Your 5 Disciplines For Leadership Excellence

Jim Rohn, the great American Philosopher said: Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day, while failure is simply a few errors in judgement, repeated everyday. It is the accumulative weight of our disciplines and our judgements that leads us to either fortune or failure.

Based on my 27 years experience in strategic leadership positions and my research I share with you the following five disciplines that I have found to be of supportive of leadership excellence.

Value Your Team(s)

Your leadership requires you to inspire, empower and unite people. You are creating a culture that is exciting, value driven, effective, fun and worthwhile in your enterprise. So the value you have for your team is essential. Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel.

If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.          - Sam Walton

Show Courage

To be an even more excellent leader, you need to be courageous; you sometimes need to go down the untraveled path. The world’s excellent leaders act courageously in facing their challenges and in chasing their dreams. By courage I mean the ability to face down those imaginary fears and reclaim your far more powerful self that sometimes denied.

Imagine if you will, you being courageous. "The original definition of 'courage' is from the Latin word 'cor,' meaning 'heart.' The earliest definition was to show you who you are by telling your story with your whole heart.

What is it that keeps you from being courageous?

You sometimes hold back from taking the courageous path because of fear. So let me ask you a few clarifying questions:

• Where in your life and business do you need to be courageous?

• Are there storms in your business, work or personal life that need to be anchored?

• Do you have the courage to follow your intuition?

• Do you have the courage to be adaptable and to let your creativity shine?

Leading your business and your life requires courage. Yet you may not be achieving your full potential because of fear. Marianne Williamson says:

Our Deepest Fear - is not that we are inadequate... Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.  A Return To Love' (1992) by Marianne Williamson 

Why is it important to have courage?

Courage is the key to excellent leadership. Excellent leaders demonstrate bold reasoned judgment, spirited but calculated risk-taking and a confident reflective disposition. From my research on leadership and my lived experience of leading in complex environments, I have found that courage is the most important virtue of leadership. Aristotle called courage the first virtue, because it makes all other virtue possible both in business and in life.

Leadership requires you to make bold and often unpopular decisions. Leadership takes courage. Innovation involves creating ground-breaking but tradition-defying ideas. Innovation takes courage. Sales require being repeatedly rejected before closing a deal. Sales take courage. Take away courage, and sales, innovation and leadership lose their potency.

And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.  - Steve Jobs, Stanford commencement speech, June 2005.

There are times when you may find that you allow fear to rob you of your courage. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of going broke, fear of being alone, fear of humiliation, fear of public speaking, fear of being ostracised by family and friends, fear of physical discomfort, fear of regret and fear of success.

• How many of these fears are holding you back?
• How would you live if you had no fear at all?
• You would still have your intelligence and common sense to safely navigate around any real dangers, but without feeling the emotion of fear, would you be more willing to take risks, especially when the worst case wouldn't actually hurt you at all?
• Would you speak up more often, talk to more strangers, ask for more sales, dive headlong into those ambitious projects you have been dreaming about?
• What if you even learned to enjoy the things you currently fear?
• What kind of difference would that make in your life?

You are more likely to demonstrate your courage if you are able to control fear. Oftentimes fear is misunderstood. Fear is important in signaling to you that an issue is important. Yet if you become paralyze by fear, you procrastinate and take no action. Unchecked fear then becomes disabling because excessive fear closes down your solar plexus, which is a close network of nerves with connecting tissue at the bottom of your rib cage. The solar plexus if sometimes referred to as the sun of the body so if your sun is closed down, you will not shine.

The first step in your journey to leadership starts with courage. The voice of your experience can be a catalyst and inspiration to others.

Within your life or within your business, is there a catastrophe waiting to happen because you lack the courage to do the right thing?

It takes courage ... to endure the sharp pains of self-discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives. - Marianne Williamson, "Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of 'A Course in Miracles

Being bold in the face of uncertainty will help give your people courage and motivate them to keep striving when the going gets tough. Leading with courage goes hand in hand with leading with character and when your leadership is rooted in character, your leadership matters because it reflects your integrity.

You don’t lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case. - Ken Kesey

All Great Leaders are trailblazers - Are You?

Be a trailblazer. Excellent and outstanding leaders are trailblazers, navigating the path for others to follow. Excellent leaders, however, encourage their people to climb higher, inspire people to be their best, dream bigger, and achieve greater. An even more important leadership skill you can develop as a leader is the ability to provide inspiration to your people. Trailblazers empower others and when you lead with empowerment, you will instil confidence in others and empowered people take ownership of their work.

Listen to People. Your people are your greatest resource; listen to their feedback and encourage their dreams. You never know where your next great idea will come from, so empower everyone up and down the corporate ladder to contribute and innovate.

Successful leaders see the opportunities in every difficulty rather than the difficulty in every opportunity.  - Reed Markham

Lead with communication, listen to people and seek to understand the issues, understand what is needed for innovation, what is working well, what is not working, how resources can be better utilised and harnessed.

