Taking People on the Journey
SUMMARY
Do you feel a little bit out of your depth sometimes when you need to lead others?
I know I certainly did, and I know a lot of people feel fantastic when they get “promoted” into a position of leadership because of the extra finance or significance it might bring, but at the end of the day I know there's also an internal voice going:
“Oh no, I don't even know how to look after myself, and now I need to take these other people under my wing as well.”
Every leader goes through this so, I want to make sure that this week I give you some things to think about, and then we'll continue to unpack them in the weeks to come, that will help you be a great leader of people.
This week, I want to share with you the 3 areas that we focus on in people leadership:
The first area is RESILIENCE.
The second area is RELATIONSHIPS.
The third area is RESULTS.
People Leadership is a privilege, and it's not easy. It takes time to develop the mindsets and the behaviours that you need to be a great people leader.
TRANSCRIPT
Do you feel a little bit out of your depth sometimes when you need to lead others?
I know I certainly did, and I know a lot of people feel fantastic when they get “promoted” into a position of leadership because of the extra finance or significance it might bring, but at the end of the day I know there's also an internal voice going:
“Oh no, I don't even know how to look after myself, and now I need to take these other people under my wing as well.”
Every leader goes through this so, I want to make sure that this week I give you some things to think about, and then we'll continue to unpack them in the weeks to come, that will help you be a great leader of people.
Hi, this is Grant Herbert, VUCA Leadership and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today I want to continue this conversation around all things leadership by helping you know how to take people with you on the journey.
Over the last few weeks, we've been talking about these three areas of leadership:
Personal Leadership which is about leading YOU.
Professional Leadership is about YOU getting results through YOU.
Today, I want to continue this conversation by looking at what most people think leadership is, and that is Leading people.
Leadership is a set of internal characteristics of the leader used in different contexts: Leading ourselves, leading our processes, and leading people. You need different sets of mindsets and skills to go from leading yourself to taking these other people on the journey with you.
A lot of people lack these skills because they don't come in the technical training and development that they've done, and unfortunately, they don't get the training that they need.
This causes a lot of stress and conflict not only to the leaders themselves but to the people that they're leading, and the organisation suffers as well.
I believe that if you don't train people, you can't blame them, so as a leader if you're not getting this sort of development, put your hand up and say:
"Hey, I'm out of my depth. I don't understand how to work with these other people. They're all different to me. They do and think about things differently to me, and I'm not able to focus on my work…”
And that's what comes with learning to lead; you can read heaps of books about it, but on-the-job training is the only way to develop these skills.
Hopefully, today, I can give you some things to focus on— three areas that I will take you on as we continue into next year. However, these are things that you will need to develop and get the support, training, and coaching or whatever it is that you need to do to take you there.
My promise is that when you do this, you'll have the same experience as I did:
I went from being a leader who people wanted to kill to a leader who now enjoys taking people on the journey with them. People actually compliment me for how I work with them.
I'm not perfect, by the way, and that's never the goal.
So, if that's you, if you're a little bit stressed out by people and you're wondering when we can just go to the robots so that you can just plug in what you want them to do on a computer, then I'm here to help.
The 3 areas that we focus on in our people leadership is, firstly, RESILIENCE.
RESILIENCE has been taught a certain way for way too long, and I will shift some thinking around that as we get into it.
This shift is going from being stressed to being strong. And doing it in a way that eliminates that old-school thinking of hardening up and saying things like:
“Eating a cup of concrete.”
“Just suck it up."
“Get on with it.”
This kind of thinking doesn't help.
As we talked about burnout and performance last week, those are some of the areas in which a leader can definitely put themselves in a bad position if they think about it in that way.
So, this is about being able to operate in the good stress — the eustress and moving away from distress, which is the unhealthy stress where when it gets to a certain level, it leads to mental illness. And that's where I've been and have been able to come back from.
The second area is RELATIONSHIPS.
I don't care how far we go with artificial intelligence. In my opinion and experience (and my hope), we'll always need to have relationships with other people.
People are different to you. I know, particularly in my case, that's a good thing because if everyone was like you, imagine what the world would be like.
If everyone in your team was just like you, some of you would not be needed.
So, you need to celebrate that diversity. You need to get on with people and play well with them.
This shift is about going from being in conflict all the time to collaboration and teamwork.
This shift will help you get more done, go on a journey together, and still be able to enjoy each other along the way.
It's not about making everyone your best friend because that's not what leadership's about, but this shift is about enjoying working with each other, which certainly makes your day a lot more fun.
So, I will show you how to understand people even more than you do right now. I’m going to help you see into their world and look at things through their lens so that you can communicate well with them and get them on the same page as you and get you on the same page as them. And eliminate those misunderstandings and the confusion that lead to those conflicts.
The third area is RESULTS.
This is a key one for a people leader. This is where we shift from getting the results from ourselves — which is doing — to getting the results through others, which is all about delegation.
Delegation is all about bringing other people on the journey. It's about recognising the strengths that each person in your team has and being able to utilise them together. It's about, as a leader, realising that you don't need to know and do everything. It’s about building a level of trust that says: “You know what? They're going to make mistakes, and that's okay.”
One of the main reasons why leaders don't delegate, even though they say that they're too busy, is because they don't trust that the people they're delegating it to are going to represent them in a favourable way.
So, they say things like: “It’s just easy, I’ll do it myself.”
I don't know whether you've ever done that, but I know that I have.
So, these are the 3 areas that we're going to work on:
Your RESILIENCE is all about getting you stronger in a healthy way.
Your RELATIONSHIPS that is going to be good for you, others and the greater good.
And the way you get your RESULTS, which is about being able to get your stuff done and lead others into getting their stuff done as well. It is also about having that individual performance coming together as a collective so you end up where you're going faster.
People Leadership is a privilege, and it's not easy. It takes time to develop the mindsets and the behaviours that you need to be a great people leader.
But you can do it.
It's about learning things and incrementally bringing them into your world, just like everything else that you've done up to this point in your life.
You could be someone who’s already leading a team, or you could be someone who is about to.
Either way, I guarantee that there'll be some things that I'll be able to encourage you with that will help you in that journey.
Well, that's it from me for another week. Join me again next week, as I'm going to give you a message about the end of the year as we go into the holiday season. Then, continuing into 2024, we're going to go back through those nine crucial shifts, and I'm going to go deep into each of them and give you practical things that you can do so that you can start incrementally hardwiring these new skills of personal, professional, and people leadership.
Have an amazing week.
I look forward to being with you again next week. I'll see you then.
