Additonal tools for your leadership toolkit regardless of your style. Click here to read Part 1.
One of the hardest things is leading others. It can be frustrating at times and awesome at others. It’s a lifelong never-ending journey to be a better leader.
This second and final part of the series looks at the other foundational skills required for being a leader. Skills to help you with your team and stakeholders. Skills to lead yourself.
This doesn’t mean that you only need these skills to be a good leader. It means that these skills are foundational to help develop your other skills and experience as a leader. There are great books, courses and training on leadership that you should explore.
Two ears, one mouth
How many times have you caught yourself daydreaming in a meeting or during a conversation? Are you aware that when someone is speaking, you’re actually not listening but preparing your response for when the person finishes speaking?
We’re always preparing for something to say when the person is talking. Or we’re multitasking on another thing. Or we’re lost in our own thoughts. We’re not really listening to them.
This dilutes your interaction with the other person. It stops you from learning, stops you from building a rapport with the other person, and stops you from making a meaningful contribution.
Listening actively is challenging and exhausting. You can’t do it for all interactions. You’ll need to save it for the key meetings and conversations. Like all skills, it will improve with practice.
Does that mean that for meetings and interactions where you are not actively listening, you will continue to multi-task and daydream? No. What it means is that you should focus on the single task of being present at the meeting or conversation. But not expend as much energy as you would when listening actively.
The steps for active listening are:
Pay attention and focus on the speaker.
In situations where you need to listen actively start by setting the intention with yourself, for example, “I am going to listen to xxx so I can understand her situation and not worry about my response.”
Next remove all distractions like your phone, notifications, and emails. If you’re having an online meeting, turn on the camera to keep you honest.
Reflect back to the person what you’re hearing
If it helps, have a pen and notebook so you can take notes. And you can use it to reflect back to the person what you’re hearing to clarify and make sure that you understand and empathize.
It’s important that when you reflect back on what you’re hearing without any judgments.
Provide feedback as the person is speaking with body language that shows you’re listening.
Ask open-ended questions to clarify and be patient
Hold onto your judgment
Try to understand before making an assessment. Empathy helps to improve understanding. This isn’t a passive acceptance of their view. It’s to walk in their shoes so you can form an assessment of your own views.
Writing notes here help so that you can follow the conversation and understand their viewpoints. It also helps to stop you from creating a counter-argument in your mind.
Respond appropriately
This is the time when you can provide your response. You can ask further clarifying questions or make a statement. The challenge here is that you need to form a view after the other person has paused which may lead to uncomfortable silences.
Your secret superpower
This is one of the hardest skills because our natural tendency is to give advice and direction. But it’s also one of the most powerful and effective skills in your toolbox.
The purpose of coaching is to empower your team and improve their performance and capabilities.
“The Coaching Habit” by Michael Bungay Stanier is a great book on starting to coach your team. Its premise is to create a habit to coach your team in the moment. It provides a framework of questions that you can use to help coach your team. Below is a summary of the questions. It doesn’t do the book justice and I recommend reading it and putting it into practice.
The kick-start question — What is on your mind?
Follow-up question — And what else?
Focus question — What’s the real challenge for you here?
Foundation question — What do you want?
Lazy question — How can I help?
Strategic question — if you’re saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?
Learning question — what was most useful for you?
Coaching requires self-awareness and self-regulation. This is required to get into the right mindset for coaching your team member. Can you imagine being in a bad mood whilst trying to coach your team on how to deal with a difficult customer? It’s also important to stop your natural instincts of giving advice and direction from taking over.
A step I try to do (Try because this is an ongoing habit and skill that I am developing) before an interaction (e.g. going into a meeting or phone call), is to pause and take a couple of deep breaths to release what happened in the previous meeting/ activity and set the intention for the upcoming interaction.
The idea is to create space in your mind to focus and be clear when you are interacting. It separates the last activity or interaction you had from the new interaction.
