Courageous Leaders Value Trust

As we draw close to the International Day of Trust, I’m inspired to revisit and expand one of the essential aspects of being a Courageous Leader:

Courageous leaders are deeply aware of the value of trust – in themselves, in the processes they set up and in the people around them - working with them in a work team or living with them as members of a family. Trust is a foundation value of a Courageous Leader. Without trust, it is virtually impossible to be courageous.

Courage always involves an element of trust; firstly you need to trust in yourself - to do what you believe to be right and stay true to the kind of leader you really want to be. Even when there is pressure from other sources, it is in those challenging times that courage comes to the fore and when you demonstrate that you are trustworthy. This is true of you as a leader in all aspects of your life – as a parent, a sister, a supervisor, a wife, a manger, a daughter or a board member and all your other roles.

Trusting in the processes set up and agreed to is essential. This shows you believe in the other people to follow the process and produce the results. We are often tempted to second guess or question the way something is being done, and while constructive input can be valuable it is important to let others work with agreed processes and systems without feeling that they have someone ‘looking over their shoulder’. This can be very challenging and I have probably learnt the most about this concept by being the mother of a teenage daughter!

Finally there is the trust you have in other people – facilitating opportunities and experiences that enable them to develop and learn, to sometimes fail and learn from that too. Twenty-first century organisations cannot afford to have robotic employees; it is important to attract and retain creative problem solvers who are inspired to courageously take the organisation to the next level. If you want people to work with passion and to unleash their true potential they need to feel trusted to deliver, not forced to comply.

Some of us have a natural propensity to trust and others of us are more skeptical and critical. No matter our natural propensity - trust in others is the true expression of our foundation value as a Courageous Leader. Developing our ‘trust muscles’ leads to enhanced teamwork, empowered individuals, reduced blame and greater accountability. I encourage you all to trust more in your journey of becoming a Courageous Leader.

As one of the co-authors to Vanessa Hall’s book The Truth About Trust it is a real honour to be part of the growing Entente Trust Community and to celebrate the International Day of Trust.

- Mandy Holloway

Influencing Decisions

When facilitating a workshop where we explored how middle managers could start influencing more decisions, it was rewarding to watch how people recognized what they could start doing differently. 

It is far too easy to blame the senior leaders for not inviting us to influence a decision. Don't point the finger of blame, instead take responsibility and use "the five tactics" to influence a decision. 

It all starts by building trust with the decision makers - because remember their organisational reputation could be on the line with this decision so before they encourage anyone to influence their decision they would need to really trust the person. 

Courageous Leaders take responsibility for building a personal brand that earns them a seat at the decision making table!

Making Time to Replenish Your Energy Reserves

The more courageous you become the more essential it is to make time to replenish your mental, physical, emotional and spiritual energy. To be courageous uses enormous amounts of energy and as I have experienced over the last week it is critical to make the time to replenish and just be "present" with yourself - engage in a conversation with yourself to check out how you are going and what you are feeling. Yesterday I went for a 90 minute walk around the lake and just spent time with our beloved dog who does not require too much conversational attention and myself - soaking up the serenity and enjoying a fast pace!

 
You also need trusted life partners, friends and colleagues who are prepared to listen, to reflect back what they are seeing and hearing, to challenge what is happening and maybe help you see the situation differently.........and these kinds of conversations do much to replenish the energy banks. Take a few moments to reflect on what you do to regularly replenish your energy sources.

Learn to Lead

Over the last few weeks several incidents have occurred and caused me to reflect on the pain of learning. I believe this is why so many people do not truly embrace the desire to LEARN to lead. It requires conscious thought and effort each day and with this greater consciousness comes pain. So much easier to just keep doing what you've always done or tinker on the edges.

Learning to lead is so much more than participating in a program, completing some self awareness tools......it about wanting to LEARN. It is about truly being prepared to dive deep inside and check out your limiting mental models....and we all have them! Challenge your assumptions and check out your judgements - and that is tough stuff.

Using Your Power For Good, Not Evil

Facilitating a MasterClass the other day opened up an important thought - we can use each of our powers for evil - even our personal power. We have access to five sources of power - positional, expert, opportunity, referent and personal. We explored how you use each of these for good and for evil.

Personal power is your personal brand - where you come from a place of strength- aligning and igniting values, personality preferences and what you stand for with how you behave. Now sometimes we can go into overuse of our strengths to an extent that we judge others against our values. For example - my top five strengths taken from Martin Seligmans Character Strengths Survey are: gratitude; bravery; authenticity and honesty; zest,enthusiasm and energy; and capacity to love and be loved. Recently I went into overdrive as a client took action that I perceived went against each of my values - and I could feel myself going into overuse of each of these strengths. To have accessed my personal power too early would have been destructive - I would have used it for evil. Here is how that would have played out:

Gratitude: I have invested so much time in making their development program brilliant and they are taking me for granted - there is a lack of gratitude for what I have done

Bravery: they have not had the courage to come and talk to me about their decision

Honesty and authenticity: what about engaging in a real conversation and being honest with me

Zest, enthusiasm and energy: has been ripped out of me by their actions

Capacity to love and be loved: I do not feel like my care has been reciprocated.

This would have been me using my personal power for evil!!

Do yourself a favor and invest some thinking into how you access each of your sources of power - for good and for evil - and I would love to hear your stories.