How "Mental" Is Your Leadership?

How “Mental” Is Your Leadership?

When I use the term “mental,” I’m not asking about the extent to which you live in your head, full of visions and ideas that have trouble seeing the light of day.

That’s a different leadership topic.

What we’re talking about here are the mental factors that contribute to your “Brain Power” and the level to which it allows you to perform.

Mental factors influencing your brainpower, and therefore your leadership performance include things that allow you to be present in the moment- to be alert, focused on the task at hand, clear-headed in thought, and fully engaged in any circumstances you may face.

When your mental capacities are primed to be alert, focused, and clear, you’re able to harness your brainpower for leadership responsibilities that include generating ideas, making effective decisions, and taking action on initiatives.

Mental influences affect your performance and are related to the thoughts you have, and to what level they are efficiently and effectively processed by your brain.

These influencers impact the level to which you are alert and able to maintain concentration and focus.

They help determine your level of mental clarity, acute awareness, and ability to access your creativity and intuition, among others.

The trick to improving brainpower is to systematically determine which mental factors are affecting your capacity and performance at any given time.

Now let's take a look at the impact of mental influencers on a key aspect determining our leadership success: alertness.

Mental Influence On Alertness

Dictionary.com defines “Alert” as being fully aware and attentive; wide-awake and keen.

Being alert allows you to be swift, agile, and nimble. Like what you aspire to in your leadership,

Your level of alertness determines your ability to quickly perceive and respond to things going on around you. Leaders often need to make decisions quickly and decisively, and alertness levels impact your ability to respond accordingly.

Think about a time you quickly picked up on subtle cues and quickly put a plan into action. You were able to “think on your feet” in order to create and implement a quick, successful response to the circumstance at hand. You had clarity regarding what was needed and why.

You were alert.

Being alert in leadership is important.

And our level of alertness is always under attack, by both external and internal forces.

It’s impacted by many factors including stress, sleep, nutrition, and your engagement levels in a given task.

For peak performance, it can take some investigation and experimentation with these mental influencers to determine when you are optimally alert, and how to engage in a way that gives you the best chance for success.

For example:

Are you a “night owl” and find your levels of alertness peak after hours? Do you need to get the day-to-day stuff behind you in order to truly apply your attention to important, strategic activities?

Maybe your alertness peaks in the morning after a couple (but not three) cups of coffee and before the distractions of the day make an appearance.

Gaining awareness of the influence of "what," "when," and "why" is the first step in putting your success plan into action.

It can be a helpful exercise to rate your level of awareness on typical tasks and responsibilities you face on any given day.

• Think about your daily schedule. Are you more alert in meetings at certain times in the day? Is alertness related to the topic, people involved, or some other factor?
• How alert are you reading and responding to email? Why?
• How present in the moment are you when dealing with employee concerns and needs?
• Do you get stressed out when sitting down to write up that business proposal? If so, where does it come from? If not, what is it about the what, how, and when that increases your engagement level?

Exploring what affects your level of alertness and how, is crucial to understanding the nature of the influence, and devising a plan to enhance your performance in this area.

Experiment with factors that affect your alertness. The goal is to understand the variables at play and then create and execute on your personal plan to increase or decrease the influence of mental factors on your leadership performance and capacity.

Have a concern that sleep is affecting you? Keep a log of your sleep, your perceived levels of awareness, and how you’re performing throughout the day.

Feeling less engaged in meetings after lunch? It could be diet-related, but there may be more at play here than just what you pulled from the snack machine on your way over.

Identifying those factors you believe are most influencing your level of alertness, and applying a methodical approach to your experiments can show trends, and help identify potential solutions.?

Ultimately, improving alertness is one factor influencing our ability to perform to our leadership potential.

When mental factors are optimal for you, they clear the way for that microprocessor we call your brain to function at peak performance levels.

The clearer your thoughts, the more likely you'll be able to eliminate indecision, uncertainty, and ambiguity.

The more present and effective you'll be as a leader.

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Brian is an ICF-certified executive life and leadership coach.?

He combines a unique background of leadership roles in the military, manufacturing operations, and human resources to deliver powerful coaching and help his clients achieve their personal and professional development goals.