Soul-Inspired-Leadership

There often are, what we call magic moments, which in hindsight when we see them we realise they ended up derailing us.

Can you share a bit on this?

The main one is this whole perception of getting stuff done. Ticking off the tasks becomes a priority instead of focusing on the soft skills like interpersonal and collaboration. This actually makes one be off balance. It not only impacts the leader but everybody around them. One has to be intentional in taking time to look at the interpersonal relationship and the communication within that. Specially in this year where everything has been virtual. Communication has taken on an entirely new importance and there's more focus or spotlight on that skill.

Two things one can foresee. One is that in 2021 we are going to go back into the workplace and through this year a lot of the conflict, with regards to not being able to get along with people we don't like, is going to come to a head because we have been working from home and that's been the excuse in not dealing with it. The second is that the virtual work is here to stay and we all have to figure out how to keep those relationships strong in a new way. We are all in a mentality of being in the survival mode. There's going to a time when we will have to be much more intentional about our workplace relationships.

There's a positive and a negative in this as people come back to the workplace. The intentionality can be to serve oneself better or to actually be relieved that one is not stuck at home and therefore stay on in the workplace longer that usual.

Rewinding a bit there's a bit about finding out what matters to you and not doing as others expect of you. This bit, of of am I making the choice or is the choice being made for me, came across over time. The realisation came that it was a bit of both. In hindsight it's great to see the courage and bravery one had in taking the transformative step. Whilst it was scary and extremely tough, it's truly beneficial to have made that change. 

This is where having a coach really becomes very useful. As a coach helps you set time aside to simply reflect back and see if you are on course and if not what you need to do. Thereby creating or re-creating the intentionality. 

Jennifer Chapman can be contacted at

www.ambitionleadership.com

At Soul Inspired Leadership we speak with leaders who lead from within and let the environment reflect them rather than the leader reflecting the environment.

On that note how have you taken the current environment and challenges as a leader?

Having to work from home was a massive transition. Most of us have not worked from home before. It started with bringing the team together when we weren't physically together. Fortunately, everyone responded to the change quite well. 

As a leader I continued leading the way I lead in a different format. Focused on connecting with people. Today we're more connected than when we were in office physically. 

People appreciate being connected especially when one is working remotely, and that personal interaction helps. 

This connectivity is an important point.

In the office it's sort of taken for granted. Whereas using virtual formats one has to create that environment and feeling of being and getting connected. The key here is that we are now purposeful in making time and having more meaningful conversations. 

Changing environment doesn't mean changing what you do. It means changing the context of how you do what you do. In coaching it's coming out that executives find their leaders more conscious about connecting. The social interaction, in connecting, adds a lot to an employee and it also means a lot. Understanding the social bit is key. It's not all work related but regular social conversations that help set the environment. It creates the added value of understanding one's wellbeing and health in all aspects. As a leader one works at it in terms of enabling this. This impacts efficiency and productivity. 

As a leader how we encourage and model the wellbeing matters. It shows up in how we lead people and shows up in the team mentality. Looking at it collectively in terms of how we help and hold each other up. It’s key, as a leader, to look after oneself so that one has the mental strength and physical wellbeing to then help others. 

Leadership is about leading yourself first. To be able to lead effectively one has to have the energy to do so. One has to build that energy level up each day and taking positive action for self helps in that. Self-nurturing is particularly important in self-leadership. Maintaining one's physical and mental wellbeing as well has having the self-discipline to do what good leaders do.

What do you mean when you talk about brilliant jerks?

A billion jerk is somebody that is a high achiever. Usually very bright because they're brilliant in their area of expertise. They give big results for companies because they're very driven, but it causes a lot of turnover and stress in the company. It’s because usually they are interpersonally blind.

When you get brilliant people sometimes, they just focus on the brilliance and that often tends to feed the ego. Making the behaviour worse. The question is do we do we run with the inputs of what they produce and what they do or do we go we need to sort this out.

Sometimes they fire them because they have caused too much turnover, too many complaints about the employees. Sometimes their roughness even affects customer service. For example, there could be a heart surgeon that was very sought after and the hospital wanted very much to bring him in because he has such international aura. So, they bring him in and, indeed, he's a very good heart surgeon. But the nurses complain his bedside manner is horrible for example, so that could be a case.

These brilliant jerks don't understand why people are complaining because it is their blind spot. So usually one needs to bring that perspective through caching. Saying we find that your approach is a bit raw with people and that too many people are leaving your department. So we propose a coach to guide you. At times they get offended. They think this is a betrayal here. It brings out two types of such people.

