Soul-Inspired-Leadership

What was the catalyst that made you want to be a better leader and lead you down the path of coaching?

It started with the feedback one would receive on performance. The intent to improve oneself is always there. Coupled with that there were a couple of instances where talks on coaching and mentoring and how it positively impacts leadership crossed one's path. The intent to improve and the curiosity of how one could use coaching techniques, as a leader, set off this journey.

The start of coaching was all about seeking to learn how one could lead one's team better to improve performance. As that learning experience started one realised it was about coaching self. About self-leadership.

As a leader you've got to have strong character, grit and be passionate. These help in engaging and motivating the team. With that you've got to be compassionate, patient, and able to pace yourself as per your team. Not your individual speed. 

Where coaching helps is helping to understand the team better, listen to them, be patient and able to pace oneself as per the team.

Doing this takes a bit of effort. You've got to be accessible and make people feel they can be comfortable with you. Accessibility, openness and showing people that you are passionate about developing people is very important.

As a senior corporate leader, undertaking coaching helps in getting back in touch with the human side of things. In corporate, the focus is on results and the processes leading to that. Yet it’s the people who need to be directed and doing that requires empathy and compassion. Which is what being human is all about and that's the bit that coaching helps a senior leader re-discover about self and get better at.

Contact Ranjith at:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ranjithknair/

This is Soul Inspired Leadership's 100th podcast!

What better way than to share it with the person who got me started with episode #1....Antoinette.

Which brings us to what we both love talking about… the subject of self-talk.

Many aren't quite aware of the impact our self-talk has on our actions and reactions. Those actions and reactions then create the reality one lives in. That affects the leadership one displays. Whilst much has been written about how adversity brings out true leaders, this comes back to the issue of self-talk.

Overcoming obstacles or challenges occur when the internal dialogue of the leader is actually positive. It's about having self-belief and drawing upon that strength that helps a true leader overcome challenges and influence others. 

When we know what to focus on, we can ensure that our own self-talk is positive. Doing this requires taking cues from one's own body. That helps in understanding what is the underlying feeling that's causing the reaction one is feeling.

Feelings is what one needs to be in touch with and acknowledge. It's important to be able to understand where that feeling is coming from. Take anxiety or depression as an example. These are effects that have certain causes. It's important to acknowledge and understand where these are coming from. Without that, not only can these re-surface, but more importantly one's baseline feeling is one of unease. 

What's key in getting to the root of self-talk is to identify the trigger. Knowing what triggers it, allows one to get control and work through it. Doing this takes courage. Simply because you have to bring up and deal with unpleasant memories and feelings. 

You can reach Antoinette at

https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinettebiehlmeier/

Leadership is all about going beyond ego and leading from within. 

It's about leading from the inner self. When you are connected with your inner self and are connected to that, you lead differently. 

Healthy self-esteem helps in empathetic leadership. The outer ego is the one that creates and drives self-comparisons. Comparing and contrasting with everyone around you.

In leadership what one sees is too much of ego driven behaviour. For example, one identifies a threat and reacts with a defensive strategy. That defensive strategy will differ from one leader to the other. The commonality is that both are fear driven. This is the key.

The question to ask is how can you live and lead without being fear driven?

The answer lies in transcending that fear by getting into your inner self. Starting with acknowledging one's strengths and weaknesses and being self-aware. Secondly, having a purpose and staying present to that purpose.

However, our humanness often drives us to make decisions which, in hindsight, we may regret. This occurs as we end up reacting through our ego because we are nervous under pressure. 

One of the keys is being able to be humble with oneself and others. It's this humility that helps to keep the focus on one's purpose and to accept failure and know oneself better. That leads to increased self-trust. That is, trust my ability to stay present to my purpose.

This realisation reduces moments of being ego driven and increases the time one is being true to one's real self. 

Going from this to the next stage of questioning if one is still holding back, one looks at if there's forgiveness. Forgiving self and others for whatever has happened in the past that's actually got one stuck in the ego driven behaviour. 

