Soul-Inspired-Leadership

At the heart of being a great leader is having the behaviour that gets the outcome. The most important quality of leadership is that of being effective and this precedes anything else. Once you are outcome focused as a leader you do what is required to create that outcome.

The whole point of being a leader is to get results.

The thing about results is this-- when you look at human behaviour, a behaviour always creates a result. We always get a result. They may not be the best or the intended result.

What is the most important result and how do you get that?

Focusing on the critical result helps in achieving the important result. In the process that impacts other activities.

In doing this discipline and time management become key. You realise the importance of time and you say yes to activities accordingly.

There are many shiny things that often distract leadership. What's key is the behaviour to get the outcome. Quoting Peter Drucker "any new knowledge without the ability to translate it into meaningful results" - is what shows how valuable behaviour is.

Behaviour is fundamental, its practical and its timeless.

So keeping focused on the main thing a leader can demonstrate meaningful value through the results obtained through the right behaviour. 

Yet through generations leadership shows to be making similar mistakes.

This is an outcome of focusing on the wrong things. We're too busy focused on the shiny new object instead of what are the necessary behaviours. That occurs because it’s tough to change behaviours because the organization is controlling the behaviour. Couple this with the ingrained habits in terms of how we think and how we act, and we keep falling back on what we used to do. Add to this the organizational forces that force a leader to behave in a certain way just to meet the needs of the organization. 

Changing behaviour involves identifying meaningful outcomes as a team. What's meaningful to one may not be the same with another. When a consensus on the outcome is there then behavioural change can be affected.

So given the limited amount of time leaders have to pay attention to something outside of trying to get stuff done everyday it helps to focus on one thing and answer what does it mean to be effective for you, as a leader, and for the organization. Identify that and spend your equity, in the form of time, money, energy and attention, on that in converting it into being effective. Once one does that anything you add will be of value.

In this process, another principle of Drucker that comes through, is that a leader is also training and developing other effective leaders. This is not organizationally leading from the top but more of leading through out. 

This is a challenge across industry. If leaders aren't effective then employees aren't engaged and the ramifications of that are there. Treating engagement doesn't work. At the source it's the leadership that impacts.

What does servant leadership mean?

There is a lot of talk on this. 

Servant leadership is where a leader is there to look after and make the way or clear the way for the employees. It's all about providing vision so that the team heads towards a target. As a leader if you do whatever it takes to keep people on track to reach that target. That's servant leadership.

As a leader you're there to serve them. Not the other way around. The employees or the team are there to reach a goal or a target. The role of a servant leader is to enable them to get to that target. That's the key.

An example of this is a sport that's seen once every four years in the Olympics! It was invented in Scotland. It's called Curling.

When the player sends the curling stone down the ice, to reach a target, there are a couple of players who act as sweepers. Sweeping the ice and clearing the way for the stone to reach its target. 

Leaders are like that. A curling sweeper. The leader is there, keeping people on track, by clearing the path to get the team to reach or achieve the target. Serving the team clearing the path by removing obstacles and providing resources. That's what Servant Leadership is about.

In the process the leader also has to develop people. It's part of achieving the target. The right skills and talent need to be nurtured. The journey to the target is not static and in order to achieve it people need to be developing.

It's not just clearing the path. It's also about keeping the team aligned to the target and doing what else is needed to serve them in order to help reach the target

Authenticity is spot on.

There's a lot of talk about authenticity. Especially in leadership.

There are scenarios where a leader behaves badly and puts it down to his or her true self.

There's a difference between being authentic and being one's true self. 

Then one says I need to be myself because I've heard about authenticity and read about it and as a leader, I need to be just who I am, that’s thinking from the head.

Coaching helps one understand that authenticity is a continuous connectivity between the head, the heart and soul. Understanding that makes one view authenticity differently.

When your heart, soul and inner self are connected you’ll always have good thoughts.

When you stay or keep yourself connected from within, you'll always lead from what your true feelings are.

That’s the true self. The real and authentic you.

A very important part of being one’s true self is that of being conscious of your impact on others. Keeping in touch with one's feelings enables one to understand other people's feelings.