One who is put off by having a coach. The other is where they get offended that they haven't got one. So when they're challenged then they don't actually want one. They just want the ego recognition of it.

Then once you start showing them the areas within themselves they need to take a look at that's when they don't necessarily react to the case kindly. I had an English executive that I coached and he introduced me to all his office because having a coach was like a prestige item. I also coach a French executive and she would even take me around the office but never introduced me because then she would have to explain that she has a coach. So you have to see whether the company perceives coaches as a remedial or as developmental or as a perk and that also helps to know how this leader will receive you.

I would say the brilliant jerks generally don't think they need it because they are high performers. Despite them being very brilliant there's an angle that they don't see and usually that angle is the interpersonal one.

In the beginning you can ask them why do you think your I'm here? That’s to see if anyone has spoken to them about this issue. If the boss has spoken to them you can see if things have been clearly said or not. Sometimes it’s necessary to have a pre conversation that has not taken place. The other conversation is around the question of can this coach really help me or not?

What I do is not tell them that they need to be coached. I just ask them what the reasons might be that I'm there. Through that I get awareness. Then is there negative information that might be deterring them from the career. That is in the organization. If they don't know I could propose to do some research work for them how they're perceived. What would make the relationships more productive and then see if they still want to do a coaching or not? They're usually a high-powered individual and very smart so I let them make a decision but I guard the objectives.

It's critical to get the feedback because sometimes it's a surprise and other times expected.

It just depends who it is and how they perceive the world as you rightly mentioned before I think that sometimes they know they're creating havoc, but they think their ability they can get away with it.

It's one thing to be aware. It's another to actually change your behavior to something more productive...

This series is where I discuss various aspects of leadership.

All leaders are managers. Yet not all managers are leaders. Managers who aren't leaders manage processes.

In essence you gather that information from subject matter experts, collate it and put that together. The next step for a manager is then to implement. This is where the issue of leadership starts. The desire for those people to produce what they need to produce in order for you to actually put it together as a strategy or plan won't be as strong because you're not influencing them as a leader would. 

Let's start here.

You have a strategy. You have everything built up all nicely. Now what you need to do next is to have that strategy implemented in the most effective way.

This is where the difference between being a leader or being a manager occurs.

When a manager wants to go from point A to point B vis-à-vis a leader who wants to do the same but in the most efficient effective and speediest way.

So, my analogy with the Mercedes. In business the petrol are the people. Using the high-octane super fuel or in other words the right people and mapping the closest freeway to the destination is equivalent to motivating the people creating the environment for them to operate in a good way.

A manager simply manages that process and is not focussed on the people. It just wants to get from point A to point B. It’ll never get there as quickly and, in some cases, won't even get out of the driveway due to lack of leadership.

Whereas a leader organizes the people and implement things. Without implementation It's like leaving the Mercedes in the driveway.

Implementation by influencing people is what separates leaders from managers.

Warwick Fairfax is the founder of Crucible leadership. The firm guides leaders and companies in turning business and personal failures into the fuel for igniting a life of significance.

Fairfax was only 26 and a fifth-generation heir to the media empire bearing his family name. He led and lost a multibillion-dollar public takeover bid resulting in company founded, by his great-great-grandfather, slipping away from family control after a hundred fifty years. This incident led him to examine not only his shortcomings and losses but also his life principles.

How did you find yourself at that that moment after it all fell over?

My dad died an early ’87. He was in his 80s at the time and launched a $2 billion takeover to ostensibly bring the company back to the ideals it was founded on. Things went wrong from the start. Other family members sold out in the Oct. ‘87 stock market crash. By the end of ‘87 we had an unsustainable level of debt. Australia got into a recession at the end of 1990 and the company went under.

Coming back from this was tough. One of the challenges was that my whole sense of self-worth and identity was wrapped up in the family business. I felt like I let my dad and family down. Felt I had created friction within the family. In my mind what made it worse was the comparison with the founder of the business. I felt like I had let everyone down.

The question then was what am I going to now? A former media Moghul who is unemployable. Ironically, my faith helped. From my perspective, I believe God loves us unconditionally. He doesn't need stuff from us. I think, we're all I created beings and so we have intrinsic worth in ourselves. That's an important Paradigm for me. Having a loving wife and kids helped tremendously.

Little by little I was able to do things. I got a job at a local Aviation Services Company in Maryland doing financial and business analysis. From there moved on to executive coaching. Then I got on to non-profit boards in my church and the kids private school board. From there eventually ended up in Crucible leadership.

It was a journey. It was the validation step by step finding my path back and gradually rebuilding a sense of self-worth.

What actually started to help you move forward?