For example, I just came out of a tough meeting and I have to go into a meeting with one of my team members. I would pause, close my eyes and take a few deep breaths and mindfully follow my breath. After deep breaths, I would say to myself “My purpose in this meeting is to understand what is going on with my team member. I will be present and listen with kindness.”
A different way of thinking about people
When Daniel Goleman released the book Emotional Intelligence back in the 90s, it changed how people view others and themselves when they interact with each other.
Emotional intelligence is about developing self-awareness and self-regulation of your emotions. Another important aspect of emotional intelligence is to be able to identify another person’s emotions and manage that. It’s not about manipulating them. It’s about how to help the other person manage the emotion they have.
For example, in a heated meeting with a stakeholder, I notice that I am getting upset and I use some breathing techniques to calm myself down. I also ask for a pause in the conversation to collect my thoughts. I noticed that the stakeholder is also getting upset, and the pause is also benefiting her to calm down. I continue to help her calm down by asking questions and getting her to voice her concern and grievances.
Below is Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence model. It shows the four components and the competencies that support each component.
Be An Example
If you want your team to be inclusive and help each other out, you need to lead by example. Be the change that you want to be. Behave how you want other team members to behave. This is the opportunity for you to walk the talk.
At times, this can be challenging as we have habitual behaviors that may stop us from behaving the way we want to. One practice that I got from Brendon Burchard is setting an intention. Before doing an activity or interacting with someone, I take a few deep breaths and then say to myself how I want to interact, what outcome I need to get and why it’s important in doing the activity or having that interaction.
This creates space between the last and the upcoming activity or interaction. It gives you focus and embeds the importance of the upcoming activity. Then show up and be the example that you want your team to be.
And guess what? There will be times when you don’t show up how you want. There will be times when you act or respond in a way that is opposite of how you want to and want your team to. In those moments, break the cycle. Pause, take time out if you can. If you can’t, increase your self awareness of the moment, detach from the situation. Try to understand why and recover from the moment.
Growth Mindset
Lots of articles and courses and talks on growth mindset. So I won’t delve into too much detail here. It is important as part of your leadership growth. It’s through the growth mindset that you can develop as a leader. Check out this talk on growth mindset.
One concept that I do want to cover here is that of a false growth mindset. This is where you think you have a growth mindset but you don’t.
Two aspects of a false growth mindset are where you praise ineffective effort and undertake positive thinking without accountability.
In a growth mindset, praise the effort and energy that you put in not the end result or talent. The praising of ineffective effort is where you praise an activity or action that does not progress you forward. For example, when you sit a test that you didn’t study for and you end up failing. You end up telling yourself “at least I turned up on time.”
Praise needs to be linked to process and energy despite the result. For example, if you planned out the study required and you implemented the plan — you reviewed material, rewrote your notes, and did practice tests — and you still failed. Praise the process and energy you put into the plan and study for the test. Review the reasons why you failed and what you need to do to pass it next time.
The other aspect of a false growth mindset is positive thinking without accountability. This is where you give yourself the reward of success without earning it or the process was not effective. An example of this is when you plan to wake up early to do some focused work. You block out the time and set the alarm and you get up to do the work but you get distracted by other tasks. You reward yourself for getting up early even though you didn’t get the goal done.
Lifetime study
Leadership is a study for life. It’s not one of those things where you take a course or read a book and you know what and how to do. You might gain the information but have not embodied it. It’s made of techniques, skills, experience, and habits.
Practising the skills take time and effort and daily practice. Build momentum by doing it every day.
Set your goal at the start of the day. What you intend to practice, how you will practice it and when you will practice it. At the end of the day, review how you went. Get an accountability partner or coach.
You will see improvement and progress and find others look to you for leadership.
Resources on leadership
There are so many books and resources on leadership. Below are some books and podcasts that has helped me on my leadership journey
Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier
Ego is the Enemy: The Fight to Master Our Greatest Opponent by Ryan Holiday
The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph by Ryan Holiday
Mindset: The New Psychology for Success by Carol S Dweck
Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
Coaching for Leaders Podcast
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