Courageous leaders inspire

I was asked a question today about how the world might look if people were inspired to be courageous leaders. I found it hard to use words to describe what I think it will feel like to be in this kind of world........and I have pondered this question over the course of the last few hours and am going to attempt to put my thoughts and feelings into words.

Firstly I think the reason I found it so hard is because I do not know what it could possibly look like if we had people leading courageously as one symbiotic population of leaders within an organisation or even within every organisation in a country - no political game playing, no fear, no deception, no blame, no justifying, no controlling others. The opportunities and possibilites are truly exponential! So I needed to time to think and explore before I could respond - I could easily describe what I wanted us to move away from but it was not so easy to describe what I wanted us to move TOWARDS.

If we had each complete population of leaders within every organisation in every country adopting the mantle of courageous leader we would have a world where each leader took total responsibility for the ramifications of their decisions and would not make them from an egotistical or greedy basis. It would be like standing at the peak of a mountain and seeing no boundaries just limitless blue in front of you; and everyone would be standing with you feeling inspired about the future and what it was going to bring. You would almost feel breathless like you do at the peak of a huge mountain - only it would be because of the anticipation of what "might be" as we proceed into the future. We would have complete transparency with everyone believing in abundancy and not scarcity and our underlying principle would be that of "pay it forward". Trust would be complete as people would not feel the need to "hide" anything and would trust that the leaders would make decisions based on their trusted conscience of the "right thing to do" - and at a moral and ethical level we all recognise there is a right way to do things where we look after people, finances and the environment.

I believe there HAS to be another way of leading people to create our bountiful future - and I would not want to limit anyone's thinking about what we COULD achieve as a result of being a courageous leader. And that is probably why I find it hard to describe the future because I am limited by my own thinking and want dynamic, curious, interesting and collaborative interactions with other courageous leaders to truly explore what we could be capable of achieving.

It is therefore important for me to conclude that courageous leaders inspire...........they inspire us to dream of and envision a new and exhilerating way of "being."

Courageous leaders have relationships that challenge

Courageous leaders seek out relationships that challenge them to grow and develop - they do not have a high need for relationships that feed their ego. I loved reading about this principle in Carol Dweck's book called Mindset and I believe it is highly relevant for the Courageous Leader.

Working with participants in a workshop I noticed again how easy and quick it is for us to retreat to our defenses when challenged - we don't like to reflect on how things could be better or acknowledge (developmental) feedback from external sources. It is confronting so then our natural response is to label the people facilitating the challenging thoughts as negative, disloyal and other such descriptors that I explored in an earlier blog on challenging behaviour.

I found myself in such a situation just recently - and it is ever so hard not to jump into justify your behaviour when someone labels you - for me, I was labelled "negative" - and for those that know me well would know that kind of label really hurts and is not representative of the kind of person I am and the kind of brand I want to build. I found myself passionately wanting to prove to the person that I was not being negative that I was trying to challenge the reality of what was being created for this business. And I certainly experienced first hand how hard it is to engage in such conversations - because you feel under attack personally ........... and yet at the same time it is just the kind of relationship I say I seek - one to challenge me to grow!

If I pick up the challenge then I start to think that if I am creating the perception then what can I do differently to turn it around - how can I engage in the conversation differently? Or do I need to stop taking responsibility for how people are choosing to receive my ideas - others in the room found me inspiring? These thoughts rage through your head as you are trying to choose your behaviours in an instant - what should I say next, how should I respond, how will I manage my raging emotions constructively...........

Courageous Leaders look for opportunities to grow and develop as a result of the relationships they build - what can I learn from the impact I created for people from the language I chose to use and would I do anything differently if I were put into the same situation again?

If you see and hear people moving into their "defenses" what do you do - try to engage them differently, acknowledge that is where they are at and that is not where you are going to travel with them?

Wouldn't it be great to have a "manual" with all the answers - life is full of experiences that bolster growth if you allow it and that is the very essence of the Courageous leader. Know you did the best you could in the instant when you needed to make your choices and then reflect on what you can do differently when put into a similar situation in the future.

I think that next time I am going to ensure the person takes more responsibility for their reactions - I present a situation and it is their choice to respond defensively - and that is OK!

I would love to hear back from some of my followers about their experiences with such growth in relationships.

Courageous leaders tell BIG T truth

Over recent months I have spent considerable time talking about and exploring the need for truth from leaders. The more recent events with our political scene in Australia have dismayed me - will we ever have anyone who tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth? How are our young people supposed to learn about the importance of truth? Big T truth I have learned from a fabulous colleague needs to be differentiated from divulging/dumping and avoiding - it is the hard cold truth - facts and feelings.

