Leadership Behavioural Competencies & Characteristics

Enthusiasm and Energy... with a huge dash of Resilience. That’s a great starting point. 

Energy is contagious, whether you are bringing positive or negative energy to the situation. Please note that when we speak about energy, we are not speaking about those people who are naturally effusive and full of beans and jump about the stage, energy takes many different forms, and it is still contagious. There are great leaders who are quiet, disciplined, detailed, thinkers, who have a fantastic energy field.

For example, when you communicate your vision with your people, do you do it in a way that inspires them to get involved? Do you portray excitement, paint an exciting future, articulate the role your people play, and the rewards for all of you?  The key is to bring your own natural energy, it is important to be genuine. Do you have a genuine enthusiasm for your role and your job? Brilliant, then simply be natural, it will shine through. Please do not try and fake it, people will see through it.

What kind of energy comes into the room with you?

Energy is massive to you as a leader, one of the reasons we speak so much about leading yourself and looking after yourself is that you will need reserves of positive energy and resilience. Having the energy to strive for greatness when those around you are happy with the status quo. The energy to continually stand up for you and your teams’ values, to keep yourself and everyone around you going when things go wrong, and the energy to drive a world class customer experience.

Be aware when something goes wrong, your people are looking to see how you react, if you are walking around like the world is on your shoulders, it will not help them.  Please know all your people look to how you behave and how you react to certain circumstances and then take their lead from you. Tom Peters, the great American leadership thinker and visionary, was once asked ‘If you could name only one quality that is absolutely critical in a leader, what would it be?’, he instantly replied; Resilience. It would be difficult to argue with that.

Enthusiasm is another very important characteristic to develop as a self-leader and propagate in others. If you cannot be enthusiastic about your organisation, your vision, your customers, and people, why would other people be? Train yourself to bring your enthusiasm to work every day, and you will notice the effect it has on others. Now, of course we are all human beings and some days may not feel enthusiastic, that is why you must learn to lead yourself as a starting point. Because even on those days, the ideal you must show up, whether you feel like it or not.

How many people have you come across with AUTHENTIC energy and enthusiasm? How did they make you feel?  The self-leadership process of preparing yourself to face the world each day is important to avoid people spotting fake, energy and enthusiasm, which they will.

You will also need to build resilience because things will go wrong, guaranteed! Your success, however, will not be defined by what goes wrong but how you respond to what goes wrong.

Note: Emotionally Intelligent leaders respond, they do not react.

There are times when all feel a little overwhelmed. This is when you need to dig deep into the reservoir of who you are and your character. It is one more reason that learning to lead yourself first is critical in determining your leadership journey.

Being a leader is easy when everything is going well, it is when the unexpected happens people look for and deserve great leadership.

One Senior VP's magical solution: "I was Senior Vice President of  a $9 Billion, high pressure turnkey manufacturing division. I recognised whenever anything went wrong, even experienced managers in my team would get upset or disheartened, doubt themselves, blame others, or sometimes a mixture of all! Perhaps, it was a new product launch, the channels have all been sold out now they need filled.  The retailors have run their promotions and set aside the premium floorspace for this new product. The company is perhaps counting on this new product to boost an ailing share price, ailing reputation, or perhaps to increase market share further. The amount of pressure put on the supply chain is quite incredible. Everyone is absolutely trying their best, they are conscientious, and want to succeed with every fibre of their being, but sometimes things go wrong.

Whenever we would have some unexpected poke in the eye, perhaps the parts not arriving on time, a design flaw, or we just cannot get the manufacturing to flow with high yields. I would tell everyone, Don’t worry, it’s extremely fortunate that just this morning I had made up a whole new bag of ‘magic dust’. Now you and I know that I never really made a bag of magic dust, and so did my team. However, the effect of bringing out the magic dust, giving whoever required it a little sprinkle, letting them know just how potent and powerful this batch was, calmed and recentered everyone. The extremely powerful associated placebo effect raised collective energy and enthusiasm, empowering my team to find the right solution. Over time it became a go to area and running joke, that we need some magic dust …The energy and enthusiasm it sparked however was certainly no joke. Having a great attitude and energy will take you far, if you can find the triggers for your team, it can take you on incredible journeys. Incidentally, the magic dust was also my way of boosting my own energy and enthusiasm levels. If you are running around sprinkling everyone else with magic dust, some must land on you, I could not be anything else except enthusiastic and energetic.”

