Bringing the leading for results concept together

It’s time to do a quick summary!

This is a wrap-up to the last few weeks where I have been unpacking our applied leadership development program - Leading For Results which is about mastering five critical leadership conversations:

• Aligning and Energising?
• Reinforcing
• Improving
• Reviewing
• Coaching

At their heart, these conversations are about bringing into play the synergy between

• Head - clarity and logic
• Heart - emotions - Energy In Motion
• And hands - the capacity to act - capability

The vital ingredient that unlocks the power of these conversations is the leader’s capacity to create psychological safety. This is a space where we can engage in conversations that foster dialogues that are meaningful and get to the heart of the matter.?

Psychological safety has been a consistent theme emphasised in many presentations at the ATD 2023 conference in San Diego that I am attending.

Some of the tips that I have heard from the conference about leaders developing a safe space include:

1) Leaders should have a mindset of humility where they know that they don’t know everything. This activates better questions and sharper listening that invites others to open up and share their perspective.

2) Leaders who share a story of tough feedback they have received and how they dealt with it. This lets others know many things; the leader is not perfect but rather human - a work in progress, they can work constructively with tough feedback and value it and it normalises feedback both ways.

3) Leaders who can express their heartfelt intentions to work collaboratively with their team members to bring out the best in them and surface team members’ perspectives about the most effective way to do that for them.

The takeaway from all this is this: try picking a conversation that you want to elevate and gather some feedback on how you are going and the steps to be even more effective. The more you practice this, the better your skills as an overall leader will become.