Authenticity is about having the perspective of seeing what people see and feel when one is one's true self.

It’s all about feeling it not thinking it.

When you are driving change in an organization you are affecting the future of lots of people because when change happens it changes the way people interact, who they interact with and whenever a change happens it pushes one out of the comfort zone.

When change is announced individuals become nervous about their future. Being set or in a comfort zone one forgets that one has the ability to learn. We keep doing our work and it accounts for what we do and how we think.

In today's world change is happening so frequently. It’s really the role of the leader to create an environment where people won’t be as afraid of change because change can eliminate jobs, but it also creates a lot of opportunities. Employees, when they hear change is happening, they really want to hear from their leader is, what does the future look like, and does it include me. This is where leaders falter as, often, they aren't very good at answering those questions.

It’s especially difficult for middle managers. They are, literally, in the middle. They have leaders up there telling them to get their group or department ready and in shape, and yet often they haven't really been involved in the decision. It's often not sold in but dumped on people.

Organizational change doesn’t have to be that way. One may not have all the information but if you communicate with people on a regular basis and tell them what you know, at that point in time, then you build trust and you increase the probability of having a successful change because there is a high rate of failure.

At times of implementing change often leaders emphasize the change rather than where the company is heading. If leaders were to not mention the word change and instead speak of the vision and where they want to lead the organization, employees would align and recognise that and do what's needed to get there without consciously thinking that are changing in order to get there.

All employees want to know is the support and learning they will get to do the new work required to get to that point. They are interested in knowing how to grow their career and grow the company and the business so that there’s business continuity.

Learning from experience has been about the insecurity that leaders have as you go up the organizational hierarchy. Managers, Vice Presidents, and CEOs live with the most amount of fear. A lot of people go to that place of 'what's going to happen to me if I can't keep this job'. Add to this the age factor and the insecurity is about life being over! It is unfortunate but we tend to see what we have to lose more than seeing the opportunities that are available.

This thinking impact behaviour. Leaders start to see everybody else as a threat and it becomes like 'we're not in this together and I'm out for me and too bad about you' kind of scenario. That then manifests as reality. It doesn't have to be that way.

This is one reason why the highest number of entrepreneurs are over 50 and 60. It becomes more about self-leadership and self-change coupled with organizational learnings. The process remains the same,

If you strongly believe in what you're going to move to, the stronger the chance that it will turn out okay. Even though at times the end is not defined. What you had is over, so you can't do what you have been doing and all you know is that it doesn't feel good moving into new territory. One must take that first step even when you don't know what that next step is going to be. It's about faith and faith tramples fear. It's a combination of being scared and excited.

When you do get those opportunities, it’s about saying to oneself, 'do I step out to it or do I say no'. Usually when you say no it's your head speaking. If your heart says yes, then you really should be following your heart. The other way around is when you need to stop and think if it's beneficial to you. The heart is what guides us and the head gives...

Effect of Pause on Leadership

In leadership having the time to reflect and feel the vision enables one to create. Those in leadership roles do reflect. However, that reflection is more of a cognitive one or reflecting in one’s brain and not from the heart. What it does is that the mind fills up the gaps through the data it has.

To get one to move from the head to the heart can be difficult. It is so due to two unknown obstacles. One is a massive mental block and the other is one is hearing what their heart is saying but it’s not what one is comfortable with. This is actually a self-defense mechanism to avoid the pains that are in the heart.

When one is not recognising the pains, one is missing out on a big opportunity to learn something about self and to undertake transformation or healing. Everything has energy. Even the pain within has an energy that is within the body and it creates disturbances.

"Everyone you encounter is a mirror to look at something within yourself"-Antionette

For people in the workplace, those who are struggling to connect with their hearts, it's an opportunity to find out more about what's happening within ourselves. Provided of course they are willing and have the intent to do so.

"You can't understand other people unless you understand yourself"- Ross

From a mindset perspective, the behaviour of other people reflects self. In other one sees areas within that one can strengthen. For example, if a particular behaviour was told to be inappropriate a long while back and one has subdued that, yet one finds that behaviour in others and judges it to be inappropriate, it's basically a mirror effect of blaming because one was told it was inappropriate.

