Leadership
Leadership in the Heat of Battle | Transformation #2: Going Beyond Who You Are Now
Leaders must often make impossibilities happen. How do you do that?
We all have a view of what is possible. Additionally, we have ways of functioning that we know produce results and achieve objectives.
To make an impossibility happen, you must expand the scope of what is possible, and you must go beyond your habitual ways of getting things done.
Take a moment and answer the following question:
What characteristics, abilities, traits do you rely on in yourself to accomplish things? Make a list. I’ll be silent while you write. Take a couple of minutes…
OK—times up.
Second question:
What is something you want to make happen or achieve—something big, something beyond what you’ve accomplished before—perhaps an impossibility? Take a moment and write that down…
If you compare the two lists, and you’ve picked something big enough, you can see that list 1 is insufficient to accomplish list 2.
You must go beyond who you are now, your “comfort zone”. But even more than this, the very strengths you rely on are at the same time your limitations.
If you look at this from a neuroscience perspective, what’s stored in your brain, among everything else, are sets of patterns of behaviors that worked in the past to give you what you wanted. These patterns, or from neuroscience, these sets of neuronal patterns, get “activated”. Like calling up a particular program in a computer. The brain, which is designed for our survival, is a repository, a library of such winning patterns for us to get by, succeed, win, even to survive.
Although we may think you are acting freely, when closely examined, you can start to see the repetitive nature of these behaviors. And they worked! In the past. Here’s the problem: when you are presented with situations that are not the same as the past, that have elements in them, complexities, that you’ve never encountered before—OR if you want to make something happen, produce a result, beyond anything you’ve ever accomplished before—an impossibility—then these patterns from the past may not serve you. Starting when you are a child, through your teen years, and through your early adulthood, you and I formulate these strategies. Then we get stuck with them.
Example:
A CEO of a growing technology company who was very hands on, getting involved in everything, as the company expanded, became unable to control it all.
He had to begin trusting, managing/delegating to, and empowering others.
He had to go beyond the strengths, abilities, approaches that had worked in the past, and discover new ways to think, relate, plan, communicate, act to be appropriate to the scale of opportunity now in front of him.
So, the second transformation of a leader is this…
to recognize these habitual formulas, begin to see how they limit, and be willing to go beyond them to achieve something big, something extraordinary, perhaps something currently impossible!
Your comments and questions about Leadership Transformation #2 above, and our earlier post for Leadership Transformation #1 (here) are very welcome.
You’ll also want the “The Six Leadership Keys” for executives.
Call Barry at (310) 730-6355 to get yours, free, from our Edgevantage Guides series.
Leadership
Leadership in the Heat of Battle: Transformation #1: Powerful Listening
Watch this short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubNF9QNEQLA
What does this video (and listening) have to do with leading effectively?
Leaders need to be vividly present to what is happening around them, and most importantly hear exactly what others are communicating. That includes hearing what others are not saying that they are saying. This allows a leader to get critical information needed to make appropriate decisions and take effective actions. It also allows those they lead to experience that they’ve been heard. What is more frustrating than attempting to say something to someone and not experience you’ve been heard?
When a leader listens, they strengthen relationships and build trust.
The video illustrates how much we miss that is going on right in front of us, and by extension, how much is being communicated that we’re missing.
How do you know you’re not listening powerfully?
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- Is there someone around you who says the same thing over and over as though they’re not being heard?
- Is there something someone else is telling you that you don’t want to hear it? that you disagree with? that you think is wrong? and you listen to them with that going on with you as they speak?
- While they’re speaking, are you evaluating, judging, diagnosing, solving?
- While someone is speaking to you, are you finishing their sentences? interrupting them with what you have to say? attempting to correct what they’re expressing? preparing to defend yourself against what they’re saying?
- Do you get impatient when others speak? do you want them to “get to the point”?
- Are you in a hurry to get somewhere or do something, and find that you don’t have time for what people are saying to you?
- Are you not hearing the people who are closest to you? that you care most for? family?
- While someone is speaking, are you predicting what they’ll say next or thinking that you already know what they’re saying?
These are some of the pitfalls leaders fall into regarding communication. So the first transformation a leader must go through is to realize how much they do not hear. The pathway to actually listen deeply is to first notice how much you habitually do not. This fact may be something you may not want to confront. However, true transformation always begins with great honesty and telling the truth about what is happening now.
Also, are there things you want to communicate to others, and you don’t have a sense they’re really hearing you? You cannot put water into a cup that is already full. Begin by hearing others completely—let them empty their cup. Then there is room for them to hear you. You have experienced wanting to say something to someone, and as they are speaking, you can’t wait to tell them what you have to say. And this makes it difficult for you to hear them.
Take on really listening to people and watch the miracles that will occur around you!
Want the “The Six Leadership Keys” for executives?
Call Barry at (310) 730-6355 to get yours, free, from our Edgevantage Guides series.
Corporate Consulting, Executive Coaching, Leadership
I just typed in “leadership” on amazon.com and found over 200,000 entries! Google has over 4 million.
It seems that everyone has something to say about leadership. And yet looking at the world today, from business to government, leadership is missing. What’s more, it is missing that it is missing. More information, strategies, characteristics, styles to copy don’t make a leader. A new approach is required.
From the content of our “Being a Leader” Course Part I:
The Four Foundational Factors of being a leader are
- Integrity
- Authenticity
- Being up to something bigger than oneself
- Cause in the matter
We promise
You will leave the course being a leader and exercising leadership effectively as your natural self-expression, in any leadership situation and no matter the circumstances.
Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership
An Ontological/Phenomenological Model
- Ontology: study of the nature of being
- Phenomenology: study of consciousness and the objects of direct experience.
— Los Angeles, August 2018 *
* Please inquire for upcoming dates.
Corporate Consulting, Executive Coaching, High Performance Teams, Leadership
WHAT YOU MASTER | From Idea to Impact: Inspiration in Action
In our work together, you discover the levers and dials of creating Revolutionary Results: the science of translating an idea, even an Impossibility—a breakthrough—into reality.
This begins with a Reinvention of yourself in the following sense: What got you to where you are now—your legacy ways of thinking, planning, and action—circumscribe the domain of “what is possible” for you. How strange that your greatest strengths are at the same time your greatest limitations!
Reinventing yourself means to identify these habitual approaches, putting them aside, and discovering a world of new of possibilities and actions that enable you to produce something Revolutionary. Suddenly the present and future become malleable and the scope of what can happen expands.
And, the Reinvention of an organization, of a team, begins with the Reinvention of its leaders first. The next level repeats the individual Reinvention at the level of group and organization. What are the legacy, cultural ways of thinking, planning, and acting? Identifying and then putting these aside, what Impossibilities will you take on as a team, as a company? Imagine releasing the brilliance of an entire group or enterprise, aimed at some Revolutionary result?
We call this a Science for this reason: my approach is a rigorous, reliable method for accomplishment. After we put aside the past-based strategies that you/your team/your organization have used, we then discover the tools, principles, and laws of Revolutionary Performance.
We use the word Discovery in this sense: what you discover for yourself belongs to you. It has a different value, utility, and power when it is yours.
So our method, our approach is the Discovery of the Science of Accomplishing the Revolutionary.
— Barry
Let’s talk about your own possibilities. Remember, your inquiry is always confidential.
