Michaela says " By being conscious you are stepping into the driver's seat of your life and no longer simply be a passenger in someone else's car."

Purpose in our lives comes about slowly. At times it just creeps up on you and reaches a crescendo and brings you to making a choice. Some choose knowingly and others are not awake or conscious to be able to read the signs.

It’s about self-leadership. It's you driving your own car. That's self-leadership.

You can't drive a bus with others in it unless you can drive the bus.

Conscious leadership starts with understanding that it is our own responsibility. to understand how we function and basically take the responsibility for our responses to situations and the way how we process situations.

It's easier said than done because we very often feel that we are self-aware and we are taking responsibility. But when we start digging into it becomes somebody else's fault or we start blaming people for what is happening in our life. So taking responsibility is based on self-awareness. And awareness of how we function.

Another big thing is understanding the difference between the context that we come from and the content that we work with. What that means is– what is my place of being that I'm proud that I am approaching things from? I can be approaching things from, for example, being angry, or being in that place of victimhood, or being in that place of aggressiveness. Understanding that if I am approaching a meeting situation with my team. From that kind of place, I am only going to create an atmosphere of aggression or more victimhood, Its understanding that.

The core of who I am when I show up in these situations is going to create my results. So if I know that I'm going to go into a meeting then I need to be conscious of how I put myself into this place . Its not just show up with whatever energy its I want to show up being confident, whether it is loving, whether it is understanding, whether it is in a state of collaboration. I need to be conscious of it.

So I want to be intentional about what place that I'm coming from approaching the situations. That is a big part of being conscious and understanding that context, how we show up who we are when we are approaching situations is really key to what we're going to create.

You've got to consciously step up and say, I want to be the leader, but I want to be and include these five or six behaviours that I must do day in and day out.

Another big part of being self-aware is, what is going on in your head.

What is the chatter?

That is beating you up or have you got an inner coach that is there to help you? Really understanding what is going on in your mind is another big part of being conscious and functioning from the place of being self-aware and more sitting in your center.

How the process within us goes, when we are creating our result is, we have got a sense of belief, which is very often subconscious from this belief, we think certain things, so beliefs thoughts, then thoughts create emotions. And we know when we get anxious, when we get nervous, and when we get angry. We feel it in our bodies, right? So emotions come up and then we are triggered.

 And then from emotions, which are affecting our behaviour, of course, and then our behaviour creates the result, right? That's why we say that we consciously or unconsciously create our reality because beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and actions drive results, 

Michaela Smith can be found at

michaela-smith.com 

linkedin.com/in/smith-michaela

Authenticity is our individual greatness. Which is our gift of being unique as human beings.

Up until we understand this and know how to express it in our behaviour we're not being authentic. On the contrary, we're existing through an imposter syndrome scenario.

It requires going within yourself and discovering what one is really passionate about and then using that in being intentional in every aspect of one's life.

'Be the best version of yourself' is an oft-heard phrase. What authenticity truly means is continually learning and growing every day.

So how do you bring about exploring and finding your authenticity?

The 'Greatness Engineering' way has a simple process called 'DARE'

D- Decide

A- Action

R- Review

E- Expand

In leadership authenticity, it all starts with the decisions we make. That decision leads us to take action. Which either brings us results that we planned to achieve or not. That's where one needs to review the results. This is the stage where learning for improvement occurs. And from that learning one expands to decide the next course of action.

What this process does, it helps you be more effective in your communication with others by establishing clarity in all actions. It puts forth your attitude which sets the tone of the relationships. Which then helps the leadership and oneself to be valued and appreciated.

 Mireille can be contacted at:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mireille-toulekima/

https://twitter.com/MToulekima

We've moved from the era of manufacturing to being knowledge-based. This impacts leadership. As such there's a critical gap as leadership hasn't quite bridged how to lead in a knowledge-based environment. And using tools prevalent in the manufacturing times simply don't work anymore. Coupled with this is the fact that employees, as people, have and are changing.

The gap as we see it in leadership presently stems from the perspective of how leaders view their teams. What matters is viewing them as people and their development as a priority. However what happens is that leaders tend to defer to shareholders and shareholders aren't into leadership. Their interest is the bottom-line. And shareholders believe caring about workers is going to cost them money. Instead of understanding that there is a better way of managing people that's behavioral based and one that would get them better returns.

Now we see change in leadership coming through, not top-down, but bottom up. Employees are not sticking around when they aren't getting respected and appreciated.

This is the catalyst that brings forth the need to lead from the heart.

And the heart has a mind!

As an author, I reflected back on what I had done in leading people and the insight was that I was touching hearts.

That validation happened when speaking to a world-renowned cardiologist who confirmed the science of communication between the heart and the mind. The research shows up that the heart has it own form of intelligence and is responsible for the feelings we feel and drives our behaviour.

A key research fact in the book talks about 75% of employees stating their stress is from the interaction with their boss. Whilst the same group states they like the work they do. So the interaction bit gets isolated and is identified as the cause. Looking at this objectively, leaders don't take into account how they make employees feel. This is a lack of sensitivity. Secondly, it's often perceived that the role of a manager is to find fault. Which results in an employee feeling horrible.

These two examples highlight the necessity of having a new orientation. One where the leader or manager is more of a coach. When one sees oneself as a coach one becomes an advocate for people and doesn't criticize.

This brings forth the bit about having positive energy. It's what helps one be more productive. In summary, if the attitude is right, it creates a happier feeling that drives productivity. Human beings are hardwired to thrive on positive energy.

The tip here is to listen more to your heart and not stay with the thoughts in your mind. Now when we hire people we're looking for brain smarts and nothing about the heart or feelings. We are now learning that there are two forms of intelligence. The heart is where intuition comes from. And the heart always looks out for what's good for you.

Find Mark https://markccrowley.com/lead-from-the-heart-duh/

It starts with being aware of the unconscious thoughts and beliefs that are affecting these three areas. And with getting clear on what's driving oneself. That's when choices materialise and from those choices, one can make changes. So if one believes that our thoughts and beliefs create our experiences, then if one changes the thoughts, one has different experiences.

The problem is that most don't know that their thoughts and beliefs are getting in the way. And the impact of this is significant. Overworking, over-functioning, and neglecting our health.

Digging into my own unconscious thoughts and beliefs helped me learn how they were blocking me and how I could change them.

An example-- is asking one the question to write down what they want to have a year from now. And that's where clarity happens as most focus on time. Time to take care of their health, time with family, and time to make an impact in the workplace.

From this one learns why they are doing what they are doing. That throws up choices. And those choices are then turned into action by putting a timeline to it.

This example highlights how important it is for one to get and be in touch with their inner self.

When we get clarity on what's important and the values that are dear, how to choose who I choose to be given the external pressures of what success looks like. It comes down to the choices one makes and gets to a point where all aspects of self are in balance.

Doing this requires having grounded confidence. Which is being comfortable with being uncomfortable and building skills and tolerance of taking the discomfort. This is the bit that helps with productivity. By identifying a set of activities that one is good at and one enjoys doing, and doing it more incrementally one increases their productivity.

As leaders when we operate from a place of deep self-content, even when we get triggered or have an emotional reaction, it's the grounded confidence that allows us to see the opportunities in the situation. People tend to gravitate to the calmness a leader shows in hard situations as that's an attractive quality. 

You can contact Moira at

www.moiralethbridge.com

moira@moiralethbridge.com

 Moving on to jobseekers specifically, the one thing should do is try and give smart answers to what might seem to be a ridiculously polite question. For example, in sales interviews, one is asked what animal would you be if you could choose to be so? And this gives an insight to the interviewer about how you think. In order to make an impression, you've got to answer this from the perspective of the interviewer.

 Going on to leadership what is your view on leading from within?

Leading from within is the ability to share stories that help you connect emotionally. It's the bit that connects hearts and minds. It helps encourage people to take the learning from the sharing of experience and then adapt and use it to their benefit in their way. This is the bit that all great leaders do.

 In being a great salesperson one has to develop the ability to listen, ask lots of questions so that the client's perspective comes through, and then walk the client through as to how the service or product is useful.

 The one takeaway for listeners is this-- believe in yourself and doing that comes from within you.

It's necessary, for a leader, to have a clear alignment between what we know and what we do. It's that bit which helps a leader provide good leadership to the team..

Leadership’s ability to connect with a higher purpose, to be courageous, and compassionate, things that are actually associated with spiritual intelligence directly impacts engagement.

Research showed that not only did leaders not embrace this fully, if the cultural environment was not conducive it tended to diminish the spiritual intelligence. The leaders researched had components of it but none of them were empowered to use it.

Inspite of changes all around, socially, behaviourally and business wise today, the one thing that deeply embedded in many working cultures is to use cognitive abilities even if it's known not to be effective.

Unfortunately using only cognitive abilities does not solve engagement. Which is the most important thing for a leader to have.

To have spiritual intelligence takes courage. It requires a leader to step away from the known pathway and undertake a self discovery journey of finding their inner belief.

The cause of this is that as leaders we're not taught this. On the contrary we're told stuff like this is out there and is not to be brought into an organizational set-up.

The key element of spiritual intelligence is to consistently be purposeful in actions and thoughts and elevate those around me and myself to do better. And this can't be done just with one's mind. It's heart-based. A feeling that comes from within you and as you feel it you think it. That gives you strength which is what creates the self-belief.

The reason why you need leaders that are heart felt and soul inspired is because they allow their teams to step out of the common pathways, knowing they will be safe and that it's expected of them to do so.

The only way to bring about this change is to influence and share with a younger leadership group. People who would be tomorrow's business captains. By arming them with tools that help them self-reflect and for them to understand who they are so that they can be their best selves.

How does NLP (neuro linguistic programming) work in leadership development?

What NLP does for an individual is bring greater and complete understanding about oneself. Aside from the common perceptions about NLP, what NLP does is help you understand how the human mind works.

As a leader when one is making decisions, where are those decisions coming from?

When I am reacting to something, where is that reaction coming from?

When I am communicating how much is the recipient understanding?

The level of awareness of such things increases hugely when exposed to the science of NLP and what it does is bring forth the leader in the individual.

Leadership is a behaviour and not a title. You behave in such a way whereby you clearly show, through your actions, that you are leading your own self.

You understand where your behaviour is exactly coming from. This level of awareness then brings about a change in perspective where when interacting with another person, you're trying to understand where their behaviour is coming from.

This is what helps leaders bridge the gap with their teams. The team members actually pick up on the behaviour of their leader. When a leader is leading with high self awareness leads to being inspirational for the team.

The resulting outcome of this, for companies, is that people become more inclined towards creative thinking.

In leadership it helps in being able to see the perspective which is bringing the behaviour. This occurs through heightened self awareness and going through a mental process of trying to understand why what was said or done occurred.

What increased self awareness does is that it empowers us to question. We don't resort to giving excuses or answers. Instead we attempt to understand where and what made the perspective come about. This questioning behaviour tends to rub off and that action, by default, works in developing the leadership behaviour in others.

Speaking on self-awareness, post pandemic, there has been a rise in self awareness en mass. People had the time to actually pause and look within and re-prioritise what matters to them.

Looking at what one has been doing and asking why. It results in discovering purpose. And that turns into the motivation to live and lead oneself in a way that is fulfilling to self each day.

For more on Naheed Khan visit: https://www.futurwits.com/

 A key bit about leadership is one has got to want to do it. With that comes the responsibilities of setting the scene, share a vision people can resonate with and work towards and show the values that matter. With that comes one aspect of being somebody who is willing to get stuck into difficult issues.

 All of which comes back to the key element of leading from within. Which is sometimes very difficult given the pressures of the outside world that push and pull you in all directions.

 As a leader you've got to really know who you are as a person. Your values and where you see your company going. 

 It's always best to follow what's coming from the heart that guides you straight. Operating from the head often leads to convoluted actions as the mind is often overwhelmed with the onslaught of information. Being true to one's inner self gives that consistency of action, of thought, which then makes it easier to share the vision or picture one has as a leader. Doing this helps inculcate and increase trust over time.

 Focusing on the staff and taking their perspectives and points and being inclusive in ensuring what matters to them is part of the company's activities goes a long way in earning trust and appreciation as a leader.

 A change in senior leadership in any company always shakes up the hierarchy. What helps is the empowerment that managers are given. It helps them to take on leadership responsibilities and thus showing similar values and work ethics that helps encourage innovation and new ideas which made the company a valued one.

 All part of being a ‘Buddhist CEO’ Contact Thane on

https://twitter.com/BuddhistCeo

https://www.thanelawrie.com/

Doing all of this comes back to leadership.

The more you grow your people, the more you grow your business. As people grow they have more capacity to run the strategies and input into strategic thinking.

In doing this what are the challenges?

When we look at the various challenges companies face and work our way to understand the root cause, we see it comes down to primarily being a people issue. In that, helping leaders to be more intentional is the key challenge.

Leadership is about being intentional.

How do you intentionally work towards a certain outcome is what matters? In this journey, how intentionally a leader can bring people along is what matters. It's this particular bit that creates challenge as there are many who aren't intentional or wanting to move along. Old habits and familiarity of doing things in a particular way come in the way. With intent it's important to manage it in order to ensure one is moving forward towards the planned outcome.

Focusing on balancing each of the four areas is what helps manage intention and provide leadership direction towards the planned outcome. Doing this requires being intentional about each aspect at a certain time and being disciplined in doing it.

The way to do this is to focus on the common goal of the company and then look at the rhythm and habits or the processes required. This creates a behaviour which helps leadership be intentional and balance the day-to-day requirements and strategic thinking and action.

Jeremy can be contacted on:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyhancy/

Should work be a hybrid, remote and in-office? Or should it be fully remote or go back to how it was by being fully in office?

These are the questions companies are battling through now.

 This makes it an opportunity for companies to actually change and re-shuffle things.

Let's take the example of how tight the labour market is. The recruiters are tired. They are not getting the skill sets they need, and when they do it's tough to get the right demographics, the candidates aren't quite keen. This is impacting recruitment significantly.

Even with these difficulties when we do get the right people and get them in the companies, do we enable them to be able to purposefully and efficiently do fulfilling work?

In both these scenarios the blockage is the recruitment and employee engagement systems that are in use.

Because of this progressive companies are using this war on talent as a situation to re-think and re-jig very many things that impact business performance.

This brings up the role of leadership.

It's important for leadership to look at how the data flows. Specially where workflows are concerned. Two key things need to be the priorities-- quality of the data and the utilization of it- in the strategic drivers of the business. Doing this requires a bit more than having a great data analyst. It requires having clarity on the business purpose and understanding how the strategic business drivers will lead to success.

Many a business is lacking on clarity of their purpose and social responsibility. It results in confusion.

 It's why having clear direction, communicating that direction to the employees clearly so that all at their respective roles are able to use the data and information effectively to benefit the company in a socially responsible way.

 Anna can be found at

https://twitter.com/AnnaMamalaki

https://www.linkedin.com/in/annamamalaki/

https://annamamalaki.com/

It started with the feedback one would receive on performance. The intent to improve oneself is always there. Coupled with that there were a couple of instances where talks on coaching and mentoring and how it positively impacts leadership crossed one's path. The intent to improve and the curiosity of how one could use coaching techniques, as a leader, set off this journey.

The start of coaching was all about seeking to learn how one could lead one's team better to improve performance. As that learning experience started one realised it was about coaching self. About self-leadership.

As a leader you've got to have strong character, grit and be passionate. These help in engaging and motivating the team. With that you've got to be compassionate, patient, and able to pace yourself as per your team. Not your individual speed. 

Where coaching helps is helping to understand the team better, listen to them, be patient and able to pace oneself as per the team.

Doing this takes a bit of effort. You've got to be accessible and make people feel they can be comfortable with you. Accessibility, openness and showing people that you are passionate about developing people is very important.

As a senior corporate leader, undertaking coaching helps in getting back in touch with the human side of things. In corporate, the focus is on results and the processes leading to that. Yet it’s the people who need to be directed and doing that requires empathy and compassion. Which is what being human is all about and that's the bit that coaching helps a senior leader re-discover about self and get better at.

Contact Ranjith at:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ranjithknair/

What better way than to share it with the person who got me started with episode #1....Antoinette.

Which brings us to what we both love talking about… the subject of self-talk.

Many aren't quite aware of the impact our self-talk has on our actions and reactions. Those actions and reactions then create the reality one lives in. That affects the leadership one displays. Whilst much has been written about how adversity brings out true leaders, this comes back to the issue of self-talk.

Overcoming obstacles or challenges occur when the internal dialogue of the leader is actually positive. It's about having self-belief and drawing upon that strength that helps a true leader overcome challenges and influence others. 

When we know what to focus on, we can ensure that our own self-talk is positive. Doing this requires taking cues from one's own body. That helps in understanding what is the underlying feeling that's causing the reaction one is feeling.

Feelings is what one needs to be in touch with and acknowledge. It's important to be able to understand where that feeling is coming from. Take anxiety or depression as an example. These are effects that have certain causes. It's important to acknowledge and understand where these are coming from. Without that, not only can these re-surface, but more importantly one's baseline feeling is one of unease. 

What's key in getting to the root of self-talk is to identify the trigger. Knowing what triggers it, allows one to get control and work through it. Doing this takes courage. Simply because you have to bring up and deal with unpleasant memories and feelings. 

You can reach Antoinette at

https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinettebiehlmeier/

It's about leading from the inner self. When you are connected with your inner self and are connected to that, you lead differently. 

Healthy self-esteem helps in empathetic leadership. The outer ego is the one that creates and drives self-comparisons. Comparing and contrasting with everyone around you.

In leadership what one sees is too much of ego driven behaviour. For example, one identifies a threat and reacts with a defensive strategy. That defensive strategy will differ from one leader to the other. The commonality is that both are fear driven. This is the key.

The question to ask is how can you live and lead without being fear driven?

The answer lies in transcending that fear by getting into your inner self. Starting with acknowledging one's strengths and weaknesses and being self-aware. Secondly, having a purpose and staying present to that purpose.

However, our humanness often drives us to make decisions which, in hindsight, we may regret. This occurs as we end up reacting through our ego because we are nervous under pressure. 

One of the keys is being able to be humble with oneself and others. It's this humility that helps to keep the focus on one's purpose and to accept failure and know oneself better. That leads to increased self-trust. That is, trust my ability to stay present to my purpose.

This realisation reduces moments of being ego driven and increases the time one is being true to one's real self. 

Going from this to the next stage of questioning if one is still holding back, one looks at if there's forgiveness. Forgiving self and others for whatever has happened in the past that's actually got one stuck in the ego driven behaviour. 

Ego is formed from the patterns we've created for ourselves through our experiences and environment. We carry those patterns into our work and leadership roles. Getting over it involves taking a hard look at the story of our self that we've repeatedly told ourselves and then deconstructing the bits that aren't reflective of what our real inner self is. 

Leading from beyond ego is about self-understanding, being purpose driven, being humble and trustful. It's about shedding those layers of ego that had got put on through the years by going through forgiveness, and ultimately, being compassionate. This results in gratitude coming up.

Put together, this drives one to become more of a servant leader.

For enquiries on Thor's book, contact him at:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thor-olafsson-b4a6a5b7/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/beyond-ego/

Autonomy to employees to do their day-to-day role is where it all starts. Specially those who are in customer facing roles. Giving them the autonomy to make decisions as they are interacting with the customers, instead of having to check-in with a superior at every stage, helps immensely.

This simple autonomy is something that is, often, either not explained to employees or not given. As a result the front facing employees often find themselves in situation where they feel stuck.

Delegation and empowerment are two areas that are often misunderstood and misused.

Delegation is giving the responsibility of an activity to another to do it instead of the manager doing it. Empowerment is giving the authority and responsibility to execute the full activity, as felt best, by that employee.

Empowerment is underpinned by trust. It's about trusting your people and letting go of your ego about the fact that the executive just may do a better job than the manager could have.

The key here is to take time and explain the scope of the activity or the role of the executive. That aids in having effective empowerment.

Trust is where it all starts. This involves 3 T's-- Training: you've got to train your people properly and long enough so that the person trained gets habituated with the process and equipment; Tools-- ensure the correct tools are provided; Trust-- as a leader spend formal time with your team. That one-on-one is what builds mutual trust and strengthens the relationship.

Rob can be contacted at:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertson-hunter-stewart-90538b1a/

https://www.robertsonhunterstewart.com/

https://twitter.com/stewartwrites

Graham Brown that's does brilliantly. A great communicator. He brings forth how storytelling aids leadership.

In business storytelling is not about fairy tales. It's about creating a connection using empathy. There's an art and science to storytelling.

One can use one word to communicate change or give a picture of what's happening. In that word itself lies the story as we all have various analogies in our memory that's triggered through reading or hearing that word.

As a leader this is very helpful as, often, you do not have a lot of bandwidth to communicate. The necessity of being crisp and clear in getting the message clearly communicated is a vital need. Using a powerful analogy or story helps you do this and gets people to understand what comes next.

If one looks at the psychology of storytelling the brain doesn't understand the difference between past, present and future. It doesn't have that concept. It only knows experience.

What powerful stories do and great leaders are able to do is to take an unknown future and connect it with a known past.

As a leader you can use these techniques to create change and help people understand.

Good leadership is good storytelling. It's about how you take the short form storytelling and package the unknown.

As people we consume stories because it helps us understand information through frames we are very familiar with.

When leaders fail in their communication is when they don't use a frame people are familiar with. They don't borrow what works and try and create something new and ends up creating confusion to the reader or listener.

In business there's this entire psychology of naïve realism that's present. We stop make believe because we think that's childish. We flip over to using data and logic. That's needed yet that's not what people buy into. People buy into the experience and within that packaging is the data and logic required to aid the decision making.

Today as society and leaders we are challenged to create this connection. A lot of the talk is about the future of work; how do we find meaning; how we create teams in this disconnected world; how do we create voices of diversity and so on. Storytelling is a great way of addressing these. Historically storytelling has been a powerful way of creating connections emotionally.

As a leader be being seen as a human, fallible, imperfect and not having all the answers gives a frame that helps people relate and accept. Leaders have to keep in mind that they are the brand where people are concerned. Be it a founder owner or CEO of a large company.

When it comes to creating and driving change it's all about how, as a leader, you are able to connect with your people at an emotional level. It's hard because you don't see it but you definitely feel it.

Graham can be contacted at:

https://www.pikkal.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamdbrown/

https://twitter.com/GrahamDBrown

During an M&A the focus is mostly on all the technical or the structural aspects of the M&A and the people are the last bit that one looks at. Yet people are the most critical part. 

There's one fundamental fact that we need to keep in mind. As human beings, we are resistant to change. The key here is that we tend to get into a routine and when that's disrupted we try to pull back to what it was like.

To get around this what helps is having the leaders get into a coaching mode. Using positive psychology with teams and groups. This helps guide people to make those shifts that are needed as the companies merge or are acquired.

It all comes down to making the people feel involved in the process as then when that feeling of involvement comes in then they tend to join it and the individual activities moves along smoothly.

Getting into a company and finding out what the real culture is, is a key challenge in the M&A space. This ambiguity actually creates an advantage.

In M&A everything is stated out in black and white. However when it comes to the people, it's ambiguous. It's how we, as people are, by nature. Understanding this helps create an advantage of knowing how best to create cultural fit.

A successful M&A works due to the people and how they have been involved and managed.

Rachel can be contacted either at:

www.fts-global.com

www.henkainstitute.com

www.racheltreece.com

Going into this, what's key to understand is, that given people have changed, the value propositions of organizations need to change. That impacts the strategy of a company. Which should change or be changing.

The changing value proposition is enabled by three things:

1. People

2. Processes

3. Technology

Technology is exponentially changing. It's impacting how we work. Processes need to evolve in order to aid achievement of business goals. To do this one has to lean upon the people aspect. People have changed drastically. Specially with regards to what they want for their lives.

An outcome of the effect of the pandemic has been a re-prioritization of what's important in an individual's life. That's led to a change in how individuals are approaching employment. Being able to work from home and be with family, and going back into office expecting more empathy in the culture, are two significant factors in this.

One can see many a company capitalising on this change by introducing multiple new systems. Technology and process wise. The aim being to utilise the disruption that's occurred in their favour. The things to utilise this opportunity to serve the new value proposition and purpose as a company.

Where companies need help is to see how these three- People, Process & Technology-- connect where their core business is concerned.

Contact Anna at:

https://twitter.com/AnnaMamalaki

https://www.linkedin.com/in/annamamalaki/

annamamalaki.com

Thinking that you can get better is the first step in being a better leader. In this coaching helps you become and remain a great leader.

The pandemic has impacted leadership requirements hugely. The state of flux creates makes it necessary for a leader have one's wits together and be agile simply because that state of flux is continuously changing.

The health care industry leaders are having this pressure first and having to adapt and evolve. Those who are unable to keep abreast are making mistakes with their teams that are showing up.

The analogy of a squeaky wheel is apt here. As a leader you're not pushing or pulling the wheel. You're coming in and oiling the squeaks whenever it occurs. That oiling of the squeaks is taking care of the human challenges a leader may face.

The human challenges are key here. Every individual member of a team is affected by anxiety caused by the pandemic. 

That's caused a key challenge for leaders now. Connecting and understanding each member of their team and what they are going through. Specially given that there are different stages, globally, with regards to getting back to the physical office and the remote working is still in play. Managing this comes down to how leaders ask questions. Asking specific questions gives insights into how a team member is feeling. That then helps the leader to know where and how to connect and engage.

Doing all this comes back to a leader continuously striving to improve oneself.

Adam can be contacted at https://www.linkedin.com/in/dradamharrison/

If you remove people from business, there is no business. Going back into history to the times when barter trade was practiced. Business was still between people. Each offering something of perceived value to the other. It's no different today. Business is all about people. It's still about the same perceived value. It's for people, done by people.

Over time we've given people labels. Employees, customers, vendors, partners.

Step back and look at the 'why' of the business. The classic purpose. Look at it now from the leadership aspect of being human. The starting point would be self. Self-leadership. Reflect on how I am leading myself. In this there is no right or wrong. The decisions we take through our lives, at a moment in time, is right for that time. The analytical part of our brain feeds us a choice based on the data of our life experiences. Coupled with that our instinct also kicks in to provide another choice. This is the point where we end up choosing between listening to our instinct, soul, intuition or swayed by the data-based choice. The latter occurs as that's how we are conditioned.

As a leader it's important to recognise the humanness in you. Simultaneously recognise that the other person too, has the same thing. As two humans you are coming from two different perspectives, with two different experiential bases, your viewpoints are going to be different. Being open minded to accept that both perspectives are right and then evaluating as to which one is more effective reflects out in behaviour.

It's this behaviour which then has an impact on all that you, as a leader, meet. It touches all and ripples out. It's this bit that becomes the key communication. Behaviour is from habit. Habit is nothing but a pattern from one's beliefs. So being human helps you lead yourself better which results in your behaviour impacting and influencing what you want the others to do.

It's the human side that connects.

The issue on this is the word selling. There's a conditioning that has happened to that word. Through our formative years we've had a lot of stuff inputted which our brain arranges without us realising. When we do become aware of this what we are doing is creating a cycling lane next to a highway, as an analogy. It's how we observe our thoughts.

In marketing there is a discipline quite extensively used nowadays called social selling. In that it's all about what the audience is feeling. It comes down to having insight into what the audience is feeling at the time when the brand communication is going out to them. In doing this it’s all about understanding what the audience is seeking and serving that in that moment in time. It's usually a theme that can be related or connected back to the product of service. What that does is it helps to catch the attention and interest of the audience whose mindset is automatically seeking more information. When a brand continuously does this, it starts attracting this audience regularly and that's the start of a relationship.

All of this is what comes through in the TripleM framework of Humanizing Business. Creating three key pillars of stories, data and content. The outcome of using the framework, for a brand, is that its marketing and communication gets a real human persona that makes the audience say, 'you understand me'. It creates reciprocity.

Reciprocity is where leadership connects. Understanding people, having empathy and understanding the diverse perspectives. 

All of this is summarised as experience. More specifically it's brand experience under which one has employee & customer experience, partner relationships, client account management and more. As an individual interacting with the brand you don't approach it in a silo. You feel the entire experience of interacting and using...]]>Through leadership and marketing, in business, bringing in the human aspect is what drives growth in today.

If you remove people from business, there is no business. Going back into history to the times when barter trade was practiced. Business was still between people. Each offering something of perceived value to the other. It's no different today. Business is all about people. It's still about the same perceived value. It's for people, done by people.

Over time we've given people labels. Employees, customers, vendors, partners.

Step back and look at the 'why' of the business. The classic purpose. Look at it now from the leadership aspect of being human. The starting point would be self. Self-leadership. Reflect on how I am leading myself. In this there is no right or wrong. The decisions we take through our lives, at a moment in time, is right for that time. The analytical part of our brain feeds us a choice based on the data of our life experiences. Coupled with that our instinct also kicks in to provide another choice. This is the point where we end up choosing between listening to our instinct, soul, intuition or swayed by the data-based choice. The latter occurs as that's how we are conditioned.

As a leader it's important to recognise the humanness in you. Simultaneously recognise that the other person too, has the same thing. As two humans you are coming from two different perspectives, with two different experiential bases, your viewpoints are going to be different. Being open minded to accept that both perspectives are right and then evaluating as to which one is more effective reflects out in behaviour.

It's this behaviour which then has an impact on all that you, as a leader, meet. It touches all and ripples out. It's this bit that becomes the key communication. Behaviour is from habit. Habit is nothing but a pattern from one's beliefs. So being human helps you lead yourself better which results in your behaviour impacting and influencing what you want the others to do.

It's the human side that connects.

The issue on this is the word selling. There's a conditioning that has happened to that word. Through our formative years we've had a lot of stuff inputted which our brain arranges without us realising. When we do become aware of this what we are doing is creating a cycling lane next to a highway, as an analogy. It's how we observe our thoughts.

In marketing there is a discipline quite extensively used nowadays called social selling. In that it's all about what the audience is feeling. It comes down to having insight into what the audience is feeling at the time when the brand communication is going out to them. In doing this it’s all about understanding what the audience is seeking and serving that in that moment in time. It's usually a theme that can be related or connected back to the product of service. What that does is it helps to catch the attention and interest of the audience whose mindset is automatically seeking more information. When a brand continuously does this, it starts attracting this audience regularly and that's the start of a relationship.

All of this is what comes through in the TripleM framework of Humanizing Business. Creating three key pillars of stories, data and content. The outcome of using the framework, for a brand, is that its marketing and communication gets a real human persona that makes the audience say, 'you understand me'. It creates reciprocity.

Reciprocity is where leadership connects. Understanding people, having empathy and understanding the diverse perspectives. 

All of this is summarised as experience. More specifically it's brand experience under which one has employee & customer experience, partner relationships, client account management and more. As an individual interacting with the brand you don't approach it in a silo. You feel the entire experience of interacting and using the brand. 

This experience is impacted and affected by leadership. Irrespective of the type of organization and its hierarchy the leadership shown creates the culture. Which impacts the experience that all stakeholders of a brand feel. 

All of this comes back squarely on the lap of leadership Making it critical for organizations to have the right leaders. Right here is a big word. It's defined as senior people who are constantly evolving and open to learning tend to lead very well. They can influence through the experience their behaviour creates.

Joy Link:

Link Tree : https://linktr.ee/JoyAbdullah

Toxicity in the healthcare workplace, unfortunately, occurs far too much. Looking back during my trainee days, one experienced it in the surgical department, then in family medicine. Today as one looks back the realization occurred that this toxicity is a consequence of doctors not being trained in leadership in medical school. Positions of responsibility are thrust upon doctors and it comes down to managing people with the inherent set of inter-personal skills that one has.

Such a scenario is quite common across workplaces. What most don't get is that there's a significant cost attached to this. Productivity wise it affects not just the individual facing the toxicity but the team around as all suddenly want to play safe, not make a mistake and generally the behaviour becomes one of walking on egg shells.

A 2013 HBS study on incivility and discourteousness in the workplace showed that 48% of people who felt incivility and discourteousness reduced their work effort. 78% were quoted as saying it impaired their loyalty to the organization. 25% took out the frustrations on customers. Add to this others who were not directly in the line of such toxicity. It's not hard to imagine the cost of this to any organization. 

In the medical profession this gets further compounded as doctors rely on the references to get into the next role. As a result of this many don't speak out. Ending up with presentism. Being there but not adding any value through individual contribution.

This brings into focus the importance of teaching self-leadership. Learning to lead yourself teaches you about the impact of your behaviour on others. Being able to get this into part of the professional learning is one way of helping people to be more self-aware and about leadership.