We all have issues within ourselves which manifest in behaviour and impacts on the leadership we display. The true leader can internalise and lead from within to lead out. Not the other way around. One who is grounded in themselves and doesn't see others as a threat is able to learn about themselves.

Take that pause to reflect about what happened during the day and pause to connect within.

What does pause mean in one's work life and personal life?

The purpose of taking a break is to have a break from the daily hustle and grind.

When we do plan on taking a break, we often end up making a list of things to do to fill time. It takes time to switch off the internal habit of filling up time. Once one reaches that point where one can simply be present and enjoy the surroundings and the present moment it is very helpful.

Creating moments of pause, within our daily day, where one does nothing is very helpful. It helps to stop all the noise the mind has and enables one to go within oneself and find what is important and connect with one's creativity, listen to what one's soul and heart or intuition is saying.

Here's a quick exercise:

Take your right hand and wrap it around your left little finger or the left hand round your right little finger. The little finger is related to the heart and the small intestine. The heart is really important for all of us because the more we are connected to our hearts the more we are connected to what's really true to us.

When you think back on events and moments one plays back how one feels. That is an emotion. One is feeling and not thinking that one is feeling. There is a difference. The struggle is in getting from our mind to our hearts and into our gut.

What happens in this exercise is that by holding the little finger one is activating the connection with the heart. The heart is all about emotions. It's about knowing what is deeply true for you and the small intestine is all about choices. When we are in our minds, we often make choices based on the rational side of us. When we move more into the heart we can make decisions from a very different perspective and probably wiser ones at times. The heart provides a very strong energy field in our body.

Here's a tip:

Whenever you need to calm yourself down and centre yourself wrap your hand around the little finger of the opposite hand for 5 minutes to 20 minutes, depending on the time you have, and you'll immediately feel more relaxed and calm and able to feel where your intuition is guiding you.

How this helps is that it addresses the necessity of pretending. We often pretend to ourselves that we can go on and have more energy than we really have, resulting in driving ourselves and neglecting what our body is telling us. By doing this exercise we start connecting with our body more often and in a compassionate and curious way.

Leadership impacts employee engagement in the evolving workplace of today.

In spite of this being a hot topic, the issue is a common one across countries. The commonality is that the figures are pretty poor all across the globe.

Employee engagement is a direct result of the quality of leadership. Given the way the employee engagement figures are, that only means the quality of leadership is not great. Today's society demands a much more different leadership approach. Given that technology is transforming how we deal with every moment.

Employee engagement is much more than having good communication, work involvement, and nice events. Great engagement is engraved by things that have to do with leadership, the values of the corporation and how things are being done.

What is mooted as behaviour and what is not?

It’s much more of an involvement with the leadership and organizational development than other disciplines like communication. Which, of course, is absolutely necessary but we tend to misjudge leadership with communication. There needs to be good leadership then comes good communication.

It's up to leaders to connect with people and connect is through communication. If one doesn't connect then one is just throwing words and the recipient might as well read a book! If leaders connect well there will be good employee engagement.

The term 'experience' is better used instead of engagement. It has a connection and connotation with customer experience. It is what people really experience within the workplace that matters. We need to have a holistic approach in order to see what the structures, processes and leadership development need areas are to create a good workplace experience.

In today's business environment, to be effective, organizations rely a lot on the behaviour of its employees than compared to the past. Today the technological revolution urges us to utilise it to unlock new sources of value and to achieve its improvements are needed very quickly. Those organizations that are able to do this quickly enough will not lose in the marketplace. Those who lag are in real danger. The technological transformation occurring has created an organizational revolution in the form of creating autonomously functional teams that work with agility and similar work models and they have a very fast pace of exploring the problems, delivering solutions through quick iterations. In such a work environment, the existing work models need a huge shift from the past.