How do you see, feel and engage your intuition to sense a current experience, and project into potential future timelines through different lenses?

One of the greatest discoveries in Neuroscience is that those same neuro-synaptic connections and clusters in your brain that fire and wire together for you to experience consciousness, are also found in your heart and in your gut. You in fact have three interactive brains involved with the processing of information we experience as thought.

In truth this is ancient wisdom, in virtually all cultures, ancient and modern, the heart and gut has long been regarded as a conduit to a source of information and wisdom beyond normal awareness, hence the expressions broken heart, gut feeling, etc.

In a study researching the electrophysiological evidence of Intuition by Dr Rollin McCarthy, Director of Research at The Heart Math Institute, he and his team discovered truly surprising empirical evidence that the heart plays a direct role in the perception of future events.

The gut (digestive system of the body) has close to 500 million nerve cells and 100 million neurons and is almost the size of a cat’s brain. The human brain has nearly 100 Billion neurons, nevertheless a great deal of scientific research, including that of Emeran Mayer, professor of physiology, psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (U.C.L.A.) determines that the gut directly influences mood and well-being, and informs our state of mind in other more obscure ways. Our emotions for example are influenced by the nerves in our gut, “I have butterflies in the stomach”, I just have an instinctive feeling about him”.

Omni-Channel thinking is the ability to ‘see beyond’ the limited ranges of your 5 senses, which is external stimulus by using your cognitive, emotional, and intuitive awareness to gain a more complete picture of reality now and where it may be in the future if nothing changes. It is the ability to see, feel and sense situations, events, and communications from different perspectives engaging your three brains.

©Copyright NOVO Leadership International Ltd 2020

When it comes to leadership challenges it has been said there are always three sides to any story. My side, your side and the truth most likely lie somewhere in the middle! And so, those problems or challenges are seldom one dimensional. They will, for sure, be multi behavioural in their dimension.

Having the ability to stand back and analyse it, view it from different angles, or as we would call it a dragonfly lens. The ability to be able to see different points of view, especially with people can prove valuable to you as you progress on your leadership journey. When confronted with a problem, try and look at it from different perspectives, predict and understand others behavioural patterns, then get others involved to automatically bring their own perspective. In our careers we have seen some tough problems solved by someone asking a question from left field that causes the group to re-examine how they are looking at it.

Review Module 14: 'Assertiveness and its Adversaries,' to understand the cognitive paradox about how YOU ‘Perceive’ a stimulus provides you with YOUR Perspective of the related Communication, Event or Situation and the four lenses to view it through.

Through a Consultants Dragon Fly Lens:

“Working as a consultant I got a call from a high end, high tech audio company having a manufacturing problem, the issue was the rubber gasket around the speaker was coming free sometimes and making a buzzing noise as it did, not good in a top of the range audio set up. The company had brought in global experts to view the different properties of adhesives and calculating logarithms, observing different material properties being used and how they interacted, ensuring all incoming material was meeting spec etc. As an Operational Excellence Consultant I went straight to the shop floor to the stage where these parts were assembled, spoke with the operator, and asked if he knew there was an issue between gasket and speaker. “No”, he said, “I Never knew…but I am not surprised.” “Really, why not?” I asked. “Well, you see the thing is I cannot tell visually if a seal has been made, the adhesive and materials are clear on the gasket, so it is very difficult to see”… “So, what would you do?” I asked. “I would use some food colouring” said the operator, “if we coloured the adhesive blue or red, I could see if the seal was off in any way.” “That’s a great idea I said, and someone was sent off to get some food colouring to mix with the adhesive. To cut a long story short, it worked, they could see at point of manufacture if something were wrong. After some more detective work it also turned out the jig being used was going out of calibration quicker than maintenance schedule”. 

Sometimes we need to bring real specific experts, however an incredible amount of time, you or your teammates will have the answer between you. You see, some leaders perceive it is a sign of weakness asking team members for ideas. Do not fall into this trap, you have brilliant people all around you, if only YOU would tap into it.

Do not be afraid to ask silly questions either, some of us can shrink if confronted by someone we perceive to be of higher technical calibre or perhaps our boss, or more senior leader, in terms of voicing some questions or opinions. Understanding your behavioural patterns, is the first step to become more adaptable to build rapport with others. Leadership takes courage on many levels, working on your self-leadership is what helps you in these moments of courage. If you are being steered by you or your companies’ vision, living your values, and being consistent with your purpose, you will be successful... Go ahead, voice your opinion, voice your questions, even the tough ones.