Adam can be contacted at https://www.linkedin.com/in/dradamharrison/

Such an experience brings up questions about purpose. 

Understanding the event is a defining moment is where one starts with regards to purpose. The question is does that experience define who you are as a person?

It gives you two choices. One to become the victim and lose your path. The other is to take the lesson and decide to that learning into action.

In discovering your purpose, it starts with understand what makes you, you. The way you've been designed. This goes into knowing and accepting your values and beliefs. In crucible we say the 'keys of your vision are in the ashes of your pain'. It points out what you really and truly enjoy doing. Picking that up and turning that into a career brings living your purpose.

 Which will take your to craft your vision. Doing that, you need to be aligned with your beliefs and purpose and be very passionate about it. Simply put, your vision will become your driving force and matter to you as it's how you are delivering your purpose and creating impact. 

Speaking of impact, its where you need the right people around you who help you to deliver. From a self, point of view, you have be in touch with your beliefs and values. From an external point of view, you discuss with trusted advisors like coaches, or close family members or a mentor to get a perspective. Doing this allows you to take a objective decision and drive the impact you wish to achieve.

Warwick can be contacted at https://crucibleleadership.com

What's the key when, as a leader, you're leading and are under pressure?

Inspite of the best plans, things do go wrong. They do so because technology can play up, key people may have personal emergencies and not be able to be at work. Such unexpected gaps occur. What helps is the training and the experience one has in managing the pressure.

In addition to the work related pressure leaders often have pressures from the social recognition they get for their leadership. A certain expectation is created about leadership performance. 

The key here is to ensure that your mind is focused. Then the pressure acts as a driver of efficiency. It acts positively in one's performance. Being focused comes from loving what you do. It becomes a part of your self and what you do. 

Pressure comes in different forms and it's about how, as a leader, you process the information and where you keep your focus. Focusing on the event helps ease the pressure.

Inderjit can be contacted at

inderjit.singh@aviationanalyst.net

At a foundational emotive level humans react in the same way to the world. So, trust is actually an emotion. Lot of people think of it as a moral or ethics as it gets rationalised in that way. However, as a deciding factor it is an emotion.

What this means is that trust is shaping our lives just as other emotions are also shaping our lives. The hint here is that emotions are very important in our social lives and so is trust because it is allowing us to create connection, cooperation and as a result of that collaboration.

Trust is the social foundation of the magic of humanity.

Whether they show that in their behaviour or not people want to be trusted. We are wired to trust. 

The question is how much trust is too much?

The reality is that there is a sort of balance that needs to be achieved. We seek reciprocity in our relationships, and it applies to trust as well. Trust is a very strong variable of influence, and it can be used in various forms. 

Trust is a catalyst for change.

It's the required ingredient in innovating, changing, and transforming. Trust here relates to our own abilities and in the abilities and competencies of others.

As humans we are geared for equitable distribution. However, when you make it all about just an interaction then the equitable bit goes out. This is currently playing out in the global economy as we can see.

As an individual we often think what difference can I make. This is where self-trust becomes important. The act of trusting ourselves can and does have a huge influence on the lives of people around us and we're not even aware of it. 

Trust is a beautiful force of self-actualisation and the foundation of a fulfilled existence.

Our emotions are very strong drivers and at times we don't even know or realise why they are driving us. Then there's rationalisation. With trust the rationalisation is about doing the right thing. Leading to being trustworthy. That's a cognitive process. Being trusted is an emotive process.

Trust is not an absolute. It operates on a spectrum. Everyone starts a different point where trust is concerned. It comes down to balancing that feeling in relevance to the context of what one needs trust. Often, without realising, as people we are at the mercy of our emotions. 

The new book 'Reset' is a story about how businesses can now be embracing a different scenario. It's about two types of companies. The type A kind of company who realises this is a moment of opportunity with regards to understanding there is an urgency driving important transformations. Where there's urgency these types of companies are making necessary changes and in 5-10 years these companies will be thriving. The other is the type B company. This type of company sees the pandemic as an inconvenience. Ending up doing the bare minimum to wait out and go back to what and how they were operating before. These kinds of companies are missing out on reinvention and delivering on innovation and transformation that they have been talking about. These types of companies will be seeing a drop all around in the next 5-10 years’ time.

Philipp can be contacted at https://philippkristian.com/

Speaking of strategy, the size and type of an organization does not impact on the strategy it has. The difference is how long it takes to design and implement the strategy. Strategy is the way to get to the vision. It's the priorities and focus areas that an organization manages on a daily basis in order to reach to its vision. 

A commonality of strategy, across all types of organizations, for its leadership is the daily struggle of balancing the long-term goals with the situations occurring. Understanding if it's a crisis or a change that impacts the strategic plan and being able to be flexible in adapting accordingly. This is where leadership comes into play. Identifying the pathway that will take the organization through to its goal.

What helps is perspective. In a large organization, as a leader, one might be in charge of a strategic project that's part of a 3-5 years of change. Giving one's best to ensure that project milestones are achieved well and trusting that the other interconnected projects will occur as well helps in keeping to the vision and the plan. Doing this involves empowering the team in order to ensure everyone gives their best.

Getting this done involves clear two-way communication that's more of a conversation. Aimed at ensuring each person understands the value of what they do and how it helps another colleague. Once that understanding occurs it creates value to self in terms of the benefit of the daily tasks and work one does. Which results in motivation and impacts productivity and engagement.

This leads us into understanding how purpose and profits connect. 

For this discussion we'll describe purpose as solving an issue that society has. Be it individually or as an organization. Patagonia is a great example of leading through purpose. As an entrepreneur or a start-up, looking back at the need that birthed the business provides purpose. When purpose is lived and acted upon daily it becomes the culture and that brings in the profits simply because customers and clients relate and resonate with the purpose of that organization.

Today business has moved or been pushed to address purpose from the ESG (environmental, social and governance) requirements. The large organizations are representatives of and for people and have to take this into account in order for investors to acknowledge their value. This shift is driving organizations to now be more focused on creating profits with purpose.

Alex Brueckmann can be contacted at

https://www.linkedin.com/company/brueckmann-executive-consulting/

It's about understanding what is driving one's feelings and emotions. As that then drives the behaviour they show. We don't recognise that it's we, ourselves, who get in our way and sabotage ourselves.

20% of change comes through becoming aware and having greater consciousness. 80% happens through practice which helps to develop core mental muscles. Building mental strength helps us to intercept our hardwired mental response of flight, fight or freeze. Acknowledge them and let them go and then shift the mind to the sensation in the body. Taking it forward means being more empathetic with ourselves and then exploring and innovating around what are the options and ideas that we could use to help with the situation.

Here's where we often mistake sympathy as empathy. Empathy helps you to have a positive feeling about yourself and move forward. Whereas sympathy is feeling sad or agreeing with your feelings. What is critical in understanding all of this is judgement. As humans our biggest saboteur is that we tend to judge. We judge everything starting with ourselves. Using discernment helps take into concern factors to look at the issue at hand.

All of this stems from the mindset one has. A growth mindset enables one to be open or secure in being vulnerable to explore and move forward.

Lesz can be contacted at https://www.lifelurn.com/

To lead oneself there has to be clarity in terms of what one wants. It starts with who are you and what kind of leader do you want to be and what kind of life do you want to lead. It's absolutely necessary to have a strong vision for oneself. Without purpose it's hard to stay motivated and to be able to get up when knocked down. The purpose is the motivation to try and go forward. It helps knowing how one wants to be perceived as a leader. That then brings up the required behaviour which helps in creating that perception.

The starting point is with defining self. Often professionals define their identity as their job function or designation. Which is not them as a person. 

Two key behaviour traits help in defining oneself. Tenacity & grit which help one to stay focused all the way, through thick and thin, to reach their goals. Here it's important to remember that the body, mind and emotions are all inter-connected. What happens to one is going to affect the other. Starting with the words you use and the thoughts you have. Our thoughts and words translate into action which then shape your outcomes.

The next is understanding and controlling your emotions. As humans we experience a range of emotions. When those are negative you should be able to recognise it as such and then cap the time on that emotion. Without that it has the ability to impact your action.

Then comes movement or how you carry yourself. Posture impacts moods and thoughts. When one is mindful and aware of how posture plays and makes an effort to use the right postures, it impacts emotion and behaviour. With time this becomes a practiced habit that shows up as a behaviour.

Try this quick exercise-- put your head down and talk about your week. Hear the tone of your voice and the words you use. Then do the opposite. Look up and repeat exactly the same words describing your week and hear the tone and the words. Hear the difference! Listen to this in exercise in the podcast.

We can't speak the same negative words in a downcast tone whilst looking up simply because that's how our body and mind is wired. When we look down and speak, we are closing ourselves out. Whereas when we look up and speak, we're opening ourselves up. This is part of our body language. Doing this is actually connecting with yourself. 

Lastly celebrate yourself. It can be as small as just giving yourself a piece of chocolate. Celebrate who you are and always reward yourself.  

You can contact Elizabeth at

https://lizleecoaching.com/

What does that mean?

People try to show how effective a leader they are by being hard on the people they lead. Not realising they are never going to meet the goals of the strategic plan if people aren't buying in. People don't buy-in when they don't feel supported, understood, and appreciated. Certainly, holding people accountable is good but not in a way that makes people want to quit their jobs. 

Most people at their jobs know what they are doing. If they are given certain parameters and allowed to do what one has to do to make it work, they are going to make mistakes. That has to be looked at not with malice but with the perspective what was the effort and intent in that activity. The reaction and feedback should be based on that.

Leadership is giving everyone the same opportunities, treating them fairly and helping them succeed. It's about knowing your people and knowing them well. 

From a leadership perspective it's about remembering the good leaders and what they did in order to be a better leader yourself. The flip side is bad leadership. If you approach that with a learning mindset you get to know what to avoid as a leader.

Reflecting on your leadership helps understand that you're leading people. Understanding how you are leading yourself helps in knowing how you can get the best out of your team. With that comes the communication with regards to thinking about what and how your people will take the message and think of. That helps in judging your communication style and words accordingly. Focusing on communication to the middle management and spending the time on ensuring the message was communicated as intended helps in getting the team buy-in.

You can find Chris at https://www.lighthouseleadershipservices.com/

It's about being authentic and being yourself. Which translates as being honest and true with yourself. Related to that is the area of personal discipline around hard work, passion, drive and application. They all form the DNA. These can't be taught. However they can be improved upon. People can achieve goals provided they are honest in putting in the hard work to be the best version of themselves and not try be someone else.

In corporate this comes through a lot as comparisons. All of which is in one's head. It's key to know how to be oneself. Simply because, be it sport or work activity, it has to be done by oneself without help from anyone else. Which means being able to know one's strengths in order to play well. That's the critical aspect. Being yourself and being true to your potential without comparing with others mentally. 

Taking the analogy from cricket, as in going out to bat in front of a huge crowd, you are just you. All you have is your partner and yourself and the ability to leverage of that teamwork. However, at the end of that day when you get back. It's only you and the person you see in the mirror. Which is yourself. That's where accountability to self comes in. You know your game best and you know if you have really applied yourself and given it 110% through effort and application and committed to the opportunity. It's about taking ownership of what you do and don't do and being accountable for that.

The learning from sport that really applies in corporate environment is in the focus. As a great leader you've got be focused on giving the credit to the team when things go great and when they don't take personal responsibility for that. The other learning is that of taking care of the process. Doing that ensures the outcomes are achieved. 

Feedback is another area that helps performance. In feedback it's key to remember to accept all feedback and not to pre-judge. Then deciding which bits of the feedback to keep, which to discard and which to feed-forward. This last bit is about specific feedback around what they person wants to do. This is where opinions are cast aside and constructive inputs are provided on what one is working on so as to be of help.

The key takeaway in all this is about knowing what is it that I need to be doing and knowing to be better, at what I do, each day. In this process the self-discipline aspect plays a huge role and is what can be taken from sports into corporate leadership performance. 

Simon's details

http://integrityvaluesleadership.com/

https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Gaps-Simon-Taufel/dp/9389109256

This is also an important part of being a leader of people.

As a leader it's important to accept vulnerability. It's okay to not have all the answers and none of us do. The best CEOs can talk to anybody. To be human is the most important aspect of great leadership. Showing the sincerity through what one is doing. Expressing oneself authentically and vulnerability with it.

When one shows how one is fitting in their lifestyle wellness program it goes a long way in encouraging others. That authenticity creates transparency and makes the leader seem human.

When one leads through authenticity one creates an environment of trust. That engages and gets interaction and participation and helps in seeking solutions. Trust starts with trusting and believing In yourself. It then follows on to trusting and believing others. To be a great leader it's important to have belief in others. To be able to see the innate good that is there in each one of us.

Each one of us approaches diversity through our own cultural lens and experience. A way that's helped is through the cultural acclimatization sessions. These interactive sessions help people to share about their cultural experiences and learnings and in turn become helpful knowledge for people running cross-functional diverse teams.

Learning about the differences is helpful in many ways. Such as punctuality. Keeping time on the dot is valued greatly by some. Whereas in other cultural setting being 10 minutes early or 10 minutes late is still being punctual. So, when you understand this, you're able to see the perspective through the lens of the other person's cultural make up. What this does is create an acceptance space to take on board other points of views and perspectives. 

A simple act of wishing someone in their language creates a bridge of familiarity. As leader having self-awareness and humility helps in creating space for acceptance of diversity. One thing that helps in this is undertaking training in recognizing unconscious bias. 

When we accept diversity, it helps business growth. Having the same lens or understanding leads to discovering common areas which leads to arriving at consensus easily. Most importantly senior leadership needs to be seen walking the talk i.e., showing acceptance of diversity through inclusiveness. 

Lorraine can be contacted at

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorrainelee8/

View Live on Purpose and see its how you can best help others

https://liveonpurpose.sg/

Many organizations approach alignment as telling their people about what they should be thinking. The common practice is getting the people to think the same way with regards to the mission and task at hand. The real challenge is about the alignment of action. If you can agree on where you're going, what does success look like and understand that, you can then agree on the actions you need to take as a team.

This is key as everyone is coming and going in different directions. It's important to understand the individual difficulties in getting to a common point. That assistance helps in ensuring the actions line up towards the common goal. It's very important to appreciate where people are coming from in order to understand their state of mind and provide the assistance required.

For leaders today it's critical to understand what their people are feeling. At different levels of a company the challenges are different and that creates a totally different state of mind. Understanding this, knowing how their team is looking at the challenges and the thoughts they have on it, helps leaders in creating the necessary alignment for the team to pull together as one.

The other critical point about alignment to keep in mind is that:

A) it's not binary

B) it's not fixed

There are degrees of alignment and it's momentary. 

Alignment is foundational for any company, or clusters of groups of people, can achieve anything. The more one works on alignment the more one is bound to succeed. Not to mention it drastically reduces the benefit leakages and stress & frustration. 

Leaders need to have patience, ask open ended questions and listen to the feedback. It helps bring out the challenges or obstacles and how those can be managed. Addressing those with positive suggestions creates the grounds for good alignment to occur.

Today with the way technology is evolving there is a real opportunity to look at how do you implement and utilise technology to help leaders collect and organize opinions so that one can work on the areas where there's non-alignment. 

Lesz can be contacted at https://www.lifelurn.com/

The background research leading upto the book, showed that upto 30% of senior business leaders felt they were depressed. Following this up with the in-person interviews brought out specific stories that's captured in the book. A key finding was that senior leaders are often working across cultures and laws over various countries which impacts decision making and makes it complex. Whilst some leaders might be comfortable in discussing and arriving at a collaborative decision, the culture demands a more authoritarian approach of being provided the solutions sans the discussion.

Another interesting finding was that the vast majority of senior leaders do not want to talk about this loneliness to their superior or company. This stems from the fear that it would not be favourably looked upon and could be detrimental to their career. 

Sharing the personal story is to provide strength to others on how to be able to lead oneself. To be able to accept there is a problem and then seek out help is actually displaying strong self-leadership. Nick's personal story illustrates how the loneliness affects senior leaders and guides the reader to having the steps of taking action.

The key message, for all good leaders is, be transparent and observant. Be willing to be vulnerable in order to create transparency and connectivity. Through that an important conversation might just happen which would be of help to an associate, a colleague or someone connected to you.

To purchase the book go to: https://executivelonelinessbook.com/index

For more information about Nick go to: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-jonsson/

Everybody is a leader. Today leadership has come about to be more about mindset and attitude. Way back the classic older leadership style was about 'we don't trust you'!

Leadership creates the environment that brings about learning. The more the people learn they grow. This is an aspect that shows trust. Trust that's reciprocal. It creates an energy that drives everything. 

This energy is actually the thoughts of the people. How optimistic are they, how positive are they, how do they feel they are involved in the mission.

Fear works in singular cases. Not always and we're not best under fear. We're not creative, open-minded or making the best decisions. We are just reacting. So leadership by fear brings a leader a very limited amount of the potential people have. 

It's important for people to feel respected and to be made to feel involved. When this is in play psychological reciprocity takes place and in turn a leader gets respect.

The new book highlights the awakening we humans are having. We're learning more and more what we humans are capable of. 

We're learning about our inter-connectivity with our earth and people. That's creating a spiritual awakening. 

Now leadership is no longer about control. It about allowing the flow to occur and to trust. It's what's resulting in hybrid work situation as well as in academia. It's bringing about more focus on the individual leader and on self-leadership.

Self-leadership is believing in yourself and having the discipline to be true to yourself.

Gary can be reached for book purchases at https://www.garyhensel.com/

How did you get started into lifestyle medicine?

Back in the day when I was mentally preparing to be the 3rd generation in the family business, I learnt that my father was harbouring a few diseases inside him! These are the silent diseases like high blood pressure. You don't realise they are there. This affected me and resulted in me making a complete change where my career was concerned. It brought home the purpose of wanting to lead people to thrive and have healthy lifestyles.

In leadership having good health comes from understanding and living a healthy lifestyle. Doing that involves taking care of the body, mind and heart. Its what brings about effectiveness in leadership.

It starts with understanding the value of taking time-out. It allows one to check in with self and actually do checks that help rejuvenate oneself. 

A key check is about moving our bodies. Research has shown us this. For a leader you need creativity. One of the concepts is called divergent thinking. Researchers at Stanford studied this coupled with 20 minutes of walking and 20 minutes of sitting. The data shows that after walking divergent thinking goes up 60%. Other research show that we can get into the alpha or theta level brain activity after exercising. To get strategic and creative thinking going, as a leader, it's key to be exercising.

The other key lifestyle input is to give yourself enough sleep. Sleep deprivation impact’s reaction time. So, appreciating sleep and giving oneself enough sleep impacts the body and mind positively. Sleep is foundational in one's health, happiness, creativity, and productivity.

Leaders are passion and purpose driven. In order to keep those going it’s important for them to take steps to honour their own body, mind, and soul. Doing this everyday it becomes a question of what’s priority and how much time is is will I spend on that priority. So, it drives you to make time for it. Instead of reacting to everything that comes and takes up one's time. The last bit is creating social connections such that, as a leader, you mentor and grow people who carry your ideas forward. This takes energy and how one maintains that energy is what matters.

Beth can be contacted at http://wellness-synergy.com

The Lifestyle Medicine Handbook: An Introduction to the Power of Healthy Habits can be purchased at

https://www.bethfratesmd.com/books

In leadership listening with empathy is how you develop trust. When one notices a drop in the listening, or the leader's attention being occupied with something else, seeds of mistrust start creeping in subconsciously. 

The fear of being judged the barrier that blocks active communication. When one is afraid of being judged, one doesn't want to share anything, and it leads to no communication. Research has shown that when leaders become adept at empathetic listening, they increase their performance by 40%. 

What is empathetic listening?

Empathetic listening goes a bit further than active listening as it includes the entire person. For e.g., observing the body language is part of empathetic listening by using one’s eyes. Then using one's heart to listen. Neuro linguistics shows that we listen through our hearts, ears, and eyes. 

The importance of listening with your heart needs to be highlighted. It actually means feeling what the speaker is feeling during the communication.

To do this it's necessary for us to become aware how we listen. For e.g., in a conversation, if one has an agenda and wants to make a point, then chances are one is not either actively listening nor being empathetic as the focus is on trying to speak one's point. 

This is a key point of difference between great leaders and good leaders. Great leaders are able to use empathy to see the point of view of the speaker and use that to engage meaningfully. Thus, enhancing the communication. 

A benefit of empathetic listening is that it often helps the speaker, who might be seeking answers, to find what they are searching for in that conversation. Having the skill to listen always helps. Especially in the circumstances we have all experienced. As a leader, cultivating this leads to better engagement and performance.

Unfortunately though, it feels as if empathy is on the decline. It's coming about due to technology now being the primary means of communication, instead of physical person to-person communication. 

When a leader practices empathetic listening, by physically giving time to team members, it helps create an environment of safety for those team members. That strengthens the relationship, impacting trust and performance as well as it making the person speaking, feel appreciated. 

When the Titanic sank there was the usual why and how. It came down to three key findings:

1. Everyone was convinced this was the best ship ever built that there weren’t enough contingencies. It was one of the reasons as to why there weren't enough lifeboats.

2. The command structure-- Neither the captain nor the next in command was out there looking out for potential risks.

3. Taking too much time to respond to the situation-- when finally, action was taken much of the catastrophe had occurred and all one could do was salvage the situation.

This resonates a lot with how leadership in business is often playing out today. We are always overconfident of ourselves and we don't expect things to go wrong until they do.

This is part of having a fixed mindset.

Connecting this back to our talk on the eco-system, it's important to note that these three impacts the eco-system significantly.

Whilst we know that having plans, processes and structure in place and running efficiently, we don't ensure the whole is ticking smoothing. It occurs due to the silo approach in each area stemming from leaders working independently and not connecting. To have a healthy eco-system, it's important to have that connect, because in a healthy eco-system everything is interconnected.

In an organisational context, we end up seeing that we have too much of a fixation one thing. Taking the analogy of the Titanic, let's build the best ship. Yet nothing was mentioned about the capability of the crew! There was no focus on the capabilities of the crew as the ship was a state-of-the-art ship and the crew didn't have to do anything.

However, since it’s the best ship, in an organisational setting, the people it attracted where the best people you could hire. The question of have them trained gets swept under the carpet since they are, individually, the best performers.

Such linear thought process leads to failure as there are always limitations.

Instead, if one were to look at it as a series of interconnected activities that create the whole, sort of like looking at a cobweb, where even if one or two strands break nothing happens to the entire web.

Linear thinking makes us think or believe that it's only that one thing that can affect. However, reality is that it isn't so. It's a gradual build-up of various stressors and risks that culminates at a point in time in creating the catastrophe. So being attuned to the signs that come up and taking course correction and remedial measures is the sign of forward thinking or being open minded.

Whilst it is not possible to factor in everything it is possible to be agile, in terms of mindset, i.e. being able to respond to a situation without getting flustered. This is a skill. In leadership this is often taken as a given. Creating simulations of potential crisis helps create a habit that helps leadership at a point in time when crisis occurs. 

Each of these have their own eco-systems. Starting with the fish tank which is more akin to us people putting in our efforts to maintain it on regular basis. Then you have the aluminium basins which is slightly easier maintenance and finally the natural environment where the eco-system runs itself. 

In each of these you'll find that fish thrive. However, when you look at it from the perspective of effort that needs to be put in, just as in organizations managers and leaders have to do, to make sure the organization thrives and the employees are able to be productive, this becomes an excellent analogy to show what an effective eco-system really is. All three of them have their own eco-systems. It's just that they have different levels of intervention.

This provides a learning. The tank inside the home is a controlled one where growth is only possible when externally provided. Whereas in the natural eco-system growth occurs with a purpose for that eco-system.

From an organizational perspective the learning here is that one has to accept the fact that one can't control everything. By allowing people to do what they need to do and digressing here to add that as human beings we instinctively know what to do, there will be mistakes yet there will be progress and growth. It comes about from that same instinct whereas people we want to succeed.

When we accept that things will occur and it might not be exactly in the way, as a leader, one had foreseen it and yet it's on objective then we begin to understand and create a natural ecosystem.

Whenever people speak of eco-systems there's a misperception of that vis-a-vis culture. An organizational eco-system is a bit more than culture. Culture is the people piece and around it comes all the other components of skill, structure. If one is fiddling with anyone of these, one has to look at the effect on all components and take those into account. Our habit is to look at one thing and see if we can fix that. However, as an organizational eco-system its all interconnect and inter-related and it's not about fixing one thing but the sum of it all.

An eco-system is not just the people. It's also the processes, systems, structure. All of these things together make up the eco-system. In an organization when we speak of an eco-system, lots of people put a humongous amount of effort into creating a right culture. And there is nothing such like a right culture. That becomes the problem. If a culture suits the organization based on its context, there will be systems, processes and people that suit the organization. Usually, we make this mistake of seeing someone else's eco-system and think that's working great there and will work equally well too.

She helps people step into their self-leadership by helping them re-connect with themselves. Convinced that to be truly connected to oneself, you also have to be connected with Nature, Nature and mountains are an integral part of the work Gerdi does - both online and in the Great Outdoors.

On this episode of Soul-Inspired-Leadership we dive into the importance of being connected with Nature. How we can benefit from this connection and why it is important when we want to be authentic people, authentic leaders in life and at work.

Gerdi can be contacted at

https://daregreatlycoaching.com

When a leader senses that a team member or two isn't really connected with the others what are some of the things they could do?

One of Jason’s games is a set of cards that gets people to play simple question and answers. Asking each other 36 questions over 45 minutes and it leads to creating better understanding of each other. The key thing about trust is how you ask more vulnerable questions that allows people to share their personal experiences in a group because then other people see themselves in that person. What happens is that people focus on answering the questions or listening and they stop noticing the differences. That brings a stop to the made-up stories one has told oneself about the other person as they now have actual fact that they have heard from the person concerned. What this also does is help an individual to create a how-to-work-with-me manual by putting together questions the answers to which would help the person choose to work with the other.

Given that we're all working remotely at the moment how do we connect better?

Strategy is key. Recognizing how we are feeling, in the group sessions and in the one-on-one discussions, is key. In the pandemic disconnection creates loneliness. So reaching out an supporting the individual in a way that helps that individual is essential for a leader to do. A simple way to do this is to ask the group who helped whom in the past week for example and how. Hearing one say how the other helped creates a huge amount of emotional engagement. Being connected and feeling like one belongs are the key in having better connection between team members. 

Understanding basic human needs and working on that helps in creating the conversations that get team members to build trust and connectivity.

Having these conversations bring about clarity and transparency of goals and processes and fosters accountability and responsibility willingly. It helps the leader keep the team engaged, connected and motivated specially through such times and ends up creating the required performance.

Contact Jason on

https://jasontreu.com/services/

On one hand, as a leader, there's a responsibility to others by grooming them and developing them and most leaders get on board with this quite quickly. On the other hand there is the financial performance delivery that is expected from the leader. The consequences of these are quite significantly different. The former is within certain parameters of being seen to be a better or worse leader and it impacts only the leader individually. Whereas the latter impacts the individual's capability and career. It's much more visceral and it results in behaviour, from leaders, that ranges from being productive to extremely harmful.

The people side of leadership has softer consequences whereas the performance consequences are much more intense.

This is what makes moral leadership a bit tough.

If we take a look at some of the corporate shenanigan's that are being highlighted, we can trace it back to the simple fact of people being under pressure, trying to deliver what is expected and not being the one left holding the can. That's where the morality part, as a leader, kicks in to actually lead and say unethical behaviour is not encouraged or supported. 

The question then becomes where does moral leadership fit in?

In some way’s organizations have to take responsibility for including a moral imperative in the way they act, they incentivize, and they discuss. What that does is that as a leader if I face this pressure the moral responsibility by the organization tells me that it has me covered and empowers the leader to do what is right.

Business is more than money. Yet on the flip side it's the money that shows how strong the commitment from a corporation is to morality. 

How does one help leaders to prioritize morality?

It starts with having an extremely high level of trust and openness in a group for truth to be on the table. To get to morality there needs to prevail security and confidence in order to talk about it. To do that it's necessary to balance the personal development conversation with the commercial conversations and create a unified conversation that includes the commercial pressures. 

A fair amount of balance and facilitation skill in creating and guiding these conversations is required. Simply because the discussion has significant impact on the future of any organization.

Chris can be reached at:

 info@chris-atkinson.co.uk

 www.chris-atkinson.co.uk/



Can you share a bit on this?

The main one is this whole perception of getting stuff done. Ticking off the tasks becomes a priority instead of focusing on the soft skills like interpersonal and collaboration. This actually makes one be off balance. It not only impacts the leader but everybody around them. One has to be intentional in taking time to look at the interpersonal relationship and the communication within that. Specially in this year where everything has been virtual. Communication has taken on an entirely new importance and there's more focus or spotlight on that skill.

Two things one can foresee. One is that in 2021 we are going to go back into the workplace and through this year a lot of the conflict, with regards to not being able to get along with people we don't like, is going to come to a head because we have been working from home and that's been the excuse in not dealing with it. The second is that the virtual work is here to stay and we all have to figure out how to keep those relationships strong in a new way. We are all in a mentality of being in the survival mode. There's going to a time when we will have to be much more intentional about our workplace relationships.

There's a positive and a negative in this as people come back to the workplace. The intentionality can be to serve oneself better or to actually be relieved that one is not stuck at home and therefore stay on in the workplace longer that usual.

Rewinding a bit there's a bit about finding out what matters to you and not doing as others expect of you. This bit, of of am I making the choice or is the choice being made for me, came across over time. The realisation came that it was a bit of both. In hindsight it's great to see the courage and bravery one had in taking the transformative step. Whilst it was scary and extremely tough, it's truly beneficial to have made that change. 

This is where having a coach really becomes very useful. As a coach helps you set time aside to simply reflect back and see if you are on course and if not what you need to do. Thereby creating or re-creating the intentionality. 

Jennifer Chapman can be contacted at

www.ambitionleadership.com

On that note how have you taken the current environment and challenges as a leader?

Having to work from home was a massive transition. Most of us have not worked from home before. It started with bringing the team together when we weren't physically together. Fortunately, everyone responded to the change quite well. 

As a leader I continued leading the way I lead in a different format. Focused on connecting with people. Today we're more connected than when we were in office physically. 

People appreciate being connected especially when one is working remotely, and that personal interaction helps. 

This connectivity is an important point.

In the office it's sort of taken for granted. Whereas using virtual formats one has to create that environment and feeling of being and getting connected. The key here is that we are now purposeful in making time and having more meaningful conversations. 

Changing environment doesn't mean changing what you do. It means changing the context of how you do what you do. In coaching it's coming out that executives find their leaders more conscious about connecting. The social interaction, in connecting, adds a lot to an employee and it also means a lot. Understanding the social bit is key. It's not all work related but regular social conversations that help set the environment. It creates the added value of understanding one's wellbeing and health in all aspects. As a leader one works at it in terms of enabling this. This impacts efficiency and productivity. 

As a leader how we encourage and model the wellbeing matters. It shows up in how we lead people and shows up in the team mentality. Looking at it collectively in terms of how we help and hold each other up. It’s key, as a leader, to look after oneself so that one has the mental strength and physical wellbeing to then help others. 

Leadership is about leading yourself first. To be able to lead effectively one has to have the energy to do so. One has to build that energy level up each day and taking positive action for self helps in that. Self-nurturing is particularly important in self-leadership. Maintaining one's physical and mental wellbeing as well has having the self-discipline to do what good leaders do.

A billion jerk is somebody that is a high achiever. Usually very bright because they're brilliant in their area of expertise. They give big results for companies because they're very driven, but it causes a lot of turnover and stress in the company. It’s because usually they are interpersonally blind.

When you get brilliant people sometimes, they just focus on the brilliance and that often tends to feed the ego. Making the behaviour worse. The question is do we do we run with the inputs of what they produce and what they do or do we go we need to sort this out.

Sometimes they fire them because they have caused too much turnover, too many complaints about the employees. Sometimes their roughness even affects customer service. For example, there could be a heart surgeon that was very sought after and the hospital wanted very much to bring him in because he has such international aura. So, they bring him in and, indeed, he's a very good heart surgeon. But the nurses complain his bedside manner is horrible for example, so that could be a case.

These brilliant jerks don't understand why people are complaining because it is their blind spot. So usually one needs to bring that perspective through caching. Saying we find that your approach is a bit raw with people and that too many people are leaving your department. So we propose a coach to guide you. At times they get offended. They think this is a betrayal here. It brings out two types of such people.

