Discover how you, as a leader, can create the inspiration and unlock the potential that already exists in your team to create lasting positive change.
Transcript:
One of the things I’ve been finding interesting lately is that people that I work with frequently get tired. And one of things they say they get tired of is creating the energy in the practice, to inspire the energy for people to grow and change. So I thought that would be a great topic to talk about: Leadership and how do we sustain and encourage that sense of energy for that which is possible, both for ourselves and for other people. Because I think that creating the energy for growth and for change is really one of the core jobs of leadership. And although it isn’t often in many leadership books, it seems to me that it’s a really core piece of what we do as leaders. We really help create the vision, but also both the inspiration, and at the operational level, motivation to help people grow and change and develop. You can’t coax people to grow and change. You can’t coax people into it. People change when they believe that they are going to be better people at the end. That it’s in their best interest and that actually “I’m going to be more of who I am” than “I’m going to do it for you”. So as a leader, how do we develop both the skills and tools that help us support people to grow and change into who they are as well as ensure that it aligns with what we are doing as a group?
The other thing about growing and changing is that people really believe you when you tell your truth. The part the gives people a lot of emotional support and activates energy for change is they can hear the truth in what a leader is saying, and they can hear the truth in their own story. So truth is an activator of emotional energy. When people mistrust, when we don’t believe what is being said is the truth, it takes our emotional energy away. And rather than staying in the moment of the conversation of what we can do together, as soon as we go to a mistrust place the conversation goes into the past about what hasn’t worked and what’s gone wrong. That sucks our energy and moves it into a very negative emotional space.
And then the other thing we want to take a look at as leaders is how do we develop our ability to really help people grow and change along a continuum. We get tired when we think that leadership is an event. I’d like you to consider that leadership is a process. And that helping other people develop their leadership skills moves along a continuum, it’s developmental.
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