At times, the most difficult thing can be to say NO. Perhaps it is someone you are close to, who you know has been putting incredible effort into a particular project. They bring it to you, but you just know it’s not exactly what the customer is looking for, or does not fit exactly with your vision, though you could probably get away with it. What do you tell them? That it is great and thank you? or that it's is not what you were expecting based on your conversations? Of course, you tell them the hard truth, but we are human beings and sometimes we do not want to hurt someone’s feelings. It is the way you convey your message that is important, and keeps the standards at the high level you and the team expect of one another.

Ask questions from different angles or perspectives. The type of questions asked in an organisation, tend to determine the direction that organisation flows.

Leadership can be a paradox, sometimes it is not about you and sometimes it is all about you… Who are you as a person, as a leader? Would people on your team describe you the same way as you would describe yourself to a prospective employer at an interview? Who you are and what you stand for matters.

Never stop developing YOU. It is incredible how much learning and personal growth you can achieve if you just keep at it, embrace, and learn from your mistakes. Of course, it is not easy, but it is achievable. It takes discipline, and purpose. Who you are today in no way defines who you can be tomorrow.

Some will have experience of a boss who would say, ‘don’t do as I do, do as I say’…you cannot expect to manage and hold people to a higher standard than you do yourself, that will not work. You must be the beacon for others. The person who, no matter what happens is always there for your team and does not get too downhearted, never gives up, and no matter how tough it gets, still treats people with respect.

I would encourage all leaders to undertake a 360-degree feedback, this is where, instead of the leader giving feedback to her people, the people are giving feedback to their leader. Not only direct reports, but also colleagues who work in different functions of the business, or peers from other departments, as well as your boss. This feedback should be anonymous, and I know how terrifying it can be to leaders. Having said that, it will provide you invaluable feedback. Give yourself the gift of seeing yourself how others view you.

Back to that word courage again, and whilst it can be daunting it is totally rewarding for people determined to improve themselves as leaders. As with many things in life, what the results are is not the most important thing. One of the most important things is you have provided a platform for your people to have their voices heard, we all know the adage…’people don’t leave their jobs, they leave their managers’. It is true, and there are multiple survey results over many years that back it up. The other important aspect of gaining feedback is how you react or respond to it. Are you likely to take offence and try and track down that one person who said something negative about you? Or do you take the feedback at face value, thank people for doing it, and resolve to work on filling gaps you had no idea you had?

People take their cues on what is acceptable and what is not from their leaders. You are responsible for setting the standards, and those standards start with leading yourself. If people hear you speak with your boss, customers, investors, etc. with integrity, passion, and humility you give them emotional permission to do the same. If they hear you speak with your boss, customers or investors about how important customer service is and how much you value customers, they will do the same.

On the other hand you walk around complaining about tough customer demands or unreasonable customer expectations, your people will follow suit just the same. They may say all the right things to the right people; however, they will believe in it no more than you do.

We have worked with many challenging and demanding customers over the years and the key is your paradigm, or in other words how you view that situation. Customer service for example, some people can get very upset and take the view, no matter what, this customer is always unhappy. This can creep into your thinking and affect how you and your people deal with the difficult customers. Alternatively, you can look at it as a great learning experience. When a customer is demanding they make us better at what we do, creating opportunity from the experience, and a chance to give our very best for them. This cultivates appreciation within the team, bringing awareness that if we can take great care of this customer, we can take great care of any customer.

Which approach and mindset is more authentic and will work best for you?

Authentic leaders are self-aware and ensure their behaviours reflect their internal values, where self-regulation enables resilience towards external pressures and influence. They admit their mistakes, show professional humility and have the capacity to quickly switch between different perspectives. They focus on we rather than me, where their authenticity is always revealed through the alignment of what they think, what they say and what they do... Most importantly they do what they said they were going to do, in the way they said they were going to do it, when they said they were going to do it.

There is always risk that you can do the right thing in the wrong way but there is never a right way to do the wrong thing, and inauthenticity always comes from knowing what is right and not doing it. As an authentic leader you must spend your time striving to be your best, rather than trying to be the best. 

