Develop Your Professional Leadership Skills
SUMMARY
Do you find it challenging to get enough done, and you are constantly exhausted when you get home from work?
I totally understand that, and it's happening to a lot of people right now.
Burnout is totally going up; people are feeling stressed and like they're not sure if they're going to be able to get it all done.
Well, if that's you, that's okay. Stick with me because this week, I want to help you do things differently.
Everything is so fast-paced and changes so quickly and often, if we just do what we've always done, we won't get the results we need.
Today, I want to shift gears and start talking about those skills that you and I need to lead ourselves well and get the results we need from our own efforts.
Here are the three shifts in the Professional Leadership area that I want to share with you:
The first area that we're going to work on is your PERFORMANCE.
The second area that we're going to work on is your POSITIONING.
Then the third area we will work on is your PRODUCTIVITY.
Even though it's about YOU getting results from YOU, what I want you to do, as you come back and follow me on this journey, is to think about not just how you are going to use what you have learned but how you can teach these things to your team as well.
If you are in a position of leadership of people, then you will benefit from them learning this stuff, too.
TRANSCRIPT
Do you find it challenging to get enough done, and you are constantly exhausted when you get home from work?
I totally understand that, and it's happening to a lot of people right now.
Burnout is totally going up; people are feeling stressed and like they're not sure if they're going to be able to get it all done.
Well, if that's you, that's okay. Stick with me because this week, I want to help you do things differently.
Hi, this is Grant Herbert, VUCA Leadership and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today I want to continue our conversation around these three Ps of leadership by helping you develop your professional leadership skills.
If you've been following me along on this journey, you know that I talk about these 9 crucial shifts that everyone needs to make so that they can lead themselves and others well in this volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world that we're working in now.
Everything is so fast-paced and changes so quickly and often, if we just do what we've always done, we won't get the results we need.
We’ve talked about the foundational competencies of all leadership, which is Personal Leadership, and that is leading yourself well.
Today, I want to shift gears and start talking about those skills that you and I need to lead ourselves well and get the results we need from our own efforts.
A lot of people think leadership is all about getting other people to do what they need them to do, and that is part of it (we will talk about that as we go further into the work we're doing together). However, we need to maintain a balance between getting that done and getting our stuff done as well, and there are three key areas we're going to focus on.
What I want to do today is just introduce you to those areas. Then, in the coming weeks, we’ll go deeper into those areas and look at the specific transformational shifts you and I need to make and how to make them.
So, let's talk about these three shifts in the Professional Leadership area. As I said, it's all about YOU getting results through YOUR efforts.
The first area that we're going to work on is your PERFORMANCE.
This is an area where people are constantly striving for high performance. Although high performance is good, it's not over the long term.
I know all too well that the repercussions that come from just going in that hustle and grind high performance, and working for long hours for a long time can really damage your health.
So, this is all about shifting from that high-performance mentality, and high-performance alone, to sustainable performance, which is about doing things in a way that means you'll be able to do them for longer.
I don’t know about you, but during my corporate career, I was exhausted, and sometimes that was at 9:30 in the morning. And yes, a lot of that has to do with the emotions and the mindset and what was going on in my personal leadership areas of identity and emotional intelligence.
Yet, as well as that, some of it was because of the strategies I used to get my work done.
So, the first area we're going to focus on in the coming weeks is your performance so that you can get as much as you need done and get the results you want without burning out.
The second area that we're going to work on is your POSITIONING.
Positioning is different for people working in an employment situation to those running their own practice or business however the principles are the same.
And this is a big shift from being invisible -- where you blend in with everybody else, and you're not standing out at all -- to being in demand.
I didn't mean "in demand", as in everyone wants a bit more of you — we’ve got enough of that. What I mean by “in demand” is the fact that you stand out, you're known for knowing certain things, you're a thought leader, and you are actually standing out as being different to everybody else in a good way.
Then the third area we will work on is your PRODUCTIVITY.
Productivity is all about getting stuff done. It’s that old chestnut that we've talked about for years.
The shift we're going to make is to go from focusing on time (not having enough time, how do you get more time and “managing” time) to looking at outcomes. To look at outcomes means doing things with strategies that will achieve more with less. It is being able to take that culmination of what you’re learning in performance and to make sure that you are managing three things: Your expectations, your environment and your energy.
Energy is something that you can control. Time is not.
In this shift, I'm going to help you change some of that old thinking, unlearn some of those "leadership skills” that we were taught many years ago, and shift into a new way of thinking and doing.
So, your professional leadership is about YOU getting results from YOU. It's about thinking and doing things differently in the areas of PERFORMANCE, POSITIONING, and PRODUCTIVITY.
Over the coming weeks, we will take each of those and go deeper. I'm not only going to show you why it's important and what it is that you need to do, but I'm also going to give you practical strategies on how you can make those shifts from high to sustainable performance, from being invisible to being in demand in your positioning, and from focusing on time and moving to outcomes in your productivity.
As a leader of yourself, this can really help you to not only get more done for yourself but inspire others as well. And you can use what you learn in this to mentor others.
Even though it's about YOU getting results from YOU, what I want you to do, as you come back and follow me on this journey, is to think about not just how you are going to use what you have learned but how you can teach these things to your team as well.
If you are in a position of leadership of people, then you will benefit from them learning this stuff, too.
Well, that's it from me for another week. Join me again next week as we start unpacking these three areas of shift in our Professional Leadership by talking about your performance.
I'll see you then.