Part of it is just forgiving yourself. I mean, we all make mistakes mine would just like really public and on the front page and I guess most of us don't have that. Part of it too is I'm pretty hard on myself. I think a lot of us are but realizing like I was 26 at the time.

How do you then move forward from forgiving yourself?

How do you get out of that sort of headspace where you think ultimately you want to find a reason to get up in the morning? What is something that I can believe in? For me, it was was a long process. Eventually Crucible leadership occurred, I had to give a sermon so I went with this.

What was amazing is that somehow my story seemed to touch people. Who, weeks and months, later said, your story really helped me by being open and vulnerable.

So that really was a huge shift in my thinking. I began to write a book, blogs, and podcasts. Focused on Crucible leadership and using your pain for a purpose.

We have Beyond The Crucible where we hear all sorts of stories from the abused, to Navy SEALs paralyzed and people losing a business.

As we say, you're living a life of significance, which means a life on purpose dedicated to serving others and it's something that like is rooted in your own values and beliefs and what you think is important then it's it makes it easier to move on you forgiving yourself, but you're pursuing something in life that you're passionate about that in some ways helps other people. There's something about that focusing on helping others.

When you go back to the young Fairfax 26 years of age taking over the media conglomerate, what's the difference in purpose...

In part 2 of the podcast we move on to the topic of being authentic and true to self.

How do you see this with people who are struggling and stuck in a bit of a bind as to where they are and starting to realize where they need to be or want to be?

Very often in the corporate world we have an idea that as a CEO or a senior leader you've got to be a certain way. Take charge, no-nonsense, confident, know everything, appropriately dressed, not hair out of place with a plastic smile. Pretend you know everybody’s name and make sure your assistant knows the birthdays and all.

I think part of authenticity is very scary. To be yourself, to throw off the plastic marks, and they reject you. That's so scary as it’s like they're rejecting your soul.

It's funny actually . On our podcast Beyond The Crucible we had this youngish guy, maybe he's just turning 40. He wrote this book the millennial whisper. His hypothesis is that Millennials are looking for authenticity in a lot of senior folks. the people that don't want to lose the Next Generation and what do they want? They want authenticity. They want transparency. They want vulnerability. They don't want the plastic smile. They want you to actually want a relationship with them enough to know the names of their spouses and what they like to do for fun on the weekend. I mean, they're craving authenticity.

So there's a huge amount of pressure from the young up-and-coming employees for authenticity. It's one of the reasons why people keep talking about it.

Senior leaders can be extrovert or introvert. They can be studious and intellectual. They can be in all shapes and sizes all backgrounds all personalities, but you know just be who you are because people are more likely to follow you.

It does take courage. It's that brave leadership aspect.

There's only one soul and that provides you the consistency and balance. It doesn't change. It’s your head that changes things based on what's going on at the time and who you need to please the most. That leads to inconsistency of leadership.

One of the things that people hate is the inconsistency of leaders.

That’s authenticity that's why the craving for it because it creates consistency. It creates balance in leadership.

One of the things we find in Crucible leadership is you can't sometimes control what happens. An example on my show recently, was a navy SEAL getting paralyzed from a training accident. In this particular case it took him a long while to bounce back in terms of his emotional and spiritual side. He ended up overseeing a vets Clinic where they had some of the latest technology in mirroring to help vets to get as much movement as possible. So, it was some purpose to that. Our life weaves in many ways. And we just need to look at the positive aspects and how we can best contribute.

Warwick can be contact at: https://crucibleleadership.com/

Jodi Hume has made a name for herself facilitating complex leadership conversations with for hundreds of growing entrepreneurs and companies throughout the US Europe and Australia working with countless organizations including Exelon, John Hopkins, and Teach for America. Judy works one-to-one with a small number of clients and is always looking for ways to make better leaders and become more involved.

Jodi also looks for ways to make more space for leadership conversations in the community. Towards that, she facilitates round table conversations for entrepreneurs and each week co-hosts a podcast called ‘Here’s My Story’—a podcast that showcases real business stories. You can also find her at the mic as lead singer of a band ‘The Waffles’.

You talked about being honest and in your podcast, you talk about stories that honestly bring out leadership and the elephant in the room.

Could you expand on that?

Honesty's a funny word. Sometimes people just assume you mean honesty as opposed to dishonest. Like lying. The tagline of our show is ‘real honest business’ and it really pairs with the real and it is a fine line between the two because you can't just blast into a room and say all the things without any amount of consideration or diplomacy or tact.