There has been a lot written and understood about the need to be a good communicator in the workplace. However, it is not your ability to communicate that is important, but your ability to connect. There is a famous quote which says, ‘people may forget exactly what you said or the words you used, but they won’t forget how you made them feel’.  

How do you connect? The most important thing is to be genuine, as human beings we can usually smell something is off when we feel people are not being genuine. Show you are genuine, and people will respond to it. If you give someone a voice, show them their opinions matter, make them feel part of something, they will feel valued.

Note: Being ‘authentic’ relates to self-expression, how you express yourself reflects how you really are inside, what you are thinking, feeling, perceiving, and believing. Its close cousin, being ‘genuine’ is more about how you relate to other people.

Listen to others with intent, not intent as to what you will say back to them, as most people do. Most of us are forming our response to what people are saying whilst they are talking, therefore you are simply hearing them with the intention on getting your point across, not really listening to their point and then exploring it in relation to yours. Work on yourself in this area. Steven Covey in his book ‘7 Habits of Highly Successful People’ said ‘The deepest desire of the human soul, is to feel understood ‘. This is true, we all want to be understood and your people are no different. Listen to them, not with the intention of forming a reply based on your own agenda, but with the intention of fully trying to understand them. Learning the skill of listening over the involuntary act of hearing will bring rewards for you and your people.

Another great way to connect is by showing people you are there for them. Would your direct reports describe you as approachable? When they are experiencing difficulties, are you there for them or do you prefer to berate them? Being there for someone does not mean dropping the standards you expect or accepting sub-standard work, it means helping them to achieve those standards. Holding people to account in an assertive manner is a minimum expectation of a leader if they are not performing. However, it is also important to be empathic, allowing us to close the gap between how we see things and how others experience them.

“The salient discovery is the certain things leaders do – specifically, exhibit empathy and become attuned to others’ moods – literally affect both their own brain chemistry and that of their followers. Indeed, researchers have found that the leader-follower dynamic is not a case of two, (or more) independent brains reacting consciously or unconsciously to each other. Rather, the individual minds become, in a sense, fused into a single system.”

Danial Goleman & Richard Boyatzis, Social Intelligence & the Biology of Leadership, Harvard Business Review

If you want to connect, people need to feel trust that they can open up to you. Without it there can be no collaboration within a team, only co-ordination or at best co-operation and at worst condemnation. If you are in a position of authority and believe in raising your voice constantly or you think little about bringing someone down in front of a group, or you like to throw your weight around, it may make you feel better for a few moments but is not conducive with connecting and will be limiting in developing long term success. Do not be disheartened, learning self-leadership is the first step to understanding that you get success when you give up those things that are keeping you from being a success. To become a leader is to earn your authority through developing trusted, borderless relationships allowing you to connect with your people.

Build trust and be yourself. We are designed to connect with other human beings… Work on how you move from communicating with your team, to connecting with them. One final point, do it with your customers as well, the more you understand them the better you can connect to them, and the better you connect the more viable they will see you as the solution.

The only way to find out if you can trust someone is to trust them. Hire well and have the courage to give everyone that opportunity. And when you do communicate, do it from the heart and the head, demonstrating a passion for work and a compassion for people.

“To truly connect with people, don’t try to get inside their heads, get inside their hearts.”

George Campbell

No matter what your business does; you are in the people business. Why? Because it is people who make things happen or choose not to make things happen. It is people who implement strategy, drive customer delight, design the business systems or achieve the outstanding financial results.  

Recent research from Stanford suggests “success in any personal endeavour is 12.5% knowledge and 87.5% your ability to deal with people”. Just think about it for a minute, 87.5% is down to your ability to deal with people. For leaders in the workplace its even higher.

Those who enjoy sports will have heard reports or stories about a manager who ‘lost the dressing room’. This becomes evident when you watch them on the field, it can look like the team are just not trying 100%. It is the same in the workplace, it is crucial to take people with you to achieve your vision.  This does not mean you let everyone do what they want, though what they want is great leadership, which means holding them to account.

What you must do is create an environment that enables people to be successful in the workplace.

In our careers we have been involved in many turnaround situations and can tell you the most important thing to do, is get people onside.

The strength in any team, is its diversity. The natural tendency is to hire people with the same behavioural characteristics as yourself, to do so is a huge mistake always hire people to fit the needs of the role, bring balance to the team and are smarter than you at the job they do. Inexperienced leaders do not want to hire anyone smarter than themselves in case they outshine them. That is one of the fastest ways to team mediocrity, to hire everyone in your own image, or to hire everyone ensuring you remain the smartest person in the room.