One who is put off by having a coach. The other is where they get offended that they haven't got one. So when they're challenged then they don't actually want one. They just want the ego recognition of it.

Then once you start showing them the areas within themselves they need to take a look at that's when they don't necessarily react to the case kindly. I had an English executive that I coached and he introduced me to all his office because having a coach was like a prestige item. I also coach a French executive and she would even take me around the office but never introduced me because then she would have to explain that she has a coach. So you have to see whether the company perceives coaches as a remedial or as developmental or as a perk and that also helps to know how this leader will receive you.

I would say the brilliant jerks generally don't think they need it because they are high performers. Despite them being very brilliant there's an angle that they don't see and usually that angle is the interpersonal one.

In the beginning you can ask them why do you think your I'm here? That’s to see if anyone has spoken to them about this issue. If the boss has spoken to them you can see if things have been clearly said or not. Sometimes it’s necessary to have a pre conversation that has not taken place. The other conversation is around the question of can this coach really help me or not?

What I do is not tell them that they need to be coached. I just ask them what the reasons might be that I'm there. Through that I get awareness. Then is there negative information that might be deterring them from the career. That is in the organization. If they don't know I could propose to do some research work for them how they're perceived. What would make the relationships more productive and then see if they still want to do a coaching or not? They're usually a high-powered individual and very smart so I let them make a decision but I guard the objectives.

It's critical to get the feedback because sometimes it's a surprise and other times expected.

It just depends who it is and how they perceive the world as you rightly mentioned before I think that sometimes they know they're creating havoc, but they think their ability they can get away with it.

It's one thing to be aware. It's another to actually change your behavior to something more productive...]]>What do you mean when you talk about brilliant jerks?

A billion jerk is somebody that is a high achiever. Usually very bright because they're brilliant in their area of expertise. They give big results for companies because they're very driven, but it causes a lot of turnover and stress in the company. It’s because usually they are interpersonally blind.

When you get brilliant people sometimes, they just focus on the brilliance and that often tends to feed the ego. Making the behaviour worse. The question is do we do we run with the inputs of what they produce and what they do or do we go we need to sort this out.

Sometimes they fire them because they have caused too much turnover, too many complaints about the employees. Sometimes their roughness even affects customer service. For example, there could be a heart surgeon that was very sought after and the hospital wanted very much to bring him in because he has such international aura. So, they bring him in and, indeed, he's a very good heart surgeon. But the nurses complain his bedside manner is horrible for example, so that could be a case.

These brilliant jerks don't understand why people are complaining because it is their blind spot. So usually one needs to bring that perspective through caching. Saying we find that your approach is a bit raw with people and that too many people are leaving your department. So we propose a coach to guide you. At times they get offended. They think this is a betrayal here. It brings out two types of such people.

One who is put off by having a coach. The other is where they get offended that they haven't got one. So when they're challenged then they don't actually want one. They just want the ego recognition of it.

Then once you start showing them the areas within themselves they need to take a look at that's when they don't necessarily react to the case kindly. I had an English executive that I coached and he introduced me to all his office because having a coach was like a prestige item. I also coach a French executive and she would even take me around the office but never introduced me because then she would have to explain that she has a coach. So you have to see whether the company perceives coaches as a remedial or as developmental or as a perk and that also helps to know how this leader will receive you.

I would say the brilliant jerks generally don't think they need it because they are high performers. Despite them being very brilliant there's an angle that they don't see and usually that angle is the interpersonal one.

In the beginning you can ask them why do you think your I'm here? That’s to see if anyone has spoken to them about this issue. If the boss has spoken to them you can see if things have been clearly said or not. Sometimes it’s necessary to have a pre conversation that has not taken place. The other conversation is around the question of can this coach really help me or not?

What I do is not tell them that they need to be coached. I just ask them what the reasons might be that I'm there. Through that I get awareness. Then is there negative information that might be deterring them from the career. That is in the organization. If they don't know I could propose to do some research work for them how they're perceived. What would make the relationships more productive and then see if they still want to do a coaching or not? They're usually a high-powered individual and very smart so I let them make a decision but I guard the objectives.

It's critical to get the feedback because sometimes it's a surprise and other times expected.

It just depends who it is and how they perceive the world as you rightly mentioned before I think that sometimes they know they're creating havoc, but they think their ability they can get away with it.

It's one thing to be aware. It's another to actually change your behavior to something more productive because there is a certain type of behavior that made them very successful. So they're not going to release that behavior very easily. They really have to see and have support in those behavioral changes that will get them to be even more successful than what they are today. Be able to see the the bigger picture of how to help the people in the company and how to help the company overall and not just about their department or their revenues.

Brilliant jerks are very bright, but feel that they have to achieve constantly. They have a huge pressure on themselves. When someone achieves and does not fail it acts as a trigger. It's like a threat. It's like it has a direct impact on them and their reputation and status. So they get very angry and fight. It becomes emotional where they criticize the person not the task and they don't give them feedback. The person that didn't make the job or did correctly succeed. They don't give them the feedback because they're so annoyed that will help them succeed. And I think that's a big difference between a brilliant jerk and an inspiring leader. The brilliant jerk comes from a gut reaction perspective and has a very negative in a sense reaction because they feel threatened to some degree and the more inspirational leader really adapts. His leadership agility has this person failed because they're incompetent or they're not competent enough. They need to develop certain things do succeed the project or are they not motivated? A good leader explains what is acceptable and not acceptable then the leader themselves just need to walk the talk.

I've had a leader that is so smart that he would get aggravated with anybody that asks a question that he thought was really not very well thought out. But sometimes they need to just be aware that something that's extremely easy for them is really a challenge for somebody else so. That's the key. It's to focus on themselves rather than the wider picture of people around them. That they can succeed better as a leader if they make all their team perform better. 

You can contact Katrina at:

https://mkbconseil.ch/

All leaders are managers. Yet not all managers are leaders. Managers who aren't leaders manage processes.

In essence you gather that information from subject matter experts, collate it and put that together. The next step for a manager is then to implement. This is where the issue of leadership starts. The desire for those people to produce what they need to produce in order for you to actually put it together as a strategy or plan won't be as strong because you're not influencing them as a leader would. 

Let's start here.

You have a strategy. You have everything built up all nicely. Now what you need to do next is to have that strategy implemented in the most effective way.

This is where the difference between being a leader or being a manager occurs.

When a manager wants to go from point A to point B vis-à-vis a leader who wants to do the same but in the most efficient effective and speediest way.

So, my analogy with the Mercedes. In business the petrol are the people. Using the high-octane super fuel or in other words the right people and mapping the closest freeway to the destination is equivalent to motivating the people creating the environment for them to operate in a good way.

A manager simply manages that process and is not focussed on the people. It just wants to get from point A to point B. It’ll never get there as quickly and, in some cases, won't even get out of the driveway due to lack of leadership.

Whereas a leader organizes the people and implement things. Without implementation It's like leaving the Mercedes in the driveway.

Implementation by influencing people is what separates leaders from managers.

Fairfax was only 26 and a fifth-generation heir to the media empire bearing his family name. He led and lost a multibillion-dollar public takeover bid resulting in company founded, by his great-great-grandfather, slipping away from family control after a hundred fifty years. This incident led him to examine not only his shortcomings and losses but also his life principles.

How did you find yourself at that that moment after it all fell over?

My dad died an early ’87. He was in his 80s at the time and launched a $2 billion takeover to ostensibly bring the company back to the ideals it was founded on. Things went wrong from the start. Other family members sold out in the Oct. ‘87 stock market crash. By the end of ‘87 we had an unsustainable level of debt. Australia got into a recession at the end of 1990 and the company went under.

Coming back from this was tough. One of the challenges was that my whole sense of self-worth and identity was wrapped up in the family business. I felt like I let my dad and family down. Felt I had created friction within the family. In my mind what made it worse was the comparison with the founder of the business. I felt like I had let everyone down.

The question then was what am I going to now? A former media Moghul who is unemployable. Ironically, my faith helped. From my perspective, I believe God loves us unconditionally. He doesn't need stuff from us. I think, we're all I created beings and so we have intrinsic worth in ourselves. That's an important Paradigm for me. Having a loving wife and kids helped tremendously.

Little by little I was able to do things. I got a job at a local Aviation Services Company in Maryland doing financial and business analysis. From there moved on to executive coaching. Then I got on to non-profit boards in my church and the kids private school board. From there eventually ended up in Crucible leadership.

It was a journey. It was the validation step by step finding my path back and gradually rebuilding a sense of self-worth.

What actually started to help you move forward?

Part of it is just forgiving yourself. I mean, we all make mistakes mine would just like really public and on the front page and I guess most of us don't have that. Part of it too is I'm pretty hard on myself. I think a lot of us are but realizing like I was 26 at the time.

How do you then move forward from forgiving yourself?

How do you get out of that sort of headspace where you think ultimately you want to find a reason to get up in the morning? What is something that I can believe in? For me, it was was a long process. Eventually Crucible leadership occurred, I had to give a sermon so I went with this.

What was amazing is that somehow my story seemed to touch people. Who, weeks and months, later said, your story really helped me by being open and vulnerable.

So that really was a huge shift in my thinking. I began to write a book, blogs, and podcasts. Focused on Crucible leadership and using your pain for a purpose.

We have Beyond The Crucible where we hear all sorts of stories from the abused, to Navy SEALs paralyzed and people losing a business.

As we say, you're living a life of significance, which means a life on purpose dedicated to serving others and it's something that like is rooted in your own values and beliefs and what you think is important then it's it makes it easier to move on you forgiving yourself, but you're pursuing something in life that you're passionate about that in some ways helps other people. There's something about that focusing on helping others.

When you go back to the young Fairfax 26 years of age taking over the media conglomerate, what's the difference in purpose...]]>Warwick Fairfax is the founder of Crucible leadership. The firm guides leaders and companies in turning business and personal failures into the fuel for igniting a life of significance.

Fairfax was only 26 and a fifth-generation heir to the media empire bearing his family name. He led and lost a multibillion-dollar public takeover bid resulting in company founded, by his great-great-grandfather, slipping away from family control after a hundred fifty years. This incident led him to examine not only his shortcomings and losses but also his life principles.

How did you find yourself at that that moment after it all fell over?

My dad died an early ’87. He was in his 80s at the time and launched a $2 billion takeover to ostensibly bring the company back to the ideals it was founded on. Things went wrong from the start. Other family members sold out in the Oct. ‘87 stock market crash. By the end of ‘87 we had an unsustainable level of debt. Australia got into a recession at the end of 1990 and the company went under.

Coming back from this was tough. One of the challenges was that my whole sense of self-worth and identity was wrapped up in the family business. I felt like I let my dad and family down. Felt I had created friction within the family. In my mind what made it worse was the comparison with the founder of the business. I felt like I had let everyone down.

The question then was what am I going to now? A former media Moghul who is unemployable. Ironically, my faith helped. From my perspective, I believe God loves us unconditionally. He doesn't need stuff from us. I think, we're all I created beings and so we have intrinsic worth in ourselves. That's an important Paradigm for me. Having a loving wife and kids helped tremendously.

Little by little I was able to do things. I got a job at a local Aviation Services Company in Maryland doing financial and business analysis. From there moved on to executive coaching. Then I got on to non-profit boards in my church and the kids private school board. From there eventually ended up in Crucible leadership.

It was a journey. It was the validation step by step finding my path back and gradually rebuilding a sense of self-worth.

What actually started to help you move forward?

Part of it is just forgiving yourself. I mean, we all make mistakes mine would just like really public and on the front page and I guess most of us don't have that. Part of it too is I'm pretty hard on myself. I think a lot of us are but realizing like I was 26 at the time.

How do you then move forward from forgiving yourself?

How do you get out of that sort of headspace where you think ultimately you want to find a reason to get up in the morning? What is something that I can believe in? For me, it was was a long process. Eventually Crucible leadership occurred, I had to give a sermon so I went with this.

What was amazing is that somehow my story seemed to touch people. Who, weeks and months, later said, your story really helped me by being open and vulnerable.

So that really was a huge shift in my thinking. I began to write a book, blogs, and podcasts. Focused on Crucible leadership and using your pain for a purpose.

We have Beyond The Crucible where we hear all sorts of stories from the abused, to Navy SEALs paralyzed and people losing a business.

As we say, you're living a life of significance, which means a life on purpose dedicated to serving others and it's something that like is rooted in your own values and beliefs and what you think is important then it's it makes it easier to move on you forgiving yourself, but you're pursuing something in life that you're passionate about that in some ways helps other people. There's something about that focusing on helping others.

When you go back to the young Fairfax 26 years of age taking over the media conglomerate, what's the difference in purpose there? We were talking about that shift earlier. A lot of people get caught up in what they think is their purpose, but is it really their purpose?

That's an interesting question. I was living my dad’s purpose in some ways. I was living somebody else's Vision. You just can't live somebody else's vision no matter how many how noble it is.

I'm living my own and that to me that's coming from a purpose. If you feel like it’s an obligation to do, its probably based on all the environment around you, what you grew up in etc. When you move into your true purpose that comes from within.

The Voyage of discovery of your vision starts with an examination of your own soul. Which means your own beliefs and values and that could be religious, philosophical, and spiritual. We're all different. We all have values and beliefs that we pay attention to. There's a funny aside in coaching that often happens with busy executives. It is about leading a life that's not in harmony with their values and beliefs. They run the risk of comprising those values for the sake of profit.

Warwick can be contact at https://crucibleleadership.com/

How do you see this with people who are struggling and stuck in a bit of a bind as to where they are and starting to realize where they need to be or want to be?

Very often in the corporate world we have an idea that as a CEO or a senior leader you've got to be a certain way. Take charge, no-nonsense, confident, know everything, appropriately dressed, not hair out of place with a plastic smile. Pretend you know everybody’s name and make sure your assistant knows the birthdays and all.

I think part of authenticity is very scary. To be yourself, to throw off the plastic marks, and they reject you. That's so scary as it’s like they're rejecting your soul.

It's funny actually . On our podcast Beyond The Crucible we had this youngish guy, maybe he's just turning 40. He wrote this book the millennial whisper. His hypothesis is that Millennials are looking for authenticity in a lot of senior folks. the people that don't want to lose the Next Generation and what do they want? They want authenticity. They want transparency. They want vulnerability. They don't want the plastic smile. They want you to actually want a relationship with them enough to know the names of their spouses and what they like to do for fun on the weekend. I mean, they're craving authenticity.

So there's a huge amount of pressure from the young up-and-coming employees for authenticity. It's one of the reasons why people keep talking about it.

Senior leaders can be extrovert or introvert. They can be studious and intellectual. They can be in all shapes and sizes all backgrounds all personalities, but you know just be who you are because people are more likely to follow you.

It does take courage. It's that brave leadership aspect.

There's only one soul and that provides you the consistency and balance. It doesn't change. It’s your head that changes things based on what's going on at the time and who you need to please the most. That leads to inconsistency of leadership.

One of the things that people hate is the inconsistency of leaders.

That’s authenticity that's why the craving for it because it creates consistency. It creates balance in leadership.

One of the things we find in Crucible leadership is you can't sometimes control what happens. An example on my show recently, was a navy SEAL getting paralyzed from a training accident. In this particular case it took him a long while to bounce back in terms of his emotional and spiritual side. He ended up overseeing a vets Clinic where they had some of the latest technology in mirroring to help vets to get as much movement as possible. So, it was some purpose to that. Our life weaves in many ways. And we just need to look at the positive aspects and how we can best contribute.

Warwick can be contact at: https://crucibleleadership.com/

Jodi also looks for ways to make more space for leadership conversations in the community. Towards that, she facilitates round table conversations for entrepreneurs and each week co-hosts a podcast called ‘Here’s My Story’—a podcast that showcases real business stories. You can also find her at the mic as lead singer of a band ‘The Waffles’.

You talked about being honest and in your podcast, you talk about stories that honestly bring out leadership and the elephant in the room.

Could you expand on that?

Honesty's a funny word. Sometimes people just assume you mean honesty as opposed to dishonest. Like lying. The tagline of our show is ‘real honest business’ and it really pairs with the real and it is a fine line between the two because you can't just blast into a room and say all the things without any amount of consideration or diplomacy or tact.

But I think the other end of that spectrum also gets shaved off far too much where there are all these weird sort of leadership platitudes that have developed over the years that are not only problematic, but I think they're damaging to the person and the organization. Like where leaders feel like they have to know everything, or they have to have all the answers first.

I've had clients say, oh, I don't like asking for help, and I always have to stifle a giggle.

My view is that leadership is literally an act of coordinating help. That's what leaders do. Leaders are not top-notch individual contributors. Of course, that's often how they get there.

What is weird is this, ‘I should figure it all out and then let my people know’ perception. It’s not only stressful, but it also diminishes the development of those people who aren't getting the opportunity to think through things plus it's harder to keep them engaged. There's just a long list of things where I think leaders struggle to know: how much to share; how much to call out the elephant in the room, and how to do it in a way that doesn't cause more problems than good.

I acknowledge that it's tricky. But too often the answer becomes – ‘Well, I'm just not going to have that conversation’. It’s either all or nothing. It’s either a tell all or a do-nothing, say nothing situation. This occurs because people say well, I don't like conflict. By not having this first initial conversation you are actually laying the groundwork for greater conflict in the future when it again arises because it has not been addressed.

To me it's like saying well, I don't like getting cavities filled. So, I'm not going to floss my teeth. Well, I think it's exactly the same thing because these initial conversations are akin to flossing your teeth. If you do all the flossing, you don't end up with the cavities. Taking a bit more time to do it properly and then you're solving any potential problems.

I think it's the time people imagine. I found my way to the facilitation part of the work that I do through being in weekly leadership team meetings of an Architecture Firm where I spent 17 years.

It was an interesting place. But in those meetings, I would watch them and observe what they were doing. I remember this one very distinct time whilst facilitating, the two principals of the company thought they had just made a decision. One was talking about a project. The other was talking about one of our employees. They both thought they had just made a decision and had an agreement on an issue. So, they would have both walked away from that conversation thinking that they had agreement. Then...]]>Jodi Hume has made a name for herself facilitating complex leadership conversations with for hundreds of growing entrepreneurs and companies throughout the US Europe and Australia working with countless organizations including Exelon, John Hopkins, and Teach for America. Judy works one-to-one with a small number of clients and is always looking for ways to make better leaders and become more involved.

Jodi also looks for ways to make more space for leadership conversations in the community. Towards that, she facilitates round table conversations for entrepreneurs and each week co-hosts a podcast called ‘Here’s My Story’—a podcast that showcases real business stories. You can also find her at the mic as lead singer of a band ‘The Waffles’.

You talked about being honest and in your podcast, you talk about stories that honestly bring out leadership and the elephant in the room.

Could you expand on that?

Honesty's a funny word. Sometimes people just assume you mean honesty as opposed to dishonest. Like lying. The tagline of our show is ‘real honest business’ and it really pairs with the real and it is a fine line between the two because you can't just blast into a room and say all the things without any amount of consideration or diplomacy or tact.

But I think the other end of that spectrum also gets shaved off far too much where there are all these weird sort of leadership platitudes that have developed over the years that are not only problematic, but I think they're damaging to the person and the organization. Like where leaders feel like they have to know everything, or they have to have all the answers first.

I've had clients say, oh, I don't like asking for help, and I always have to stifle a giggle.

My view is that leadership is literally an act of coordinating help. That's what leaders do. Leaders are not top-notch individual contributors. Of course, that's often how they get there.

What is weird is this, ‘I should figure it all out and then let my people know’ perception. It’s not only stressful, but it also diminishes the development of those people who aren't getting the opportunity to think through things plus it's harder to keep them engaged. There's just a long list of things where I think leaders struggle to know: how much to share; how much to call out the elephant in the room, and how to do it in a way that doesn't cause more problems than good.

I acknowledge that it's tricky. But too often the answer becomes – ‘Well, I'm just not going to have that conversation’. It’s either all or nothing. It’s either a tell all or a do-nothing, say nothing situation. This occurs because people say well, I don't like conflict. By not having this first initial conversation you are actually laying the groundwork for greater conflict in the future when it again arises because it has not been addressed.

To me it's like saying well, I don't like getting cavities filled. So, I'm not going to floss my teeth. Well, I think it's exactly the same thing because these initial conversations are akin to flossing your teeth. If you do all the flossing, you don't end up with the cavities. Taking a bit more time to do it properly and then you're solving any potential problems.

I think it's the time people imagine. I found my way to the facilitation part of the work that I do through being in weekly leadership team meetings of an Architecture Firm where I spent 17 years.

It was an interesting place. But in those meetings, I would watch them and observe what they were doing. I remember this one very distinct time whilst facilitating, the two principals of the company thought they had just made a decision. One was talking about a project. The other was talking about one of our employees. They both thought they had just made a decision and had an agreement on an issue. So, they would have both walked away from that conversation thinking that they had agreement. Then when they enacted those things the other one would have been like why did you do that? What did we agree? We talked about it this. No, we didn't! Yes, we did! And so on.

So, when you just check in and take the time to make sure you're on the same page, by bringing a healthy dose of curiosity to the conversations, you can really save a lot of time later.

I have come to learn that asking questions when you think you already know the answer to is an incredibly important part of leadership because of the validation aspect of it. There's also the advantage of comparing the filters with which different people use do deal with the environment around them. People can watch the exact same movie and interpret it very differently. So, being brave enough to ask the questions, that you're afraid are going to make you sound stupid helps you get over that need to look like you already know.

However, be careful of the way you approach this and the words you use. Things like, ‘repeat back to me what you heard’. It feels very like you're in kindergarten! It’s patronizing. On the contrary there is a technique that uses posture to creativity. Kind of like leaned in, eyes a little bit wide and saying ‘oh, how did you see it? What was your interpretation of it?’

This has the right vibe to it. There is a neuroscience behind what happens in the brain when your value feels threatened which is incredibly useful to understand as a leader. For example, something as simple as a supervisor saying, ‘can we talk in the conference room for a minute’? This makes your brain immediately respond with an ‘oh no!’ You never imagine that they want to pull you in on a special project, you always imagine the worse. Our brains go into that fight or flight kind of panic, which means that you literally don't have access to their more nuanced part of your brain. You cannot hear or think in a really nuanced kind of way.

So as the leader, when you talk about addressing the elephant in the room, the way parents have stability if their toddler's throwing a fit, and they don’t throw a fit and kick and scream and match the toddler. Instead you have the awareness that my three-year-old really needs a nap. I'm not going to yell at them about this because they're cranky because they're tired and they need a snack. That’s the kind of awareness to have and realise that this person is a little overwhelmed right now with these hard things I'm trying to share with them. I can’t expect them to handle it beautifully right now. You may need to give them a little bit of space.

I think that's the thing, if you share something with someone and they have an emotional reaction, that doesn't mean you messaged it badly. just hold space in that conversation to say I know this is a lot to take in. I want to give you some time to think about it. Let's reconnect in a couple of days to see how this is going. It’s holding the calm and projecting that.

If you freak out because they freak out, then they're going to freak out more and it just won’t go well. You have to know that there is always a way to have the harder conversations with people.

There's a biology that cannot be skipped. Just being accepting of the fact that some people are going to have that extreme reaction. Recognizing that something is happening helps as you don’t always know what’s happening in someone’s life that day.

It's a skill set that good leaders have, because they're putting more energy in connecting with people. It's more the connection to listen so they can get closer to that person and understand better.

I think people are so afraid of the uncertainty of someone else's emotional messiness in that particular moment, that in order to seal themselves, they go all armoured up, thinking, I'm just going to go in and be tough so they stay tough which is energy sapping. The key is to go in with a flexible mind and try to connect in a way that gets to the problem but in a diplomatic way

I'm sure your listeners are probably interested in being good leaders for the obvious reasons but for the opportunity cost as well. That is, the more a person is managed badly, the less they produce because of the emotional reactions to the bad leader.

These reactions sap the creativity and energy to perform.   

Jodi can be contacted at https://jodihume.com/

What is your take on self-leadership being important to leadership?

Essentially what it means to me is that we have enough desire to lead a team or lead a family. Whatever it is that we're leading the first and foremost thing we need to do is have enough awareness that we are important too as leaders. So, having a sense of self-importance is sort of step number 1. If we're not taking care of ourselves, and this is more of that inward stability, if we're not able to harness our self-importance and work on our self, on a regular basis then how are we going to be that example to others? How are we going to be able to swiftly move through those obstacles that come up and the problems and the concerns that other people have in order to be able to get them through to the other side? Or to just create your own energy. 

In order to have high energy, as a person, you've got to have that foundation built and that is certainly a soul inspired type of scenario. You're connecting your spirituality, your soul, your consciousness with that human experience of being able to iterate life. If you're in a leadership role this is more important than ever. It is able to do that in practice. 

So, what you're saying there is that focus of getting the best out of people as that's the leader's role. 

This brings in the concept of behaviour. People recognize us not so much from the standpoint of intelligence or intellect but from the behaviour you display as a leader.

People are going to model their own behaviour after what they're seeing from their leaders.

If a leader has a short fuse, then they're creating an environment for their people to act the same way. As a leader by being centred and being very intentional your behaviours are going to show rock solid foundation. People look at that and start modelling their own environment after it because they believe that's the expected behaviour.

As a leader you want to get results from your team. You want their behaviour to have direction. When you create an environment through the core values, through the culture itself, that sets the rules dictating behaviour. It results in the correct behaviour that you want your team to show.

Getting to know this was by educating myself on the skill sets of leadership. One of my biggest heroes of all time is John Maxwell. I was around 25 years old and working at a car dealership as a salesperson. I also had my degree in criminal justice and was interested in police administration. I was at a yard sale and saw John Maxwell's book on 21 laws of leadership. Thinking this might come handy in if I want to be in administration someday, I picked it up and fell in love with the concepts in those laws. It actually became a textbook for my team leader meetings that I had every week with my team leaders. I took each one of his laws and created a little lesson out of it. 

Its what people say and do in the workplace that matters. We're humans. As a leader you've got to be constantly looking for ways to get better so as to to have the behaviours that your team starts picking up on.

You wanted to be a good leader. Therefore, you did the things that make you a great leader. You talk...]]>We're speaking with Jennifer Bulkley who owns Jen X Enterprises and Breaking The Ice Consulting. She is an audio impactor and holistic consultant. She ditched a structured self-will corporate company for her new mission in life pursuing a life of freedom and self-authorization in order to help others Break Free of their own Illusions and lead a truly authentic life.  Jennifer's has a lot of experience in the entrepreneurial space in building and scaling multiple businesses from scratch and she's an expert in sales. She loves leadership and having a culture friendly company where everyone enjoys themselves. She's a dedicated self-development practitioner and a soul shifter. 

What is your take on self-leadership being important to leadership?

Essentially what it means to me is that we have enough desire to lead a team or lead a family. Whatever it is that we're leading the first and foremost thing we need to do is have enough awareness that we are important too as leaders. So, having a sense of self-importance is sort of step number 1. If we're not taking care of ourselves, and this is more of that inward stability, if we're not able to harness our self-importance and work on our self, on a regular basis then how are we going to be that example to others? How are we going to be able to swiftly move through those obstacles that come up and the problems and the concerns that other people have in order to be able to get them through to the other side? Or to just create your own energy. 

In order to have high energy, as a person, you've got to have that foundation built and that is certainly a soul inspired type of scenario. You're connecting your spirituality, your soul, your consciousness with that human experience of being able to iterate life. If you're in a leadership role this is more important than ever. It is able to do that in practice. 

So, what you're saying there is that focus of getting the best out of people as that's the leader's role. 

This brings in the concept of behaviour. People recognize us not so much from the standpoint of intelligence or intellect but from the behaviour you display as a leader.

People are going to model their own behaviour after what they're seeing from their leaders.

If a leader has a short fuse, then they're creating an environment for their people to act the same way. As a leader by being centred and being very intentional your behaviours are going to show rock solid foundation. People look at that and start modelling their own environment after it because they believe that's the expected behaviour.

As a leader you want to get results from your team. You want their behaviour to have direction. When you create an environment through the core values, through the culture itself, that sets the rules dictating behaviour. It results in the correct behaviour that you want your team to show.

Getting to know this was by educating myself on the skill sets of leadership. One of my biggest heroes of all time is John Maxwell. I was around 25 years old and working at a car dealership as a salesperson. I also had my degree in criminal justice and was interested in police administration. I was at a yard sale and saw John Maxwell's book on 21 laws of leadership. Thinking this might come handy in if I want to be in administration someday, I picked it up and fell in love with the concepts in those laws. It actually became a textbook for my team leader meetings that I had every week with my team leaders. I took each one of his laws and created a little lesson out of it. 

Its what people say and do in the workplace that matters. We're humans. As a leader you've got to be constantly looking for ways to get better so as to to have the behaviours that your team starts picking up on.

You wanted to be a good leader. Therefore, you did the things that make you a great leader. You talk about developing people with the concept of leadership and taking ownership. That desire to do it is what helps you have a successful business because you've got people who are putting in properly and they are engaged given how they are led the right way and leading themselves the right way.

When leaders have the energy, it reflects in the team. If you have low energy the team will have low energy. The key is to be very conscious.

I was in was the service industry and it was really about creating an environment where my team had the buy-in into the company Mission. When they feel a sense of ownership, they feel that buy-in, and they feel that sense of identity that they belong they will do the work for you times 10. Just giving them this group identity is one of the big moments. The other is knowing the people that you lead. It's a bit like a kind of military thing. I'm not going to go into battle with people who I don't consider my brother. The more you know your team as friends and use systems where they feel the love, they feel recognized the more engaged they will be. It all comes down to the culture and core values. Tying that into the to the buy-in gives that sense of identity. 

For my company there's a couple different things we did. One of our big things was having good ties to our community. We created a program for cleaning up hunger. Anybody that comes to work for us as an employee, they're part of the cleaning up hunger program. The clients that we service we partnered with them to leverage their facility saying we're dropping off food barrels where your internal and external guests can donate all month. We’ll pick these up, do some photos and then donate it all. We facilitated the whole program by having every employee, which we call a rock star, be automatically indoctrinated into being a part of the cleaning up hunger program as they're the ones working in the building. To keep the ship sailing takes every single person in the company to do. Everyone becomes part of this larger community venture and give back. The other part was that recognition was a big part of our company culture. We would reward in a manner where they earn as they deserve for doing your job correctly. It's so much positive reinforcement that they start to really feel that level of care. It created a strong bond of appreciation and care. 

Our whole philosophy is based on being human. Which is one human to another. People feel that energy.

All of what we do leads people into saying this is a fun place to work. I get recognized. I'm making a community impact. I might not get you know paid as much as somebody might at another job, but I'm getting these other things. Like feeling I'm important and seeing how clients were developed and maintained. 

In a way all good leaders are good salespeople because you're selling a vision.

Moving on to the audio impact and holistic consulting what does that mean in your daily business?

As a holistic consultant my approach is that everything starts with you. It's going to eventually come full circle because when we have this solid inner foundation whether we're dealing with just an individual or just a consulting session with a who wants to be a better leader of his church or team it is not just about the leadership. In a holistic approach everything starts with you. Everything's got to come back to how you're navigating into. How are you navigating and connecting your internal reality with the external reality that you face every single day?

How one is iterating those connections brings it back to a simple approach. People want to make things complicated. So, let's try to bring this simple back into it using a holistic approach. Which results in people connecting the dots directly back into their being. 

Business is not separate from being human in the fact that that if you want to be a good leader, it's all about you being in leading yourself for 24 hours a day with everything in your life. It's not a separate activity. Once you are the true being and feel comfortable, then you become a better leader.

Jennifer can be contacted at

linkedin.com/in/jennifer-bulkley

A brand is a reflection of its people and the people reflect the leadership they have.

For larger companies, the challenge is that there are multiple stakeholders and brands. Which results in having a lot of things to align. When dealing with multiple people managing multiple brands, for a company, alignment is really challenging. Simply because people have different perspective.

It's a two-fold exercise. You have leadership, you have employees which form the corporate brand, then you have product and service brands. The products and service brands have to be congruent with the corporate brand. It's the congruence that brings about the extent of success.

The leadership is what sets the tone for what the brand is. Be it a large company or a small one. The brand then sets the tone for what the product and services will be and how the company will act towards their community. It makes leadership very critical.

For small and medium sized business who have been operating for the past 20 years or so, often have their founding members involved. This has an implication on the leadership, as how these founding members have run the business and projected the brand has shaped their success how the brand and its products and services are perceived. In such situations there's a lot of emotional attachment involved being the founders. 