Effective communication is base of all relationship building. An excellent leader and a master communicator not only has the mastery over the functional skills of communication but also mastery of personal qualities such as interpersonal communication which involves interaction between persons. An effective communicator always adapts to global audiences.

 

 

 

 

 

The quality of your communication equals the quality of your life and when your communication is vivid and real in such ways that your communication generate possibilities, design opportunities and move your commitments to fulfilment, in that space you have access to your power and the ability to create.

 Your listening host the depth, breadth and impact of the communication.

When you invest time in listening to people’s concerns and ideas you fuel your leadership with communication because you remember that communication is a two way process. In so doing you are also leading with recognition, valuing and treating people the way that makes them feel valued; as well as leading with connecting for when you surround yourself with quality connection to people and you invest time in building genuine relationships, you then extend your leadership beyond your personal strengths.

Most people with whom you converse do not want to listen, usually because:

?   They think they have something better to say

?   They already have the answer to what they know to be the problem

?   They have no reason or motive to listen

?   They may not like you or what you represent or what you have to say

?   They comprehend more quickly than you can speak

?   They are filtering the message

?   They are thinking about what they are going to say next

?   They are distracted or they have more immediate problems

Occasionally, some listening occurs, usually because:

?   You are liked or admired

?   You have something to say

?   There may be rewards or punishment involved if you are not listened to

?   A response might be expected

?  You may say something which can be used later

?   There are no other distractions

?   The listener is consciously trying to listen to you

I invite you to listen:

• Listen to what is being said
• Listen to how the communication is delivered - in other word - to how something is said? 

Understanding how to practice good communication in your business, your day-to-day life, among friends, family, and significant others, is important for a number of reasons. Good communication fosters good self-esteem, maximize productivity, improving relationships, being an even better leader and even becoming a better speaker

 

At this point I will share with you five fundamental communication practice of excellent leaders.

• They mind what they say, they only say what is necessary, they are congruent with what they say - their actions align with their words. They know that it is better to say nothing or delay communication until they are confident that their actions will ring true.
•  They make the complex simple. You are in an information age when people are bombarded with information and hence simplicity never been more powerful or necessary. Great leaders distill complex thoughts and strategies into simple, memorable terms that people can grasp and act upon. Be clear and be on alert for technical jargon and business speak both of which adds complexity. Say what you mean in as few words as possible.
•  Great leaders speak with their own voice - it is essential that you find your own voice, it is about your authenticity - You may wish to follow-up this aspect in my book, Authentic Choice: Be You. Great leaders use language that is distinctly their own. So the insight for you is to let your values come through your communication, another person’s voice may be more eloquent and it is not your own. People want you to be real and they respect you when you are real. People follow you when you are real. Avoid disguising who you are, be genuine and people will respect you for being genuine.
•  Great leaders are visible. Visibility is about engaging with people and your stakeholders so that they get a feel of who you are and what you care about. Theodore Roosevelt Quote is pertinent here. The quote follows:

People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

I encourage you to really get this: Although e-communication serves a valuable purpose, it is no substitute for dialogue voice-to-voice communication and face-to-face communication. When you grasp that in today’s environment, people are often burned out and need to feel personal connection to you and the work that you believe in. Manage your diary and ensure that you are engaging with people, show people that you are engaged and that you care about them and the contribution they are making to your business.

•  Great leaders listen with their eyes as well as their ears. They practice the habit of stop, look and listen. They know that effective communication is a two way process and they know how to ask engaging questions and then listen with their eyes and ears.

In this regard the insight is that it is easy to be very focused on getting your message out, or persuading others and you miss tuning into what you see and hear. You need to read between the lines, listen to what is being said as well as what is not being said. Listen for the question that is not being asked. Listen and hear what is coming back to you. Look for the non-verbal cues. Sometimes a person’s body language will tell you all you need to know. It is well reported in psychology and communication literature that nonverbal cues and language accounts for 55% of our communication message, tone of voice - how we say the words accounts for 38% of the communication message and words - what is actually said accounts for 7% of the communication message.

Excellent leaders are exceptional communicators. Communication is the real work of leadership. It’s a fundamental element of how leaders accomplish their goals each and every day. You simply can’t become an excellent leader until you are a great communicator.

Great communicators inspire people. They create a connection with their followers that is real, emotional, and personal regardless of any physical distance between them. Great communicators forge this connection through an understanding of people and an ability to speak directly to their needs in a manner that they are ready to hear.

Regardless of whether you’re talking about business, politics, sports, education, the ministry or the military, the great leaders are first-rate communicators. Their values are clear and solid, and what they say promotes those values. Their teams admire them and follow their lead. Likewise, if you want your company to reach new benchmarks of achievement, you must master the art of clear communication.

To lead people, walk behind them. - Lao Tzu

• Dr Neslyn Watson-Druée, CBE, FCGI, FRCN is an executive coach, author and International Public Speaker on Leadership