Leadership

Self-Awareness

• Self-Awareness. This means simply understanding your strengths and weaknesses, but gaining self-awareness is anything but simple. Self-awareness is one of the critical leadership skills for ongoing and long-term effectiveness as a leader.

Leadership Wisdom

Leadership Wisdom

• The best leaders have a bank of lessons and anecdotes they can bring to bear on new challenges. These insights don’t arise spontaneously but are the result of ongoing practice.

Leadership Wisdom

• The key to cultivating leadership wisdom is taking time to reflect on your experiences. This includes revisiting your experiences from multiple perspectives, engaging in “surface reflection” to identify past actions and behaviors, and practicing “deep reflection” to examine underlying beliefs, emotions, and assumptions.

Leadership Wisdom

• This reflection must be done time and again, and good leaders often return to the same experiences repeatedly to gain new insights as they grow.

Leadership Identity

Leadership Identity

• Your leadership identity, or social Your leadershipidentity, influences how you lead, whether you’re aware of it or not. In fact, we all make assumptions about our own identity and that of others. Unfortunately, when we work together, assumptions are often treated as reality. That’s why in our diverse, global marketplace, it’s even more critical to understand our own identity and how it shapes interactions with others.

Leadership Identity

• Think of your leadership identity as 3 concentric rings (which may overlap).

Leadership Identity

• In the outer ring is your given identity — characteristics you have no choice about. These natural traits include age, nationality, race, some physical characteristics, and the like.

Leadership Identity

• The second ring is your chosen identity. These traits describe your status, characteristics you control, and skills. Common attributes in the chosen identity are your potential major, political views, and hobbies.

Leadership Identity

• We use social identity to categorize people into groups, identify with particular groups, and compare various groups. Knowing your leadership identity may help you find common ground with others and enhance your internal and external self-awareness, leading to stronger relationships or reducing the likelihood of misunderstandings during critical communications.

Leadership Identity

• The innermost ring is your core identity. These are the qualities that make you unique; some may change over your life, while others remain constant. Included here are behaviors, values, and beliefs.

Leadership Identity

• When you are building a relationship at school or work, what do you want to know about the other person? What do you notice first? Are you attracted to certain characteristics? What assumptions do you make about other people based on their social identity? If someone else were describing your identity, what do you think they would notice first? What would be most relevant to them, and why? What assumptions do you think other people make about you based on your social identity? How much do you think you have in common with others in your closest circle

Leadership Reputation

Leadership Reputation

• Your leadership reputation is what others think of you as a leader. Understanding your leadership reputation helps you comprehend how you may be perceived and judged by others. Knowing how you’re perceived will strengthen your ability to communicate with and influence others.

Leadership Brand

Leadership Brand

• How do people know the leadership you’re capable of, and how do you communicate it? That’s what your leadership brand is — an aspirational set of leadership traits and behaviors.

Leadership Brand

• Understanding your leadership brand — how you’d like to be perceived — allows you to act to change those perceptions in a positive, authentic way. Your leadership brand should identify your unique strengths, communicate them to others, provide a consistent experience that meets others’ expectations of you,

Communication

Communication

• “Communicating information and ideas” is consistently rated among the most important skills for leaders to be successful. Communication is also embedded in a number of other leadership skills and competencies, including “leading employees,” “participative management,” and “building and mending relationships.”

Communication

• Writing clearly, speaking with clarity, and using active listening skills are all part of the equation.

3 Important Facts About Communication for Leaders

Authenticity counts

— a lot.

3 Important Facts About Communication for Leaders

• Be honest and sincere. Find your own voice; quit using corporate-speak or sounding like someone you’re not. Let who you are, where you come from, and what you value come through in your communication. People want, respect, and will follow authentic leadership. So forget about eloquence — worry about being real. Don’t disguise who you are. People will never willingly follow someone they feel is inauthentic.

Visibility is a form of communication

3 Important Facts About Communication for Leaders

• If you want to communicate well, don’t be out of sight. Don’t be known only by your texts or emails . Be present, visible, and available. Getting “out there” — consistently and predictably — lets others know what kind of leader you are. People need to see and feel who you are to feel connected to the work you want them to do.

Listening is a powerful skill.

3 Important Facts About Communication for Leaders

• Good communicators are also good listeners. When you listen well, you gain a clear understanding of another’s perspective and knowledge. Listening fosters trust, respect, openness, and alignment. Active listening is a key part of coaching others. Allow people to air their concerns. Ask powerful questions that open the door to what people really think and feel. And pay close, respectful attention to what is said — and what’s left unsaid.

Influence

Influence

• Developing your influencing and leadership skills helps you to communicate your vision or goals, align the efforts of others, and build commitment from people at all levels. Ultimately, influence allows you to get things done and achieve desirable outcomes.

3 Tactics to Influence People

Logical Influence (Brain)

Logical Influence

• Logical appeals tap into people’s rational and intellectual positions. You present an argument for the best choice of action based on organizational benefits, personal benefits, or both, appealing to people’s minds.

Emotional Influence (Heart)

Emotional Influence

• Emotional appeals connect your message, goal, or project to individual goals and values. An idea that promotes a person’s feelings of well-being, service, or sense of belonging tugs at the heartstrings and has a good chance of gaining support.

Cooperative Influence (Hands)

Cooperative Influence

• Cooperative appeals involve collaboration (what will you do together?), consultation (what ideas do other people have?), and alliances (who already supports you or has the credibility you need?). Working together to accomplish a mutually important goal extends a hand to others in the organization and is an extremely effective way of influencing.

Learning Agility

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• You need the ability to constantly be in a learning mode, to value and seek out the lessons of experience. To develop as leaders and as people, we need to be active learners. This involves recognizing when new behaviors, leadership skills, or attitudes are needed and accepting responsibility for developing them.

Learning Agility

• You need the ability to constantly be in a learning mode, to value and seek out the lessons of experience. To develop as leaders and as people, we need to be active learners. This involves recognizing when new behaviors, leadership skills, or attitudes are needed and accepting responsibility for developing them.

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