Leading with Intention, Authenticity and Vitality
Eduardo Nofuentes
If you google leadership training, the top learning outcomes will go something like this…
1. How to build strong relationships
2. How to align people to your vision
3. How to be Agile and Adaptive
4. How to be innovative
5. How to improve company efficiency
6. How to make decisions; and
7. How to resolve conflict
These are all crucial skills for leaders, but true leadership goes deeper than those 7 points. Leadership is less about what you do, and more about how you show up. Here are my key leadership mantras.
Not Everyone is Going to Like You
First and foremost, you need to remember that “Not everyone is going to like you.” Just by putting yourself in the arena, you will naturally experience external judgement, comparison, and dislike. It’s important to have the resilience to shake off external perspectives, but also the modesty and humble nature to look for what you can learn from their views.
Going into leadership with a desire to be liked, ultimately means you’ll be doing your team a disservice. You won’t be truly authentic or honest with people if you are constantly trying to keep in their good books. Instead, think of leadership as about giving meaning to your life beyond your own ambition. This means thinking about how you can grow others, what you can do for others and how you can mobilise others to tackle tough challenges. Sometimes, this involves making difficult choices or leaning in to have challenging conversations.
Rather than waste energy on preserving their ego, Adaptive Leaders focus on preserving the essential DNA of their teams – the elements that work well. They also discard elements that no longer serve a purpose – a good example of this being removing outdated protocols like unnecessary paper trails that are historically ingrained, but slow work down. Finally, rather than staying comfortable and keeping others around them comfortable, Adaptive Leaders envision and action possible futures to realise new potential. They don’t focus on directing, making orders, and protecting their staff, Adaptive Leaders focus on taking risks. It’s not always a likeable way of leading, but it is in an authentic and effective way of leading.
Don’t Stop Developing and Growing
Leaders are expected to lead the transformation of their organisation, but they need to start with themselves first. Getting to a position of leadership, does not mean that your development is over. A professional athlete doesn’t stop training once they’ve reached an elite level, so nor should a leader. It’s vital that you work on your own growth and development because life and work are increasingly complex, and trying to navigate others through this complexity without having your own sounding board is a needless challenge
Learn and Apply Systems Thinking
To truly understand why a customer, employee or team behaves in a certain way, you need to gain a deep understanding of the underlying structure of the systems and mental models those people are relying on.
Here’s an example of that’s very close to home. Here at Neu21, we’ve been growing a lot recently and team members have expressed that we need a Knowledge Management System (KMS) because people can’t always find the information they are looking for.
When we were a smaller team, we would ask one another for the information we needed. But now there’s a growing sense that an organisation of our size should have a KMS, especially as a pattern is emerging where people can’t find what they need quickly.
A reasonable response to this challenge would be to invest in a KMS. However, using systems thinking, we looked beyond the patterns into the mental models that were causing the need, and how creating a KMS could impact other systems in our organisation. For example, if we responded by creating a KMS, it would a. cost a lot to build b. is likely to be obsolete very quickly and c. it's going to take a lot of time. More crucially, it has the potential to stop people communicating and collaborating.
The mental models were even more illuminating. Delving into some of the motivations behind the KMS, we discovered that some team members didn’t want to bother other people and they wanted to independently learn and practise new knowledge rather than lean on others. In our culture, collaboration and communication are key, so this was an important realisation. The systemic problem wasn’t that we didn’t have an organised library of tools, it was an interpersonal one about self-worth. We could have spent thousands of dollars on a KMS, and the real problem would not have been solved. Instead, we focussed on individual development as the priority.
Enjoy the Space InBetween
By their very nature most leaders are achievers. They are driven by the endorphins of doing things well and achieving great results. While the pay-off might be happy chemicals, promotions and pay rises, the impact on themselves is often stress and anxiety, and it can prevent others from growing.
To combat ‘achievers’ syndrome’ I suggest having a ‘to be’ list not a ‘to do list’. Very few leaders are saving lives, so rather than focussing on what needs to get done, focus on who you want to be each day. The outcome of this will be that you listen more, you only step in when there’s a crisis and you ask better questions, rather than jumping in with your answers.
Enjoying the space in between, means letting go of ego and practising humility. By doing this you’ll open yourself up to new learning, and be able to see and hold multiple perspectives.
You Can’t Look After Others if you Don’t Look After Yourself
This tip is short and sweet. Have a healthy relationship with food, alcohol, sleep and exercise. Do what works for you, but don’t beat yourself up when you miss the gym or indulge too much. Part of being a leader is knowing when to be gentle on yourself too.