With different generations coming into the workplace the expectation of and from the workplace has undergone significant changes. Whilst societal behaviour may be the same the organizational structures in place don't work due to the technological changes that have come about and which dictates a new structure.

Nowadays there is no place for the command and control model of leadership. The role of the manager today has evolved to provide context to the work not the content of the work.

It's the human aspect. It's the behaviours that matter.

Unfortunately, organizations have not yet quite translated what this shift really means in the way of operations. This shift drastically changes how things are being done. This is where, how leadership and leadership development is practiced, has a significant impact.

When behaviour matters most but at the same time data is so much easily accessible, by everyone, it changes the way learning is done. Courses are now available everywhere and allow for learning from anywhere. So learning is no longer the objective of development but it’s much more the growth that one can ensure for employees.

That growth becomes the molded thing. It means how will the team enable the employee for success.

What are the enabling factors?

Does the workplace include or offer challenges to the employee in order for him or her to put their skills into...

The behaviour a brand displays is a reflection of the leadership behind that brand. It manifests through how employees are engaged in the brand and how a brand is able to add value to the customer.

The route to creating a great company brand is through its employees. How important is leadership in achieving this?

The short answer is that leadership is very important.

Historically, in Asia especially, we've approached brand from the perspective of it being a label, a design, a logo, a product or a service. There's much more to a brand than all of these elements. In any business there are two legs:

1. Leadership
2. Culture

Leadership impacts culture by the way it thinks, talks and behaves creating the environment in which employees operate. To quote--"monkey see, monkey do"-- As one sees the leaders doing so does one do! Now the employee is in various functions, within the organization, resulting in interacting with different people connected to the business and its brand. Given how organizations are structured this results in a series of mini-cultures all across and all of it reflects how the leadership engages the employees in those functions.

This impacts on the culture and climate within the business and is then reflected out through the brand in its interactions with the stakeholders. It drives the advertising, communication and internal engagement from that brand in terms of its tonality and content.

We now know that in the social age we are in, leadership is not a position or a title. This makes self-leadership a very critical concept. In any organization, an executive gets promoted because of technical and functional competencies. It's only in the past decade that attitudinal competencies and people-skills have climbed onto the evaluation criteria. With technology making more and more inroads and replacing routinised work managing people become a key. In doing so the entire premise of self-leadership comes into being. With good self-leadership comes good EQ, emotional quotient, and SQ, social quotient.

It's very important and a must to be able to understand oneself in order to be able to understand others. In coaching, this requires either a developmental or a remedial type of coaching. As some get this necessity of self-development easily whereas others are still in the blame game mentality.

Being self-aware and having the ability to lead oneself enables the leader to actually lead the team through empathy which helps in creating a strong individual and human connection. How this works is by having a simple conversation where each is given time and respect as a human being and acknowledged as such.

Coupled with this comes belief. Before taking a brand out externally it's critical for the employees to fully believe in its promise and align with its values. Just like individually one has to have a belief in one's purpose. In doing this the leadership requirement is to ensure that every single doubt that comes up is answered and solved. Doing this requires an investment of time, in specific conversations, that does bring in a strong ROI down the line. It needs to be done one-on-one and not as town halls or group sessions. After the one-on-ones, the team is pulled together by its team leader where the team is asked to suggest what and how the activities should be done. That results in a transfer of ownership and creates responsibility. It's not always the leader who has to come up with the ideas. It's the team members.

That's when engagement occurs.

By creating this transfer of ownership a leader ensures full commitment from the employee. Now when we scale this up to all employees doing this, the effort level goes up through the roof, and the probability of failure reduces drastically.

In doing this leadership needs to keep in mind the types of conversations required. With six generations in the workplace now, though...

It all starts with oneself.

To be a good leader one has to be a good leader of one's own self.

Encouraging others to be better self-leaders involves an understanding of what are one's gifts and talents and leaning into using those. Often it takes another to spot the talent and bring it to light thereby helping the person to be seen, heard and understood. Most important is understanding the other person, as that's what most people want. In doing this sometimes one has to help people lean into their discomfort in order to get comfortable.