Ego is formed from the patterns we've created for ourselves through our experiences and environment. We carry those patterns into our work and leadership roles. Getting over it involves taking a hard look at the story of our self that we've repeatedly told ourselves and then deconstructing the bits that aren't reflective of what our real inner self is. 

Leading from beyond ego is about self-understanding, being purpose driven, being humble and trustful. It's about shedding those layers of ego that had got put on through the years by going through forgiveness, and ultimately, being compassionate. This results in gratitude coming up.

Put together, this drives one to become more of a servant leader.

For enquiries on Thor's book, contact him at:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thor-olafsson-b4a6a5b7/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/beyond-ego/

Empowering employees everyone talks about it. Everyone says to do it. Yet it's a challenge.

Autonomy to employees to do their day-to-day role is where it all starts. Specially those who are in customer facing roles. Giving them the autonomy to make decisions as they are interacting with the customers, instead of having to check-in with a superior at every stage, helps immensely.

This simple autonomy is something that is, often, either not explained to employees or not given. As a result the front facing employees often find themselves in situation where they feel stuck.

Delegation and empowerment are two areas that are often misunderstood and misused.

Delegation is giving the responsibility of an activity to another to do it instead of the manager doing it. Empowerment is giving the authority and responsibility to execute the full activity, as felt best, by that employee.

Empowerment is underpinned by trust. It's about trusting your people and letting go of your ego about the fact that the executive just may do a better job than the manager could have.

The key here is to take time and explain the scope of the activity or the role of the executive. That aids in having effective empowerment.

Trust is where it all starts. This involves 3 T's-- Training: you've got to train your people properly and long enough so that the person trained gets habituated with the process and equipment; Tools-- ensure the correct tools are provided; Trust-- as a leader spend formal time with your team. That one-on-one is what builds mutual trust and strengthens the relationship.

Rob can be contacted at:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertson-hunter-stewart-90538b1a/

https://www.robertsonhunterstewart.com/

https://twitter.com/stewartwrites

Good leadership is how you connect with people and one of the best ways to connect with people is through storytelling.

Graham Brown that's does brilliantly. A great communicator. He brings forth how storytelling aids leadership.

In business storytelling is not about fairy tales. It's about creating a connection using empathy. There's an art and science to storytelling.

One can use one word to communicate change or give a picture of what's happening. In that word itself lies the story as we all have various analogies in our memory that's triggered through reading or hearing that word.

As a leader this is very helpful as, often, you do not have a lot of bandwidth to communicate. The necessity of being crisp and clear in getting the message clearly communicated is a vital need. Using a powerful analogy or story helps you do this and gets people to understand what comes next.

If one looks at the psychology of storytelling the brain doesn't understand the difference between past, present and future. It doesn't have that concept. It only knows experience.

What powerful stories do and great leaders are able to do is to take an unknown future and connect it with a known past.

As a leader you can use these techniques to create change and help people understand.

Good leadership is good storytelling. It's about how you take the short form storytelling and package the unknown.

As people we consume stories because it helps us understand information through frames we are very familiar with.

When leaders fail in their communication is when they don't use a frame people are familiar with. They don't borrow what works and try and create something new and ends up creating confusion to the reader or listener.

In business there's this entire psychology of naïve realism that's present. We stop make believe because we think that's childish. We flip over to using data and logic. That's needed yet that's not what people buy into. People buy into the experience and within that packaging is the data and logic required to aid the decision making.

Today as society and leaders we are challenged to create this connection. A lot of the talk is about the future of work; how do we find meaning; how we create teams in this disconnected world; how do we create voices of diversity and so on. Storytelling is a great way of addressing these. Historically storytelling has been a powerful way of creating connections emotionally.

As a leader be being seen as a human, fallible, imperfect and not having all the answers gives a frame that helps people relate and accept. Leaders have to keep in mind that they are the brand where people are concerned. Be it a founder owner or CEO of a large company.

When it comes to creating and driving change it's all about how, as a leader, you are able to connect with your people at an emotional level. It's hard because you don't see it but you definitely feel it.

