GIVE Model

Being a leader is never easy. While many people love to be put in a position of leadership, and those positions often come with desirable rewards, the work is still challenging. It is hard to keep a diverse group of people motivated and working toward the same goal. Everyone has their own unique perspectives and self-interests, so aligning everyone to work in a common direction can feel like an impossible task.

To be a successful leader, you must think carefully about yourself and how you are going about your duties. Thinking specifically about the person you are in the work place, and what that persona says to those around you, can be a great exercise. You always want to make sure you are giving off the right kind of positivity to others, so you can be a beneficial influence that everyone else can draw from.

One handy tool you can use in this pursuit is known as the GIVE model. In this setting, GIVE stands for the following –

•  Growing
•  Integrated
•  Virtuous
•  Esteemed

In the content below, we will take a closer look at each of these four points to see how it can impact your professional life.

Growing

This one can be difficult for established professionals. If you have risen to a position of leadership in your organization, you already have plenty of positive career experiences under your belt. With that in mind, you might not feel like you need to grow in any significant way to have success. You’ve thrived to this point, so why change now?

You might not need to change in a significant way, but ongoing growth is essential for long-term prosperity. Learning new management techniques, being trained in new skills, and opening to new forms of communication are all signs of meaningful growth on the job. The exact types of growth, which are helpful for your career will depend on your specific role and your current set of skills. Be honest with yourself, think about where you might be falling short currently, and look for ways to make improvements.

Integrated

On this point, you are thinking about all parts of your life integrating into a single, cohesive person that is working toward the same goals in all settings. You don’t want to have your professional and personal life in conflict, for instance, as that will make it difficult to keep your mind moving in the right direction. This doesn’t mean that you must always take your work home with you, but it does mean that you shouldn’t try to pretend to be someone that you are not.

Many business professionals are not properly integrated, and the quality of their work suffers as a result. Think about all the things you do daily and think about whether they are in line with one another. If not, take steps to change that reality. By making even subtle changes, you can integrate your life more fully and enjoy the benefits, which stem from that achievement. Most people are more productive in all areas of life when they feel that everything is moving in one common direction.

Virtuous

Working toward something greater than yourself is what being virtuous is all about. Do you do anything on a day-to-day basis that is placing someone else in front of yourself? These activities can be very rewarding, even if they are relatively small things. We aren’t just talking about charity work here, either, although that is very noble. More so, we are talking about things like being supportive to other people in the workplace, having integrity in your business dealings, sharing your knowledge and experience, and more.

If your goal is to gain respect and trust on the job, and as a leader, you would be wise to focus on virtuous behaviors. It is easier to be more self-centered when in the workplace but going the extra mile to consider the needs of others instead of yourself will be worth it in the end. Think about various ways you could add virtue to your daily activities and it is quite likely that you will be rewarded in one way or another.

Esteemed

The final point in this model has to do with esteem.

•  How are you viewed by your team members?
•  How are you seen by your peers?

If you are held in great esteem, you can expect to move forward with your career successfully as the months and years go by. Of course, to be held in esteem, you must earn those feelings in the first place. What are you doing daily that is worthy of this positive regard others may have for you? In other words, you need to give people a reason to like you, and a reason to respect you.

The four points highlighted in the GIVE model are all positive, and they should all make their way into your thinking on the job. It is far too easy to get caught up in things like climbing the corporate ladder and increasing profits at all costs. There is nothing wrong with having objective business goals for both yourself and the company, but you should be thinking about more than that each day. Place these GIVE traits near the top of your priority list and make sure others are seeing you in the way you would like to be seen.