To be a good leader one has got to be brave. This is where fear comes in. Often in self-development one is not thinking about the inner self but about what other people think and the noise and chatter from outside. Listening to that noise and what others are thinking results in keeping one stuck.

At this point where self-belief becomes very important. Taking courage and going forth believing one will be okay allows for a different result to occur. It enables change to occur. What's key is to know that no matter what others think of us, what's important is what we think of ourselves.

We need to know if we are enough, at that point or stage in life, to and for ourselves whilst we are striving to be the better version of our self. It requires accepting oneself fully and tap into one’s authenticity and show up in that form.

Self-belief comes from understanding, knowing and believing in the purpose one has. Once you have an inner purpose and believe that's what one is meant to do and enjoy doing it one finds the will to just do that.

Quote--"If you have a pulse, you have a purpose".

To be an effective and great leader two key components must be on display-- compassion& empathy.

If a leader lacks these then it is very hard to have the team believe in that leader. These skills need to be developed in order to be a good leader.

Empathy involves the ability to listen not with the intent to respond but to understand. Empathy helps one understand oneself from the perspective of one’s behaviour in order to be able to understand others. That helps self-development from a leadership perspective.

Having empathy enables one to take constructive criticism and use it positively for self-development. When we lead ourselves first and improve, we benefit the team we work and interact with.

This tends to radiate out and allows for in connecting with people.

There are two aspects in connecting with people which to some comes naturally and to many it’s hard. A reason for finding it hard to connect is because one may find it uncomfortable being vulnerable. That's where being authentic and transparent helps as people when one is true, and one is not. An often misconception is that vulnerability is a weakness. On the contrary, it’s a strength.

The other aspect in connecting is our story that we tend to project outwards.

Our story is what we tell ourselves dictates how we process it from within. Our behaviour reflects this and as a result we project it out.

It's important to identify what is that one story we keep telling ourselves. That becomes the energy we radiate out. This energy is what lifts or dampens others. Understanding one's story and identifying what energy one is creating aids in connecting with others of similar energy. On the positive side, this helps. On the negative side, this enables one to identify what needs to be done and jump out of a negative energy situation and improve oneself.

To be a good leader one must understand oneself first. It’s all about self-leadership.

Self-leadership and purpose are interwoven. Self-leadership is about leading from within. As a leader if one is not leading oneself then one has nothing to offer to others. That's where authenticity plays a vital role. Knowing oneself is like a compass and it gives one the strength or courage to be, what is known as, a brave leader.

Belief and purpose help you overcome roadblocks or obstacles at work and in life. As a leader its part of the role to remove such obstacles for teams and to enable them to move forward.

People will remember leaders from the positives that they brought into life and that's where soul inspired leadership plays an active role.

It's about guiding people in the direction they are heading. In doing this it’s about helping people to look within themselves and encourage them to do so in order to express themselves through the courage they find and to overcome roadblocks.

Having self-leadership helps to be able to offer others leadership through something concrete and unforgettable in terms of behaviour and action.

When one is a purpose driven leader nothing stops you from serving your purpose. The passion to see other people be better keeps you, as a leader, going. One of the key things is about making-a-difference. Good leadership is about making a difference in other people's lives.

As a leader there is a moral obligation to get the best out of people around you. Understanding this makes one realise the true essence of leadership and actually helps in making the choice of being a leader or not.

Many in leadership positions are ordained the role but the true leaders then earn that role because of their behaviour and their actions. Leaders get things done through people. Other, kinds of leaders, manage a process in which people have to get involved by virtue of being engaged in with that task.

The analogy to explain leadership from within, or soul inspired leadership, is that of parenting. It similar to how a parent nurtures the child. Similarly, a leader needs to nurture and empower the team in order to grow them to a point where the team takes accountability, responsibility and does the work themselves.

It’s about developing the people by connecting them to the vision and in doing this it also about the love you have within yourself.

Love is defined in many ways.

In the area of leadership this love is defined as seeing someone else succeed in their chosen area and because of your wealth of knowledge or position the leader knows that he or she can make a huge impact by pointing them in the right direction and by creating opportunities for them.