Leading with the Value of "Being Human"

Leadership is a people business. If you don’t put people front and centre you’ll not get very far. “Being Human” in your interactions with your team should be one of your values. If you’re always putting your team first, building big healthy relationships with them and creating the right experience, you’re on a great path. A lot of us know how to behave and lead but when it gets busy, we can lose sight of that. Being self-aware of how we’re behaving and interacting with our team during the ups and downs is critical.

If you haven’t already, you know what to do:

8 Tips to help you be more Human when Leading.

1) Lead rather than Manage - we’ve all seen it, if not see the visual below. There will be times when you need to be in “Manager Mode” and focus on getting stuff down quickly, but this should be a small portion of your time, the majority of your time should be focused on leading and being in “Leader Mode”.

2) Listen more, speak less - when you speak, you share what you already know. When you listen, you learn new things. You’ll be amazed at what you hear when you listen attentively, you may even hear things which are not being said.

Pro Tip: Stop narrating your response/come back in your head while the person is still speaking, just listen to what they’re saying.

3) Be question biased, rather than answer biased - asking questions develops critical thinkers, problem solvers and empowers our team to share their perspective and solutions. When we’re providing answers all the time we’re not developing autonomy or self-sufficiency.

4) Tough on the problem, kind to the person - you and your team will mess up from time to time. Bad calls will be made. When situations come up, focus on the problem and address the behaviours. One mistake doesn’t define someone. We’ve all made mistakes and learnt from them. Be clear on the path forward but kind.

5) Coach the person, not the situation - when a problem is presented to you, whether you know the answer or not. The situation is irrelevant. Your goal is to coach the person and get them from where they are now to where they want to be.

6) Own it when you mess up - the quicker you own it, the quicker you can go about apologising and correcting things moving forward.

7) It's not about being right, it’s about getting it right - always being right on your own doesn’t win you any friends. Working together, considering perspective and looking at data helps you make good decisions as a team. Perspective is everything.

8) Care deeply - you have to love the work and care deeply. About your team, yourself and all the people around you. Your focus as a leader is your people. Their your responsibility to nurture, support and help them prosper. That’s your role, if you don’t care deeply you will not be successful.

All the best

David

Resources Of The Week

• YouTube Video - The Power of Kindness by Simon Sinek. Simon talks about the power of kindness and the chemical reaction we have to acts of generosity. Oxytocin, the chemical responsible for feelings of love and connection, binds us as human beings.

• Book - Oz Principle by Roger Connors. The Oz Principle is the groundbreaking work that demonstrates the vital role of accountability in the achievement of business results and the improvement of both individual and organizational performance.

• Book - The Advantage by Richard Lencioni. Richard argues that the seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre ones has little to do with what they know and how smart they are and more to do with how healthy they are. Simply put, an organization is healthy when it is whole, consistent and complete, when its management, operations and culture are unified.  Healthy organizations outperform their counterparts, are free of politics and confusion and provide an environment where star performers never want to leave.

Quote of the Week

Last week’s issue: Navigating Change: the Rider, the Elephant and the Path

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