Graham can be contacted at:

https://www.pikkal.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamdbrown/

https://twitter.com/GrahamDBrown

In M&A people usually look at the data when looking to merge a couple of companies. What is often overlooked are the people. Specially about the cultural fit of two groups of people. It comes down to creating a performance focused environment that fits. 

During an M&A the focus is mostly on all the technical or the structural aspects of the M&A and the people are the last bit that one looks at. Yet people are the most critical part. 

There's one fundamental fact that we need to keep in mind. As human beings, we are resistant to change. The key here is that we tend to get into a routine and when that's disrupted we try to pull back to what it was like.

To get around this what helps is having the leaders get into a coaching mode. Using positive psychology with teams and groups. This helps guide people to make those shifts that are needed as the companies merge or are acquired.

It all comes down to making the people feel involved in the process as then when that feeling of involvement comes in then they tend to join it and the individual activities moves along smoothly.

Getting into a company and finding out what the real culture is, is a key challenge in the M&A space. This ambiguity actually creates an advantage.

In M&A everything is stated out in black and white. However when it comes to the people, it's ambiguous. It's how we, as people are, by nature. Understanding this helps create an advantage of knowing how best to create cultural fit.

A successful M&A works due to the people and how they have been involved and managed.

Rachel can be contacted either at:

www.fts-global.com

www.henkainstitute.com

www.racheltreece.com

Organisations have changed. It's not been a planned change management project, but change has occurred as people have changed. That change is not one directional. Now it's up to leadership to harness that change and steer it in a way that's best for the organisation.

Going into this, what's key to understand is, that given people have changed, the value propositions of organizations need to change. That impacts the strategy of a company. Which should change or be changing.

The changing value proposition is enabled by three things:

1. People

2. Processes

3. Technology

Technology is exponentially changing. It's impacting how we work. Processes need to evolve in order to aid achievement of business goals. To do this one has to lean upon the people aspect. People have changed drastically. Specially with regards to what they want for their lives.

An outcome of the effect of the pandemic has been a re-prioritization of what's important in an individual's life. That's led to a change in how individuals are approaching employment. Being able to work from home and be with family, and going back into office expecting more empathy in the culture, are two significant factors in this.

One can see many a company capitalising on this change by introducing multiple new systems. Technology and process wise. The aim being to utilise the disruption that's occurred in their favour. The things to utilise this opportunity to serve the new value proposition and purpose as a company.

Where companies need help is to see how these three- People, Process & Technology-- connect where their core business is concerned.

Contact Anna at:

https://twitter.com/AnnaMamalaki

https://www.linkedin.com/in/annamamalaki/

annamamalaki.com

There's a belief amongst good leaders that they can get better. 

Thinking that you can get better is the first step in being a better leader. In this coaching helps you become and remain a great leader.

The pandemic has impacted leadership requirements hugely. The state of flux creates makes it necessary for a leader have one's wits together and be agile simply because that state of flux is continuously changing.

The health care industry leaders are having this pressure first and having to adapt and evolve. Those who are unable to keep abreast are making mistakes with their teams that are showing up.

The analogy of a squeaky wheel is apt here. As a leader you're not pushing or pulling the wheel. You're coming in and oiling the squeaks whenever it occurs. That oiling of the squeaks is taking care of the human challenges a leader may face.

The human challenges are key here. Every individual member of a team is affected by anxiety caused by the pandemic. 

That's caused a key challenge for leaders now. Connecting and understanding each member of their team and what they are going through. Specially given that there are different stages, globally, with regards to getting back to the physical office and the remote working is still in play. Managing this comes down to how leaders ask questions. Asking specific questions gives insights into how a team member is feeling. That then helps the leader to know where and how to connect and engage.

Doing all this comes back to a leader continuously striving to improve oneself.

Adam can be contacted at https://www.linkedin.com/in/dradamharrison/

Through leadership and marketing, in business, bringing in the human aspect is what drives growth in today.

If you remove people from business, there is no business. Going back into history to the times when barter trade was practiced. Business was still between people. Each offering something of perceived value to the other. It's no different today. Business is all about people. It's still about the same perceived value. It's for people, done by people.

