The Many Faces of Leadership
SUMMARY
Do you see yourself as a leader, or do you think that's just a title that people have when they have a team that they have to tell what to do?
Well, stick with me because in this week's episode I want to help you understand that you are a leader no matter what it is that you do.
Leadership has the same principles that carry through no matter what time of the year or environment we're in. It doesn't matter if we are in the industrial age, the information age, the VUCA age, or the age of AI. What does matter is being able to take those skills and use them in the right context for what your people and yourself are experiencing at that particular moment.
The fast-paced change and the uncertainty that comes around, whether or not AI is going to take over our jobs (and all those sorts of things), will create different experiences.
However, you, as a leader, will be able to navigate through any particular circumstance if you stick with the basic principles.
This week, I will talk about the 3 areas of leadership, which are PERSONAL, PROFESSIONAL and PEOPLE leadership and the 9 crucial areas within these three are going to help you to become the leader that I know (and hopefully, you know) that you can be.
Leadership is a set of internal characteristics of a person — the leader. Even if you're only leading one person, which is YOU, then you are a leader.
So, you need to be equipped to lead yourself through the processes that you go through and then to lead others as well.
TRANSCRIPT
Do you see yourself as a leader, or do you think that's just a title that people have when they have a team that they have to tell what to do?
Well, stick with me because in this week's episode I want to help you understand that you are a leader no matter what it is that you do.
Hi, this is Grant Herbert, VUCA Leadership and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today I want to continue our conversation around all things leading in this current environment by helping you to understand the many faces of leadership.
Last week, we talked about leading in the age of AI and I tricked you a little bit because the title didn't mean that the content was any different at all when it comes to leadership.
Leadership has the same principles that carry through no matter what time of the year or environment we're in. It doesn't matter if we are in the industrial age, the information age, the VUCA age, or the age of AI. What does matter is being able to take those skills and use them in the right context for what your people and yourself are experiencing at that particular moment.
The fast-paced change and the uncertainty that comes around, whether or not AI is going to take over our jobs (and all those sorts of things), will create different experiences.
However, you, as a leader, will be able to navigate through any particular circumstance if you stick with the basic principles.
Leadership is not a set of skills that you need just to tell people what to do to influence them and get them to go on the journey with you. There's a lot more to leadership than that.
In my experience, leadership is a set of internal characteristics of a person — the leader. Even if you're only leading one person, which is YOU, then you are a leader.
So, you need to be equipped to lead yourself through the processes that you go through and then to lead others as well.
I talk about 3 particular areas of leadership and I want to introduce you to those today. Over the coming weeks we're going to unpack them and I will empower you with skills within each of them. These skills are going to transform your results from where you are now to where you want to go.
As we come towards the end of another year - while some people are sitting back and taking a rest, already putting up their Christmas tree or whatever they're doing and mentally switching off — you and I are going to go on a journey together where we prepare so that as we go into the holiday season and we rest and renew, we can come out the other side ready to hit the ground running.
The 3 areas of leadership that I've found that we all need to focus on are personal, professional, and people leadership.
PERSONAL LEADERSHIP is all about YOU; it's about leading yourself.
In my experience, the person who I find the most difficult to lead most days is me. This is because I'm a human being who has uncertainties and beliefs. I’ve made certain situations mean things about me and all those things that we've talked about when we've worked on that stuff before.
So, leading yourself to be who you need to be every single day is the first challenge. That takes a particular set of skills — skills you and I can have by being introduced to them and then learning how to use them.
The second area is PROFESSIONAL LEADERSHIP.
These are the leadership skills that you need to produce a result in whatever it is that you do. This can be your technical ability, the reason why you are in your particular career, or what your clients or your employer expects from you in a way that gives you the best possible results.
Now, a lot of these skills need that foundation that comes from personal leadership. I’m going to step you through that and show you how building that foundation will help you in your professional leadership as well.
The third area is PEOPLE LEADERSHIP.
It doesn't start there. It starts with building the foundation of your own skills and leadership capacity. Then, it's a matter of transferring that knowledge and experience to the people who you are leading and taking on the journey with you.
