you tend to be on the perfectionist side, forget it, the wheels will keep on turning, yet nothing of value will truly get accomplished. The doer of deeds is the one getting the work done. Walk the talk, don’t forget that talk is cheap!
Developing our resilience and creating self-awareness about the fixed mindset and growth mindset, and ensuring we are making the conscious decision of approaching challenges with a sense of excitement for the growth to come; instead of as the possibility of failure and the associated shame it casts on us, will help us to be more assertive and focus more on working at finding a way forward.
As leaders, we want to engaged employees because engagement ultimately leads to productivity. And productivity brings efficiencies, innovation, and higher results. Thus, it’s not only a good idea to be able to describe your culture, it’s important to build and nourish a culture that you’re proud of, and that enhances both job and company satisfaction. And that consequently, will trickle and positively impact customer satisfaction as well.