Teams are the building blocks for an organisations success, yet most teams suffer from a critical interpersonal skills gap that impedes success.  And unfortunately, many employers see teamwork as something that should either come naturally to their employees or they will figure it out on the go.

Why is it that some teams work smoothly and effectively together, while others break down into internal conflict and achieve little? There are, of course, many reasons for this, but one of the main contributing factors is the interaction of different styles within the team. NOVODISC behavioural profile reports can provide a useful predictor of team effectiveness, by highlighting possible problem areas and suggesting ways of resolving these problems.

The ideal composition of any team is, of course, dependent on the task that the team is intended to fulfil. In general terms, however, it is true to say that the key to success in team-building is diversity. Each of the main NOVODISC behavioural profile factors draws an individual to play a different part in the team structure, and a variety of factors across different team members can help to ensure that the team performs effectively.

Perspectives on Teamwork
NOVODISC has a wide array of tools for assessing the operation of a team as a whole, but just as important is an understanding of a member's individual approach to teamwork.

We use a specially designed DISC model to describe how a person will tend to approach work in a team. It also breaks down team attitudes into one of twenty-seven distinct role types:

Each role has its own distinct definition, describing a particular approach to teamwork, and a particular attitude to others within a team setting. These role definitions give an at-a-glance summary of a member's likely behaviour in a team setting.

Fundamentally a great team is the right balance and the right mixture of the right people, who are not always the most skilled people. NOVODISC as a wide array of tools for assessing the operation of a team as a whole, but just as important is an understanding of a member's individual approach to teamwork. More on this later in this module.

One constant is always true, none of us, are as smart as all of us. Have a think about that for a minute. If it rings true for you then why would you not tap into a collective intelligence? 

“None of us, are as smart as all of us is a mantra I have carried for a long time, but it was not always so, in fact, as a young man full of his own self importance and hubris I attended a college class. We did an exercise called ‘landing on the moon’. Your spaceship has just crash landed on the moon, (I am sure it’s familiar to some of you) and you have a list of all the items on the spaceship, tents/matches/fuel, etc. You have to rank them 1-15 from most important item to least important item. I thought great, I am pretty sure I can win this and at 3 pts per correct answer, top marks would be 45/45… I scored 12. We were then told to get into groups of 5 and do it again, the difference this time is it was a team effort. You were not allowed to vote, there was no majority carries, so we had to debate it until we all came to agreement. Our team scored 39/45. What a valuable lesson was learned that day. If I could create an environment where people feel comfortable to air their views, and listened to, collectively we would perform so much better than I ever could individually. It is a lesson I hold dear. Not every single decision or challenge should involve your team, keep it for the important ones and give yourself the advantage of that additional brainpower.” George Campbell - NOVO Leadership

It’s all about the bottom line. I wish I had a pound or a dollar for every time I heard this. There is no doubt whatsoever the bottom line is massively important. After all, none of us are in business to lose money. And for larger corporations it has a huge impact on share price.

Another fundamental, is not only the ability of the leader to set stretch goals, but the ability of the team to embrace them. What are stretch goals? The point of a stretch goal is to challenge you into what is possible that you may have previously felt was impossible. Now, there is no point in being silly about the stretch goals, setting unrealistic goals can and will result in the team losing motivation and energy and we do not ever want that. The leader has to get the balance right, to stretch individuals and teams to help them grow, whilst at same time ensuring they are possible, even if difficult to achieve. This is where a lot of the other attributes come into play. The team must trust the leader and to trust in one another to take on and achieve the stretch goals. The culture must be supportive.

It is only by stretching ourselves that we, our teams, and our businesses grow. Stretch goals are powerful because they challenge you and push you beyond what you may have thought was possible. It was stretch goals that enabled us to land on the moon in 1969, the U.S. President JFK, publicly declared that ‘we will land a man on the moon before the decade is out’ and for sure some people at NASA would have had their heads in their hands that day but look at what they achieved. History has many more examples.

We grow when we push beyond the previous barriers or limits of what we thought was achievable.

In this module of Leadership DNA, learning to lead yourself. We speak a lot about the mental skills required, or what some people may describe as soft skills, (they are not soft and applying them is hard). Everything we speak about and teach is designed to lead to better results for you, your team or organisation. Delivering results is how you will be measured. It is therefore vital to focus on those results.