But I think the other end of that spectrum also gets shaved off far too much where there are all these weird sort of leadership platitudes that have developed over the years that are not only problematic, but I think they're damaging to the person and the organization. Like where leaders feel like they have to know everything, or they have to have all the answers first.

I've had clients say, oh, I don't like asking for help, and I always have to stifle a giggle.

My view is that leadership is literally an act of coordinating help. That's what leaders do. Leaders are not top-notch individual contributors. Of course, that's often how they get there.

What is weird is this, ‘I should figure it all out and then let my people know’ perception. It’s not only stressful, but it also diminishes the development of those people who aren't getting the opportunity to think through things plus it's harder to keep them engaged. There's just a long list of things where I think leaders struggle to know: how much to share; how much to call out the elephant in the room, and how to do it in a way that doesn't cause more problems than good.

I acknowledge that it's tricky. But too often the answer becomes – ‘Well, I'm just not going to have that conversation’. It’s either all or nothing. It’s either a tell all or a do-nothing, say nothing situation. This occurs because people say well, I don't like conflict. By not having this first initial conversation you are actually laying the groundwork for greater conflict in the future when it again arises because it has not been addressed.

To me it's like saying well, I don't like getting cavities filled. So, I'm not going to floss my teeth. Well, I think it's exactly the same thing because these initial conversations are akin to flossing your teeth. If you do all the flossing, you don't end up with the cavities. Taking a bit more time to do it properly and then you're solving any potential problems.

I think it's the time people imagine. I found my way to the facilitation part of the work that I do through being in weekly leadership team meetings of an Architecture Firm where I spent 17 years.

It was an interesting place. But in those meetings, I would watch them and observe what they were doing. I remember this one very distinct time whilst facilitating, the two principals of the company thought they had just made a decision. One was talking about a project. The other was talking about one of our employees. They both thought they had just made a decision and had an agreement on an issue. So, they would have both walked away from that conversation thinking that they had agreement. Then...

We're speaking with Jennifer Bulkley who owns Jen X Enterprises and Breaking The Ice Consulting. She is an audio impactor and holistic consultant. She ditched a structured self-will corporate company for her new mission in life pursuing a life of freedom and self-authorization in order to help others Break Free of their own Illusions and lead a truly authentic life.  Jennifer's has a lot of experience in the entrepreneurial space in building and scaling multiple businesses from scratch and she's an expert in sales. She loves leadership and having a culture friendly company where everyone enjoys themselves. She's a dedicated self-development practitioner and a soul shifter. 

What is your take on self-leadership being important to leadership?

Essentially what it means to me is that we have enough desire to lead a team or lead a family. Whatever it is that we're leading the first and foremost thing we need to do is have enough awareness that we are important too as leaders. So, having a sense of self-importance is sort of step number 1. If we're not taking care of ourselves, and this is more of that inward stability, if we're not able to harness our self-importance and work on our self, on a regular basis then how are we going to be that example to others? How are we going to be able to swiftly move through those obstacles that come up and the problems and the concerns that other people have in order to be able to get them through to the other side? Or to just create your own energy. 

In order to have high energy, as a person, you've got to have that foundation built and that is certainly a soul inspired type of scenario. You're connecting your spirituality, your soul, your consciousness with that human experience of being able to iterate life. If you're in a leadership role this is more important than ever. It is able to do that in practice. 

So, what you're saying there is that focus of getting the best out of people as that's the leader's role. 

This brings in the concept of behaviour. People recognize us not so much from the standpoint of intelligence or intellect but from the behaviour you display as a leader.

People are going to model their own behaviour after what they're seeing from their leaders.

If a leader has a short fuse, then they're creating an environment for their people to act the same way. As a leader by being centred and being very intentional your behaviours are going to show rock solid foundation. People look at that and start modelling their own environment after it because they believe that's the expected behaviour.

As a leader you want to get results from your team. You want their behaviour to have direction. When you create an environment through the core values, through the culture itself, that sets the rules dictating behaviour. It results in the correct behaviour that you want your team to show.

Getting to know this was by educating myself on the skill sets of leadership. One of my biggest heroes of all time is John Maxwell. I was around 25 years old and working at a car dealership as a salesperson. I also had my degree in criminal justice and was interested in police administration. I was at a yard sale and saw John Maxwell's book on 21 laws of leadership. Thinking this might come handy in if I want to be in administration someday, I picked it up and fell in love with the concepts in those laws. It actually became a textbook for my team leader meetings that I had every week with my team leaders. I took each one of his laws and created a little lesson out of it. 

Its what people say and do in the workplace that matters. We're humans. As a leader you've got to be constantly looking for ways to get better so as to to have the behaviours that your team starts picking up on.

