How do you remove the burdens of leading so that you can actually enjoy the privilege of being in a leadership role?
A recently published Fast Company article by Bill Treasurer drew my attention. Bill explores three leadership strategies leaders can adopt to become further resilient. He notes that leadership can be exceptionally rewarding, but your success relies upon the engagement, productivity, and performance of those you lead. The path to endurance however is to focus on three essential elements of leading: Leading Yourself, Leading Others, and Leading Work.
Daniel Goleman, the author of the international bestseller Emotional Intelligence, also supports this theory. Goleman says that the primary role of a leader is to focus attention. I first came across Goleman's Focused Leader publication during my EMBA program (HBR Emotional Intelligence Series) which then led me to his book ‘Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence’. The book categorises these modes of attention into three broad buckets—focusing on yourself, others, and the wider world.
Focus on yourself - Leadership starts with self-awareness and self-discipline. Leading yourself, therefore, involves, knowing yourself, modelling principles and practising humility. You have got to know what you are good at, and what you would be wise to hand off to others. If you cannot lead yourself, how can you lead others?
Focus on others - Your success as a leader depends on how successfully you help others. Your leadership influence should be focused on helping each individual you work with to add more value. You must create safety, nurture talent and promote inclusion amongst your people. Besides, focusing on others helps leaders cultivate emotional intelligence.
Focus on the wider world - Leaders are judged by the results they achieve. You and your team need to deliver efficiently and consistently. A strong outward focus can help you devise a strategy, innovate, and manage your organisation and people far better than your counterparts whilst effectively delivering positive outcomes that did not exist before.
Leadership can be challenging but staying focused can take that burden away and get you into good leadership shape. As Goleman notes, every leader needs to cultivate this triad of awareness, in abundance and in the appropriate balance, because a failure to focus inward leaves you rudderless, a failure to focus on others renders you clueless, and a failure to focus outward may leave you blindsided.
Naveen Maram
Driven to inspire the next-gen.
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