Similarly, with larger companies there is an emotional attachment with the way the brand is portrayed and communicated. Leadership plays a key role here in leading the necessary brand output objectively and for the benefit of the brand.

It's always good to work backwards by starting at the touch-points the brand interacts with its constituents and understand what is it that the people need. Connecting that to messaging and the brand story helps to see what is necessary. Keeping the communication tight and clear is where leadership plays a critical role to ensure the team have the clarity of marketing objective and the brand's purpose and being able to connect and deliver on it.

Three key things to keep doing daily to make a brand compelling and engaging requires leadership, focus and clarity of message.

Susan can be reached at https://www.susanmeierstudio.com/

That's where the conflict with self often happens. Leading to getting stuck in one's own mind or the head space. It's not just about the conscious awareness but more about what the subconscious awareness and thinking is. This is where the primal survival instinct kicks in which then relies on our life experiences of what has worked, and we try use those to move ahead. 

Leaders are often defined by their success and the ways they achieved it and stick with that. What this does, is it stops the individual from evaluating the risk objectively. Great leaders successfully cross that bridge between their inner self and their conscious thinking to take calculated risks to achieve success. They are comfortable stepping into the unknown because they allow themselves to be guided from within. 

That is being authentic.

Authentic leadership is often misunderstood by leaders as being themselves as seen by others. In other words, it's a version of themselves as perceived by the outer world which is what leaders hold in their conscious awareness. Instead of actually being driven from their heart and guided by their soul.

This is the biggest challenge people face to become better leaders. Once leaders are aware of this and are able to traverse comfortably between their inner self and conscious awareness or, in other words, bring about situational leadership, they become relaxed, comfortable, and grounded. They are then able to deal with anything as they keep their consistency and balance. This is a cycle of crossing back and forth. Many leaders think that what's required is to do what it takes to get to the leadership role and that's it. There's a feeling like I've fixed myself. But that isn't it. We're constantly bumping up against our humanity. Having the awareness of recognising our thoughts and feelings enables one to then engage with some tools or strategies to confront and work through it.

A tool that is extremely helpful is simply recognising the situation one is getting out of, being where you are. Doing this involves digging deep and seeing what the benefits are such as the need to be self-righteous and making other people feel they are wrong for oneself to feel good. These, in their own way, become limiting and needs to be worked through and changed. (More on this can be viewed here: https://spencersnakard.lpages.co/masterclass2018replay/

What helps is being aligned with who you really are and knowing what you are here for or, in other words, being noticeably clear about your why and your values. 

Remember who you are know that you are a divine magnificent being. You are perfect and whole as you are. There's nothing missing, nothing lacking and nothing wrong or broken that you need to fix. You are perfect exactly as you are. Remember that and everything else that you feel is not working simply melts away.

The other point is that leadership is shown through your behaviour. It's dependent on the way you lead by the example you set. In the military you can't have a difficult conversation about fitness if you're not fit yourself as a leader. That undermines your authority. Which leads on to an area on corporate leadership where there's a view that teams work for the leader whereas actually it’s the other way around. Here's where a mindset change is required where, as a leader, you're thinking about how to set your team up for success and how do you remove the obstacles they could or are facing.

The modern leader has to quickly understand the context. Evaluate the situation and then work out what the team needs to be doing. This is the point where control comes into play. Do I give control to my team? Or do I retain it for myself? Really good leaders have a sense of where they naturally are on this spectrum and then act accordingly. In the process creating an environment for learning.

Which brings to fore the necessity of going deeper into a situation that might look like a failure. In the corporate world there's truly little of that. This is where there's value in the debriefing process. In the corporate world leaders are afraid to admit there's something going wrong. A debriefing process provides a number of values. Knowing that performances are going to be challenged and getting pointers on what could have been done better being two key ones.

The flip side is to look at a debrief when things have gone really right and the team's hit the nail on the head. There are immense learnings from that. Digging underneath the surface to know what was done and how was it done brings out what was done differently. Understanding that helps all to learn from it. Learning from your wins is very important.

Today behaviour in leadership matters. Impacting on behaviour can be done in a number of ways. One way is bringing it out is to identify who provides inspiration and connect what that person did, as behaviour, to the inspiration felt. Then look at the other side or what's awful leadership like. What this does is bring out how the leaders actually see good leadership from their perspective. What this exercise does is that it shifts people's thinking. Taking this further into how, as leaders, we interact with our people creates an experience. The empowerment motivates and results in transferring the experience out as the customer experience which impacts business earnings and performance. 

in leadership what's hardest is the first step. Where the individual's expertise and team capabilities move him or her up to be a leader. That becomes a totally different job. Starting from having people who were team mates now being people who work for the leader. This is where leadership standard and competencies get set. 

For organizations that are looking for an edge they need to work out how to recruit people who have the right attitude fit as then these are the talents that can be adapted and groomed to be great leaders. 

Roderic can be contacted at

www.leadershipforces.com

roderic.yapp@leadershipforces.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodericyapp/

It all comes down to communication that is based on pure understanding.

If that understanding is not there in most times what occurs is a reciprocal behaviour of what is being communicated. 

It comes down to one's mindset and the energy one holds within oneself. One's perception of things and how one looks at life and the understanding of human nature. If one is coming from a aware and self-secured centre within oneself then one isn't, usually, judgemental or critical. Whatever one communicates either verbally or through our thoughts, as energy, comes back to us. Understanding this is very powerful and helps one to have an outlook on life that looks for and at the positive aspects within the reality of the situation.

This is the giving process. It's not about what one wants from the other. It's about what positivity one can give and create a connection where that positivity, in time, is reciprocated back. People really appreciate this when they are receiving such positivity and appreciation.

For leaders doing this means living it. That's how it manifests out. 

When we speak of negativity being present it always helps to look at oneself. At the end of the day it's a reflection of the energy one is projecting that is reflected back. What counts is how we show up in life. Whatever be the scenario how and what we are bringing into it is what is going to be reflected back. This is where we need to know if we are at our peak state in terms of the energy we radiate. Often that is governed by our physiology. If we are not healthy or we are tired it affects our presence in the way we show up. 

For leaders its vital to be aware of their physical and mental well-being and work on it everyday. Having rituals or routines that help you get centered and get your high energy going.

The other aspect is the communication that leaders do. It's important and critical to be conscious of what they say. Words trigger emotions that have an impact on both the person saying it and the person hearing it. It's important to be mindful of the words you speak from the perspective of how you feel about those words. The way you feel about the words is the impact those words will create. 

The words impart energy through the emotional connection they convey. These in turn impact the value that we individually have. One of the key things of leadership is know or understand what are the value they are driving for someone in the team and to look at how those values could be aligned with that of the company. Doing this creates individual inspiration that drives the team member to contribute positively in all aspects.

Summing up-- this comes back to the human side of leadership. It's about understanding each individual as a human being. The more one finds what motivates them and connect that with their values and align it to that of the company, you've provided leadership that helps the team and...]]>The quality of our relationships is based on the quality of our communication. Regardless of who we are and what skills and qualifications we have and whether we are a leader or being led by one, we are all human beings. To be a good leader we need to understand the psyche, the nature of the basic human being's need of another human being. When a leader looks at a team member it's actually looking at another human being and not judging people by their behaviour but understanding where that behaviour comes from. In the words of Tony Robbins there are two ways people respond-- one is lovingly where they are aligned with your thinking and the other is a cry for help to fulfill unmet needs that's expressed very emotionally in different ways. Understanding the human nature is very important as then leaders can be more understanding and less critical. Finding a better way to tune in and deliver to people in a positive way the needs they are looking for to have a connect.

It all comes down to communication that is based on pure understanding.

If that understanding is not there in most times what occurs is a reciprocal behaviour of what is being communicated. 

It comes down to one's mindset and the energy one holds within oneself. One's perception of things and how one looks at life and the understanding of human nature. If one is coming from a aware and self-secured centre within oneself then one isn't, usually, judgemental or critical. Whatever one communicates either verbally or through our thoughts, as energy, comes back to us. Understanding this is very powerful and helps one to have an outlook on life that looks for and at the positive aspects within the reality of the situation.

This is the giving process. It's not about what one wants from the other. It's about what positivity one can give and create a connection where that positivity, in time, is reciprocated back. People really appreciate this when they are receiving such positivity and appreciation.

For leaders doing this means living it. That's how it manifests out. 

When we speak of negativity being present it always helps to look at oneself. At the end of the day it's a reflection of the energy one is projecting that is reflected back. What counts is how we show up in life. Whatever be the scenario how and what we are bringing into it is what is going to be reflected back. This is where we need to know if we are at our peak state in terms of the energy we radiate. Often that is governed by our physiology. If we are not healthy or we are tired it affects our presence in the way we show up. 

For leaders its vital to be aware of their physical and mental well-being and work on it everyday. Having rituals or routines that help you get centered and get your high energy going.

The other aspect is the communication that leaders do. It's important and critical to be conscious of what they say. Words trigger emotions that have an impact on both the person saying it and the person hearing it. It's important to be mindful of the words you speak from the perspective of how you feel about those words. The way you feel about the words is the impact those words will create. 

The words impart energy through the emotional connection they convey. These in turn impact the value that we individually have. One of the key things of leadership is know or understand what are the value they are driving for someone in the team and to look at how those values could be aligned with that of the company. Doing this creates individual inspiration that drives the team member to contribute positively in all aspects.

Summing up-- this comes back to the human side of leadership. It's about understanding each individual as a human being. The more one finds what motivates them and connect that with their values and align it to that of the company, you've provided leadership that helps the team and company grow.

In any situation what kicks in first is our feelings. We feel our way through life. In feeling leadership this is one of the cores in having a can-do attitude. It's the one that kicks in first. Our brain manages those feelings. Even in extreme feelings like excitement it creates an opportunity to think.

Our brain is the hardware, and our mindset is the software. We've created our mindsets, over time, through all of our experiences, our beliefs which form our attitude and our attitude and action is our behaviour. That is the essence of leadership. 

We walk into an office and spot inspirational quotes all over. Yet the people there do not even note these in their daily actions. They find it hard to connect to their present. It's the contextual nature. That's how leadership is.

Speaking of subtlety, it is, at time, more powerful than being authoritative. By asking curious questions a leader can take people on a journey. It leads to connecting with people and more a leader connects the more feeling there is in the interaction.

In leadership we have many a word that's used to describe various aspects of it-- empathy, sympathy, acknowledgement, silence. 

A really good leader knows the power of silence in allowing people to think. This creates a feeling of empowerment. That enables one to learn-by-doing. Which leads into the concept of lifelong learning. 

Given the global environment today, leadership thinking needs to go back into an entrepreneurial mindset. Go into the unknown. Take risks. All of which is only possible with the right mindset of like establishing a start-up. 

Somewhere in all our lives we've all done entrepreneurial stuff. Trying things we didn't know, and that didn't work, so changing it around. Faced with a new challenge do you have the courage to take it on? Are you focussed? Are you committed?

Answering these truthfully brings forth behaviours that impact on the leadership displayed. Specially being committed to your leadership.

Leadership is about action. Not position and title. It's all about what you have done, and are going to do, to bring everyone together. This involves feeling, to know and understand, your industry, your market, and your people to be able to lead them effectively. Really good leaders feel the pain of the organization because it’s that pain that drives the organization. By feeling the pain, leaders are able to connect with the need and influence their teams appropriately and drive the outcome.

Couple that, with the positive out of the pandemic being the online connectivity, where we've all now seen and been a part of an individual's personal life, all thanks to the work-from-home scenario. That brings us a more human connection. Good leaders get that and use it to connect through the feeling that it creates. Ensuring a person-to-person connectivity and engagement. 

Leaders need to be feeling the leadership and not just run through a checklist of items that add up to being a leader. Feel the pain, but also feel the excitement, and be relied upon for inspiration. The inspiration must come from within, otherwise a leader's position becomes egotistical. This is where the alignment between the head, heart and soul comes in and is important. A leader has to use one's head to think but feel from the heart and soul. The connection that occurs when there's the connection of feelings creates the inspiration and followership.

Summing up-- just feel your way through. Go and experiment.

You can contact Neville at

Twitter https://twitter.com/NevilleGaunt

Websites http://www.YP2Grow.com/ 

What does feeling leadership really mean?

In any situation what kicks in first is our feelings. We feel our way through life. In feeling leadership this is one of the cores in having a can-do attitude. It's the one that kicks in first. Our brain manages those feelings. Even in extreme feelings like excitement it creates an opportunity to think.

Our brain is the hardware, and our mindset is the software. We've created our mindsets, over time, through all of our experiences, our beliefs which form our attitude and our attitude and action is our behaviour. That is the essence of leadership. 

We walk into an office and spot inspirational quotes all over. Yet the people there do not even note these in their daily actions. They find it hard to connect to their present. It's the contextual nature. That's how leadership is.

Speaking of subtlety, it is, at time, more powerful than being authoritative. By asking curious questions a leader can take people on a journey. It leads to connecting with people and more a leader connects the more feeling there is in the interaction.

In leadership we have many a word that's used to describe various aspects of it-- empathy, sympathy, acknowledgement, silence. 

A really good leader knows the power of silence in allowing people to think. This creates a feeling of empowerment. That enables one to learn-by-doing. Which leads into the concept of lifelong learning. 

Given the global environment today, leadership thinking needs to go back into an entrepreneurial mindset. Go into the unknown. Take risks. All of which is only possible with the right mindset of like establishing a start-up. 

Somewhere in all our lives we've all done entrepreneurial stuff. Trying things we didn't know, and that didn't work, so changing it around. Faced with a new challenge do you have the courage to take it on? Are you focussed? Are you committed?

Answering these truthfully brings forth behaviours that impact on the leadership displayed. Specially being committed to your leadership.

Leadership is about action. Not position and title. It's all about what you have done, and are going to do, to bring everyone together. This involves feeling, to know and understand, your industry, your market, and your people to be able to lead them effectively. Really good leaders feel the pain of the organization because it’s that pain that drives the organization. By feeling the pain, leaders are able to connect with the need and influence their teams appropriately and drive the outcome.

Couple that, with the positive out of the pandemic being the online connectivity, where we've all now seen and been a part of an individual's personal life, all thanks to the work-from-home scenario. That brings us a more human connection. Good leaders get that and use it to connect through the feeling that it creates. Ensuring a person-to-person connectivity and engagement. 

Leaders need to be feeling the leadership and not just run through a checklist of items that add up to being a leader. Feel the pain, but also feel the excitement, and be relied upon for inspiration. The inspiration must come from within, otherwise a leader's position becomes egotistical. This is where the alignment between the head, heart and soul comes in and is important. A leader has to use one's head to think but feel from the heart and soul. The connection that occurs when there's the connection of feelings creates the inspiration and followership.

Summing up-- just feel your way through. Go and experiment.

You can contact Neville at

Twitter https://twitter.com/NevilleGaunt

Websites http://www.YP2Grow.com/ 

http://www.mindfitltd.com/ 

This situation creates a challenge within. One of wanting to be understood and respected. This is a common across all human beings. However, through our education we don't get taught about self-respect. We adapt as per our social value system and culture and learn to respect the other. This imbalance of having to respect the perceptions of others over one self resulted in creating a need for oneself to be free.

Taking that journey brought a learning. One that highlighted the importance of living in alignment with one's inner voice. When we get in touch with our inner self it becomes easier to understand and be in touch with others. It creates a space of trust.

Being aligned from within brings about a space of trust and relatability when interacting and engaging with others. This changes the inter-personal relationship. It brings about the ability to be candid. Within all this emerges respect simply due to the space of being mindful and respectful that is created. This is actually connecting to the humanness of one another. It's going beyond the words to the intentions behind.The intent or the unsaid is a space of power. It enables one to bring forth one's potential. 

This is exactly what great leaders are able to do. It helps them connect at a deeper level. That establishes trust.

In uncertain times people automatically flock to those they trust. When a leader is able to create this trust it makes leadership impact very positively.

Getting to this inner alignment is a journey. It's a learning that occurs through believing in oneself. Which is actually connecting with one's soul or the inner-self. This is actually the voice of truth. It's always there within. If one gives it the power by acknowledging, aligning and doing as it guides the more you are coming out as authentic. In a way this is a natural state of empowerment. 

The books "I Am Freedom' & "I Am Life" are the chronicles of this journey. The first one talks about how we are caught in our conditioned thoughts and perceptions, recognising that and then getting to de-clutter oneself. The second one talks about recognising one is a observer and that there are infinite perspectives to observe. This helps to embrace the abundance of life. The upcoming book- "I Am Perfection"- is about the life journey one has taken in recognising the space of perceptions, anchoring emotions, expanding the observer in oneself and exploring life fearlessly and growing into an authentic leader and life life joyfully. 

There is a science and method to growing into being an authentic leader. The objective is that it's possible and all of us can live a life of joy. The question is is one brave enough to face their inner self in order to take this journey. 

Getting to be a truly authentic leader involves sweet pain. It's an evolutionary journey that's possible for anybody. 

Today what comes to the forefront, based on interactions and observations, is empowerment. This will come into play in leadership hugely.

Teams will be working in small numbers and independently. In such a scenario leaders will not lead, they will only become facilitators and research providers. This is not a type of role that many leaders will relish. Leaders want to be in charge. They want to direct people. 

We have eulogised participative leadership and democratic leadership and consensus building leadership. Whilst these are great, there is a time and place for these styles to be in operation. In a crisis situation leadership needs to be authoritative and take charge. At other times providing a direction helps. 

Given that we are heading towards small teams working independently, leadership needs to provide clear direction on the task, clarity on performance measurement and then monitoring how the individuals, in a team, are managing and performing and providing them the safety net of interaction and guidance.

Today, in the post-pandemic stage, the ask from leaders is to ensure survival of the business and turnarounds, as maybe applicable. What this does is it removes the facility of time for leaders to build up interaction and understanding with teams. This is a natural progression given the ask of the hour. Leaders need to be able to gauge this requirement. It's important to be able to know what is a priority for the business and direct on the basis of that.

In doing this another aspect that comes into the picture is the collaborative skill of the leader. Looking at how Google & Amazon collaborated during the pandemic, it clearly establishes that there is no permanent rival or competitor. This brings to front that leaders will have to have the ability to adapt and collaborate as the situation demands. 

Which will bring up a new skill-- crisis intelligence skill. How fast can you gather up information and connect the dots together and stop the ball rolling. Earlier crisis management used to be reactive where leadership is concerned. Now what becomes important in leadership is being able to see a trend or pattern and prevent a crisis from occurring. Doing this would involve adapting to the digital landscape and being able to read the right data. All of this leads to a whole new set of skills being required in leadership.

This is not just for the top of the pyramid i.e. the C-level, it includes functional leaders throughout the organizational hierarchy. In order to have this in play the Human Resource function will have to have better understanding of the business first, rather than its HR functions. 

Why this is so is because there is no more long-term planning. Given the current scenario everything has gone short-term. That makes is necessary for the HR function to collaboratively partner the line managers and work together in terms of the human resource required for business goal achievement within a limited period of time.

The only way to tackle uncertainty is by being proactive. Whilst all around lay-offs are appearing it's critical for businesses to keep an eye on the skill-sets required to rebound. It's not just about surviving but also being able to have the resources to bounce back. To do that leaders will have to become and be agile and think in short-steps.

Starting with passion there are three key components in leadership.

A leader has to have passion for whatever their endeavours are. Whatever they are trying to accomplish they have to passionate about it. 

The second item that's important in leadership is respect. One learns more from a bad boss simply because we learn more when we are in pain or discomfort. One can use fear to push things through but its limited. It results in not having people perform at their best.  

Which leads into the third component--influence. 

When one is passionate and people feel you are treating them with respect it enables a leader to develop influence that helps the leader to get the people on board on the mission. 

When this understanding occurs many managers actually are able to look within and realise that they may not have the ability to understand the ambiguity of people. That helps them from a self-leadership perspective.

Often many a bad boss has that behaviour underlying from the past.experiences where they learn't about instilling fear as being leadership. Getting this behaviour out of a leader is often the hardest as its so ingrained. It impacts on the trust one can create. That starts within. With the relationship one has with oneself. A healthy self-respect and self-awareness creates the ability to give respect which then helps build a trusting relationship. In leadership if one has a lot of insecurities and fears it creates a distrust of people and that reflects in the leadership style.

To get the best out of people, as a leader, one has to truly believe that people are good. That's where the trust forms. Couple this with the traits of being positive and flexible enables a leader to create an ever evolving and growing environment where there's continuous success.

As an example looking at General Ulysses S Grant back during the American civil war, provides a lot of insight into how great leadership works. That's one learning of looking back into history and learning from it.

The key is in making the connection. As a leader one has to make the connection with the team in order for respect and trust to occur. That happens when the people understand your leadership approach and realise that as a leader you are there for them. 

To order books Gary Hensel can be contacted via his site https://www.garyhensel.com/ or his books can be found on Amazon

Practicing gratitude and proactively choosing joy and selecting to be thankful even for things that haven't happened yet. A couple of things happen in doing this. One is that there's an immediate feeling of good and the second is that it gets attraction in the day going for the things that one is grateful for though they haven't happened yet. This is important for a leader. As a leader one has to be helping other people and to do that one has to direct one's energy towards it. That's where the mindset of gratitude is helpful.

Focus determines bravery. How we focus our attention determines how we feel and how we show up and behave. That determines our results. The definition of brave is willing to face and endure danger or pain. What's interesting about that definition is that we all want to be brave and in focusing on trying to be brave we inadvertently put ourselves in danger and pain. It's easier to be brave when you have the energy in you to be so. In doing so expressing gratitude brings forth a joy that creates the energy required to move forward. Simple things like noticing how much we appreciate the people we can connect with during this time. Choosing where to put our focus.

As human beings we always like to believe that we can control everything. But there's so much outside our realm of control. What we can control is our attention and where we put our attention. Being on autopilot is not helpful and even trying to be mindful and in the present does not always work. Yet we have to have the mindset to appreciate and try at every situation.

At work we always tend to use busy to not be focused. In leadership perspective. specially at a time like this, one needs to be mindfully focused on the conversations with the people so as for the same to be beneficial to them. This is when focusing on one's purpose helps. Coming from one's purpose helps in seeing how one can help the other. Looking at keeping the focus on answering what's the impact I want, as a leader, in this group call right now. This is where the gratitude practice really makes a difference. Focusing on being grateful in a proactive manner creates the positive energy within which then enables one to focus on the impact they want to make then and there. 

Coupled with empathy and action we then are being human dealing with human beings. From a leadership perspective when you do this, people connect with their hearts to you and want to follow and want to perform. As a leader its critical to connect to the hearts of one's teams. 

Summing up it’s about how you lead yourself. Starting off the day with being grateful gives you a head start with positive energy to connect with the hearts of their teams.

The book was born out of the need to prove a point about employees being the priority for a business.

If you get the employee bit right the rest happens.

In the hospitality business the employees are the front-liners facing, speaking, and managing the guests. They need to be empowered, have the right training, enough autonomy so that they can do their jobs. Couple with this there has to be trust in that fact that the employees can do their jobs well. Without that there won’t be good performances consistently.

An analysis of comments on Trip Advisor showed that nine out of ten times it's not about the product but about the people. The service quality. This is where having an engaged employee becomes especially important.

What's the first thing to do in order to have an engaged employee?

First thing to remember is that people work for people. Not for companies. So for a manager it's critical to ensure the team can communicate properly within themselves and others, that they are treated well, and provide the correct equipment and resources required for them to do their job. Give them the opportunity to perform and support it with the right training so that employees can use these tools and are comfortable doing so. At all times the communication channels must be open and as a manager you have to be there to listen. 

At the end of the day it's not C.A.R.E. - Customers Are Really Everything; it's E.A.R.E.-- Employees Are Really Everything. This is so because its the employees who are giving the service, So all conditions should be conducive to help the employee perform. 

As a manager you have to ensure that your employees know that you care for them as a person. If that link is missing, then there won't be any engagement.

At this time of the global pandemic the care factor is definitely more heightened. People want to be able to trust and the first step on that is towards the employers and leaders. Going forward as the restrictions ease, country by country, and companies want their employees to start coming back into the office, this care factor is going to get more pronounced and actually result in creating the employee engagement in a post-pandemic time.

Care is important as it has a financial implication also. In the hotel industry the cost of replacing an employee with a new one is approximately USD 4000. Therefore, by putting in the effort to engage the employees one can directly show cost-saving.

Managers get the people they deserve. If you're a good leader you attract similar people. On the other hand, if you're just managing processes and not leading then you end up having a dysfunctional team. The good ones would leave, leaving behind the ones who can't get a job and a group who simply just ticks the box.

This is so applicable in employee engagement. One gets what one deserves and its purely up to the management to ensure employees are well engaged through correct care and attention so that they perform well and don't leave. It's key to remember that in a team there are a group of individuals and each is unique and needs care and attention.

As people grow the business grows.

Robertson can be contacted at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertson-hunter-stewart-90538b1a/

Sometimes leaders need to be grounded with their own internal compass. In academic studies on authenticity one of the characteristics measured is a defined internal moral perspective. There's another side of that which is being open to new information. So, leaders are in this constant balancing act between staying true to themselves but open to new information to allow that to influence or to enable them to think of their position and consider if the opinion is still valid for them.

This comes back to one's values. As long as the data or information aligns to one's values then that's on the right track. It's when it's not that's when one starts compromising. We don't spend a lot of time on our values. Yet by understanding the power of one value verses another we get to understand how often it drives your choice. Being aware of the importance of one values and how they relate to each other is critically important. This is the power of introspection. It allows you to choose what's really an important value that drives decision making.

Values underpin what one does as a leader and one needs to connect with that regularly. It's part of reflecting on oneself. Doing this daily helps. For example, undertaking a pause practice-- 5 minutes a day for 5 days-- the objective is to physically feel what a pause feels like. That one is not uncomfortable doing it and feeling it. Unless one is comfortable with a pause, the habits continue to drive action out of reflex. Taking a pause helps one get comfortable with waiting to understand the bigger picture.

In this current global pandemic scenario, its worth understanding what leaders are fighting for. Is it maintenance? Or seeking a return to normalcy or looking at the situation and going what can one contribute through one's unique skills, product or service to this new and changed world? This where the pause practice can make a big difference. If we are trying to return to an equilibrium that's gone that is a lot of energy going into trying to go back to something we're not going to have. Taking a pause allows one to actually sit and think through what it means and what one would be doing and then explore what's possible.

It's about consistency and knowing or choosing where to spend one's energy on. It's about staying true to yourself. When this realisation happens there's a sense of liberation or being free that comes within.

There's also the situation where many a leader is not aware of what his or her real self is or they are not sure if their self is well suited for what they are doing. It comes down to knowing how to choose the best version of oneself, based on strengths and opportunities, to move forward. This is possible because as individuals we get to choose the facts of who we are. That's immutable. Leaving aside our physical facts of height, weight etc who we are is based on the choices we make.

By having an alignment between our soul and what truly makes us happy we get to choose how we position ourselves and project ourselves. 

For more about her book 'Get Naked at Work' you can contact Danessa at

 https://www.danessaknaupp.com/

In looking at solving how to deliver the customer experience consistently it went back to culture. At the end of the day culture is the everyday behaviours in play. That's how culture is felt. How are we showing up to customers every day? Answering that question leads straight to the experience being felt by the customers. To get an effective culture one has to look at the alignment of culture with leadership. Looking at the guiding principles for the front-line leaders. Which then goes back to purpose and values.

It's all about how leaders are aligned to the purpose which flows from the vision a company has. Individual purpose and the organizational purpose aren’t always the same. Yet there has to be an alignment between the two in order for synchronicity to be present. Else it creates a dysfunction that grows little by little ultimately to a point where it ends up creating an inconsistent experience internally and externally.

So, it becomes critical to call out the behaviours that are not in alignment.

It necessitates having difficult conversations and snipping away the unwanted behaviours. Simply through reminding who and what the company is about and what it stands for.

There are industries which have high empathy such as healthcare for example. In these types of industries its common to find employees highly committed. However even in these industries a continuous check-in is required as sometimes the same commitment can take an employee off the track with the overall organizational purpose.

What helps in such scenarios to regain alignment is the content and the context that might not have been explicit. For example, the work of stacking shelves in a supermarket was there three weeks ago. Yet everyone today values that work output in context of the global pandemic where the employee knows he or she is providing a key service to a customer who would get what they and their families need when they come to the supermarket. Given the global context presently this service has, sort of, become like part of an essential service.

Sometimes purpose is explicit and at other times not so. That is the challenge for leaders to find that and make it explicit and align their team members roles to that purpose.

A good leader is able to make sure that everybody feels that they have a unique contribution to the bigger picture is.

The whole point of being a leader is to get results.

The thing about results is this-- when you look at human behaviour, a behaviour always creates a result. We always get a result. They may not be the best or the intended result.

What is the most important result and how do you get that?

Focusing on the critical result helps in achieving the important result. In the process that impacts other activities.

In doing this discipline and time management become key. You realise the importance of time and you say yes to activities accordingly.

There are many shiny things that often distract leadership. What's key is the behaviour to get the outcome. Quoting Peter Drucker "any new knowledge without the ability to translate it into meaningful results" - is what shows how valuable behaviour is.

Behaviour is fundamental, its practical and its timeless.

So keeping focused on the main thing a leader can demonstrate meaningful value through the results obtained through the right behaviour. 

Yet through generations leadership shows to be making similar mistakes.

This is an outcome of focusing on the wrong things. We're too busy focused on the shiny new object instead of what are the necessary behaviours. That occurs because it’s tough to change behaviours because the organization is controlling the behaviour. Couple this with the ingrained habits in terms of how we think and how we act, and we keep falling back on what we used to do. Add to this the organizational forces that force a leader to behave in a certain way just to meet the needs of the organization. 

Changing behaviour involves identifying meaningful outcomes as a team. What's meaningful to one may not be the same with another. When a consensus on the outcome is there then behavioural change can be affected.

So given the limited amount of time leaders have to pay attention to something outside of trying to get stuff done everyday it helps to focus on one thing and answer what does it mean to be effective for you, as a leader, and for the organization. Identify that and spend your equity, in the form of time, money, energy and attention, on that in converting it into being effective. Once one does that anything you add will be of value.

In this process, another principle of Drucker that comes through, is that a leader is also training and developing other effective leaders. This is not organizationally leading from the top but more of leading through out. 

This is a challenge across industry. If leaders aren't effective then employees aren't engaged and the ramifications of that are there. Treating engagement doesn't work. At the source it's the leadership that impacts.

There is a lot of talk on this. 

Servant leadership is where a leader is there to look after and make the way or clear the way for the employees. It's all about providing vision so that the team heads towards a target. As a leader if you do whatever it takes to keep people on track to reach that target. That's servant leadership.

As a leader you're there to serve them. Not the other way around. The employees or the team are there to reach a goal or a target. The role of a servant leader is to enable them to get to that target. That's the key.

An example of this is a sport that's seen once every four years in the Olympics! It was invented in Scotland. It's called Curling.

When the player sends the curling stone down the ice, to reach a target, there are a couple of players who act as sweepers. Sweeping the ice and clearing the way for the stone to reach its target. 

Leaders are like that. A curling sweeper. The leader is there, keeping people on track, by clearing the path to get the team to reach or achieve the target. Serving the team clearing the path by removing obstacles and providing resources. That's what Servant Leadership is about.

In the process the leader also has to develop people. It's part of achieving the target. The right skills and talent need to be nurtured. The journey to the target is not static and in order to achieve it people need to be developing.

It's not just clearing the path. It's also about keeping the team aligned to the target and doing what else is needed to serve them in order to help reach the target

There's a lot of talk about authenticity. Especially in leadership.

There are scenarios where a leader behaves badly and puts it down to his or her true self.

There's a difference between being authentic and being one's true self. 

Then one says I need to be myself because I've heard about authenticity and read about it and as a leader, I need to be just who I am, that’s thinking from the head.

Coaching helps one understand that authenticity is a continuous connectivity between the head, the heart and soul. Understanding that makes one view authenticity differently.

When your heart, soul and inner self are connected you’ll always have good thoughts.

When you stay or keep yourself connected from within, you'll always lead from what your true feelings are.

That’s the true self. The real and authentic you.

A very important part of being one’s true self is that of being conscious of your impact on others. Keeping in touch with one's feelings enables one to understand other people's feelings.

Authenticity is about having the perspective of seeing what people see and feel when one is one's true self.

It’s all about feeling it not thinking it.