The results are defined through your goals and stretch goals and measured through KPI’s. Just focusing on those desired outcomes alone is a mistake. If you focus only on results you will no doubt achieve some; if you focus on change, engage your team in the process, create the environment to enable people to be successful and measure progress, you will achieve massive results.   Focusing interdependency on continual improvement driven by purpose is therefore vital to ensure better results.

“Results driven organisations have achieved great things over the decades and advanced humanity as whole from putting a man on the moon to knowledge and purchases at your figure tips, to augmented reality, and of course generated massive economic growth. At an individual consciousness level, it has provided purpose by answering the question; “How can ‘I’ intentionally better myself?” However, this question is reaching its evolutionary limit and creating Divergence from the question our evolving civilization, in which business is an integral part of, now requires an answer to; “How can ‘We’ intentionally better each other, our society, and the planet?” The answer goes far beyond driving performance for profit maximisation purposes, which we know elicits short term decision making… It serves a higher purpose greater than one’s own self-interest… It fulfils a rapidly growing need for conscious capitalism in organisational decision making and has now become key to realising the enduring duty of a business; generating profit for its shareholders.   

Organisations must now tap into this shift from individual to collective consciousness... Results driven organisations were designed to focus on WHAT ‘they’ need to ‘DO’, which is inextricably linked with people’s compliance to performance in order to determine results… Purpose driven organisations focus on WHO ‘we’ need to ‘ BE’, in order to achieve ‘WHY’ we do what we do; which is inextricably linked to the people’s commitment to contribution and value, the emerging determinants for better results.

Taking an approach of firm but fair, rewarding the right behaviours and constantly encouraging and challenging everyone improves output, un-burdening poor performers will also help to build a cohesive team. Simply by focusing on a KPI (Key Performance Indicator), will usually result in a 10% uplift without doing a whole lot more than measuring and focusing on it. As a leader, if you show something is important to you, it will be important to your people.

It is also imperative to reward the right behaviours and contribution within your team, one thing guaranteed to stop you getting a high performing team is with team members whose contributions are vastly different. The thing is your team already knows who they can count on to perform and always go that extra mile, who will help them and those who don’t. When one team member is not pulling their weight, your people will question their behaviour, lack of enthusiasm and how they get away with it. After some time, they stop looking at that individual and begin looking at their leader and asking ‘why doesn’t this person do something about it’ why do they let it go so often yet expect so much from me? Feeling of unfairness creep in, and few things trip our Amygdala like perceived unfairness towards ourselves. It is important to reward high achievers and not tolerate poor performance. At first, it is important to sit down and discuss with the individual, pointing out where they are failing and what they need to work on, by asking if they need additional help, training etc. Sometimes even with great leaders not everyone will want to be on board with the vision and direction. If after spending some time trying to improve that person, and there is no breakthrough, it’s time to let go of them, before you lose the rest of your team.

One last point, as humans we are programmed to fear failure, without truly understanding the huge importance of ‘Meaningful Failure’ in terms of personal success, or ‘failing fast’ in terms of modern business success.

‘Meaningless Failure’ on the other hand occurs for only one of two reasons:

1. Doing things without thinking about and planning them with your team
2. Thinking about things without planning and doing them with your team

If you are not willing to fail greatly against set stretch goals and results that you want, then you will never success greatly. Embrace the potential for failure, separating failure from you being a failure and engage collective intelligence to ensure you fail fast and adapt with agility or push through the barriers.

“You have a choice:

You can expect massive results and not get it, or you can expect nothing and get it.

Only one builds a platform of experience and fortitude to try again, better.”

Derek Mair

Depending on your role, the ability to understand different cultures and how they react in certain situations will be key to your success. Having spent a lot of time working all over the world, we have witnessed first hand the cultural differences you must be able to understand. People are people, and there are great people everywhere, sometimes people can get confused between a person’s cultural norms and who they are as a person.

A recent neuroscience study revealed that during an MRI or brain scan, when they ask people from western cultures to think of themselves, a particular part of the brain engages. When they ask people from Eastern culture to think of themselves, the same part of the brain engages. What happens next is revealing, when the western person is shown pictures of loved ones, friends, family a different part of the brain engages, whereas in eastern culture it’s the same part of the brain, as If they are thinking of themselves. It turns out in eastern cultures they feel much more part of the group, the family, collective conscious, whereby in the west we are much more about the self, me, and view ourselves as different or distinct, even from family and friends.

