Sharing sleepless night experiences in the last few weeks has brought up some of the main reasons for your worry, your stress, your ruminating thoughts. One point we haven’t made, though evident, is that if you have sleepless nights, it is because you care. Goes without saying of course.
But what is it leaders really care about, deep down?
As we recap what we’ve been discussing: load, priorities, uncertainty, regret, wanting to do better, etc., all these themes have something in common. What we have noticed over the years, with our experience with leaders and all kinds of organisations is that at their core, is a desire, the need to show up and perform well, to grow and be the best they can be.
In fact, that is also at the heart of what you partner with us for. Your responsibility as a leader to your people, whether stakeholders or shareholders, employees, customers or the broader community, to invest yourself and others in elevating leadership. To stretch possibilities and leadership potential, improve and increase performance and expand perspectives to thrive.
What does this look like?
Let’s start with potential. I love the word potential. I see it as a real opportunity, something invigorating, and a choice that helps you to grow and flourish. I urge you to discover the power of nurturing and stretching potential. What’s possible? Who am I at my best? What can we achieve as a team together? What is my organisation capable of? Potential from the perspective of self, team and organisation as the key to leadership. As the point of departure for any kind of heightened, future and sustained leadership performance.
Understanding potential is quite tricky though. Yes, we all have it. It’s human nature to evolve and to do so, we must have the potential to change, improve or do things differently. But what do you do to find out where somebody’s potential lies? Do you throw them into the deep end and wait and see? Sometimes that is the only option, but different people will have different triggers to activate their potential. Observing, connecting, getting to know them or developing your own self-awareness will enable possibilities of maximising potential to arise and make themselves visible and obvious.
The following elements will help you in the process:
⚪ Curiosity and a Growth Mindset: to have an openness to opportunities and a desire to seize them.
⚪ Unrealised Strengths and Confidence: to have an untapped source of energy, joy and performance and the courage to give new things a go.
⚪ Connection and compassion: to operate with trust, kindness and the humble knowledge that you don’t know everything, that there’s always room to stretch.
In the next few weeks, we’ll delve deeper into how these three elements can help maximise leadership potential for yourself, your team and your organisation.
Stay tuned! 🤩