ARE YOU A GREAT LEADER?

Are you a great leader?

So often we evolve into leadership roles. Our performance excels or our charisma shines, and we end up being promoted to overseeing a team. Interestingly though, many times we have no training or experience in leadership.

I have a friend who is in charge of 60 people across 3 teams, and they have never had any leadership training. This may sound unusual, crazy even, however it is so easy to end up in high leadership roles but to have slipped through the training cracks. You then get so established in your role no one would think to ask, “Do you have any tools for leading this team?” or “Do you know how to get the best out of your team?”. In addition, these leaders don’t want to appear lacking and so the Ego kicks in, like a competent & unquestionable avatar.

This is dangerous for the leader, the team and your organisation.

WHY? Because for an organisation to thrive, a leader needs to learn how to lead themselves. They need to have a relationship with their self-awareness to be growing themselves, their skills and the people they lead. This is a key ingredient for creating a culture of Psychological Safety.

Don’t worry, I’m not talking about creating an environment of navel-gazing narcissists, far from it. Instead, I’m suggesting that any leader you have in your organisation needs to have a relationship with themselves that enables them to see what it is like to be on the other side of them.

No one wakes up in the morning and thinks, “I’m going to be really domineering today,” or “I’m going to be a real jerk to my team today” or even “I’m going to abdicate on my responsibilities today”. They wake up and oftentimes don’t think. They go to work as a leader and accidentally lead all day without intention, without knowing how they come across. They just shoot from the hip as best they can.

A few years ago, I was lucky enough to go away for my 10th wedding anniversary and leave all 4 kids with my mum. In preparation for my time away, I wrote an overly detailed plan of where each of my kids had to be every day. I planned everything to the nearest minute in an attempt to be really helpful.

I had no idea how it might come across. My poor mum was terrified by the amount of detail I had given. She felt overwhelmed and not up to the task. I had overplanned and come across as controlling and restrictive, which was not my intention. I did not think “Let me confuse my mum with loads of details,” in fact quite the opposite, but I was oblivious to what it was like to be on the other side of me.

Had I known then what I know now, I would have behaved very differently. My self-awareness journey, where I seek to learn ‘what am I like on the other side of me,’ has enabled me to see that I tend to over-explain. In doing so, I can confuse people. Learning that has helped me change my tendencies in this area so that I now lead by being clearer with fewer unnecessary details. I now have the self-awareness tools on hand that enable me to know what it’s like being on the other side of me.

Steve Cockram, founder of GiANT puts it perfectly, “You have to know yourself to lead yourself.” And it is in leading yourself that you are able to lead others well.

A question for you to think about is, “What is it like to be on the other side of me?” And do your leaders have that same question in mind as they lead others?