It could well be all your people live within 10 miles of the workplace so therefore you may think there are no cultural differences. Culture transcends at some level through every country or commonwealth, area, city, town genres, religion, or ethnic group. Through every organisation, group, team or family. Therefore, IN BUSINESS, before strategies, before operations. before sales, before systems, before team, the leaders role is to engage with their team to establish the culture through the vision, values and PURPOSE of the organisation, and to create a platform for individual and team accountability; policies and procedures and cascading success… goals and expectations. Being able to understand that people are all unique and how to bring the best out of them individually and collectively with a defined culture is so important.

Being a culturally agile facilitator means that you understand the differences different people with different views bring to the workplace and you find a way of putting them together for the collective benefit of the team. After all, culture, which you can define as the way people work together, is a living breathing organism that emerges from the social and psychological environment within your company. And culture is the key contributor to your company’s effectiveness and competitiveness.

One challenge we have these days is having too much data and information, sometimes it feels so overwhelming, though it can become insight for yourself and the team? Can you see the patterns as they emerge, the trends? Are you able to share these insights and help others see them? If not, perhaps you do not see the patterns and trends as some people do, but maybe you have someone on your team who does. Use them, play people to their strengths, whilst continually providing growth opportunities. Are you leveraging the data for your strategic plans and direction, are you utilizing the data to verify you are on the right track? Are you reacting to the data if it shows you are going in wrong direction, are you planning improvements based on data?

No Leader ever created a plan to be frustrated, immobilised, unsure or burnt out, those are the things that happen when you do not have a plan. Having a Plan is not the most important element of Planning. It is the Process of ‘Planning’ itself involving your team that is most important, in fact it is the essential element for growth and development because it brings the future into the present by forcing everyone to ask questions so that we can mobilize collective intelligence do something about it in the present.

Failing to strategically think by turning data into insight is failing to participate, failing to strategically plan is planning to fail, failing to strategically Implement is simply waste.

Culturally agile facilitators understand leadership is a vocation, it is about helping others through a sense of purpose to all.  They know results are important yet choose to focus on a person’s contribution instead of only the results. Performance is a by-product of purpose…period. 

“Purposeful performance driven by the common unity. Develop Neuro-Emotive talent strategies and educate learners at all levels about the Creative Mindset improving decision-making, conversations, and outcomes. Through a coaching culture and sustainable model for continual improvement.”

We speak about Humanised systems. When developing your systems and processes, do you take people into consideration? How people will react, how will it affect them, what benefits does this system bring to the people executing it? A good example is the annual HR performance review. Does anyone feel this was put in place with your people as the beneficiaries, or to showcase a forward-thinking workplace where you review every person, and score them out of 5 or 10? It is a horrible process, first scoring is so subjective, and managers differ in their scoring approach. Secondly, does anyone think it’s a good idea to wait until a year has passed and then tell someone how you appraise their performance? Not only that, but too often people are surprised their leader felt they were doing a poor job, when they themselves had thought they were doing well and contributing. No-one should ever be surprised by their annual review, why? because great leaders are constantly providing feedback, learning and growth opportunities, things you are doing well, along with areas where improvement is required.

Now imagine, instead of trying to remember all the good someone has done over a year, you regularly review their performance with better communication about their contribution and how it is enhancing or detracting from the vision. Paying particular attention to their growth as well as areas they need to pay attention to. It can be documented and used as live training and development needs on an ongoing basis. Some organisations will take the time to put personal development plans together, some others will simply file the annual review, in a drawer until next year. If you are doing that, then it is time to take stock.

Understand all your people have differences, in terms of skills, backgrounds, and attitudes and play each to their strengths, learn to think who would be best placed as you design systems and the impact on them. It is part of your role, to embrace those differences and fuse them together to impact the whole and ensure it’s greater than the sum of it’s parts.

Get them involved and help develop their leadership traits. Can you imagine if everyone around you was as motivated and enthused as you are every day? that is possible, and down to you. Leadership should not only be top down; it works fantastically well when it is also bottom up.

Finding your purpose as an Individual and leader will be crucial to your success. Purpose helps harness the energy to keep going, through enthusiasm and energy and provides the fuel during the tough times. It can also provide a compass.  