When change is announced individuals become nervous about their future. Being set or in a comfort zone one forgets that one has the ability to learn. We keep doing our work and it accounts for what we do and how we think.

In today's world change is happening so frequently. It’s really the role of the leader to create an environment where people won’t be as afraid of change because change can eliminate jobs, but it also creates a lot of opportunities. Employees, when they hear change is happening, they really want to hear from their leader is, what does the future look like, and does it include me. This is where leaders falter as, often, they aren't very good at answering those questions.

It’s especially difficult for middle managers. They are, literally, in the middle. They have leaders up there telling them to get their group or department ready and in shape, and yet often they haven't really been involved in the decision. It's often not sold in but dumped on people.

Organizational change doesn’t have to be that way. One may not have all the information but if you communicate with people on a regular basis and tell them what you know, at that point in time, then you build trust and you increase the probability of having a successful change because there is a high rate of failure.

At times of implementing change often leaders emphasize the change rather than where the company is heading. If leaders were to not mention the word change and instead speak of the vision and where they want to lead the organization, employees would align and recognise that and do what's needed to get there without consciously thinking that are changing in order to get there.

All employees want to know is the support and learning they will get to do the new work required to get to that point. They are interested in knowing how to grow their career and grow the company and the business so that there’s business continuity.

Learning from experience has been about the insecurity that leaders have as you go up the organizational hierarchy. Managers, Vice Presidents, and CEOs live with the most amount of fear. A lot of people go to that place of 'what's going to happen to me if I can't keep this job'. Add to this the age factor and the insecurity is about life being over! It is unfortunate but we tend to see what we have to lose more than seeing the opportunities that are available.

This thinking impact behaviour. Leaders start to see everybody else as a threat and it becomes like 'we're not in this together and I'm out for me and too bad about you' kind of scenario. That then manifests as reality. It doesn't have to be that way.

This is one reason why the highest number of entrepreneurs are over 50 and 60. It becomes more about self-leadership and self-change coupled with organizational learnings. The process remains the same,

If you strongly believe in what you're going to move to, the stronger the chance that it will turn out okay. Even though at times the end is not defined. What you had is over, so you can't do what you have been doing and all you know is that it doesn't feel good moving into new territory. One must take that first step even when you don't know what that next step is going to be. It's about faith and faith tramples fear. It's a combination of being scared and excited.

When you do get those opportunities, it’s about saying to oneself, 'do I step out to it or do I say no'. Usually when you say no it's your head speaking. If your heart says yes, then you really should be following your heart. The other way around is when you need to stop and think if it's beneficial to you. The heart is what guides us and the head gives...]]>When you are driving change in an organization you are affecting the future of lots of people because when change happens it changes the way people interact, who they interact with and whenever a change happens it pushes one out of the comfort zone.

When change is announced individuals become nervous about their future. Being set or in a comfort zone one forgets that one has the ability to learn. We keep doing our work and it accounts for what we do and how we think.

In today's world change is happening so frequently. It’s really the role of the leader to create an environment where people won’t be as afraid of change because change can eliminate jobs, but it also creates a lot of opportunities. Employees, when they hear change is happening, they really want to hear from their leader is, what does the future look like, and does it include me. This is where leaders falter as, often, they aren't very good at answering those questions.

It’s especially difficult for middle managers. They are, literally, in the middle. They have leaders up there telling them to get their group or department ready and in shape, and yet often they haven't really been involved in the decision. It's often not sold in but dumped on people.

Organizational change doesn’t have to be that way. One may not have all the information but if you communicate with people on a regular basis and tell them what you know, at that point in time, then you build trust and you increase the probability of having a successful change because there is a high rate of failure.

At times of implementing change often leaders emphasize the change rather than where the company is heading. If leaders were to not mention the word change and instead speak of the vision and where they want to lead the organization, employees would align and recognise that and do what's needed to get there without consciously thinking that are changing in order to get there.

All employees want to know is the support and learning they will get to do the new work required to get to that point. They are interested in knowing how to grow their career and grow the company and the business so that there’s business continuity.

Learning from experience has been about the insecurity that leaders have as you go up the organizational hierarchy. Managers, Vice Presidents, and CEOs live with the most amount of fear. A lot of people go to that place of 'what's going to happen to me if I can't keep this job'. Add to this the age factor and the insecurity is about life being over! It is unfortunate but we tend to see what we have to lose more than seeing the opportunities that are available.

This thinking impact behaviour. Leaders start to see everybody else as a threat and it becomes like 'we're not in this together and I'm out for me and too bad about you' kind of scenario. That then manifests as reality. It doesn't have to be that way.

This is one reason why the highest number of entrepreneurs are over 50 and 60. It becomes more about self-leadership and self-change coupled with organizational learnings. The process remains the same,

If you strongly believe in what you're going to move to, the stronger the chance that it will turn out okay. Even though at times the end is not defined. What you had is over, so you can't do what you have been doing and all you know is that it doesn't feel good moving into new territory. One must take that first step even when you don't know what that next step is going to be. It's about faith and faith tramples fear. It's a combination of being scared and excited.

When you do get those opportunities, it’s about saying to oneself, 'do I step out to it or do I say no'. Usually when you say no it's your head speaking. If your heart says yes, then you really should be following your heart. The other way around is when you need to stop and think if it's beneficial to you. The heart is what guides us and the head gives all sorts of data that often confuse us.

Rita can be reached on

@BurgettMartell

bit.ly/yourchangeguru

In leadership having the time to reflect and feel the vision enables one to create. Those in leadership roles do reflect. However, that reflection is more of a cognitive one or reflecting in one’s brain and not from the heart. What it does is that the mind fills up the gaps through the data it has.

To get one to move from the head to the heart can be difficult. It is so due to two unknown obstacles. One is a massive mental block and the other is one is hearing what their heart is saying but it’s not what one is comfortable with. This is actually a self-defense mechanism to avoid the pains that are in the heart.

When one is not recognising the pains, one is missing out on a big opportunity to learn something about self and to undertake transformation or healing. Everything has energy. Even the pain within has an energy that is within the body and it creates disturbances.

"Everyone you encounter is a mirror to look at something within yourself"-Antionette

For people in the workplace, those who are struggling to connect with their hearts, it's an opportunity to find out more about what's happening within ourselves. Provided of course they are willing and have the intent to do so.

"You can't understand other people unless you understand yourself"- Ross

From a mindset perspective, the behaviour of other people reflects self. In other one sees areas within that one can strengthen. For example, if a particular behaviour was told to be inappropriate a long while back and one has subdued that, yet one finds that behaviour in others and judges it to be inappropriate, it's basically a mirror effect of blaming because one was told it was inappropriate.

We all have issues within ourselves which manifest in behaviour and impacts on the leadership we display. The true leader can internalise and lead from within to lead out. Not the other way around. One who is grounded in themselves and doesn't see others as a threat is able to learn about themselves.

Take that pause to reflect about what happened during the day and pause to connect within.

The purpose of taking a break is to have a break from the daily hustle and grind.

When we do plan on taking a break, we often end up making a list of things to do to fill time. It takes time to switch off the internal habit of filling up time. Once one reaches that point where one can simply be present and enjoy the surroundings and the present moment it is very helpful.

Creating moments of pause, within our daily day, where one does nothing is very helpful. It helps to stop all the noise the mind has and enables one to go within oneself and find what is important and connect with one's creativity, listen to what one's soul and heart or intuition is saying.

Here's a quick exercise:

Take your right hand and wrap it around your left little finger or the left hand round your right little finger. The little finger is related to the heart and the small intestine. The heart is really important for all of us because the more we are connected to our hearts the more we are connected to what's really true to us.

When you think back on events and moments one plays back how one feels. That is an emotion. One is feeling and not thinking that one is feeling. There is a difference. The struggle is in getting from our mind to our hearts and into our gut.

What happens in this exercise is that by holding the little finger one is activating the connection with the heart. The heart is all about emotions. It's about knowing what is deeply true for you and the small intestine is all about choices. When we are in our minds, we often make choices based on the rational side of us. When we move more into the heart we can make decisions from a very different perspective and probably wiser ones at times. The heart provides a very strong energy field in our body.

Here's a tip:

Whenever you need to calm yourself down and centre yourself wrap your hand around the little finger of the opposite hand for 5 minutes to 20 minutes, depending on the time you have, and you'll immediately feel more relaxed and calm and able to feel where your intuition is guiding you.

How this helps is that it addresses the necessity of pretending. We often pretend to ourselves that we can go on and have more energy than we really have, resulting in driving ourselves and neglecting what our body is telling us. By doing this exercise we start connecting with our body more often and in a compassionate and curious way.

In spite of this being a hot topic, the issue is a common one across countries. The commonality is that the figures are pretty poor all across the globe.

Employee engagement is a direct result of the quality of leadership. Given the way the employee engagement figures are, that only means the quality of leadership is not great. Today's society demands a much more different leadership approach. Given that technology is transforming how we deal with every moment.

Employee engagement is much more than having good communication, work involvement, and nice events. Great engagement is engraved by things that have to do with leadership, the values of the corporation and how things are being done.

What is mooted as behaviour and what is not?

It’s much more of an involvement with the leadership and organizational development than other disciplines like communication. Which, of course, is absolutely necessary but we tend to misjudge leadership with communication. There needs to be good leadership then comes good communication.

It's up to leaders to connect with people and connect is through communication. If one doesn't connect then one is just throwing words and the recipient might as well read a book! If leaders connect well there will be good employee engagement.

The term 'experience' is better used instead of engagement. It has a connection and connotation with customer experience. It is what people really experience within the workplace that matters. We need to have a holistic approach in order to see what the structures, processes and leadership development need areas are to create a good workplace experience.

In today's business environment, to be effective, organizations rely a lot on the behaviour of its employees than compared to the past. Today the technological revolution urges us to utilise it to unlock new sources of value and to achieve its improvements are needed very quickly. Those organizations that are able to do this quickly enough will not lose in the marketplace. Those who lag are in real danger. The technological transformation occurring has created an organizational revolution in the form of creating autonomously functional teams that work with agility and similar work models and they have a very fast pace of exploring the problems, delivering solutions through quick iterations. In such a work environment, the existing work models need a huge shift from the past.

With different generations coming into the workplace the expectation of and from the workplace has undergone significant changes. Whilst societal behaviour may be the same the organizational structures in place don't work due to the technological changes that have come about and which dictates a new structure.

Nowadays there is no place for the command and control model of leadership. The role of the manager today has evolved to provide context to the work not the content of the work.

It's the human aspect. It's the behaviours that matter.

Unfortunately, organizations have not yet quite translated what this shift really means in the way of operations. This shift drastically changes how things are being done. This is where, how leadership and leadership development is practiced, has a significant impact.

When behaviour matters most but at the same time data is so much easily accessible, by everyone, it changes the way learning is done. Courses are now available everywhere and allow for learning from anywhere. So learning is no longer the objective of development but it’s much more the growth that one can ensure for employees.

That growth becomes the molded thing. It means how will the team enable the employee for success.

What are the enabling factors?

Does the workplace include or offer challenges to the employee in order for him or her to put their skills into...]]>Leadership impacts employee engagement in the evolving workplace of today.

In spite of this being a hot topic, the issue is a common one across countries. The commonality is that the figures are pretty poor all across the globe.

Employee engagement is a direct result of the quality of leadership. Given the way the employee engagement figures are, that only means the quality of leadership is not great. Today's society demands a much more different leadership approach. Given that technology is transforming how we deal with every moment.

Employee engagement is much more than having good communication, work involvement, and nice events. Great engagement is engraved by things that have to do with leadership, the values of the corporation and how things are being done.

What is mooted as behaviour and what is not?

It’s much more of an involvement with the leadership and organizational development than other disciplines like communication. Which, of course, is absolutely necessary but we tend to misjudge leadership with communication. There needs to be good leadership then comes good communication.

It's up to leaders to connect with people and connect is through communication. If one doesn't connect then one is just throwing words and the recipient might as well read a book! If leaders connect well there will be good employee engagement.

The term 'experience' is better used instead of engagement. It has a connection and connotation with customer experience. It is what people really experience within the workplace that matters. We need to have a holistic approach in order to see what the structures, processes and leadership development need areas are to create a good workplace experience.

In today's business environment, to be effective, organizations rely a lot on the behaviour of its employees than compared to the past. Today the technological revolution urges us to utilise it to unlock new sources of value and to achieve its improvements are needed very quickly. Those organizations that are able to do this quickly enough will not lose in the marketplace. Those who lag are in real danger. The technological transformation occurring has created an organizational revolution in the form of creating autonomously functional teams that work with agility and similar work models and they have a very fast pace of exploring the problems, delivering solutions through quick iterations. In such a work environment, the existing work models need a huge shift from the past.

With different generations coming into the workplace the expectation of and from the workplace has undergone significant changes. Whilst societal behaviour may be the same the organizational structures in place don't work due to the technological changes that have come about and which dictates a new structure.

Nowadays there is no place for the command and control model of leadership. The role of the manager today has evolved to provide context to the work not the content of the work.

It's the human aspect. It's the behaviours that matter.

Unfortunately, organizations have not yet quite translated what this shift really means in the way of operations. This shift drastically changes how things are being done. This is where, how leadership and leadership development is practiced, has a significant impact.

When behaviour matters most but at the same time data is so much easily accessible, by everyone, it changes the way learning is done. Courses are now available everywhere and allow for learning from anywhere. So learning is no longer the objective of development but it’s much more the growth that one can ensure for employees.

That growth becomes the molded thing. It means how will the team enable the employee for success.

What are the enabling factors?

Does the workplace include or offer challenges to the employee in order for him or her to put their skills into practice?

Does it include clear values for the work?

Does it include constructive and unbiased and authentic feedback?

Does it include encouragement to help the employee try new things?

Lastly, does it include respect for the employee and his or her believes and what the employee may have to say?

This is what leadership development is. It's not learning anymore.

Previous generations for various reasons stayed in the jobs yet were not engaged. The younger generations are honest and straight-forward and vote with their feet if they are unhappy. What happens with voting with your feet is that if leadership is not performing then all the good people leave. They leave because they can get another job and what's left, as a talent pool, are people who can't get another job. So basically, the organization ends up with a less skilled workforce.

With 5 generations in the workforce, this kind of change creates a lot of frustration and leadership crises. This turmoil of change does not allow to provide the content of work, but the context, and that requires a behaviour change, which is a huge shift behaviourally. This demands an upfront ability to cope with such change. Coaching helps a lot in order to support the development of behaviours needed but it’s not enough. At the same time, there needs to be processes and structures that are the behavioural models required because everyone needs to know what is the real value expected from them through their work.

This creates a common language within the teams and within the organization. Lots of organizations realize that it’s not enough to have the values on a wall, but it needs to be the behaviour to impact the culture.

To get all this in place processes and systems are important to enthuse all the necessary behaviours and to monitor them so that they really happen. That's what is done in organizational and leadership development. All of these need to work together in order for the music to flow.

It's all about people.

Connect with Anna at https://twitter.com/AnnaMamalaki

linkedin.com/in/annamamalaki

The route to creating a great company brand is through its employees. How important is leadership in achieving this?

The short answer is that leadership is very important.

Historically, in Asia especially, we've approached brand from the perspective of it being a label, a design, a logo, a product or a service. There's much more to a brand than all of these elements. In any business there are two legs:

1. Leadership
2. Culture

Leadership impacts culture by the way it thinks, talks and behaves creating the environment in which employees operate. To quote--"monkey see, monkey do"-- As one sees the leaders doing so does one do! Now the employee is in various functions, within the organization, resulting in interacting with different people connected to the business and its brand. Given how organizations are structured this results in a series of mini-cultures all across and all of it reflects how the leadership engages the employees in those functions.

This impacts on the culture and climate within the business and is then reflected out through the brand in its interactions with the stakeholders. It drives the advertising, communication and internal engagement from that brand in terms of its tonality and content.

We now know that in the social age we are in, leadership is not a position or a title. This makes self-leadership a very critical concept. In any organization, an executive gets promoted because of technical and functional competencies. It's only in the past decade that attitudinal competencies and people-skills have climbed onto the evaluation criteria. With technology making more and more inroads and replacing routinised work managing people become a key. In doing so the entire premise of self-leadership comes into being. With good self-leadership comes good EQ, emotional quotient, and SQ, social quotient.

It's very important and a must to be able to understand oneself in order to be able to understand others. In coaching, this requires either a developmental or a remedial type of coaching. As some get this necessity of self-development easily whereas others are still in the blame game mentality.

Being self-aware and having the ability to lead oneself enables the leader to actually lead the team through empathy which helps in creating a strong individual and human connection. How this works is by having a simple conversation where each is given time and respect as a human being and acknowledged as such.

Coupled with this comes belief. Before taking a brand out externally it's critical for the employees to fully believe in its promise and align with its values. Just like individually one has to have a belief in one's purpose. In doing this the leadership requirement is to ensure that every single doubt that comes up is answered and solved. Doing this requires an investment of time, in specific conversations, that does bring in a strong ROI down the line. It needs to be done one-on-one and not as town halls or group sessions. After the one-on-ones, the team is pulled together by its team leader where the team is asked to suggest what and how the activities should be done. That results in a transfer of ownership and creates responsibility. It's not always the leader who has to come up with the ideas. It's the team members.

That's when engagement occurs.

By creating this transfer of ownership a leader ensures full commitment from the employee. Now when we scale this up to all employees doing this, the effort level goes up through the roof, and the probability of failure reduces drastically.

In doing this leadership needs to keep in mind the types of conversations required. With six generations in the workplace now, though...]]>The behaviour a brand displays is a reflection of the leadership behind that brand. It manifests through how employees are engaged in the brand and how a brand is able to add value to the customer.

The route to creating a great company brand is through its employees. How important is leadership in achieving this?

The short answer is that leadership is very important.

Historically, in Asia especially, we've approached brand from the perspective of it being a label, a design, a logo, a product or a service. There's much more to a brand than all of these elements. In any business there are two legs:

1. Leadership
2. Culture

Leadership impacts culture by the way it thinks, talks and behaves creating the environment in which employees operate. To quote--"monkey see, monkey do"-- As one sees the leaders doing so does one do! Now the employee is in various functions, within the organization, resulting in interacting with different people connected to the business and its brand. Given how organizations are structured this results in a series of mini-cultures all across and all of it reflects how the leadership engages the employees in those functions.

This impacts on the culture and climate within the business and is then reflected out through the brand in its interactions with the stakeholders. It drives the advertising, communication and internal engagement from that brand in terms of its tonality and content.

We now know that in the social age we are in, leadership is not a position or a title. This makes self-leadership a very critical concept. In any organization, an executive gets promoted because of technical and functional competencies. It's only in the past decade that attitudinal competencies and people-skills have climbed onto the evaluation criteria. With technology making more and more inroads and replacing routinised work managing people become a key. In doing so the entire premise of self-leadership comes into being. With good self-leadership comes good EQ, emotional quotient, and SQ, social quotient.

It's very important and a must to be able to understand oneself in order to be able to understand others. In coaching, this requires either a developmental or a remedial type of coaching. As some get this necessity of self-development easily whereas others are still in the blame game mentality.

Being self-aware and having the ability to lead oneself enables the leader to actually lead the team through empathy which helps in creating a strong individual and human connection. How this works is by having a simple conversation where each is given time and respect as a human being and acknowledged as such.

Coupled with this comes belief. Before taking a brand out externally it's critical for the employees to fully believe in its promise and align with its values. Just like individually one has to have a belief in one's purpose. In doing this the leadership requirement is to ensure that every single doubt that comes up is answered and solved. Doing this requires an investment of time, in specific conversations, that does bring in a strong ROI down the line. It needs to be done one-on-one and not as town halls or group sessions. After the one-on-ones, the team is pulled together by its team leader where the team is asked to suggest what and how the activities should be done. That results in a transfer of ownership and creates responsibility. It's not always the leader who has to come up with the ideas. It's the team members.

That's when engagement occurs.

By creating this transfer of ownership a leader ensures full commitment from the employee. Now when we scale this up to all employees doing this, the effort level goes up through the roof, and the probability of failure reduces drastically.

In doing this leadership needs to keep in mind the types of conversations required. With six generations in the workplace now, though everyone is speaking English, the language a 60-year-old vis-a-vis a 22-year-old is totally different. The context is what is key.

For a brand to be successful, by whatever parameters are set, leadership is what makes it or breaks it.

Joy Abdullah is a strategic marketing leader who humanizes businesses by engaging employees with the business purpose

and enabling them to provide value through their ideas and advocacy.

One of ‘Malaysia’s 10 Most Engaged Marketing Folks on LinkedIn in 2015’ & One of the ‘100 Most Inspirational LinkedIn Icons In Malaysia in 2019’ he has Asia-centric international experience in business strategy, marketing, and business operations that deliver measurable and profitable growth.

Joy can be contacted at https://www.linkedin.com/in/joyabdullah/

https://twitter.com/JoyAbdullah

To be a good leader one has to be a good leader of one's own self.

Encouraging others to be better self-leaders involves an understanding of what are one's gifts and talents and leaning into using those. Often it takes another to spot the talent and bring it to light thereby helping the person to be seen, heard and understood. Most important is understanding the other person, as that's what most people want. In doing this sometimes one has to help people lean into their discomfort in order to get comfortable.

To be a good leader one has got to be brave. This is where fear comes in. Often in self-development one is not thinking about the inner self but about what other people think and the noise and chatter from outside. Listening to that noise and what others are thinking results in keeping one stuck.

At this point where self-belief becomes very important. Taking courage and going forth believing one will be okay allows for a different result to occur. It enables change to occur. What's key is to know that no matter what others think of us, what's important is what we think of ourselves.

We need to know if we are enough, at that point or stage in life, to and for ourselves whilst we are striving to be the better version of our self. It requires accepting oneself fully and tap into one’s authenticity and show up in that form.

Self-belief comes from understanding, knowing and believing in the purpose one has. Once you have an inner purpose and believe that's what one is meant to do and enjoy doing it one finds the will to just do that.

Quote--"If you have a pulse, you have a purpose".

To be an effective and great leader two key components must be on display-- compassion& empathy.

If a leader lacks these then it is very hard to have the team believe in that leader. These skills need to be developed in order to be a good leader.

Empathy involves the ability to listen not with the intent to respond but to understand. Empathy helps one understand oneself from the perspective of one’s behaviour in order to be able to understand others. That helps self-development from a leadership perspective.

Having empathy enables one to take constructive criticism and use it positively for self-development. When we lead ourselves first and improve, we benefit the team we work and interact with.

This tends to radiate out and allows for in connecting with people.

There are two aspects in connecting with people which to some comes naturally and to many it’s hard. A reason for finding it hard to connect is because one may find it uncomfortable being vulnerable. That's where being authentic and transparent helps as people when one is true, and one is not. An often misconception is that vulnerability is a weakness. On the contrary, it’s a strength.

The other aspect in connecting is our story that we tend to project outwards.

Our story is what we tell ourselves dictates how we process it from within. Our behaviour reflects this and as a result we project it out.

It's important to identify what is that one story we keep telling ourselves. That becomes the energy we radiate out. This energy is what lifts or dampens others. Understanding one's story and identifying what energy one is creating aids in connecting with others of similar energy. On the positive side, this helps. On the negative side, this enables one to identify what needs to be done and jump out of a negative energy situation and improve oneself.

Self-leadership and purpose are interwoven. Self-leadership is about leading from within. As a leader if one is not leading oneself then one has nothing to offer to others. That's where authenticity plays a vital role. Knowing oneself is like a compass and it gives one the strength or courage to be, what is known as, a brave leader.

Belief and purpose help you overcome roadblocks or obstacles at work and in life. As a leader its part of the role to remove such obstacles for teams and to enable them to move forward.

People will remember leaders from the positives that they brought into life and that's where soul inspired leadership plays an active role.

It's about guiding people in the direction they are heading. In doing this it’s about helping people to look within themselves and encourage them to do so in order to express themselves through the courage they find and to overcome roadblocks.

Having self-leadership helps to be able to offer others leadership through something concrete and unforgettable in terms of behaviour and action.

When one is a purpose driven leader nothing stops you from serving your purpose. The passion to see other people be better keeps you, as a leader, going. One of the key things is about making-a-difference. Good leadership is about making a difference in other people's lives.

As a leader there is a moral obligation to get the best out of people around you. Understanding this makes one realise the true essence of leadership and actually helps in making the choice of being a leader or not.

Many in leadership positions are ordained the role but the true leaders then earn that role because of their behaviour and their actions. Leaders get things done through people. Other, kinds of leaders, manage a process in which people have to get involved by virtue of being engaged in with that task.

The analogy to explain leadership from within, or soul inspired leadership, is that of parenting. It similar to how a parent nurtures the child. Similarly, a leader needs to nurture and empower the team in order to grow them to a point where the team takes accountability, responsibility and does the work themselves.

It’s about developing the people by connecting them to the vision and in doing this it also about the love you have within yourself.

Love is defined in many ways.

In the area of leadership this love is defined as seeing someone else succeed in their chosen area and because of your wealth of knowledge or position the leader knows that he or she can make a huge impact by pointing them in the right direction and by creating opportunities for them.

There’re so many self-improvement classes and offers. It makes one wonder if we are not good enough the way we are.

People often go to self-improvement programmes not because of wanting to know what's inside them but because of what's around them.

For example, if the intent of going to the gym is all about being muscled rather than being a flabby overweight individual then, perhaps, that intent is not right. It may work for some and it may not. Many don't get to that end goal, of being muscled, simply because the intent is not real. And when the intent is not real, the improvement activity is not sustainable.

In the workplace executives, often, want to be a better leader to gain that extra bonus or the promotion. That's the wrong reason to undertake a leadership self-improvement programme. This occurs partly due to the conditioning we have in our minds where the 'better leader' bit is associated with a tangible gain. Reality is that to be a better leader it comes through behaviour and developing other people. And this behaviour comes from purpose and what comes from purpose drives you and sustains you.

Such conditioning also leads us to be continuously on the go and not be satisfied with where we are, at the present moment, in our lives. We don't pause and reflect that to get to the point where one is at there has been some positives which have gotten us there. Instead, we pick up on the negatives or the missing areas and start looking at them.

Yet discomfort does not occur in isolation. There are triggers, like our self-beliefs, that create that sense of discomfort. It comes from somewhere. We need to take the time to explore that discomfort. Or else we may miss out a great learning about ourselves. On the other hand, if we get too stuck in this self-exploration then we miss out seeing what the positives about oneself are.

The key in self-improvement is to build from the basics of what is good in your life as that will give you the strength to sustain the improvement efforts. The positives create the foundation you need and keep you grounded in undertaking the improvements you've identified.

It’s about taking a measured and balanced view on what works right and identifying what is holding one back. This way it doesn't create an association with the negative only and gives one a balanced view of the positives and negatives.

Focussing on a required self-improvement that is viewed as a negative, when one starts working on it, can actually not work out. As when one reaches the desired milestone the negative association that has been there from the start can affect the development of the improvement resulting in ending up in the same space of discomfort that one was in earlier.

Therefore realising the positives that exist is extremely helpful, as having a foundation to build from aids in have desired results in self-improvement.

In 2006 Sarah was over 200lbs, her quality of life was not what she really wanted and more importantly she realised she wasn't being the mom she wanted to be. In a reflective moment she told herself--"this is not acceptable'! That's where she started out leading herself without even realising that she was doing it.

Any good leader has the discipline of self-leadership. It comes back to having a relationship with yourself, internally not externally. It's always challenging to be self-disciplined as there are inner parts that don't want you to change. It comes from that feeling of being safe where you are as you know where you are and the mind has created the story around that situation. And when you decide to step out of that scenario and create a new script for your life that's when those parts start to get in the way, and it becomes a battle.

This is where mindset becomes very important. Your mindset also has to transform with you. So, it's a physical transformation from a mindset perspective.

How do you go about that?

Everyone is different. For everyone the motivation differs. One has to find out what that particular moment is which acts as a strong motivation. For Sarah it was getting angry and fed up being the way she was. It's at this point, that one's mindset comes into play very heavily, where you actually decide on what's best for yourself and not give in to whatever pressures or advise friends, family or acquaintances maybe saying as they may want you to remain in that comfort zone. Doing that then helps one to do what is best for one so that then in turn one can help others do what is best for them.

It's being true to yourself and ignoring the outside noise or chatter because the outside noise tends to influence us. This is part of the Brave Leadership concept of Kimberly Davis. One has to be brave to do it because you will have outside chatter that will try to conform you into who you are at the present moment.

It does create and bring resistance. What helps is levelling up i.e. evolving and changing and transforming.

Today the change has evolved into servant leadership.

Having had this journey and meeting people who have helped Sarah with time, knowledge and expertise, she has arrived at a point where she is now ready to complete the circle by helping others through showing them that they can do a mindset change or transformation and how to do it.

The key to making such a transformation successful is not taking it all on at once. For e.g. 'today is the day I have to start my diet'-- if we take the change as a lifestyle, we are setting ourselves up for failure. Whereas if you shift that to a 'this is how I will be living' and you accept yourself without being overly hard on yourself then the change takes hold. In leadership speak this is known or termed as 'shaping'. When you start something, you identify what is the most critical thing to do and focus on that. It has to be taken step by step and doing that will make you have the connection between leadership and transformation.

When people realise that they have this power-- to lead themselves through their own transformation - that is the key to the change in mindset.

As an analogy if you have the best-looking house in the street but it doesn't have anything inside it’s not a home. Yet if you have a comfortable home inside which reflects you and love and warmth, you're not so concerned about how the outside looks. It's no different to a human. You've got to be at home first i.e. you've got to be comfortable with yourself first.

Leadership is about letting the criticism, that comes with resistance, go knowing what you are doing, you're doing for...]]>Sarah Keen Post shares her journey and learning into self-leadership in this podcast.

In 2006 Sarah was over 200lbs, her quality of life was not what she really wanted and more importantly she realised she wasn't being the mom she wanted to be. In a reflective moment she told herself--"this is not acceptable'! That's where she started out leading herself without even realising that she was doing it.

Any good leader has the discipline of self-leadership. It comes back to having a relationship with yourself, internally not externally. It's always challenging to be self-disciplined as there are inner parts that don't want you to change. It comes from that feeling of being safe where you are as you know where you are and the mind has created the story around that situation. And when you decide to step out of that scenario and create a new script for your life that's when those parts start to get in the way, and it becomes a battle.

This is where mindset becomes very important. Your mindset also has to transform with you. So, it's a physical transformation from a mindset perspective.

How do you go about that?

Everyone is different. For everyone the motivation differs. One has to find out what that particular moment is which acts as a strong motivation. For Sarah it was getting angry and fed up being the way she was. It's at this point, that one's mindset comes into play very heavily, where you actually decide on what's best for yourself and not give in to whatever pressures or advise friends, family or acquaintances maybe saying as they may want you to remain in that comfort zone. Doing that then helps one to do what is best for one so that then in turn one can help others do what is best for them.

It's being true to yourself and ignoring the outside noise or chatter because the outside noise tends to influence us. This is part of the Brave Leadership concept of Kimberly Davis. One has to be brave to do it because you will have outside chatter that will try to conform you into who you are at the present moment.

It does create and bring resistance. What helps is levelling up i.e. evolving and changing and transforming.

Today the change has evolved into servant leadership.

Having had this journey and meeting people who have helped Sarah with time, knowledge and expertise, she has arrived at a point where she is now ready to complete the circle by helping others through showing them that they can do a mindset change or transformation and how to do it.

The key to making such a transformation successful is not taking it all on at once. For e.g. 'today is the day I have to start my diet'-- if we take the change as a lifestyle, we are setting ourselves up for failure. Whereas if you shift that to a 'this is how I will be living' and you accept yourself without being overly hard on yourself then the change takes hold. In leadership speak this is known or termed as 'shaping'. When you start something, you identify what is the most critical thing to do and focus on that. It has to be taken step by step and doing that will make you have the connection between leadership and transformation.

When people realise that they have this power-- to lead themselves through their own transformation - that is the key to the change in mindset.

As an analogy if you have the best-looking house in the street but it doesn't have anything inside it’s not a home. Yet if you have a comfortable home inside which reflects you and love and warmth, you're not so concerned about how the outside looks. It's no different to a human. You've got to be at home first i.e. you've got to be comfortable with yourself first.

Leadership is about letting the criticism, that comes with resistance, go knowing what you are doing, you're doing for yourself, you're leading yourself.

In having self-leadership it's important to note where the intention, for it, is coming from as there will be resistance and people will judge and have their opinions. Having the right intention which is to ensure personal growth and well-being and not because other people want us to conform to how they think one should be.