Unfortunately, a lot of leaders are “promoted” into a position of leadership without doing any work on the foundation, and they're expected to learn these new leadership skills as they go along.
Even if they're blessed to have someone bring in a person like me and teach them particular skills to lead others like communication, conflict management and handling difficult conversations and all those things, without building the foundation, they're not able to implement and utilise those new skills in an effective way.
So, personal, professional, and people leadership are the three areas of leadership that you and I need to develop so that we can be well-rounded leaders who can be everything that we need to be for ourselves, for those around us, and for the people that you're leading in your team. In each of those particular areas, there are transformational skills that I like to work on, and we'll unpack those over the next few weeks.
I call them The 9 Crucial Shifts.
This week, I just want to let you know what they are to get you thinking about them, and then we'll unpack them over the coming weeks.
So, within your PERSONAL LEADERSHIP, which is all about leading YOU, are the 3 areas of transformation. These areas are in your identity, intelligence, and intention.
Identity is about shifting you from how you feel about yourself in terms of who you believe you are and who you believe you're not so that you're empowered to put your best foot forward, take on challenges and risks and all the things that are going to give you the results that you want.
Intelligence is about shifting from just your technical and cognitive ability to the many other facets of intelligence that you have as a human being.
Intention is about going from the seat of the pants, day-by-day mentality, to having a plan around your life.
When you build that foundation of personal leadership, you're then able to step into the other areas of leadership with confidence.
Within PROFESSIONAL LEADERSHIP, your ability to get stuff done from your own efforts are 3 transformational areas which are:
Your Performance. This is being able to perform in a way that allows you to keep doing it over a long period of time without burning out and without it having a detrimental effect on your health.
It's also about Positioning yourself. If you are in an employment situation, it's about positioning yourself in the right place at the right time in your career. If you are in your own business or practice, it's about positioning yourself in the marketplace to be an authority so that people see you and listen.
The third area is Productivity. This is that old chestnut that helps you to get more done and to be honest, the word productivity is a little bit old school, and I love alliteration because it helps you and me to remember things. But in productivity, it's about shifting that old thinking about what works, getting away from things like “to-do lists” and all those antiquated things that didn't really work all that well back in the eighties and nineties of last century, and looking at things in a different way. It's about being able to manage expectations, environment and energy.
The third area is PEOPLE LEADERSHIP. The 3 areas we want to work in this area are:
Your Resilience. Let’s face it. Working with other people takes a little bit of resilience. I'm going to introduce you to a new thinking around resilience. It's not about getting harder and toughening up at all. That can be very detrimental and cause burnout and burnout is a big issue around the world right now.
The second area is your Relationships.
Everything we do, even in the age of AI, is built around relationships. So, to be able to shift from all that conflict to working in unity and collaboration.
Then the third area in people leadership is Results — the way you get results.
In professional leadership, it was all about learning how to get the results from your own efforts. As a leader who is leading people, you need to be able to shift to a position of passing the baton to others, to delegating, to leading the process, but not necessarily doing everything.
Doing this is one of the biggest challenges that leaders have in that transition. They do one of two things: They either micromanage because they don't trust that their people are going to get the results they want, or they totally take their hands off; they get into their own work and stick to that professional area of getting results from their own efforts, and their people are looking for guidance, and they're not getting it.
So, the 3 areas of leadership, which are PERSONAL, PROFESSIONAL and PEOPLE leadership and the 9 crucial areas within these three are going to help you to become the leader that I know (and hopefully, you know) that you can be.
Over the next few weeks, we’re going to unpack these shifts and I'm going to go deeper into each of them and give you skills that you can use straight away.
If you resonate with this and you go:
"Hey, this is something that I need.” or “This is something that my team needs.” Then, find a way to connect with me.
Wherever you are watching (or reading) this — on YouTube, my website, on some sort of social media, on LinkedIn, or wherever there's an opportunity, connect and ask me some more questions; we can jump on a call and work out how you and I can work on those things together.
For everyone else, come along on the journey.
Join me again next week when we start working, going deeper into these 3 areas of leadership.
I'll see you then.