As the great Viktor Frankl said:

“Success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.”

A great articulated Purpose attracts commitment and energises people by providing a significant challenge worthy of their very best efforts.

‘Authentic Purpose’ is rooted in serving ourselves, serving others and serving the greater good, it has the power to transform extrinsic motivation into intrinsic motivation which constantly pulls us forward and through difficult times. When we are pulled by purpose, we are more likely to reflect on our past and future and are much more likely to regularly consider our impact on others. When we serve others, we become better. More importantly, we transcend ourselves and become part of something bigger. Quite simply, having a sense of ‘higher purpose’ makes us neurologically and physiologically better and focuses our intentions onto an idealised future.

It’s not surprising, then, that when individuals in businesses are compelled by collective purpose, they feel happier, are more motivated, form better teams, and perform better. In other words,… Contributing Makes Us Better

We would ask you to consider being purposeful in collaboration. Collaboration is key if you want to put together high performing teams and achieve terrific results, across the enterprise, in every single department. We spoke earlier about how none of us are as smart as all of us, same principles apply. Collaborating means people working together, pulling together in one direction. Just imagine for a minute how powerful that could be. It all begins with you, and within your function. Start with your own people, how much do you demonstrate leadership that shows collaborating is a key principle or value to you? Do they see you spending time with other peers, learning, working together on projects? Do they hear you speaking positively about the benefits of working with other functions or departments, or do they hear about how terrible they are? As with everything, it all begins with you and how you lead by example.

Do you encourage cross team collaboration amongst your own people? When another department comes looking for help, do you encourage being as helpful as possible, building relationships?

Starting with your team you must look at breaking down any barriers there may be, real or perceived. What is stopping people on your team collaborating more? whatever it is, remove it.

It’s common place in some larger organisations to have silos, that is, departments that operate and think primarily of what is best for themselves without considering the wider organisation. All great leaders we have known are fierce collaborators, they understand working with people produces greater results than we can achieve working on our own, therefore they pursue this vigorously, encouraging their team members to be fierce collaborators also.

Clear the roadblocks, set up an environment that encourages collaboration. Help people to question the norms and look at how we can do things better. One mantra worth embracing is, that whatever we do today and however we do it, we are always open to doing it better. Whether that be in terms of pace, or efficiency, perhaps about the customer experience or the involvement and development of your people. If you take the attitude that things can always be done better, your brain will constantly work on that, even as you sleep, it will also result in you and your team being very open to feedback, and a guaranteed way to drive improvements.

The benefits are many, from promoting teamwork, to resolving a problem you were perhaps struggling with through to bringing people closer together and creating unity. These will all be crucial as you move forward from leading yourself to leading others and creating high performing teams. You are putting the groundwork in place for a bright future in leadership.

One final, and very important characteristic of all great leaders we should talk about, is Hard Work. You will notice in our model that every spine has hard work written on it, that is because nothing worthwhile is ever achieved without first putting in the effort. So many leadership and management books out there either assume that it’s a given or deem it not important enough to speak about on its own.

Being a leader is hard work. Be in no doubt about that, constant challenges, dealing with people, changes, dealing with disaster recovery, launching a new product, onboarding new teammates, delighting customers, delivering on the top line and bottom line, nurturing a culture, leading teams of people no longer all in the one physical location, inter department disagreements, conflict resolution, making big decisions, leading change, developing people, hiring/firing, dealing with pressure, and stress….

The list could go on and on and whilst dealing with all of it, never forget leadership is not about what others can do for you, but what you can do for others. The key being, If others see you are there for them, be in no doubt, they will be there for you also.

You need to bring that energy and enthusiasm we spoke about every day, no matter what, as your people look to and take their cues from you. Therefore, it is so vitally important to learn to lead yourself first. The more time you invest in developing YOU the better prepared you are to lead others and lead change.

If you are working in an environment where people are bringing their best to work every day, where everyone is enthused by the vision and the role they play in it, feel listened to valued and understand their contribution, then you are all in it together and everyone will feel involved. The benefits of this is all within your power. Even when dealing with big issues, or big changes, it will not feel like hard work, even though it is.

If the environment is toxic, people only look out for themselves, they will not have a desire to collaborate, and teamwork will be insignificant. When there is no value towards their opinions or because they differ from their leader, and you as a leader have not yet developed the skills required to lead, that is where the really hard work lies.