Mastering the Art of Noticing: A Key to Co-Creative Leadership

Welcome to the latest edition of the “How to be a co-creative leader” newsletter!?

When people invite me to speak on co-creative leadership, I often tell attendees one very important thing up front: Before you can even consider becoming a co-creative leader, there is some foundational work you need to do on yourself.

You need to get some clarity on your personal core values and you need to get clear on what your leadership is in service of. More importantly though, you need to start building an understanding of your current leadership game and learn to see it in action.

In this edition of the newsletter, I want to talk to you about your leadership game and how you can start seeing it in action. This all begins with mastering the lost art of noticing. What does this mean and what should you notice you ask? Well, that’s what we are going to discuss this week.

Let’s go!

What is your leadership game?

To give you some context before we start, let’s talk about your leadership game. To keep it simple, this is your personal operating system. It is what defines you as a leader as well as a person.

Your leadership game drives how you react at your best and at your worst. It is not a single thing, it is a combination of your values, your behaviors, your beliefs and how you act in certain situations.

When I say it is your default operating system, I mean that it is what drives how you will act or react by default to the events happening around you.?

Let’s take a very basic example to illustrate. Imagine a leader that asks a question to their team and answers it themself right away. When this person is planning their meeting, they are not planning on acting this way, it happens by default.

Over the time that I work with leaders, one of the key things I do is help them see their leadership game in action. Not so that they can judge themselves harshly, but rather so that when it kicks in, they can see it and choose to act a different way in these same situations.

This is why knowing your leadership game is the foundation to become a co-creative leader and we’ll dig deeper into this topic in a future newsletter.

Mastering the art of noticing

Noticing is a fairly simple concept. It’s about taking a moment just to pause and see what’s going on inside of you or even around you if you are in a meeting with colleagues.

I give this very simple exercise to some of the people that I coach:

• Grab a pack of post-it notes and write the word “NOTICE” nice and big on about a dozen of them.
• Spread those post-its around your home office and put some at your desk at the office for the times you show up there. Put some in different places, the bathroom, the monitor of your home office, the back of a door… anywhere you look at consistently during the day.
• When you are in a meeting, every time you see one, take a moment and do a quick reflection on a few of the following questions:
• At the end of the day, take a moment to reflect on some of the things you noticed during the day. What are some of the patterns you can see? How can this help you in the next meetings with your team?

The first time I learned about the topic of noticing was in a training course I followed with CultureSync a long time ago around Tribal Leadership. They gave us a very similar exercise, I framed it differently for you in the context of this newsletter.

Some useful things to notice…

I focused the exercise in the last section for the context of a meeting. Notice (pun intended) that I also gave you questions to focus on yourself first. This is because it tends to be easier to notice what other people are doing instead of what we are doing and saying.

In a team context, there are other things you can notice such as:

• Team Dynamics: How do team members interact with each other during meetings? Who takes initiative? Who holds back? Who struggles listening to each other and communicating? Noticing these things will help you improve how your team plays together.
• Individual Needs:? Each member of your team has unique strengths and weaknesses. They may have different preferences as well. Noticing all of this can help you tailor your approach to their individual development needs which in turn will improve their motivation and productivity.
• Environmental Influences: Ongoing organization changes, market conditions, on-site vs remote work environment can also have an impact on the performance and morale of your team. Focusing on these as well can help you adapt your leadership accordingly.
• Your personal impact on the group: In the moment, being able to see what your leadership is creating and taking responsibility for it is the key to mastering your leadership game. How are you reacting under various circumstances? Are you responses and behaviors helping or hindering your team??

Pulling it all together

I hope you can begin to see how the art of noticing can be a powerful tool in your leadership toolkit. The secret is for you to become more aware of both your internal state and the dynamics happening around you. This in turn, allows you to start leading more consciously and responsively.

As you notice things, do not hold your perspective too tight. Although you are noticing things, keep in mind you are filtering things through your own personal lens. You may be correct in your assumptions but you may be wrong as well. So talk about what you are noticing with others, especially when it relates to team dynamics.

In the end, what you want to do is to translate the things you are noticing into better leadership actions to create a more collaborative, engaged and productive team environment.

I encourage you to use the noticing exercise I talked about earlier to start honing your noticing skills. Remember, right now the goal is not to critique harshly but to observe and see what you can learn from it.?

As you become more practiced in noticing, you will likely find that many aspects of your leadership game naturally start coming to light for you. You will then be able to start making strategic changes in your behavior and leadership approach to align more closely with your core values and the needs of your team.

Your insights and experiences are invaluable to our community. I invite you to share what the noticing exercise is opening up for you. Have you discovered new things about yourself? Have adjustments in your behavior led to better outcomes? Share your story in the comments below.

Thank you for joining me once again on this journey to becoming a co-creating leader and have a more meaningful impact in your organization!

About Steffan Surdek

?? Are you ready to elevate your leadership to the next level?

With over a decade of experience in leadership coaching, I've dedicated my career to helping executives and management teams unlock their full potential. My approach centers around the concept of Co-Creative Leadership, focusing on fostering a culture of collaboration and action-oriented learning.

If you're looking to transform your team's dynamics, enhance collaboration, or reduce conversational debt, I'm here to guide you.

?? Drop a "LEAD" in the COMMENTS below, and I'll send you an exclusive guide on "The 5 Key Skills of a Co-Creative Leader." This resource is designed to provide you with an overview of the five key skills as well as actionable insights and strategies to unleash the leaders within your team and create a more dynamic and effective working environment.

Join me on this ongoing journey together towards co-creative excellence.