Over time we've given people labels. Employees, customers, vendors, partners.

Step back and look at the 'why' of the business. The classic purpose. Look at it now from the leadership aspect of being human. The starting point would be self. Self-leadership. Reflect on how I am leading myself. In this there is no right or wrong. The decisions we take through our lives, at a moment in time, is right for that time. The analytical part of our brain feeds us a choice based on the data of our life experiences. Coupled with that our instinct also kicks in to provide another choice. This is the point where we end up choosing between listening to our instinct, soul, intuition or swayed by the data-based choice. The latter occurs as that's how we are conditioned.

As a leader it's important to recognise the humanness in you. Simultaneously recognise that the other person too, has the same thing. As two humans you are coming from two different perspectives, with two different experiential bases, your viewpoints are going to be different. Being open minded to accept that both perspectives are right and then evaluating as to which one is more effective reflects out in behaviour.

It's this behaviour which then has an impact on all that you, as a leader, meet. It touches all and ripples out. It's this bit that becomes the key communication. Behaviour is from habit. Habit is nothing but a pattern from one's beliefs. So being human helps you lead yourself better which results in your behaviour impacting and influencing what you want the others to do.

It's the human side that connects.

The issue on this is the word selling. There's a conditioning that has happened to that word. Through our formative years we've had a lot of stuff inputted which our brain arranges without us realising. When we do become aware of this what we are doing is creating a cycling lane next to a highway, as an analogy. It's how we observe our thoughts.

In marketing there is a discipline quite extensively used nowadays called social selling. In that it's all about what the audience is feeling. It comes down to having insight into what the audience is feeling at the time when the brand communication is going out to them. In doing this it’s all about understanding what the audience is seeking and serving that in that moment in time. It's usually a theme that can be related or connected back to the product of service. What that does is it helps to catch the attention and interest of the audience whose mindset is automatically seeking more information. When a brand continuously does this, it starts attracting this audience regularly and that's the start of a relationship.

All of this is what comes through in the TripleM framework of Humanizing Business. Creating three key pillars of stories, data and content. The outcome of using the framework, for a brand, is that its marketing and communication gets a real human persona that makes the audience say, 'you understand me'. It creates reciprocity.

Reciprocity is where leadership connects. Understanding people, having empathy and understanding the diverse perspectives. 

All of this is summarised as experience. More specifically it's brand experience under which one has employee & customer experience, partner relationships, client account management and more. As an individual interacting with the brand you don't approach it in a silo. You feel the entire experience of interacting and using...

Toxic environments are taxing. Specially so in the medical profession.

Toxicity in the healthcare workplace, unfortunately, occurs far too much. Looking back during my trainee days, one experienced it in the surgical department, then in family medicine. Today as one looks back the realization occurred that this toxicity is a consequence of doctors not being trained in leadership in medical school. Positions of responsibility are thrust upon doctors and it comes down to managing people with the inherent set of inter-personal skills that one has.

Such a scenario is quite common across workplaces. What most don't get is that there's a significant cost attached to this. Productivity wise it affects not just the individual facing the toxicity but the team around as all suddenly want to play safe, not make a mistake and generally the behaviour becomes one of walking on egg shells.

A 2013 HBS study on incivility and discourteousness in the workplace showed that 48% of people who felt incivility and discourteousness reduced their work effort. 78% were quoted as saying it impaired their loyalty to the organization. 25% took out the frustrations on customers. Add to this others who were not directly in the line of such toxicity. It's not hard to imagine the cost of this to any organization. 

In the medical profession this gets further compounded as doctors rely on the references to get into the next role. As a result of this many don't speak out. Ending up with presentism. Being there but not adding any value through individual contribution.

This brings into focus the importance of teaching self-leadership. Learning to lead yourself teaches you about the impact of your behaviour on others. Being able to get this into part of the professional learning is one way of helping people to be more self-aware and about leadership.

Adam can be contacted at https://www.linkedin.com/in/dradamharrison/