You wanted to be a good leader. Therefore, you did the things that make you a great leader. You talk...

Branding requires leadership. One can start or have a company with great products or services and doing well in the market. But a brand can be nebulous or inconsistent and it really requires a top-down perspective to define what is it that ties all the products, the people behind it together and what the brand stands for. So that the people on the other end, who are receiving the messaging and using the products or services have a clear understanding of what and who the brand is.

A brand is a reflection of its people and the people reflect the leadership they have.

For larger companies, the challenge is that there are multiple stakeholders and brands. Which results in having a lot of things to align. When dealing with multiple people managing multiple brands, for a company, alignment is really challenging. Simply because people have different perspective.

It's a two-fold exercise. You have leadership, you have employees which form the corporate brand, then you have product and service brands. The products and service brands have to be congruent with the corporate brand. It's the congruence that brings about the extent of success.

The leadership is what sets the tone for what the brand is. Be it a large company or a small one. The brand then sets the tone for what the product and services will be and how the company will act towards their community. It makes leadership very critical.

For small and medium sized business who have been operating for the past 20 years or so, often have their founding members involved. This has an implication on the leadership, as how these founding members have run the business and projected the brand has shaped their success how the brand and its products and services are perceived. In such situations there's a lot of emotional attachment involved being the founders. 

Similarly, with larger companies there is an emotional attachment with the way the brand is portrayed and communicated. Leadership plays a key role here in leading the necessary brand output objectively and for the benefit of the brand.

It's always good to work backwards by starting at the touch-points the brand interacts with its constituents and understand what is it that the people need. Connecting that to messaging and the brand story helps to see what is necessary. Keeping the communication tight and clear is where leadership plays a critical role to ensure the team have the clarity of marketing objective and the brand's purpose and being able to connect and deliver on it.

Three key things to keep doing daily to make a brand compelling and engaging requires leadership, focus and clarity of message.

Susan can be reached at https://www.susanmeierstudio.com/

We are soulful beings having the human experience. Sometimes there tends to be a conflict between the head and the heart. Which, if one were to go in a bit deeper, is about who we are as souls, housed in our human bodies that are not everlasting, In our humanness we have the need to survive, and protect ourselves and the experience of fear. For many of us in the leadership space we don't have the physical threats anymore. Leaving aside this pandemic which has brought about a significant physical threat. So, what happens is that our identities tend to step in and say 'I'm going to watch out for these threats and keep you safe from those.' What that does, is make us bump up against these fears that bounce off our humanity as we attempt to express ourselves fully.

That's where the conflict with self often happens. Leading to getting stuck in one's own mind or the head space. It's not just about the conscious awareness but more about what the subconscious awareness and thinking is. This is where the primal survival instinct kicks in which then relies on our life experiences of what has worked, and we try use those to move ahead. 

Leaders are often defined by their success and the ways they achieved it and stick with that. What this does, is it stops the individual from evaluating the risk objectively. Great leaders successfully cross that bridge between their inner self and their conscious thinking to take calculated risks to achieve success. They are comfortable stepping into the unknown because they allow themselves to be guided from within. 

That is being authentic.

Authentic leadership is often misunderstood by leaders as being themselves as seen by others. In other words, it's a version of themselves as perceived by the outer world which is what leaders hold in their conscious awareness. Instead of actually being driven from their heart and guided by their soul.

This is the biggest challenge people face to become better leaders. Once leaders are aware of this and are able to traverse comfortably between their inner self and conscious awareness or, in other words, bring about situational leadership, they become relaxed, comfortable, and grounded. They are then able to deal with anything as they keep their consistency and balance. This is a cycle of crossing back and forth. Many leaders think that what's required is to do what it takes to get to the leadership role and that's it. There's a feeling like I've fixed myself. But that isn't it. We're constantly bumping up against our humanity. Having the awareness of recognising our thoughts and feelings enables one to then engage with some tools or strategies to confront and work through it.

A tool that is extremely helpful is simply recognising the situation one is getting out of, being where you are. Doing this involves digging deep and seeing what the benefits are such as the need to be self-righteous and making other people feel they are wrong for oneself to feel good. These, in their own way, become limiting and needs to be worked through and changed. (More on this can be viewed here: https://spencersnakard.lpages.co/masterclass2018replay/

What helps is being aligned with who you really are and knowing what you are here for or, in other words, being noticeably clear about your why and your values. 

Remember who you are know that you are a divine magnificent being. You are perfect and whole as you are. There's nothing missing, nothing lacking and nothing wrong or broken that you need to fix. You are perfect exactly as you are. Remember that and everything else that you feel is not working simply melts away.