Having confidence in one's mindset and in your own decision and believing in the intent or reasons for which you are making the change and sticking to it when there's resistance one comes away feeling empowered.

This power of empowerment works beautifully as the more empowered you feel in yourself you radiate that aura and energy out to help others and most importantly the authenticity of self comes through.

Kimberly can be found at  https://onstageleadership.com/blog/

Janice can be found at https://janicekobelsky.mykajabi.com/blog

Burnout makes us experience heightened emotions of stress, feeling overwhelmed, vulnerable, fearful of change, and anxiety.

Here are some strategies to manage these:

1. Identify your super-objective:

This really is purpose-in-action. Purpose often can feel very overwhelming! Yet it doesn't have to be. All it takes is to be asking the right questions. There are three key questions:

1. A) Why do you CARE?

Given how important work and the identity it gives us is this question points out what we really care about. It also helps us know if it’s the reason that makes us get out of bed. Importantly we need to give ourselves permission to truly care for the reasons we care about our work.

If you don't that's a red flag!

It's going to be really hard to fully engage and bring the energy and passion one is capable of bringing in life.

1. B) What is the IMPACT you want to have outside yourself?

Most of our impact needs are self-centred. It focuses on the ‘I’ and is inward looking.

Whereas one needs to focus on the impact one wants to have on someone or something, outside of self, when looking to have an impact.

1. C) WHO or WHAT do care about most?

Are you a one-on-one person or are you seeking to impact your team or inspire large groups?

Is it about individual development or societal issues?

In getting to having a super-objective having clarity around these three questions helps frame it. What having the super-objective does is that it puts you on an active path to move through.

1. Start from within:

Everything begins within. Not from the outside. It all begins with oneself first. Starting from the outside is not the answer. Purpose-based actions always start from within and move out. It provides for the bravery in doing what one needs to do in order to be acting from one's purpose.

1. When faced with a stressful situation fall back on the super-objective questions and answer those honestly to self.

Pause.

Think back on these questions and, in that moment, answer them. It helps bring into perspective what and who is important to us and if what is stressing one out is in that perspective or not.

What these strategies do is that one doesn't have to wait for something to happen to reduce stress. Just by re-focussing one can live and work and lead on purpose. You end up bringing purpose into action through this.

Imagine you find yourself up against a big change, or your feeling vulnerable or your feeling afraid. You're typically focussed on what might happen to you in the face of this. What this does is that in the amygdala in your head--the centre of emotion management-- it gets triggered and it starts to send cortisol, the stress hormones, through your body and then you get the physiological sensations of stress. That leads to the reaction of protecting ourselves through fighting back or do things we do when we feel threatened.

If you can take your focus off yourself what that does is that it gets in the way of your amygdala. It stops it from triggering and you don't get those physical sensations! And that leaves you free to show up powerfully to make the impact you are there to make. It frees you up from your own physical limitations.

In leadership, this is very helpful. Where leaders, once they practice this, can look at helping their teams manage stress.

Whilst the same questions could be difficult for a leader to ask, as it]]>Today's podcast again features Kimberly Davis author of the book of Brave Leadership and well-known leadership development Blog writer Janice Kobelsky.

Kimberly can be found at  https://onstageleadership.com/blog/

Janice can be found at https://janicekobelsky.mykajabi.com/blog

Burnout makes us experience heightened emotions of stress, feeling overwhelmed, vulnerable, fearful of change, and anxiety.

Here are some strategies to manage these:

1. Identify your super-objective:

This really is purpose-in-action. Purpose often can feel very overwhelming! Yet it doesn't have to be. All it takes is to be asking the right questions. There are three key questions:

1. A) Why do you CARE?

Given how important work and the identity it gives us is this question points out what we really care about. It also helps us know if it’s the reason that makes us get out of bed. Importantly we need to give ourselves permission to truly care for the reasons we care about our work.

If you don't that's a red flag!

It's going to be really hard to fully engage and bring the energy and passion one is capable of bringing in life.

1. B) What is the IMPACT you want to have outside yourself?

Most of our impact needs are self-centred. It focuses on the ‘I’ and is inward looking.

Whereas one needs to focus on the impact one wants to have on someone or something, outside of self, when looking to have an impact.

1. C) WHO or WHAT do care about most?

Are you a one-on-one person or are you seeking to impact your team or inspire large groups?

Is it about individual development or societal issues?

In getting to having a super-objective having clarity around these three questions helps frame it. What having the super-objective does is that it puts you on an active path to move through.

1. Start from within:

Everything begins within. Not from the outside. It all begins with oneself first. Starting from the outside is not the answer. Purpose-based actions always start from within and move out. It provides for the bravery in doing what one needs to do in order to be acting from one's purpose.

1. When faced with a stressful situation fall back on the super-objective questions and answer those honestly to self.

Pause.

Think back on these questions and, in that moment, answer them. It helps bring into perspective what and who is important to us and if what is stressing one out is in that perspective or not.

What these strategies do is that one doesn't have to wait for something to happen to reduce stress. Just by re-focussing one can live and work and lead on purpose. You end up bringing purpose into action through this.

Imagine you find yourself up against a big change, or your feeling vulnerable or your feeling afraid. You're typically focussed on what might happen to you in the face of this. What this does is that in the amygdala in your head--the centre of emotion management-- it gets triggered and it starts to send cortisol, the stress hormones, through your body and then you get the physiological sensations of stress. That leads to the reaction of protecting ourselves through fighting back or do things we do when we feel threatened.

If you can take your focus off yourself what that does is that it gets in the way of your amygdala. It stops it from triggering and you don't get those physical sensations! And that leaves you free to show up powerfully to make the impact you are there to make. It frees you up from your own physical limitations.

In leadership, this is very helpful. Where leaders, once they practice this, can look at helping their teams manage stress.

Whilst the same questions could be difficult for a leader to ask, as it may trigger defensive reactions, asking about the impact and how success looks and how a team member looks at creating value, are some of the ways that stress, for the team, can be alleviated.

However, leaders have to be careful in asking these questions. As team members may try to seek out what's the right answer. But leading through by asking what gets one most excited circumvents that right or wrong issue and puts the focus back on the individual. And that then acts like the issue at hand and cuts through creating stress.

For leaders, they can approach this through looking at the legacy they want to leave. Evaluating the super-objective questions through the lens of legacy allows them to focus outside of themselves and work on positive activities.

All of the above comes back to mindfulness. To be able to pause and quickly recalibrate through reviewing their super-objective questions in order to be clear on the desired impact.

It results in showing up with energy in your authentic self.

Kimberly can be found at  https://onstageleadership.com/blog/

Janice can be found at https://janicekobelsky.mykajabi.com/blog

Self-care starts with setting good boundaries for oneself in order to refuel and regenerate.

Personality types do play a role here in how you take care of your energy. Introverts usually can and do regenerate by themselves easily. Yet when in a group it often takes a toll.

One must watch what one puts on the calendar in terms of having the necessary energy to see it through. If you are depleted and tired, it's impossible to show up as one's best self and give the best.

Individually its next to impossible to be all things to all people. Businesses, too, are aware of this. Thus they focus on specific types of clients they want. Yet somehow, this hasn’t quite fully translated into use in our personal lives.

We haven't quite gotten the necessity of re-energising. Neither have we gotten to understand what it actually takes to re-energise and accept the fact that you cannot be on 24X7. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that's exactly what we have to do. Be continuously on as our best self.

This is a result of our psychological need of being wanted. It’s wonderful when opportunities show up. What we don't realise is that it’s not just that you are not going to be able to bring your best self for that next engagement it's when you don't bring your best self to an engagement you hold on to that , you remember that, that muscle memory of 'I wasn't at my best' is something you carry with you.

Confidence is knowing that we can count on ourselves and when we let ourselves down, it erodes our confidence. We carry that with us into our future. It just doesn’t affect that one next engagement it affects us for the long term! If we are really looking at building our confidence and being our best, most authentic, and powerful self or "BRAVE", you really can't afford to erode your own confidence.

This perspective has a direct impact on leadership.

In the workplace, there are situations where many an activity is possible not completed in a given timeframe for a variety of reasons. This creates stress. What helps is looking at what bits have been completed. What small wins or improvements have happened. This perspective of looking at the positive, helps reduce stress and creates an energy re-boost.

It’s important to understand that there is a difference between being busy and being on purpose. Having this idea of a 'super objective' helps us understand and see what we are doing, why we are doing it and what it is tracking towards. That helps us take stock of those wins and really own them. You’re working hard and burning a lot of energy on something and the result of that could be in many months or even upwards of a year.

So, what's the win? Who defines there is a win and how do you take in that win in a way that actually sinks in? As that is another thing one finds, is that people say it will help to take stock of the wins, and yet they dismiss those wins. They don't really own it as it hasn't sunk in.

This is an outcome of our 'it’s never enough' feeling. Some of this might be societal. Yet this is something, as people, we really should look into as we are paying a very heavy price more than we realise.

The price of Burnout.

The word burnout has this connotation of the inner flame or passion, having gone out, that the work is not on purpose, that we have lost our way, in some way we have failed.

If one were to look at it as "Vital Exhaustion" then the perspective changes. It makes one look at it like looking at a health issue where the body...]]>Today's podcast again features Kimberly Davis author of the book of Brave Leadership and well-known leadership development Blog writer Janice Kobelsky.

Kimberly can be found at  https://onstageleadership.com/blog/

Janice can be found at https://janicekobelsky.mykajabi.com/blog

Self-care starts with setting good boundaries for oneself in order to refuel and regenerate.

Personality types do play a role here in how you take care of your energy. Introverts usually can and do regenerate by themselves easily. Yet when in a group it often takes a toll.

One must watch what one puts on the calendar in terms of having the necessary energy to see it through. If you are depleted and tired, it's impossible to show up as one's best self and give the best.

Individually its next to impossible to be all things to all people. Businesses, too, are aware of this. Thus they focus on specific types of clients they want. Yet somehow, this hasn’t quite fully translated into use in our personal lives.

We haven't quite gotten the necessity of re-energising. Neither have we gotten to understand what it actually takes to re-energise and accept the fact that you cannot be on 24X7. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that's exactly what we have to do. Be continuously on as our best self.

This is a result of our psychological need of being wanted. It’s wonderful when opportunities show up. What we don't realise is that it’s not just that you are not going to be able to bring your best self for that next engagement it's when you don't bring your best self to an engagement you hold on to that , you remember that, that muscle memory of 'I wasn't at my best' is something you carry with you.

Confidence is knowing that we can count on ourselves and when we let ourselves down, it erodes our confidence. We carry that with us into our future. It just doesn’t affect that one next engagement it affects us for the long term! If we are really looking at building our confidence and being our best, most authentic, and powerful self or "BRAVE", you really can't afford to erode your own confidence.

This perspective has a direct impact on leadership.

In the workplace, there are situations where many an activity is possible not completed in a given timeframe for a variety of reasons. This creates stress. What helps is looking at what bits have been completed. What small wins or improvements have happened. This perspective of looking at the positive, helps reduce stress and creates an energy re-boost.

It’s important to understand that there is a difference between being busy and being on purpose. Having this idea of a 'super objective' helps us understand and see what we are doing, why we are doing it and what it is tracking towards. That helps us take stock of those wins and really own them. You’re working hard and burning a lot of energy on something and the result of that could be in many months or even upwards of a year.

So, what's the win? Who defines there is a win and how do you take in that win in a way that actually sinks in? As that is another thing one finds, is that people say it will help to take stock of the wins, and yet they dismiss those wins. They don't really own it as it hasn't sunk in.

This is an outcome of our 'it’s never enough' feeling. Some of this might be societal. Yet this is something, as people, we really should look into as we are paying a very heavy price more than we realise.

The price of Burnout.

The word burnout has this connotation of the inner flame or passion, having gone out, that the work is not on purpose, that we have lost our way, in some way we have failed.

If one were to look at it as "Vital Exhaustion" then the perspective changes. It makes one look at it like looking at a health issue where the body vitals, physical or mental are exhausted. When one views it in this perspective then what you are saying to yourself is that you're vitality, or your key vitals, are exhausted. Then the next step is to know what to do to refuel that.

Using vital exhaustion is so much more powerful and empowering to oneself and to others in comparison to using burnout.

Viewing it as vital exhaustion one can be working so hard, so passionately towards making an impact and really making a difference in work and creating an impact that it can result in exhaustion. Where you run out of vitality or energy. Seeing it from this perspective then makes it much easier for one to say no to certain engagements and demands on one’s time.

Now we all find it hard to say no. That’s because we are always on and we feel we are not doing enough, and we are not being enough. A part of that comes from the fact that there's always more to do and there are demands on you.

In such an environment how do you say NO without saying no?

It's about clear boundaries.

It's about understanding what the boundaries are that you can put in place and holding yourself accountable to maintain those boundaries. It's about getting clear on your values, what is important to you, what you need physically. To the extent that creating rituals out of your boundaries help in getting a habit going.

Now the thing with boundaries is that it often conjures up an image of a wall!

Yet it's not a wall but a limit.

So, when viewed from the perspective of vital exhaustion the mental picture that comes is that of a dashboard where you can view your vitals.

Like seeing a gauge where you can see if you're running on empty or over-running and are about to pop. You can then either fill it up or pare it back. That helps in reframing what and how boundaries are. Thus, saying no is saying yes to yourself, to rejuvenate and re-charge.

Having boundaries and honouring them is beneficial to others.

Energy is one of the reasons people work with people.

Putting in that energy is honouring the commitment one has to the people one works with or are with. By protecting and nurturing the energy one is able to fulfill the commitments one has.

And the question being asked is this—in a business scenario, where collaborations are necessary, how do you collaborate and yet stay true to yourself?

This is, actually, a leadership skill.

It's how you take the people's inner self and connect it to the vision.

In life, it’s no different. It's how you connect with all the people around you, with yourself, to be yourself.

Whilst it’s easy to say not to ignore anyone, the reality is that we do so. That stems from being a certain personality type. For example, there is a personality type that would go in and ask everyone for their opinion yet in the end they would go ahead and do what they think is the right way. This is quite common in the business world.

What’s happening here is that someone's ticking the box and just hearing, not listening. Doing half the process and not going all the way.

It’s a paradox really.

On one hand, one must listen and listen well in order to gauge if what is being said resonates with one's self. On the other, one must be detached and emotionally intelligent enough to realise if what is being said is an opinion or a fact-based advice.

It's easier said than done.

And this is situational.

If it’s your own life and your own beliefs then you need to be true to yourself.

In business as a leader, you need to be able to have that skill to create the connections required between the vision you, as the leader, see and where your people should be heading.

It’s this connection that makes the energies right. When the connect is not there that's when things go awry. In getting this connect one does collaborate.

As an example, let's say you're getting information and you arrive at a consensus opinion or you are the expert in that issue and you have an opinion, or you get an expert opinion on the issue. You have a decision to make as you're responsible for it. And you make that decision. Post the decision making you must give feedback on how you made your decision. This feedback is critical as this is what creates the connect, between the vision you see and how the people see the benefit.

Good leaders connect with people's inner beliefs and their purpose in life.

If a business’s purpose is linked to the people's individual purpose that becomes a massively powerful driver. That is, of course, the ideal.

So how do you help someone who is caught up in the dilemma of wanting to be true to themselves and getting a very different opinion to the one they have, given that they need to take a decision?

It all comes back to how the opinion was influenced.

One must find out what is the basis on which such a diverse point of view that’s coming across. It's understandable if the information is different. But if the information is the same then you need to go back and understand how the opinion was formed, the perceptions and experiences that influenced it.

The key to influence is to look at why that opinion was formed and what were the dynamics at play in order to get the perceptions that were formed. Then you start to see where the differences happened. That is the power of influence.

When you need to stick to something that your heart believes in you've got to get to the rationale behind why others are saying something that's not quite the same.

This works when one has time. But if there's a fire, you need to take the decision you feel is right. Go back later and explain so that there's a connect, through the rationale, as to why you took the decision you did.

The key is having the people understand the rationale. So, in future, the group moves as one towards what you, as a leader, is trying to achieve.

In the process of explaining the rationale, a conversation opens and it becomes a two-way]]>For the past 6 months, our podcasts have been focused on sharing with you how to be authentic and true to yourself.

And the question being asked is this—in a business scenario, where collaborations are necessary, how do you collaborate and yet stay true to yourself?

This is, actually, a leadership skill.

It's how you take the people's inner self and connect it to the vision.

In life, it’s no different. It's how you connect with all the people around you, with yourself, to be yourself.

Whilst it’s easy to say not to ignore anyone, the reality is that we do so. That stems from being a certain personality type. For example, there is a personality type that would go in and ask everyone for their opinion yet in the end they would go ahead and do what they think is the right way. This is quite common in the business world.

What’s happening here is that someone's ticking the box and just hearing, not listening. Doing half the process and not going all the way.

It’s a paradox really.

On one hand, one must listen and listen well in order to gauge if what is being said resonates with one's self. On the other, one must be detached and emotionally intelligent enough to realise if what is being said is an opinion or a fact-based advice.

It's easier said than done.

And this is situational.

If it’s your own life and your own beliefs then you need to be true to yourself.

In business as a leader, you need to be able to have that skill to create the connections required between the vision you, as the leader, see and where your people should be heading.

It’s this connection that makes the energies right. When the connect is not there that's when things go awry. In getting this connect one does collaborate.

As an example, let's say you're getting information and you arrive at a consensus opinion or you are the expert in that issue and you have an opinion, or you get an expert opinion on the issue. You have a decision to make as you're responsible for it. And you make that decision. Post the decision making you must give feedback on how you made your decision. This feedback is critical as this is what creates the connect, between the vision you see and how the people see the benefit.

Good leaders connect with people's inner beliefs and their purpose in life.

If a business’s purpose is linked to the people's individual purpose that becomes a massively powerful driver. That is, of course, the ideal.

So how do you help someone who is caught up in the dilemma of wanting to be true to themselves and getting a very different opinion to the one they have, given that they need to take a decision?

It all comes back to how the opinion was influenced.

One must find out what is the basis on which such a diverse point of view that’s coming across. It's understandable if the information is different. But if the information is the same then you need to go back and understand how the opinion was formed, the perceptions and experiences that influenced it.

The key to influence is to look at why that opinion was formed and what were the dynamics at play in order to get the perceptions that were formed. Then you start to see where the differences happened. That is the power of influence.

When you need to stick to something that your heart believes in you've got to get to the rationale behind why others are saying something that's not quite the same.

This works when one has time. But if there's a fire, you need to take the decision you feel is right. Go back later and explain so that there's a connect, through the rationale, as to why you took the decision you did.

The key is having the people understand the rationale. So, in future, the group moves as one towards what you, as a leader, is trying to achieve.

In the process of explaining the rationale, a conversation opens and it becomes a two-way street. Through that conversation, influence starts to play and people get the thinking behind the decision and seeing another perspective.

That's where things start getting flexible.

Leadership and legacy often are mentioned in the same breath.

Yet what is a legacy and how does one go about creating a legacy consciously?

Ross and Antoinette give us a perspective on this.

Legacy is a big word.

It’s not just about the workplace leadership role and work but about one's life.

Knowing one’s life purpose has a direct connection with the legacy that you create. It also connects directly to how your leadership behaviour is.

As a leader or one who is in a leadership role if one is unsure of one’s life purpose or has not yet quite been able to pin-point it then it will create a disconnect which leads to certain leadership behaviour issues cropping up. When one is unsure or unaware of one's life purpose it can create significant anxiety. Such anxiety does manifest in behaviour.

All leaders try and look at the big picture and frame necessary actions. These are always positive. After all no one goes around thinking negatively purposefully.

What differentiates great leaders from good one is that great leaders always have a conviction of purpose. This comes from within oneself. In order to be able to do that one needs to identify and be aware of one's life purpose. Its purpose that creates the drive.

Speaking of life purpose, and its impact on the legacy one creates, it's important to know that purpose actually changes and evolves as we age. For a 20- or 30-years old life's purpose is being successful and having a family; in one's 40's and 50's a different realization seeps in. At this age point an individual has identified key qualities, has had significant life experiences and has an overall perspective on life in general. All of this, as a whole, shape what purpose will be and leads to life purpose changing.

However, as we go through our life stages and our perspective changes, our inner self actually does not change.

The question is when do we connect with our inner self?

At a younger age that connection does not occur immediately for most. For some that have been able to identify their purpose at a young age it creates the much-needed drive to do what they truly like doing and being fulfilled through that.

As one goes through life a certain realization about purpose does come in. It takes courage to be able to do what your inner self is guiding you to do. Courage because you have to connect strongly with that purpose as a calling in life and go ahead to do it without bothering about what others have to say about it. More about courage and how to get it can be heard in the podcast on Brave Leadership with Kimberly Davis (include link here to Kimberly’s podcast).

Finding that courage is essential to be able to do what one wants to do. To be able to act from one’s purpose because it creates the inner energy and dictates to the environment instead of making one react.

Courageous leaders have this connection with their purpose. They lead from being centred and with the big picture always in mind. As a leader remembering the big picture and the legacy you want to leave helps to put in perspective the environment you are dealing with so that you don't get caught up in the weeds.

One part of legacy is understanding one’s purpose. The other part is understanding what legacy is.

It’s creating relationships that are meaningful and helpful for people to find the resources they need to become stronger and more resilient in order to move ahead and be successful.

In a leadership position one finds that the key qualities revolve around developing people. One way of identifying legacy development is to have executives recall back their experiences, with leaders, and create a list which they see every day and check if they are doing those behaviours.

Doing this creates a habit that starts to impact on one’s behaviour as one is conscious of it.

And this is...]]> 

Leadership and legacy often are mentioned in the same breath.

Yet what is a legacy and how does one go about creating a legacy consciously?

Ross and Antoinette give us a perspective on this.

Legacy is a big word.

It’s not just about the workplace leadership role and work but about one's life.

Knowing one’s life purpose has a direct connection with the legacy that you create. It also connects directly to how your leadership behaviour is.

As a leader or one who is in a leadership role if one is unsure of one’s life purpose or has not yet quite been able to pin-point it then it will create a disconnect which leads to certain leadership behaviour issues cropping up. When one is unsure or unaware of one's life purpose it can create significant anxiety. Such anxiety does manifest in behaviour.

All leaders try and look at the big picture and frame necessary actions. These are always positive. After all no one goes around thinking negatively purposefully.

What differentiates great leaders from good one is that great leaders always have a conviction of purpose. This comes from within oneself. In order to be able to do that one needs to identify and be aware of one's life purpose. Its purpose that creates the drive.

Speaking of life purpose, and its impact on the legacy one creates, it's important to know that purpose actually changes and evolves as we age. For a 20- or 30-years old life's purpose is being successful and having a family; in one's 40's and 50's a different realization seeps in. At this age point an individual has identified key qualities, has had significant life experiences and has an overall perspective on life in general. All of this, as a whole, shape what purpose will be and leads to life purpose changing.

However, as we go through our life stages and our perspective changes, our inner self actually does not change.

The question is when do we connect with our inner self?

At a younger age that connection does not occur immediately for most. For some that have been able to identify their purpose at a young age it creates the much-needed drive to do what they truly like doing and being fulfilled through that.

As one goes through life a certain realization about purpose does come in. It takes courage to be able to do what your inner self is guiding you to do. Courage because you have to connect strongly with that purpose as a calling in life and go ahead to do it without bothering about what others have to say about it. More about courage and how to get it can be heard in the podcast on Brave Leadership with Kimberly Davis (include link here to Kimberly’s podcast).

Finding that courage is essential to be able to do what one wants to do. To be able to act from one’s purpose because it creates the inner energy and dictates to the environment instead of making one react.

Courageous leaders have this connection with their purpose. They lead from being centred and with the big picture always in mind. As a leader remembering the big picture and the legacy you want to leave helps to put in perspective the environment you are dealing with so that you don't get caught up in the weeds.

One part of legacy is understanding one’s purpose. The other part is understanding what legacy is.

It’s creating relationships that are meaningful and helpful for people to find the resources they need to become stronger and more resilient in order to move ahead and be successful.

In a leadership position one finds that the key qualities revolve around developing people. One way of identifying legacy development is to have executives recall back their experiences, with leaders, and create a list which they see every day and check if they are doing those behaviours.

Doing this creates a habit that starts to impact on one’s behaviour as one is conscious of it.

And this is where many leaders lose out. They lose sight of the big picture because they tend to get caught up in the weeds! That results in the behaviour being reactionary. To build a legacy what is need is to be acting from purpose.

The behaviour has to come from a place within oneself. From our heart. The heart drives the impulses to what your brain is thinking. So the action that one takes ideally should be in alignment with where we want to go or with the big picture one has.

Keeping this understanding in mind and focussing on the big picture to act from one’s purpose will aid in creating a legacy.

Leadership requires us to have one eye peeled on the big picture and the other on our team.

Yet there are times when we do end up getting caught in the weeds.

Given the hustle of life, it’s often hard to be able to pull back a bit and run a quick check on what we are doing. We often magnify the experience of the present moment much more in terms of importance than is necessary.

It's always wise to step back a bit and check how relevant is our experience, of the moment, in the grander scheme of things.

We can all relate to this.

We often get caught up in the weeds thinking what we are experiencing is really important for the long-term.

When you pause and question yourself you realize that the momentary experience doesn't really matter for the long-term. You've got to ask yourself is it part of the overall strategy and then look at the tactics or the experience of the moment and see if its related to the strategy. Most often we get lost and caught in the weeds due to the day to day tactics and operations.

The weeds of political games, work culture games, and emotionally fed behaviours rather than focussing on the big picture and working to achieve that.

By stepping back, we can regroup, get grounded and see what's really important.

When you get caught up in the little hassles or the weeds so to speak, you tend to lose the strategic or helicopter view and its perspective. Resulting in your energy getting drained much faster on things that are actually not important.

Getting caught up in the games and doing things that you don’t want to be doing or that are not aiding you towards achieving the bigger picture becomes an energy drain. In some instances, they become a negative energy!

The way to recognise that you are getting caught up in the weeds is to take note of your body. It gives you little pointers or signs, through the aches and pains, telling us about what is going on in our environment that we are not dealing with properly.

The body informs about the manifestation of physical ailments which occurs through an emotional and mental imbalance.

Recognising this and going back to the big picture, which is a more positive thing, of what you are trying to achieve in the long run helps in identifying which tactics are causing negative energy and affecting health.

To stay out or avoid getting caught in the weeds, and the negative energy associated with it, look at the behaviours that need to be used to achieve the strategy. Identify those behaviours and the positive ways of doing it.

Find your pause, in the middle of all the hustle, and check in with yourself to find out if the experience you are feeling is important or not in relation to the big picture or strategy you have in your mind.

Change invites reflection to review where we are and who we are. It invites us to drop deeper and see our shadow selves and what we are not comfortable with changing.

As individuals we are resistant to change. It helps to know or find out what's really underneath that resistance, as in where the resistance is coming from.

For leaders, it about the 'comfort zone' and change when they are looking at change management processes or initiatives. People like their comfort zones because they are in control of nearly every contingency they have and moving them out of that make them know and feel that there are more challenges coming up. That leads to the resistance of-- why do I have to change!

“One way to go about it is not to mention the word 'change' in the process, just focus on the destination and the behaviours that get you there.” (Twitter quote)

So how do you not mention the word change in a change management process or initiative?

There are 4 key questions that leaders need to answer with clarity:

1. Where do we want to go?

2. Where are we now?

3. What part do I play?

4. What's in it for me?

Giving answers to these four questions guarantees that the rest of the organization moves with the desired change management process. In fact, answering these four questions makes the entire change process much easier for those with resistance to accept and make the necessary move.

The best analogy is to take that of moving to a new house.

So first we are going to go from here, where we are now, to that house there. Move from point A to point B. The move is because the house, in point B is, say bigger or nicer and each family member gets their own room. That answers the what's in it for me. And individually as a family member involved my role is to pack and clean up the rooms and things under my responsibility and move them to the new house. But be ready for some to still have resistance and who would not want to leave.

In this example you would note that through the entire process at no point in time did anyone in the family suddenly just say "oh! we're going to change!".

For leaders it’s no different. They need to sell the idea of change without using the word change. By using the word change one creates resistance. On the other hand, by explaining the benefits of change, specially through the 'what's in it for me' bit and where the organization is headed, it makes it easier to get people on board.

This ability to communicate is impacted by the way leaders are affected by the environment they are in. It shapes their personality from what they feel is the expectation the company, the executives and the environment have from them. A sort of conditioning in terms of leadership behaviour seems to be present which suits the leaders.

Now when this behaviour changes it, initially, creates friction because the current state has changed, and a new behaviour is being demonstrated. This friction is actually pushback.

This pushback occurs on two counts:

1. The first person's usual behaviour has been replaced with a new behaviour. Therefore, a new stimulus to react to.

2. The what's in it for me needs to be clearly visible

When the changed behaviour is in play and all other dynamics are running on the old or previous conditioning and the new behaviour is not the expected behaviour it creates the friction.

For leaders it’s critical that they explain the change, that is taking place or is being spoken about, with clarity. Leaders need to be able to tell their executives why the change is happening and what exactly they are trying to do.

Let me share an example from my corporate life. This is many decades ago when empowerment wasn't...]]>Change is really about the notion or idea of impermanence of things—Buddha.

Change invites reflection to review where we are and who we are. It invites us to drop deeper and see our shadow selves and what we are not comfortable with changing.

As individuals we are resistant to change. It helps to know or find out what's really underneath that resistance, as in where the resistance is coming from.

For leaders, it about the 'comfort zone' and change when they are looking at change management processes or initiatives. People like their comfort zones because they are in control of nearly every contingency they have and moving them out of that make them know and feel that there are more challenges coming up. That leads to the resistance of-- why do I have to change!

“One way to go about it is not to mention the word 'change' in the process, just focus on the destination and the behaviours that get you there.” (Twitter quote)

So how do you not mention the word change in a change management process or initiative?

There are 4 key questions that leaders need to answer with clarity:

1. Where do we want to go?

2. Where are we now?

3. What part do I play?

4. What's in it for me?

Giving answers to these four questions guarantees that the rest of the organization moves with the desired change management process. In fact, answering these four questions makes the entire change process much easier for those with resistance to accept and make the necessary move.

The best analogy is to take that of moving to a new house.

So first we are going to go from here, where we are now, to that house there. Move from point A to point B. The move is because the house, in point B is, say bigger or nicer and each family member gets their own room. That answers the what's in it for me. And individually as a family member involved my role is to pack and clean up the rooms and things under my responsibility and move them to the new house. But be ready for some to still have resistance and who would not want to leave.

In this example you would note that through the entire process at no point in time did anyone in the family suddenly just say "oh! we're going to change!".

For leaders it’s no different. They need to sell the idea of change without using the word change. By using the word change one creates resistance. On the other hand, by explaining the benefits of change, specially through the 'what's in it for me' bit and where the organization is headed, it makes it easier to get people on board.

This ability to communicate is impacted by the way leaders are affected by the environment they are in. It shapes their personality from what they feel is the expectation the company, the executives and the environment have from them. A sort of conditioning in terms of leadership behaviour seems to be present which suits the leaders.

Now when this behaviour changes it, initially, creates friction because the current state has changed, and a new behaviour is being demonstrated. This friction is actually pushback.

This pushback occurs on two counts:

1. The first person's usual behaviour has been replaced with a new behaviour. Therefore, a new stimulus to react to.

2. The what's in it for me needs to be clearly visible

When the changed behaviour is in play and all other dynamics are running on the old or previous conditioning and the new behaviour is not the expected behaviour it creates the friction.

For leaders it’s critical that they explain the change, that is taking place or is being spoken about, with clarity. Leaders need to be able to tell their executives why the change is happening and what exactly they are trying to do.

Let me share an example from my corporate life. This is many decades ago when empowerment wasn't even spoken about at length. But one day, at work, I came across an article on it and decided this sounds good and let's give a try. So, I had an office manager who would run by me all and every issue and decision she wanted to take. So once when she did come in with an issue, I asked her opinion and agreed with her. As she was going off she seemed a bit puzzled because she probably noticed the change in behaviour. And this change in behaviour got more obvious as I allowed other managers and colleagues to take their own decision. It went to the extent that one of my managers had a book open, running odds, on if I was being transferred and where was I going! I would not have known this until one day my PA came in and sat down and asked me where I was going! And when I said I'm not going anywhere, then the penny dropped, and I realised that I had changed my leadership approach in order to help everyone on the team learn more but not told them.