This is what sets a courageous leader apart - they tell the truth and can be consistently relied on to tell the truth and not to manipulate the facts and feelings to fit with their needs. I wish someone could tell us Big T Truth about the proposed super profit tax on the mining industry for example so we could all make informed decisions about our future - super profits go to the shareholders and are the major shareholders of our mining companies residing in overseas countries - so Big T truth would the proposed tax really have hurt Australians or rather just the returns CEOs could provide to their shareholders thus earning them wonderful performance bonus payments? Will we ever know the truth?

Will we ever know the truth about our economy - yes Liberals provided us with a great surplus - great bottom line but what was the Big T Truth about the cost of such a strategy - how much funding was really taken away from our education system and medical system? Will we ever know?

We desparately need more courageous leaders to tell the Big T Truth!

Courageous leaders know how to stay "in the zone"

I have been working with several clients over the last few months and applying the work of Martin Seligman for them to better understand how they can come from a place of strength and work regularly in their "sweetspot". It has been wonderful to watch and hear people exploring what it feels like to hit their sweetspot and what holds them back from doing it more often.

As a society we have been educated to value skills and accordingly spend a lot of time emphasising the need to build them - and yet as a leader it is not skills that are going to unleash your courage to make the tough decisions, engage in the conversations you'd rather avoid or set aside critical time to think and reflect. I believe this is a major reason why we have so many leaders who operate on automatic pilot and do not inspire their people to truly unleash their potential. We have leaders who concentrate on skills and achieving bottom line by getting the tasks done.

To be a courageous leader you must invest the time in getting to know yourself and finding ways to "be at your best" - know the "right hand" of your personality preferences, identify your values/strengths and determine how to translate these into behaviours that let you be at your best. Only then are you ready to unleash the potential of people working in your team and in your business.

As I heard Dr Stephen Covey describe when he spoke in Sydney - globally our biggest workplace issue is all the untapped potential of people working in our businesses. They have untapped potential because they are not managed and lead by courageous leaders! Contact me if you would like to explore this issue in more depth as I love engaging in such conversations.

Courageous leaders reap benefits of tough decisions

Over the last few days I have engaged in conversations that have had me pondering the impending economic upswing and what will happen to those who were courageous leaders during the tough economic times and those who lead from a base of fear.

I truly believe that although many leaders felt they made the TOUGH decisions and followed through by having the courage to engage in crucial conversations to tell people they no longer had a job or they had to take a pay cut - I do not beleive these were "the" tough decisions at all - they were the easy ones and came from a place of fear.

The truly tough and courageous decision would have been to keep the people and collaboratively and innovatively work together to determine other ways (not thought of yet) to combat the tough economic times.

What we saw within many organisations was yet again that "our most important assets" were the first to go. Now as the upswing starts these same leaders are fearful of losing people they do not want to lose - as organisations start to advertise to recruit new people and making highly favourable salary offers - so the fear is probably warranted. Because the damage to loyalty has been done during this last year and people will now look to go where the best money offer comes from! Why should they stay loyal and "do the right thing" when organisations did not "do the right thing" by them and their colleagues during the tough economic cycle.

It is going to be interesting to see what happens in 2010.

Are you a socially intelligent courageous leader?

After reading through the article I mentioned in my last blog - "social intelligence and the biology of leadership" - I want to take the time to state that courageous leaders are socially intelligent because they show:

1. empathy with others and are sensitive to their needs
2. attunement to how others are feeling
3. organisational awareness of the cultural , business and market norms
4. ability to influence and persuade
5. propensity to develop others through coaching and feedback
6. inspirational tendencies so they bring out the best in people
7. teamwork
8. courage to stay true to who they are and what they believe in
9. willingness to use challenging behaviour.

I am going to work on these nine attributes / characters further and would welcome anyone's feedback and/or stories.

Social intelligence was summed up in the article as developing a genuine interest in and talent for fostering positive feelings in the people whose cooperation and support you need. It can truly be that simple if we want it to be!

I challenge you to self assess what you do on a daily basis as a leader - can you honestly say that you have stayed true throughout the day to showing genuine interest in those people on whom you rely to create the business outcomes you desire and need?

Courageous leaders know that laughter is serious business

Serendipitously as I changed my FaceBook profile picture to have one that shows me laughing and stating that I recognise the importance of laughter in life and that we need so much more laughing in our everyday life on my FaceBook wall - I pick up an HBR article that I have used in my Courageous Leaders Development Programme for about a year called "Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership" and there on page 3 it jumps off the page and hits me between the eyes - there in black and white it clearly states that:

".......top performing leaders elicited laughter from their sub-ordinates three times as often, on average, as did mid-performing leaders. Being in a good mood, other research finds, helps people take in information effectively and respond nimbly and creatively. In other words, laughter is serious business."

So all those years ago when I was managing and leading in the professional services industry and wearing the wrath from colleagues that I instigated far too much frivolity in the office - even being accused of having afternoon tea parties where I could not possibly be getting any work done - well I was in the serious business of producing great results and engaging with each of my wonderful people.

So, courageous leaders know that laughter is serious business - inspiring others to be effective and producing great results - that's exactly what we are about!