All this occurred because I had not given clarity on the change I was bringing in for the benefit of the team.

Sharing it helps as then there is clarity of purpose and it becomes a shared journey.

In ending when your managing change just don't mention the word and answer the four questions.

Generally, in assessments, particularly in the Harrison psychometric test, which Ross uses as a base for his coaching, the behavioural patterns in stress situations and the resulting volatilities are very apparent in the results.

Once an overly empathetic person realizes their softness is taken for granted by their staff, they tend to feel frustrated and taken advantage off. In a stress situation, this then may cause a shift in the opposite behavioural spectrum, which is then the tendency to enforce the rules "no matter what," without any sympathy anymore for the other person's situation. It may even lead to an aggressive outburst and therefore inconsistent behaviour.

Rules may be put in place as a reflection of earlier overly empathic approach.

As for the "Helper" personality, the excess of that trait may lead to the attitude of a martyr, spending one's energy in helping others with time, advice and emotional support. If stretched to the maximum and not getting the appreciation, they desire in return; they too start feeling taken advantage off.

Saying No is often a challenge for this personality type, as they fear the lack of appreciation or love if they would reject a request. So they overexert themselves to be needed. The drawback here is that they also train everyone else around them to seek them out as a go-to person for every small detail.

Again, in a stressful situation, they may then demonstrate a volatile behaviour by becoming aggressive or passive-aggressive, falling into the other extreme of this pair.

For the coach, it is essential to point out this volatility, discuss the two extremes of the scale, help the client to understand which situations trigger those patterns and then suggest various solutions. The idea is here to bring the behaviour the client is engaging in too much back into balance.

Coaches now can find help through our Leadership Balancing Card; the ideal tool to anchor their efforts in the client's information field for faster results.

The outer ego causes issues.

Arrogance is visible and perceived. This is outer ego showing itself.

In a corporate setting, people with strong inner strength and belief in themselves, can collaborate well, but often say less in meetings. This quietness usually comes across as lack of confidence. It becomes a matter of how you express yourself and stay true to yourself and not, in your own mind, appear arrogant.

Speaking from a coaching perspective there have been situations where it has been necessary to bring the inner ego out in a way that the individual is still comfortable but are heard more constructively.

This is best done by using a series of ‘just asking’ questions which stimulates. or gets a message. or makes a point or adds on from what someone is saying. It builds up on the conversation with the person by adding one's own bit through recognizing the other person's contribution.

How do we see ego, and do we understand ego?

Ego comes back to --'what do I believe about myself'. Some may have a balanced point of view about themselves which leads to them thinking that everyone else has a point of view too. So, they accept everyone else's views as a valid perspective and share or say from that perspective. This is a representation of a cumulative set of views.

Where does this behaviour come from?

Is it from the fact that these people are really very balanced and have a strong sense of self or is it more of a stepping back because one does not want to interfere with another's point of view and lacks confidence?

It could be both.

People who have a strong sense of self-belief do not always offer a point of view which is often because they don’t play the sometimes power that occur in a corporate meeting scenario. By offering an opinion or view they see themselves as getting themselves into playing games. So, in such a situation, its key to be able to reach out and convince such people that their opinion is valuable and to encourage them to offer it.

But isn't that ego too?

It’s the inner ego that leads people to be comfortable with themselves, have confidence and see weaknesses in other people. But a key difference is that they don't play on those weaknesses or use them against the person.

In the corporate world one has to contribute and add value. People with a balance self-belief usually have a lot to offer. In coaching such individuals, the goal is to get them to release that value, in team discussion for example, and contribute without seeing it as grandstanding. How you do that is by getting them to say that their opinion is valuable, and the team is waiting to hear it.

One has to step out in the unknown a little bit and contribute without thinking too much about that being like showing-off. It's a matter of telling yourself that you're contributing and adding value, not so much assessing yourself as someone whose contributing but like to let everyone know that they are. The way to encourage them to do it is by building on other people's discussion and asking intelligent questions.

So yes ego is important when it comes from within.

Too much of ego is arrogance and not enough ego means you are laid back.

Let's look at defining ego.

Inner ego is the inner belief or inner strength that is purpose-based and is looking at the self. Outer ego is actually arrogance where one is driving oneself to appear to be better than others in front of everyone else. It's to the world at large and not for any other benefit.

Another way to view ego is to have the understanding of who you are and what drives you and what makes you the person you are. To do this requires a bit of self-inquiry on what are your skills, traits, qualities, strengths, and weaknesses.

Following the self-belief or self-analysis route, it’s all about being true to yourself and not just doing things to look good against other people. Now, this happens in the business world a lot because you are competing against other executives to get promoted or are just playing an ego game of I am better than you!  So, there is a tendency to compare yourself to others but not with your inner self.

This causes a lot of stress and issues in the workplace. You have people who don't collaborate with others because they want to be on top of others and they will only collaborate when the purpose suits them.

From a coaching perspective, people who aren't aware of the impact their ego is having are easier to coach and influence, as once they are made aware it, it's like a revelation to them. But then there are people who are very aware of this and use ego as a power game. It is can be challenging to get them to recognise the stress they create.

How does ego present itself in the workplace?

In the workplace when we notice certain signs like lack of collaboration, or a siege mentality or less alignment and division of the corporate vision, these are potential signals of ego in play. Siege mentality is where the team leader feels the team is the best team and goes ahead to climb all over other teams to achieve. Such a team and its leader are quite often aligned and share the corporate vision within the immediate team members but are unable to help connect it for other teams. In most scenarios ego in the workplace is the outer ego given the competitive nature of business.

Then there exists a scenario of those with underdeveloped ego. Contrary to arrogance, this leads to making the individual feel highly inferior and this insecurity quite often leads to someone having to overcompensate when under stress.

The action of overcompensation results in the person either showing how much smarter he or she is, through lots of academic qualifications, or how much better he or she is, by trying to outdo others.

It is hard to reach such people and break down the layers they have created internally in their own self. Their beliefs about themselves make them feel insecure.

There are different ways how an imbalance can manifest and not necessarily by only through arrogance.

Ego also comes about through the emotion of jealousy. The tendency to envy someone else's success is a sign that one's ego is not really balanced because the emotion triggers an inferiority feeling.

The ability in recognising your own self-worth, that you have the ability to contribute to the company, to the team, to the world, is something that if it's in place, then arrogance and ego would not be present.

In the business world, better leaders believe in themselves and try to bring people along with their vision. They focus on results and people and how to balance the two. Good leaders balance it well. As a leader, by being balanced in knowing yourself allows you to accept people and their capabilities and raise them accordingly.

To summarise, you need inner ego and belief in your inner self. It's the outer ego that detracts from you qualities...]]>Ego is a positive thing for people and yet it can be a negative too.

Too much of ego is arrogance and not enough ego means you are laid back.

Let's look at defining ego.

Inner ego is the inner belief or inner strength that is purpose-based and is looking at the self. Outer ego is actually arrogance where one is driving oneself to appear to be better than others in front of everyone else. It's to the world at large and not for any other benefit.

Another way to view ego is to have the understanding of who you are and what drives you and what makes you the person you are. To do this requires a bit of self-inquiry on what are your skills, traits, qualities, strengths, and weaknesses.

Following the self-belief or self-analysis route, it’s all about being true to yourself and not just doing things to look good against other people. Now, this happens in the business world a lot because you are competing against other executives to get promoted or are just playing an ego game of I am better than you!  So, there is a tendency to compare yourself to others but not with your inner self.

This causes a lot of stress and issues in the workplace. You have people who don't collaborate with others because they want to be on top of others and they will only collaborate when the purpose suits them.

From a coaching perspective, people who aren't aware of the impact their ego is having are easier to coach and influence, as once they are made aware it, it's like a revelation to them. But then there are people who are very aware of this and use ego as a power game. It is can be challenging to get them to recognise the stress they create.

How does ego present itself in the workplace?

In the workplace when we notice certain signs like lack of collaboration, or a siege mentality or less alignment and division of the corporate vision, these are potential signals of ego in play. Siege mentality is where the team leader feels the team is the best team and goes ahead to climb all over other teams to achieve. Such a team and its leader are quite often aligned and share the corporate vision within the immediate team members but are unable to help connect it for other teams. In most scenarios ego in the workplace is the outer ego given the competitive nature of business.

Then there exists a scenario of those with underdeveloped ego. Contrary to arrogance, this leads to making the individual feel highly inferior and this insecurity quite often leads to someone having to overcompensate when under stress.

The action of overcompensation results in the person either showing how much smarter he or she is, through lots of academic qualifications, or how much better he or she is, by trying to outdo others.

It is hard to reach such people and break down the layers they have created internally in their own self. Their beliefs about themselves make them feel insecure.

There are different ways how an imbalance can manifest and not necessarily by only through arrogance.

Ego also comes about through the emotion of jealousy. The tendency to envy someone else's success is a sign that one's ego is not really balanced because the emotion triggers an inferiority feeling.

The ability in recognising your own self-worth, that you have the ability to contribute to the company, to the team, to the world, is something that if it's in place, then arrogance and ego would not be present.

In the business world, better leaders believe in themselves and try to bring people along with their vision. They focus on results and people and how to balance the two. Good leaders balance it well. As a leader, by being balanced in knowing yourself allows you to accept people and their capabilities and raise them accordingly.

To summarise, you need inner ego and belief in your inner self. It's the outer ego that detracts from you qualities to be a good leader.

Too much of ego is arrogance and not enough ego means you are laid back.

Let's look at defining ego.

Inner ego is the inner belief or inner strength that is purpose-based and is looking at the self. Outer ego is actually arrogance where one is driving oneself to appear to be better than others in front of everyone else. It's to the world at large and not for any other benefit.

Another way to view ego is to have the understanding of who you are and what drives you and what makes you the person you are. To do this requires a bit of self-inquiry on what are your skills, traits, qualities, strengths, and weaknesses.

Following the self-belief or self-analysis route, it’s all about being true to yourself and not just doing things to look good against other people. Now, this happens in the business world a lot because you are competing against other executives to get promoted or are just playing an ego game of I am better than you!  So, there is a tendency to compare yourself to others but not with your inner self.

This causes a lot of stress and issues in the workplace. You have people who don't collaborate with others because they want to be on top of others and they will only collaborate when the purpose suits them.

From a coaching perspective, people who aren't aware of the impact their ego is having are easier to coach and influence, as once they are made aware it, it's like a revelation to them. But then there are people who are very aware of this and use ego as a power game. It is can be challenging to get them to recognise the stress they create.

How does ego present itself in the workplace?

In the workplace when we notice certain signs like lack of collaboration, or a siege mentality or less alignment and division of the corporate vision, these are potential signals of ego in play. Siege mentality is where the team leader feels the team is the best team and goes ahead to climb all over other teams to achieve. Such a team and its leader are quite often aligned and share the corporate vision within the immediate team members but are unable to help connect it for other teams. In most scenarios ego in the workplace is the outer ego given the competitive nature of business.

Then there exists a scenario of those with underdeveloped ego. Contrary to arrogance, this leads to making the individual feel highly inferior and this insecurity quite often leads to someone having to overcompensate when under stress.

The action of overcompensation results in the person either showing how much smarter he or she is, through lots of academic qualifications, or how much better he or she is, by trying to outdo others.

It is hard to reach such people and break down the layers they have created internally in their own self. Their beliefs about themselves make them feel insecure.

There are different ways how an imbalance can manifest and not necessarily by only through arrogance.

Ego also comes about through the emotion of jealousy. The tendency to envy someone else's success is a sign that one's ego is not really balanced because the emotion triggers an inferiority feeling.

The ability in recognising your own self-worth, that you have the ability to contribute to the company, to the team, to the world, is something that if it's in place, then arrogance and ego would not be present.

In the business world, better leaders believe in themselves and try to bring people along with their vision. They focus on results and people and how to balance the two. Good leaders balance it well. As a leader, by being balanced in knowing yourself allows you to accept people and their capabilities and raise them accordingly.

To summarise, you need inner ego and belief in your inner self. It's the outer ego that detracts from you qualities...]]>Ego is a positive thing for people and yet it can be a negative too.

Too much of ego is arrogance and not enough ego means you are laid back.

Let's look at defining ego.

Inner ego is the inner belief or inner strength that is purpose-based and is looking at the self. Outer ego is actually arrogance where one is driving oneself to appear to be better than others in front of everyone else. It's to the world at large and not for any other benefit.

Another way to view ego is to have the understanding of who you are and what drives you and what makes you the person you are. To do this requires a bit of self-inquiry on what are your skills, traits, qualities, strengths, and weaknesses.

Following the self-belief or self-analysis route, it’s all about being true to yourself and not just doing things to look good against other people. Now, this happens in the business world a lot because you are competing against other executives to get promoted or are just playing an ego game of I am better than you!  So, there is a tendency to compare yourself to others but not with your inner self.

This causes a lot of stress and issues in the workplace. You have people who don't collaborate with others because they want to be on top of others and they will only collaborate when the purpose suits them.

From a coaching perspective, people who aren't aware of the impact their ego is having are easier to coach and influence, as once they are made aware it, it's like a revelation to them. But then there are people who are very aware of this and use ego as a power game. It is can be challenging to get them to recognise the stress they create.

How does ego present itself in the workplace?

In the workplace when we notice certain signs like lack of collaboration, or a siege mentality or less alignment and division of the corporate vision, these are potential signals of ego in play. Siege mentality is where the team leader feels the team is the best team and goes ahead to climb all over other teams to achieve. Such a team and its leader are quite often aligned and share the corporate vision within the immediate team members but are unable to help connect it for other teams. In most scenarios ego in the workplace is the outer ego given the competitive nature of business.

Then there exists a scenario of those with underdeveloped ego. Contrary to arrogance, this leads to making the individual feel highly inferior and this insecurity quite often leads to someone having to overcompensate when under stress.

The action of overcompensation results in the person either showing how much smarter he or she is, through lots of academic qualifications, or how much better he or she is, by trying to outdo others.

It is hard to reach such people and break down the layers they have created internally in their own self. Their beliefs about themselves make them feel insecure.

There are different ways how an imbalance can manifest and not necessarily by only through arrogance.

Ego also comes about through the emotion of jealousy. The tendency to envy someone else's success is a sign that one's ego is not really balanced because the emotion triggers an inferiority feeling.

The ability in recognising your own self-worth, that you have the ability to contribute to the company, to the team, to the world, is something that if it's in place, then arrogance and ego would not be present.

In the business world, better leaders believe in themselves and try to bring people along with their vision. They focus on results and people and how to balance the two. Good leaders balance it well. As a leader, by being balanced in knowing yourself allows you to accept people and their capabilities and raise them accordingly.

To summarise, you need inner ego and belief in your inner self. It's the outer ego that detracts from you qualities to be a good leader.

It's not self-sacrificial but rather in such a way that all parties benefit greatly. Such influence creates both medium and long-term success and is like servant leadership.

What is influence really?

Influence can be defined on a couple of levels.

Firstly, at a basic level influence is the ability to move a person or persons to a desired action usually within the context of a specific goal.

Secondly, that is its definition but that is not its essence. The essence of influence is 'Pull'.

Pull as opposed to push. Influence is an attraction. Genuine influencers attract people first to themselves and then, and only then, to their idea. They do this not through being pushy or pushing their will on others but rather by doing the opposite--pull.

Five Secrets of Genuine Influence:

1.Master Your Emotions: When we are in control of our emotions, in control of our self, that is when we can take a potentially negative situation or person and turn it into a win for everyone involved.

1. Step Into The Other Person's Shoes: This is easier said than done simply because most of us have different size feet! In other words, we come from different ways of seeing the world. Yet as human beings we tend to believe that most people see the world basically the same way we do which is not correct.
2. Set The Frame:A frame is a foundation from which everything evolves. What it does is it sets the context of the situation to go as you'd like it to go.
3. Communicate With Tact And Empathy: Tact is defined as the language of strength. It takes a strong person to be able to speak tactfully because to speak tactfully means you're not just saying the first thing that comes to your mind or you are not reacting to someone's comment instead you are taking into consideration what you say and how you say it and how it's going to affect the other person. This takes strength.

[spp-tweet tweet=""Tact and kindness should not be confused with compromise""]

5.Let Go Of Having To Be Right: This may sound to be counter-intuitive in the sense that you don't care to be right. It's not that at all. You prefer to be right and you want to be right, you are going to prepare to be right. What it means is that you are not going to be emotionally attached to having to be right. Rather than making you less influential it does the reverse and makes you much more influential.

[spp-tweet tweet=""As human beings we want to be able to put a cause to certain things.""]

Based on everything you said Bob I’m sceptical about one thing—you mentioned about one motivating factor shared by every single person on earth. What is it?

This is from Harry Brown, who was a student of human nature. He didn’t try to change human nature. He worked with it and he was very successful. According to Harry the one motivating factor shared by all every single person on earth is every single person seeks happiness.

[spp-tweet tweet="“Every single person seeks happiness”"]

The second part of Harry's quote is--Happiness is relative.

In every other way as individuals we are different and we all understand happiness differently. Thus, we place different values on different things. So, what would bring happiness to one person would be meaningless to another.

This is where good leadership connects with influencing. Good leaders aren't just running around trying to keep people happy all day, but they want people to be content and have fun at work and at the same time be happy with what]]>The go-giver influencer tackles what you want by focusing on the other person's interest.

It's not self-sacrificial but rather in such a way that all parties benefit greatly. Such influence creates both medium and long-term success and is like servant leadership.

What is influence really?

Influence can be defined on a couple of levels.

Firstly, at a basic level influence is the ability to move a person or persons to a desired action usually within the context of a specific goal.

Secondly, that is its definition but that is not its essence. The essence of influence is 'Pull'.

Pull as opposed to push. Influence is an attraction. Genuine influencers attract people first to themselves and then, and only then, to their idea. They do this not through being pushy or pushing their will on others but rather by doing the opposite--pull.

Five Secrets of Genuine Influence:

1.Master Your Emotions: When we are in control of our emotions, in control of our self, that is when we can take a potentially negative situation or person and turn it into a win for everyone involved.

1. Step Into The Other Person's Shoes: This is easier said than done simply because most of us have different size feet! In other words, we come from different ways of seeing the world. Yet as human beings we tend to believe that most people see the world basically the same way we do which is not correct.
2. Set The Frame:A frame is a foundation from which everything evolves. What it does is it sets the context of the situation to go as you'd like it to go.
3. Communicate With Tact And Empathy: Tact is defined as the language of strength. It takes a strong person to be able to speak tactfully because to speak tactfully means you're not just saying the first thing that comes to your mind or you are not reacting to someone's comment instead you are taking into consideration what you say and how you say it and how it's going to affect the other person. This takes strength.

[spp-tweet tweet=""Tact and kindness should not be confused with compromise""]

5.Let Go Of Having To Be Right: This may sound to be counter-intuitive in the sense that you don't care to be right. It's not that at all. You prefer to be right and you want to be right, you are going to prepare to be right. What it means is that you are not going to be emotionally attached to having to be right. Rather than making you less influential it does the reverse and makes you much more influential.

[spp-tweet tweet=""As human beings we want to be able to put a cause to certain things.""]

Based on everything you said Bob I’m sceptical about one thing—you mentioned about one motivating factor shared by every single person on earth. What is it?

This is from Harry Brown, who was a student of human nature. He didn’t try to change human nature. He worked with it and he was very successful. According to Harry the one motivating factor shared by all every single person on earth is every single person seeks happiness.

[spp-tweet tweet="“Every single person seeks happiness”"]

The second part of Harry's quote is--Happiness is relative.

In every other way as individuals we are different and we all understand happiness differently. Thus, we place different values on different things. So, what would bring happiness to one person would be meaningless to another.

This is where good leadership connects with influencing. Good leaders aren't just running around trying to keep people happy all day, but they want people to be content and have fun at work and at the same time be happy with what they are doing. That's the sense of purpose that people get.

Follow the link to visit the Go Giver       http://www.thegogiver.com/tggi-interview/

What really does being an authentic leader mean?

In this podcast we have an example that provides a scientific perspective to the need to be true to yourself.

There is a reason behind that.

It all started in a discussion about Einstein’s kinetic energy formula of

mass X velocity²/ 2.  For this equation let us take the individual as a specific energetic mass that includes all believes, shadows and perceptions that one carries around and which influences the weight in life. This is not the physical weight but the energy weight.

When we shine light on to these shadows and believes we come to realise that some of them are outdated. We can then shed these and be lighter in our energy weight.

This process starts to help one develop a different level of quality of consciousness and of awareness about self and the surrounding environment. It leads to being more focussed, authentic and more directive in one’s journey enabling to use less energy to create what is needed and also use less time to do activities.

Most of us can relate to this as we often feel like the eternal hamster in the wheel!

We just keep doing and doing. Working for eight hours, having issues that spike the adrenalin, creates so much adrenalin in our body that our body doesn't get time to restore itself to a balanced state.

This creates stress.

A lot of companies are looking at corporate wellness programs, work-life balance, and reduced work hours as means of combating stress because stress is harmful.

Whilst wellness programs are helpful it is leaders who often forget about themselves and the need for them to have a work-life balance.

[spp-tweet tweet=""This is because they are not being true to themselves due to the external influence on their ego of being a leader.”"]

We can call this emotional-data. This is the self-perception of the leader about how he or she thinks she is seen by others. This emotional-data is the mass in the kinetic energy equation.

By de-stressing it helps relax and remove perceptions created by the external influences. For some meditation does not work simply because of the immense amount of hormonal imbalance created by high adrenalin. The body is simply not able to relax to start getting back to being in a balanced state.

In a scenario like this the first thing is to try and do an activity that grounds one by doing something that really gives joy.

Doing this gets one to be more in touch with self, makes one more reflective and become true to oneself.

The emotional data, created through research of taking counsel or advice of people that you know to make a decision, is there but with a difference. It is not making that decision based on some emotional thought of what is it that others want or think you should be doing. It is more of connecting with oneself and reading one's gut and heart.

This provides a much clearer directive and less baggage and, therefore, you become more agile and are able to make decisions faster and in less time.

This is what coaches and counsellors do. They talk with people. At times just expressing the issue leaves the speaker feeling much lighter.

For those who do not have a coach or counsellor one needs to find ways, which are applicable and helpful, to de-stress and make decisions easier.

That makes it less is more by being able to reflect, balance oneself and take decisions effectively based on one's heart and gut.

What are the physical changes you notice immediately?

You feel your shoulders going forward, like drooping down, and you have a sinking feeling in your stomach. What is happening is that your body is reacting immediately to your thoughts and emotions in your mind.

Imagine the opposite. You're walking down the road and you see someone who you haven’t seen for a while and who is your best friend.

What happens to the energy in your body?

It goes up significantly because you feel excited and energised.

What this shows is how you can use your body to check if what the mind is thinking is true or not.

Our minds, often, try to steer us in a direction of self-deception or makes us lie to ourselves.

How do we even begin to recognise this?

Let me illustrate with a personal example:

Every morning my partner and I are out for our morning walk. There is a bus driver who greets my partner but not I. Initially I was thinking it doesn't matter he doesn't greet me. That way I don't have to greet him either. At that moment the mind created a reaction of "Oh it doesn't really matter".

But then I realised that I’m lying to myself! The fact that I don’t get greeted and I don’t greet the bus driver back and I am okay with that is a lie that I’m telling myself.

The fact is it does matter to me that he doesn't greet me! And the reaction is the lie I am telling myself. That's where you lie to yourself!

What my mind did was to try and cover it up and make an excuse for it. This happens to us all so often.

When you take this scenario into a leadership context it amounts to stealing your own authenticity.

A lot of leaders are affected by outside influences. By what they think they should be doing rather than what they really want to do themselves internally. This is the point that ends up creating political games.

This is where the authenticity comes in. Being true to self, keeps you balanced and not in need to play any political games. Authenticity helps you lead your team the way you feel they should be lead. This creates a balance within and results in one being more healthy because of the alignment between what you feel, what you think and what you say.

There is harmony between mind, body, and soul. By connecting internally to yourself you connect with your soul and do what is needed to be done.

By not connecting internally you create a situation where you allow yourself to be influenced by the lies the mind creates. This makes it harder for other people to trust you because the body language shows and others pick it up.

Our physical bodies have an energy field. When we are near each other the energy fields intermingle and through this, our subconscious picks up opposite person’s energy and the resultant lack of trust comes about.

There are people in leadership roles who are designated leaders but who don’t want to be there. And it takes a lot of coaching to be able to get the person to realise that all he is doing is lying to himself and making himself unhappy.

When you realise this it’s a great feeling!

"This feeling within yourself, that recognition of your own truth and finally saying it and expressing it is such a great feeling! It helps you to have the courage to be true to yourself."

Good leaders are leaders who have a very broad view of the world and can clearly see the big picture.

In leadership circles, there is a lot of talk about servant leadership. Servant leadership is a leadership approach where a leader has a facilitating and serving people mindset. It’s an approach where the leader sees his or her role as serving the team and not the position.

Such a mindset creates high energy levels within a team who, usually, have a collaborative vision or bigger picture and move towards achieving that. This enables a more effective performance.

Twitter Quote “ #servantleadership means you are on the same page, same level, you're helping people along the journey”

Historically leadership provided leaders with an aura of authority. The rise of servant leadership has come about as leadership has evolved in keeping with business needs.

Let’s take the service element a bit broader. Some of the things that help you become more of a servant leader is seeing how other people live and be more appreciative. A way to do this is through voluntary work.

The moment we step into voluntary work we start realising that there are many people who are far worse off than us. At the same time, the activities help us get in touch with parts of ourselves that we may not have yet faced and tend to humble us and put us in a mindset of serving. As we learn more about the information, we were not aware off, we tend to get a better understanding of ourselves. This awareness impacts our perspective and changes our perception. It helps a lot to see how you see your own life and the lives of others.

Serving the community creates a mindset of helping people and you see the rewards and value of doing so.

In the workplace, there’s no difference when you're leading a team. You get rewards and value by serving them as the team will respond because they are being recognised and appreciated for who they are and for their struggles and not just as an employee.

As in doing voluntary service, the servant leadership behaviour at work is the same because you are looking from the perspective of I'm here to serve the people and learn from them even if their circumstances are not good, I'm still learning from them and it's adding to my self-development. (Twitter quote)

The designated leader provides the vision and goes ahead in clearing the way and moves to the back, as a team member, collaborating and helping in the daily functions and by stepping back allows team members to be recognised. That is the servant leader mindset which is based on the function of being a leader and not on the function of being a positional leader.

Good leaders are able to merge these to be great servant leaders.

Instead of judging people, from a preconceived set of ideas or perception, one should assess people with the view of learning something that one is not aware of.

Leaders assess their employees. Such assessment can have filters of being biased which is a result of perceptions.

Perceptions are built very much based upon the experiences we have had in life. Our upbringing, our programming, our culture in which we have been brought up or we live in and our values all feed into how we see ourselves, how we see others and how we see the world.

So, the question is how do I prevent myself from judging or seeing the world through my filters?

It has to do with awareness.

The idea would be to question oneself. Is what I am seeing or what I am perceiving really the truth?

The truth is we all have our own perceptions.

In a workplace conversation, the first thing would really be to accept that we all have our own perceptions. Therefore, our perception of a situation or someone’s achievements or their skills may be completely different from that of another person.

How does one bridge this and work through it?

Perceptions form with a lot of activity and input which then gets narrowed down as one makes assumptions and experiences add on different things over the years. It forms the bias we carry.

We are biased in the areas of hearsay, people saying something about someone else and somebody has this opinion and you haven’t met the person yet and you form an opinion. This is bias as its someone else’s perspective you are displaying by judging and putting them into a specific frame where they don’t really belong.

For leaders, it’s a challenge. A simple bias causes all sorts of problems in the workplace.

For example, take a simple bias that often occurs against physically attractive males or females. Because they are attractive people deliberately go out of their way to show they are not biased by either treating them harsher or they treat them in reverse that they think they are the greatest thing since sliced bread! Either way there is a bias. And all of it comes from perceptions.

People put facades up as a protective mechanism for insecurities for all sorts of things.

The key is to get under that guard and talk to the real person and good leaders can do that because they are trying to get the value out of their people and to grow those people.

In working through bias, one needs to take a step back and try to look at the bigger picture.

Try to see people for who they are in a bigger way than the obvious way. It's also important to broaden our view and see the world or see a certain situation for more than it is rather than just through our own little lens.

Whilst it’s easier said than done good leaders ask good questions because questions are the sign of an enquiring mind and it communicates that they value the person’s opinion.

Good leaders look for value in people.

Everyone has value. Good leaders bring out the best in people. They are always looking for how they can grow people and how they can bring that person out to be the best person they can be.

The key is awareness and being open to self-reflection and asking yourself so what else can I learn from wherever I am because everything in our lives is really an invitation to learn more about ourselves.

It’s a matter of having the patience and being brave to go against other people's perceptions and discover your own percept. Discover your own assessment of the person.

In today’s life, we are continuously bombarded with information. Our brain not only has to take in the data but also sort it so that it makes sense to us. Add to this the monkey mind, and we are heading towards stress, brain fog, indecision, and energy depletion.

Therefore, it is crucial to develop the capacity to allow the brain to relax, not to fire so that we can be here and present.

Being present, it is also easier to discern which information is relevant to us. This discernment isn’t possible being IN the mind, but definitively more natural to achieve by being aware of the mind.

Jane, “Wisdom and purity (of the mind) are accessible if we can get out of our way.”

A couple of minutes of reflection a few times a day for leaders are the go-to solution to find those needed answers – putting all the clutter aside, being open and receptive to insights and information from the subconscious.

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."

Albert Einstein

Challenges in life can be an essential step for transformation and growth if we can resist rehashing the incident in the same old loops of our mind.

Taking a step aside to assess quietly, with neutrality, will help gain different perspectives and new insights. We can then incorporate old learnings with new ideas to climb up life’s ladder.

Jane explains, “When things aren’t going so well we default to the mind to solve them.”

When things go wrong, a solution needs to be found to prevent the same mistake from happening again. Ideally, these rules and regulations are then combined with awareness in the present moment in case a similar error occurs to be able to react out of the box.

Rather than following the rules blindly, presence in crisis enables one to access a different stream of consciousness and therefore offer creative solutions for the better.

While the conscious mind can process 7 bits of information consciously, the subconscious mind has access to 7 million bits of information. Being able to still your mind, achieving clarity, is definitively a skill to have to access the subconscious.

One “easy” way of getting into this state of a clear mind is regularly taking the time to sit still and observe one’s breath.

You need to breathe anyway – you may as well do that mindfully.

Antoinette

Jane is a certified coach (ICF) and senior trainer with the Potential Project, a leading global corporate-based mindfulness training company.

Jane shares the central insight she gained through her work with the Potential Project: the distinction between the talkative and the observing mind. The wandering, narrative mind goes off in all sorts of directions, and we have hardly any control over it, whereas that other part of us observes the wandering mind, and is a best described as a space of clarity and awareness.

Ross agreed, “Mindfulness is an important aspect of connecting with yourself, to be more balanced so as to harness the right energies.”

How can we sit in awareness? Jane shares, “the more we observe the wandering mind, the quieter it becomes over time.”

The more we can withdraw from distractions and cultivate being present in the current moment, the more we can see things with clarity in ourselves and others and experience things around us thoroughly and without resistance. We then don’t draw upon the past or the future. To experience this space, we need to be here, now with a clear mind.

To connect meaningfully with each other having a clear mind is essential, as otherwise our perception is tainted by judgment, thoughts, preconceived ideas and we don’t see the other for who she or he is.

Being present with what is at this exact moment; to accept and feel what is happening, and to be present with family members, co-workers, a crisis, my fear or my energy.

Jane, “We can’t develop this capacity to be present without some serious pausing practice.”

In this state of presence, valuable information is more likely to come to us compared to being in a hectic, panicky mode.

“Slowing down, reflecting on what is happening around you and taking in the situation for what it is, keeps the mind free of assumptions,” says Ross.

Please listen to this podcast to hear all about the “IT” and how it is essential in our life.

Book recommendation of Jane: ‘The Mind of The Leader’ by Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter

https://www.potentialproject.com/books/the-mind-of-the-leader/

Further links:

Jane Grafton: https://www.simplytorealise.com/new-gallery/

Potential Project: https://www.potentialproject.com

Mindfulness Professionals Network Singapore https://business.smu.edu.sg/mindfulness/Programmes/Mindfulness-Professionals-Network-Singapore

The things you do either give you energy or drain you. Choose wisely.

Anonymous

Ross: “It is your choice how you react to things.” Apart from reacting wisely the idea here is to become increasingly aware how people, situations or thoughts drain our life energy on a continuous basis without us even realizing.

Antoinette uses the metaphor of a bathtub, where apart from the tub drain there are small holes or cracks in the bottom of the tub, representing the thoughts, situations or people mentioned above. For example, the primary energy drain might be caused by a crisis at work, in that case, the energy drain is noticeable. The little holes are related to the things going on in the subconscious, slowly and unknowingly draining our energy day by day.

To preserve energy these holes and drains they need to be sealed. For this, Antoinette recommends becoming present several times during the day to do a check-in. This is to assess whether what you are engaged in either depleting or revitalizing your energy.

Ross explains that it is essential to allow time during the day to “reflect on how you are going today? What are your challenges? How do I feel at this moment?” This helps to control what happens during the cause of the day, so you can be proactive, rather than constantly reactive to the stimuli around you.

This daily check-in balances, and saves, a good percentage of your internal energy.

The more you engage in things that you are good at, and like, the better you become, the more your energy will increase and vice versa.

A great leader can identify this dynamic in themselves and within individual employees. They then are in a position to do the needful to help them turn any downward spiraling energy around. Once the employee recognizes their energy drains and can “plug” them, their energy and motivation will increase. This change will be systemic, in that, the whole team becomes so much stronger as well.

Our SIL Leadership Balancing Cards help plug these leaks by emitting balancing, as well as strengthening frequencies into the energy field of a person to boost their strengths and capabilities. Focusing on their strengths will also automatically increase their internal energy.

If you would like to find out quickly where your energy leaks are, contact us.

How do we identify these energy leaks? Being mindful and conscious of what is happening within you is the key. Jane Grafton, the guest in our next podcast, will share how mindfulness is an essential ability to gain insights and tap into one’s innate wisdom.

Janice’ work in high-performance leadership and personal excellence is very much aligned with the Soul-Inspired-Leadership mantra “Be true to your inner self to inspire as a leader.”

For Janice, the deciding place in being authentic is to discover what allows you to create joy in your own life and the life of others.

This only happens when you have clarity about who you are and what your strengths are. Janice defines strength as those areas where we experience high levels of energy, we feel engaged and are able to create value. To be inspirational, it is important to come from a place of high energy. It’s about finding alignment, with what works for, and with you, so you can create value.

What is your fuel to create that value in other people? The key is that you need to like at least 75% of what you do to remain in high energy and to inspire others. Living from a personal high energy space offers the possibility to spiral upwards, and its ripple effects will impact others positively too.

Be in tune with yourself and start to act to create value. Value can be created anywhere despite not having all the answers. Taking action will open doors to create value in other areas.

Janice: "Those with leadership accountability and responsibility owe it to their people to be tapped in, turned on and tuned up. We show up properly".

Ross: "When you accept and take up a position in leadership, you have a moral obligation to try to get the best out of your people."

To get into and remain in this zone of high energy it is essential to identify those energy draining aspects at work and in life, to examine their source (non-alignment in values, blocking beliefs, fears, worries, to mention a few) and take a proactive step to resolve these.

These drains aren’t only impacting us on a physical, mental and emotional level, but also influence those around us. No matter how well trained we are in hiding our drain, how well we use our words, we can’t change the energy we emanate, and others will definitively pick up on that.

If leaders don't see their employees for who they are and how they can contribute, if leaders don't energize the potential of their people, or if they only look at their shortcomings, the performance of the team members will be affected. Not just that, but the dynamics within the team deteriorate, customer relationships suffer as well as other aspects of life, such as family.

Janice: " As leaders, we have to manage some of the basic tools of leadership and show up at our best, as best as we can".

Janice can also be reached at:-

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janicekobelsky

Twitter: http://twitter.com/JaniceKobelsky

Facebook: http://facebook.com/JaniceKobelsky.Leaders

Janice’ work in high-performance leadership and personal excellence is very much aligned with the Soul-Inspired-Leadership mantra “Be true to your inner self to inspire as a leader.”

For Janice, the deciding place in being authentic is to discover what allows you to create joy in your own life and the life of others.

This only happens when you have clarity about who you are and what your strengths are. Janice defines strength as those areas where we experience high levels of energy, we feel engaged and are able to create value. To be inspirational, it is important to come from a place of high energy. It’s about finding alignment, with what works for, and with you, so you can create value.

What is your fuel to create that value in other people? The key is that you need to like at least 75% of what you do to remain in high energy and to inspire others. Living from a personal high energy space offers the possibility to spiral upwards, and its ripple effects will impact others positively too.

Be in tune with yourself and start to act to create value. Value can be created anywhere despite not having all the answers. Taking action will open doors to create value in other areas.

Janice: "Those with leadership accountability and responsibility owe it to their people to be tapped in, turned on and tuned up. We show up properly".

Ross: "When you accept and take up a position in leadership, you have a moral obligation to try to get the best out of your people."

To get into and remain in this zone of high energy it is essential to identify those energy draining aspects at work and in life, to examine their source (non-alignment in values, blocking beliefs, fears, worries, to mention a few) and take a proactive step to resolve these.

These drains aren’t only impacting us on a physical, mental and emotional level, but also influence those around us. No matter how well trained we are in hiding our drain, how well we use our words, we can’t change the energy we emanate, and others will definitively pick up on that.

If leaders don't see their employees for who they are and how they can contribute, if leaders don't energize the potential of their people, or if they only look at their shortcomings, the performance of the team members will be affected. Not just that, but the dynamics within the team deteriorate, customer relationships suffer as well as other aspects of life, such as family.

Janice: " As leaders, we have to manage some of the basic tools of leadership and show up at our best, as best as we can".

Janice can also be reached at:-

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janicekobelsky

Twitter: http://twitter.com/JaniceKobelsky

Facebook: http://facebook.com/JaniceKobelsky.Leaders

Our guest in today's podcast is Natasha Dalmia, management consultant, international coach, and author of "Practice of Satsang".

Sat' means truth and 'Sanga' means company. Satsang is an old Sanskrit word meaning 'being with the truth', and 'gathering together to find the truth'. In this book, she explores how conscious living enables us to celebrate the truth of who we are.

As an authentic leader, being connected with your soul, with who you are, makes it easier to communicate with others and see them for who they are.

Clarity of vision, of one's life purpose, is possible when we have clarity about who we are and what matters for us in life.

What is it that we want to celebrate at the end of life?

To explore this life-shaping question and generally to make good quality decisions it is necessary to develop an awareness of Lower and Higher consciousness.

The quality of answers depends significantly on which level of consciousness we will be in when we contemplate these questions.

Being in balance and consistency in our inner and outer world are of great help to leaders and for a good life in general.

Balancing giving and receiving for example or being aware of the destructive power of negative thinking and balancing it with more positive perspectives is essential to our overall well-being.

Awareness is the key, and then one's consciousness and inner truth determine the quality of choices and decisions.

Inner truth as the foundation of one's decisions is a cornerstone of great leadership.

Slowing down to return to balance and implement consistency, to inquire the level of consciousness one is at, will help in creating the right space for impacting answers to questions such as:

What is the goal? What is the direction to take? What legacy do I/we leave behind? What is necessary for the people who work for us?

Natasha then shares how the Soul-Inspired-Leadership card has helped her to shift her perspective from individual to team appreciation. She became aware of a feeling of gratitude for the accomplishments of the team and this shift in perspective was an invitation to discuss the future journey and legacy that they want to leave behind as a team.

Asking ourselves what we are truly grateful for and asking this question, again and again, is an invitation to peel one layer after the other in self-inquiry. Using the same question to dig deeper, is a handy tool for coaches and those who work on themselves to leave the surface answers behind and get to the core issues and one’s truth.

You can contact Natasha

• Practice of Satsang Book link - https://www.amazon.com/Practice-Satsang-Conscious-Living-Celebrating/dp/1482824418

• Natasha's Profile link from LinkedIn - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natasha-dalmia/

For us to live a healthy life full of vitality body, mind and spirit need to be in the balance.

To achieve this balance, it is essential to become familiar with one's inner dynamics and to sift through our shadows, as well as our masks and roles we are hanging on to.

We all have an energy field around us which stores a vast amount of information, dating way back into childhood and even into our ancestry. In Energy Medicine, the necessary work to balance volatility or other issues happens mainly in that field. Scientists also call it the information field. Energy Medicine People tune into this field intuitively, fine-tuning their skills through meditation and inner work.

TimeWaver, the system we work with, uses advanced quantum physics technology to tune into this information field and create optimization.

The more we understand ourselves, the more we steer towards inner and outer balance. Being in touch with oneself, acting from that intimate place of balance and serenity, fosters authenticity, a prerequisite for any good leader.

When we develop this left and right brain balance, volatility starts to reduce, intuition increases and we observe and act from a higher level of awareness, which is inclusive.

For clients, who embark on the journey of self-discovery, it is important to note that these changes in patterns and responses often happen over a period of time, are subtle and won't come with a bang most of the time. Clients may not even notice the change because it is a positive one unless they are prompted to reflect on their old behaviours.

Similar to the effects of mindfulness and meditation practice, the SIL Leadership Balancing Card supports whole brain balancing through frequencies and strengthens intrinsic behaviours and belief systems necessary for a balanced leadership style.

When coaches point out the positive changes to the client, ideally the client is encouraged to do more of the same, enforcing the positive dynamics and therefore enabling the client to speed up their transformation.

In the midst of an uncomfortable situation, where a part of us is afraid to face the truth, our mind quickly tries to stir us into a space of safety through self-deception or blaming others.

With self-awareness, it is possible to detect what is going on - either by being mindful of one's thoughts or by engaging the body's wisdom as a gaging tool. Notice how the body reacts meeting someone whom we feel uncomfortable with. Compare that with the physical response bumping into our best friend. There is always a physical reaction to thoughts and emotions. Our body doesn't lie and can be of great help if we take the time to become attuned to it and care to listen to what it has to say. It can be a great ally to question whether what the mind wants us to believe is right for us at that moment.

Often leaders are taking action based on what they should be doing, rather than what their inner self calls them to do. Playing the political game, fulfilling other people's expectations, competition, or achieving a particular social status is often more important than what rings true deep within themselves.

Being honest with oneself keeps one out of that loop. Being aligned physically, mentally and spiritually one brings forth integrity and authenticity into leadership.

Beyond our body we are wrapped in an energetic field, others often pick up quickly when we are not in alignment with our thoughts, emotions, and body. They may not be able to put a finger down on what they sense, but their body picks up on the incongruence in that field, making the person feel uneasy and at worst not trusting. Often our body language gives us away too.

Ross shares an example of a client who took up a managing position as this was the right thing to do from a career perspective. He struggled in that new job, and after several conversations with Ross, he finally admitted to himself that managing people wasn't what he wanted to do. He returned to his old job and was completely happy.

Recognizing what is one's deepest truth and then having the courage to express that is what will keep one connected to the inner self and allow for an authentic life be it at work or at home.

As human beings, it is one of our deepest desires to connect and build relationships. To create rewarding and meaningful relationships, it is essential to communicate with each other on a much deeper level.

To be able to do so genuinely, courage is needed for us to establish our most crucial primary relationship, a relationship with ourselves. That is connecting with your inner self, your soul.

Being at peace with one’s various aspects, even the ones we would judge as undesirable, will provide consistency and balance in our messages. Accepting the expression of all aspects in a balanced way makes each unique in personality, characteristics, and vibration. It makes it easier to trust ourselves, knowing that we are more than OK.

Having a robust and stable connection with ourselves, our Inner Self, creates the foundation to connect with others on a much more meaningful level.

The eyes as a window to the soul offer a beautiful way to be with each other, soul to soul. To connect through the eyes to the heart, to be seen and heard acknowledges the other person as a human being with their journey, their narratives, facets, and qualities.

Most times it takes bravery to do this as it allows you to be vulnerable because you are dropping your guard and not only allowing you to see who you are, but it allows others to see that as well. That’s the #BraveLeadership we talked about with Kimberly last episode.

When one feels seen and heard, it acts as an invitation to follow from the heart, and most likely we choose to do that because we want to, not because we have to.

This is crucial in the workplace. Employees who know they are seen as significant contributors, with valued ideas and perspectives, who can co-create and live their purpose, they WANT to come to work. When leaders are connected to their mission, their legacy and can communicate that, their teams also work towards that purpose.

It just takes #BraveLeadership and being connected with your soul to really make it happen.

• You will learn:
• How Kimberly defines what it takes for a leader to be brave
• Why focusing on others and not yourself has the greatest impact on good leadership
• Why a leader should always be aware of their impact on others
• Reaching out to the emotions of others so they want to come to work and not just feel they have to, for survival
• Being true to your inner self by connecting with your soul, gives you the authenticity and consistency that people crave for in leaders
• That Brave Leadership is a must read leadership book

Kimberly's links to learn more about Kimberly and purchase your Brave Leadership copy

https://onstageleadership.com/blog/

https://twitter.com/OnStageKimberly

Follow Kimberly on Instagram

When looking at corporate wellness, there should be no difference. The smarter more proactive ones, look at preventative corporate wellness measures and reap the benefits of a healthy workforce, while the remainder saves on the small cost of wellness programs and waits for the much larger costs of absenteeism, staff turnover, and worsening employee engagement figures of an unwell and dissatisfied workforce, to mount up.

A supportive work environment helps to increase the wellbeing of the workforce and the wellbeing of the company.

Many people would typically describe a good state of health as the smooth functioning of the body.

Sufficient rest, a balanced diet, enough water and adequate exercise are known to be the foundation of health since time memorial. But what about our inner world? The quality of our emotions, of our thoughts, is a game changer when it comes to health and wellbeing.

The connection between body, mind, and emotions is still neglected by many. Dissatisfaction with work, stress caused by deadlines, sales targets, weak management may lead to psychosomatic illnesses. Tension headaches, pains in the neck, stomach ulcers, etc. are only some of the physical symptoms observable.

Antoinette aims to help raise awareness about the connection between emotions and health - for example, the pain in the neck would be an invitation to ask, " Who is the pain in the neck?". The idea here is to share tools with our coaching community to help clients remain calmer, more centred in stressful situations, and therefore become better communicators and establish high-quality relationships.

For Antoinette, physical issues are always an invitation to look deeper to see what is going on an emotional level. Our language hints out often too what is going on for us. If someone is livid, we understand that this person is angry, and anger relates to the liver. Being constantly angry may lead over time not only to a steady stream of outbursts but also to problems with the liver.

Wellness is of course not exclusive to our physical health; it encompasses ideally other aspects too, such as a stable financial situation or a well-established social circle.

Ideally, a coach will examine the various aspects together with the client to see where there is a need for change. Contact us if you need some support - we do have the technology to help coaches get to the hot spots quickly. Your success as a coach is what we are passionate about.

We had a good connection and effective progress was made. Our sessions consisted of one on one coaching and observations in meetings etc. Skills were enhanced when it came to connecting with people and having them respond in a proactive way to what was required for the job.

I addition to this work our client was introduced to our TimeWaver technology to help him with some specific people challenges he was facing that was affecting him. These were value driven and causing an unhealthy imbalance in the client's system.

TimeWaver was developed based on quantum physics award-winning research that analyses the information field of a person and optimizes those areas of self where there is an imbalance. These vibrational patterns are transferred onto a card which then stores the relevant frequencies of harmonization and therefore is a constant source of balancing.

The information of the TimeWaver system quickly address areas of disharmony on a physical, mental and emotional level. Using regression therapy (a type of hypnotherapy) and Nutripuncture, similar to acupuncture, but using micro-nutrients instead of needles, we were able to focus on balancing deficiencies and the core issues quickly.

Using the TimeWaver technology to identify vulnerable areas of concern in the client’s life, such as upbringing, relationships etc., a human touch was also added through therapy engagement and hypnosis to identify areas of deep-rooted problems that affect the way the client interacts with others and his general wellbeing. The main problem here was that he always had low-level anxiety and stress in his daily life.

Once the client started working with Antoinette, he was amazed that he could get rid of his anxiety and deal with the people in his life who he allowed to affect his wellbeing. It became no longer a concern.

After 2 sessions with Antoinette over a period of 3 months, the client began to feel good within himself as he now is without stress, and this continues today.

In combining the executive coaching skills of Ross together with Antoinette’s healing skills, it has given Soul-Inspired-Leadership a powerful creative energy that will focus on helping executives, either directly or indirectly through other coaches, to be better and more effective leaders.

Please visit https://soul-inspired-leadership.com/testimonials/ for the client's testimonial.

To achieve this, leaders need to connect with their employees in order to help them identify with the mission and the vision of their company. They need to feel connected at work and have a sense of purpose. The facilitation of the connection lies with the leader.

Establishing a climate of such quality depends very much on the ability of the leaders to lead from within, that is to be connected with their soul and be true to themselves in their approach to their people. This closer connection with themselves, therefore, brings greater empathy and heart into their leadership. They become more aware of their own strengths, limitations and internal world. They feel more at ease showing their real self in any aspect of their life. This builds more trust and reliability into the relationships with their people.

To support coaches in their work with clients, we offer balancing cards programmed with specific leadership vibrations that help the leader become more balanced in their approach to their leadership challenges and have a greater awareness of the people around them.

It creates a safe environment for people to freely express themselves because they now work within safe parameters.

For leaders, this consistency needs to be developed by being in touch with oneself, increasing self-awareness and authenticity in expression and behaviours.

The challenge for leaders is in when in stressful situations, they often react based on subconscious beliefs about themselves, others and the world. An automatic response gets triggered which is often the complete opposite of the spectrum, so, for example, diplomacy will turn into a blunt outburst.

Completing a Harrison Psychometric test can clearly expose the imbalances.

Establishing consistency in behaviours depends very much on the ability of the leaders to lead from within. That is, connect with their soul to be true to themselves. Leaders of today need to bring back empathy and heart into their leadership. They need to be aware of their own strengths, limitations and internal world and be at ease by showing their real self in any aspect of their life. This authenticity builds the trust, reliability, and consistency in relationships with people.

We offer tools that will help coaches and Human Resource leaders develop their clients to be that authentic leader.

Our services and products, based on cutting-edge technology and quantum physics, help support a coach to achieve this with their clients faster.

Of course, there are those who insist that they do know where that particular document is on their desk that you’re asking for or that having a disorganized workplace is a sign of flexibility.

We underestimate how significant clutter is a source of stress in our lives, at work or home. It can cause anxiety, procrastination, frustration, agitation amongst many other feelings.

A cluttered workplace offers too many stimuli for the mind. Having to search your way through staples of documents to find what you are looking for may cause anxiety to raise, and it may lead to that stressful impression that there is a never-ending amount of work to tackle.

Other disadvantages of living or working in a cluttered space are the distraction from focusing on what is essential, no space for creativity to arise from within, and a rise in stress hormone-cluttered

Clutter isn't only a challenge when it comes to a physical space being unorganized; it can equally create trouble in the mind.

Trying to keep one's schedule in mind, a never-ending to-do list in the head, being continuously notified by incoming emails and text messages, our brain is facing an enormous overload of information every single day. Brain pollution diminishes our ability to discern which information is relevant and which one isn't, keeping our brain and ourselves under constant stress.

Multi-tasking is becoming the modus operandi in our time; unfortunately, focusing on several unrelated strands of thought at the same time reduces the ability to focus and prioritize.

What could help?

Switch off notifications; there is usually no need to be notified whenever someone posts on FB, you get a WhatsApp or your opponent makes a move in one of your online games.

Keep your focus on one task at a time; research has shown despite our best efforts our mind works best when we focus on one task only.

Clean up your desk before you head off home. It helps to start the next day with an empty desk, not necessarily with an empty mind.

If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”

Laurence J. Peter, Canadian, scholar of education

What is Information Field Technology?

Many cultures based their whole philosophy on the understanding that every thought, every event, every memory gets stored as a vibrational information in a non-physical space. This idea by now finally gains acceptance by modern scientists, quantum physicists, and philosophers.

The German physicist Burkhard Heim developed the idea of a 12-dimensional concept of the universe, in which all mental and physical processes come together in a field, stored as information patterns. He coined this the information field.

Markus Schmieke, German, chess player, musician, physicist, studied Indian philosophy and wanted to create a device that enables us to read and write in the information field, to highlight subconscious connections and harmonize these to increase mental, emotional and physical wellness.

The information field contains the vibrational patterns of thoughts, emotions, events, substances, and living organisms. TimeWaver technology can read these vibrational information patterns and thus can present a holistic understanding of a person.

There are ten levels we can gain information from to gain a deeper understanding of our client. The ones coaches will focus on are the spiritual, systemic, psychological and informational level.

On the systemic level, we have databases addressing imbalances related to prenatal aspects and family constellation. The psychological level has about 12 000 entries covering information patterns concerning resolving blocking convictions, such as "Criticism from others means that I am not perfect," or "I always have to be there for others." Other entries on this level focus on freeing and transformative affirmations, new directions, and resolutions, such as "I am willing to take the necessary risks to change."

Furthermore, we can search for root causes in a variety of other databases all related to psychology. If needed, also under physiological or environmental databases, to gain valuable information on possible additional areas the client needs support with. The overall aim is to see the client as a whole.

With a given objective, TimeWaver compares the client's information field with the chosen databases and offers a list of vibrational patterns first as possible blocks and then suggests solutions to harmonize these blocks.

To support coaches in their work with clients, we offer balancing cards with specific leadership vibrations as well as the option to individualize a card for a particular client to help with specific individual challenges. Our services help coaches to become more successful, increase customer satisfaction and therefore get more referrals. And employees are happier too as they have better leaders.

And if that leads to collaboration with each other, unexpected new avenues of reaching out to others and sharing our talents and ideas, perfect.

Antoinette recently participated in the Ignite Video Challenge, partly to expand her comfort zone and somewhat to learn how to create videos for SIL and her work.

She says: "I got so much more out of participating in that challenge. What I didn't expect at all was how much this community would grow via video, and how much support can be there even though we live in different parts of the world. Some of us came from Asia, some from Europe, some from Australia, the US and yet we were all connected and supportive of each other. The richness of input, the inspiration and invitation to think differently was impressive.”

This experience was the final straw to decide the direction of the Coaching Community to be something equally explorative, enriching and supportive.

Ross will draw on his experiences over many years in the corporate world and over 16 years as an executive coach working with C-suite executives in Fortune 500 companies to smaller SMEs to facilitate the Soul- Inspired-Leadership forum.

Antoinette will offer perspectives, insights, and tips from a holistic health practitioner’s point of view, based on over a decade of experience in a variety of different holistic therapy approaches.

Both aim to create a forum to help coaches gain a more productive and more profound perspective of their clients and therefore be more successful in coaching them. They do encourage members to share their own life experience, insights, and skills with the community so we can learn from each other and grow together.

WHY we want to create this community

First of all, both of us feel that one can become a bit of a loner in the coaching profession. Working with clients is one thing, having the opportunity for support and exchange with like-minded professionals is something else.

And since we want to reach out globally a center here in Singapore just won't do. Therefore, our desire is to create that global community of coaches who aim to help their clients become better leaders.

What’s in for the members?

A forum to

• Connect with like-minded professionals
• Create meaningful connections
• Find an accountability partner for a project
• Invite community members to be your sounding-board
• Discuss challenges you encounter with clients (no disclosure of names)
• Generate and exchange ideas
• Nurture your creativity
• Increase cross-pollination
• Get support to push personal boundaries
• Learn from each other and together
• Share your experience with the community

Closed FB group and private YouTube channel to connect, exchange ideas and grow together.

Monthly Zoom Meetings to discuss coaching and health-related topics

Retreats for coaches for personal self-development, self-care, rejuvenation, learning, sharing and growing

Discounts on products and services

Click here to go to our community page

Communication is more than just the spoken word, it also includes nonverbal communication, such as eye contact, body language, also the vibes that you transmit, the message you get across in a variety of different ways without saying anything.

In this podcast, we focus on the polarity between blunt or direct and diplomatic communication.

The base of any communication ideally is respect for the other person and a healthy level of curiosity about other perspectives.

A respectful and direct style of communication creates a trustful and understanding foundation for communication, an essential skill wherever you are, irrespective of your position.

A direct style of communication can easily turn into bluntness, especially when we experience a lack of energy when we are angry, under pressure or feel our boundaries are threatened. Bluntness will result in disengagement, defiance, and resentment in the workforce. It creates constant tension, blocks risk taking and is one of the reasons for reduced productivity and a higher turn-over rate.

Therefore, a good EQ level and self-awareness help in self-management and evaluation.

A few suggestions on how to reduce bluntness in communication:

1. Bluntness is charged with emotions and destructive, clear communication is measured and encourages a resolution. A reflective question could be, “What has been the trigger for me to reacting so bluntly?”
2. We all have our own projections, thoughts, opinions, fears, and concerns that we bring into a conversation. Most of us are more focused on how the other person makes us feel when engaging in a conversation. Spend time on establishing a good rapport before focusing on the information that needs to be communicated.
3. This rapport starts already before we speak the first words. Self-awareness is the key, especially when it comes to sensing into the space we are in. Are we calm, or already irritated before we start the conversation? In case of the latter, body posture, the face, the vibes will tell more than any words we speak. Use some breathing techniques or practice some mudras to calm yourself before stepping into a conversation.
4. Achieving results is what leaders are paid for. In the German language, there is a saying that is literally and figuratively translated as falling with the door into the house. Coming straight to the point without taking the time to feel and sense into your counterpart will very likely close the door before you can even open it.

Continuous bluntness reduces chances to move up the leadership ladder. If this is what you are struggling with, it is worth examining what the unconscious triggers are and how to resolve them.

Executive coaches see this volatile and inconsistent behaviour in executives quite often as they are given the task of helping executive be more consistent and balanced in their approach to their leadership

When referencing Dan Harrison, of Harrison Assessments Int’l Ltd, who bases his focus on paradox theory. That is, a trait can be constructive or destructive depending on other complimentary traits and how balanced one is in these behaviours. It provides more clarity on the insecurity issue.

For example, self-criticism is often linked to the strong need to ‘better oneself.’ The complimentary trait is self-acceptance, that is, one is okay with who they are. Both traits are important, and having them reasonably balanced in strength allows the executive to be flexible, and by using both traits, giving them more balance in the way they react and behave.

So, what causes the imbalance?

Insecurity is deeply rooted, and most likely stems from a time in childhood hearing over and over that they can’t do something, or weren’t good enough, being compared to either siblings or friends, or having been singled out in class repeatedly by a teacher.

This internal belief about not being good enough, or worse being a failure, has established its own destructive dynamic over the years by attracting a variety of different experiences into their life which deeply informed their understanding of who they were.

Insecurity often causes people to become defensive about their actions or opinions, leading very often to aggressive behavior.

On the other end of the scale one finds an overly arrogant behavior, which is a defense mechanism as well.

In the coaching relationship, we would aim at finding the root cause of the client’s insecurity. And even in this process of finding the root cause, clients may become defensive.

Skillful questions, the exploration of memories and the invitation for self-reflection are helpful tools to allow the client to open up to answers from the subconscious.

Once the source of the insecurity has been brought to the client’s awareness it is easy to develop the right strategies together with the client to overcome it.

Rather than being caught up in a defeating pattern of self-depreciation, without insecurity, the client’s ability to assess their strengths and weaknesses objectively increases.

Soul-Inspired-Leadership has developed services that can help to create this desired change.

For further details on how we help coaches be more robust in their coaching offer.

Please click here for our range of products and services.

The consequences of past events, circumstances and behaviors influence the actions and beliefs a person creates about themselves, others and the world at that moment. These are then the reference for future behaviors and perspectives.

These imprints can be deep rooted or rather on the surface, still in the awareness of the person, for example as a consequence from an experience at the workplace. It could be a colleague or former boss that provided the experience. Still fresh in memory, it is easier to identify as a cause and, whilst challenging, it can be overcome in a reasonable time.

The deep rooted behaviours generally happen in the early part of a person’s life. The influence can come from a child's parents, siblings, teachers or someone else of strong influence. Because it happens early in life it embeds within the child's subconscious and on a cellular level. It creates a dynamic of its own in how the child perceives him or herself, the quality of beliefs, and it remains an influence of their future behaviour.

For coaches, uncovering the deep-rooted cause can be a challenge because quite often the client doesn’t even know what causing it or they just don’t want to share because it can be so personal.

Only when these unconscious triggers are brought to awareness and resolved long lasting change can be achieved.

Soul-Inspired-Leadership has developed three services that can help to create that desired change.

1. The Soul-Inspired-Leadership  Balancing Card helps to balance the vibrational patterns that cause leadership behaviours to be volatile. In effect, it’s a one size fits all, as it focuses on balancing all the leadership traits.

For further details about this card, click here (we need a page now for our services and prices)

1. The Soul-Inspired-Leadership Individual Balancing Card is specifically designed for a person individual needs, based on the results of an information field analysis to uncover the relevant blocks on a mental and emotional level.

For further details about this card, click here (we need a page now for our services and prices)

1. The Soul-Inspired-Leadership Individual Package

After an individualized analysis the respective balancing information is vibrated in the clients field for a month. A         check-up analysis midway and necessary adjustments to the optimization list ensure personalized care.

For further details on this package, click here

According to scientists an information field is a space where all mental and physical processes are stored as information patterns.

Everything we think, feel, all our beliefs, emotional needs, experiences are stored as vibration in this field and is accessible.

Carl Jung recognized that the individual unconsciousness is in communication with what he calls the collective unconscious, a kind of global information field. Burkhardt Heim, a German Physicist, formulated a uniform field theory, which was relevant for the creation of the TimeWaver Technology.

TimeWaver technology creates the quantum physics interface to connect matter and consciousness which allows us to find the core issues quickly.

It helps to detect correlations and connections between the physical, mental and emotional levels that are not congruent and present a blockage towards health, mental and emotional wellbeing.

Not only does this state of the art technology discover underlying root causes and correlations, it also enables the coach to “write” in the information field. It offers us the possibility to neutralize unhelpful information patterns in the information field of the client and vibrate beneficial information patterns to support the client in overcoming these blocks.

A good example of this can be seen manifesting in executives in leadership positions. To be a truly authentic leader, being emotionally and mentally balanced is the key ingredient. Being true to oneself results in the consistency people look for in great leaders. When executives are faced with stressful situations, behaviors can become volatile and particular patterns surface.

We know that behaviors are influenced by the consequences of previous behaviors or experiences.

In discussions with clients some of these consequences are brought to the surface; they can be the result from previous work experiences or deeply rooted in childhood and therefore much harder to uncover and find a solution for in an acceptable timeframe.

Some coaches are highly intuitive and see it more readily but a lot aren’t. And therefore, the coaching may reach the necessary depth only many sessions later or not at all.

Making the unconscious visible is important in various aspects.

Once we are aware of the underlying root cause, transformation and change in consciousness, perception and action can happen quickly. The same applies to physical ailments – generally they are the result of emotional and mental blockages. Most of us aren’t aware of these connections and therefore do not work on those levels to return to health and wellbeing. Allowing ourselves to uncover and transform these connections, disease either won’t manifest or healing happens much faster.

Up until now coaches were expected to bring these issues to the surface. This takes time, particularly where the issues are deeply embedded. Unfortunately, we don’t always have that time to do what we know we should be doing to really help the person. 

Soul-Inspired-leadership has the services that give that time. Come with us on this journey in helping leaders to connect with their soul and please join our community. 

In today's business world, being an authentic and a well-balanced leader is a well-intended goal. In reality, most leaders struggle to manage this. In order to be truly authentic, they need to connect with their soul, their inner truth and then lead from there.

To be truly authentic leaders, it requires that desire to really explore and know oneself. It then demands good degree of self-awareness, the courage to be vulnerable and compassionate, and the ability to make decisions based on your inner truth.

The poor employee engagement figures we see today is a direct result of poor leadership which is often caused by the lack of authenticity. The more authentic leaders we have out there the more we will have people enjoying and feeling connected at work.

Through our podcast episodes and our products and services design specifically to help our community of coaches we will help people become truly authentic leaders.

How coaches can support their clients on this journey is the focus of our work and our podcast.

Our combined knowledge and experience, combined with cutting edge technology, will offer our community members an invaluable advantage in the coaching world.

We provide the missing links in improving the standard of leadership and developing better leaders.

Our podcast is focused on sharing new ideas, perspectives, tools and services based on cutting edge information field technology to provide an extra dimension to the professional services of coaches.

Joining us on this journey you will see that you are not alone in your endeavors and you will grow to understand how quantum physics and information field technology can best help you succeed.