I think leadership is the mixture of presence and stature that can inspire energy, dedication and purpose in others. Leadership can be learned! Especially if you treat people with respect and learn how you can make certain that people are achieving the right goals, doing it the right way and getting the assistance that they need.
When was the last time your leader asked you:
a) What can I do better?
b) What can I do better to help you?
c) What can I do better to help the organisation?
Passion vs. purpose
Morten Hansen’s book, “Great at Work”, talks about the ways you can be more productive at work. It brings data from a 5 year research project that reveals why some people in a variety of industries are more productive. I think when you have a strong sense of purpose and a passion about the contributions you make to the world is when you are most dedicated. You will work better, you will pay more attention to what you are doing and everything you do is just better, and this will subsequently lead to great performances.
“Purpose and passion are not the same. Passion is “do what you love,” while purpose is “do what contributes. Purpose asks, “What can I give the world?” Passion asks, “What can the world give me?””
Self reflection
As transparency rises in society, particularly in the business world, there will be more and more open feedback demanded about leadership performance. Knowing how to lead yourself means knowing the answers to the following questions:
What is my purpose in this work?
What motivates and demotivates me?
What are my values and how am I honouring them in my work?
What are my strengths and weaknesses, and how am I working on them?
How do I overcome challenges and re-energise?
What do I tend to resist or ignore?
Your answers may change over time, but they are worth reflecting on if you are serious about remaining a leader. Contact me via e-mail to arrange a meeting.
Mind the gap
One of the big lessons I learned from the pandemic has been patience - “Make do now and then make better later”. We measure success by the way we touch the lives of people and now I realise that everything I learned about parenting was about leadership. Both parenting and leadership have the following attributes in common:
- Caring
- Listening
- Trusting
- Empowering
- Teaching
- Mentoring
- Leading
There is always going to be a gap between your ambition and your ability. The big question is are you willing to trust progress and not seek perfection? Contact me via e-mail to arrange a confidential meeting if you are questioning yourself about: Who you are, what you stand for and what you do for others?
Old dog...new tricks!
In my early days of leadership, people centric thinking was not part of my business plan. I was a nice guy, I had a positive attitude but I wouldn’t say to you that I was sensitive to the impact of my initiatives on people. It was all about numbers and building shareholder value, not human value. My early days were very traditional, if I had to fire people - I just did it. I mean, that’s what you do in business! Unfortunately, that conventional thought still exists today, it’s not human, it’s just all about numbers.
I think the major problem with business leadership today is that there is no leadership; there’s a lot of management. It’s a very short-term attitude to just think about people as a resource that you pay and expect them to do their work. What will you lose if you take it from a human perspective? In reality we are responsible for the lives of human beings. And if you want to be cold-hearted about it, people who like coming to work are even more productive. People who feel safe and can trust the people they work with are more likely to offer bigger ideas, take better risks, be more innovative and more productive. That’s a whole host of good business reasons. When you are ready to look at your employees from a human perspective, just contact me via e-mail to arrange a confidential meeting.
Bad news doesn't get better with age
Whenever any comes to me with a problem I always have an answer for them, I always look for solutions and if I don’t have them personally, then I will leverage my network. Personal ownership is part of my leadership style as I think that it’s all about the team. Nowadays, I have to constantly remind people that you cannot get all the answers from YouTube.
The subjective side is where you involve individual motivation and culture is just as important as having great systems. You can have the greatest systems in the world but if your culture stinks then you won’t have alignment within your organisation. If the culture of helping and supporting each other is not present within your organisation, then there will not be a level of teamwork required to take on the external challenges. Some level of teamwork and personal responsibility is always required when setting the direction of where of you want your organisations to head. Contact me via e-mail for a meeting to discuss an introspection into your “true worth” principles.
Looking back to the past
The late, great Steve Jobs said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
I think in the future when we look back at our careers the leaders that we remember will be the ones who:
1. Provided us a safe space to grow
2. Opened career doors
3. Defended us when we needed it
4. Recognised and rewarded us
5. Developed us as leaders
6. Inspired us to stretch higher
7. Led by example
8. Told us our work mattered
9. Forgave us when we made mistakes
10. Contact me via e-mail to arrange a meeting.
Follow my leader
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““A person who wants to lead an orchestra must turn their back to the crowd.” - James Crook”
This quote offers a humble perspective of leadership. Leadership is not a popularity contest, I think a a good leader doesn’t do his (or her) job for praise or recognition. The best leaders are the ones who do their job silently and enable their employees. The leaders whom I most respect are humble, honest and dependable. They listen and learn and take in new information, because they care enough to understand the perspectives of others and strong enough to stand alone when the crowd is not with them. What values are looking for in your leader? Contact me via e-mail for a meeting (in confidence).
How to inspire your team
““To inform is for free, ‘the how to’ is for a fee.” ”
This is my go to mantra whenever the smart people asked if I could help them with this or that. Today I have made an exception, as I feel that many managers and leaders need a little spark in these difficult times. How to inspire your team:
Show that you care
Build people up
Listen with empathy
Treat people with respect
Showcase their strengths
No one needs what you are selling
No one needs what you are selling, they may want it but they definitely don’t need it! Sometimes it’s OK that the goal is to understand for the sake of understanding. I think the hallmark of curiosity is a thirst for knowledge that has no obvious utility. As I am a lifelong learner, I enjoy exploration regardless of whether the discovery has any immediate relevance. I have never been in the position of selling water to thirsty people! I have always had to use my skills to formulate the brand promise - explaining who’s it for, what’s it for and why you should buy it…
Nowadays, the majority of people are working at home and those of you with young children have the opportunity teach them two of life’s most valuable lessons:
To solve interesting problems
To look at something that no one has ever looked at before and come up with an interesting way to solve the problem.To connect, to lead and use emotional labour
Using emotional labour by looking someone in the eye and telling them the truth. Emotional labour means doing things that you don’t feel like doing.
The Last Dance
““Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.” - Michael Jordan”
The ABC's of leadership
For many years the ABC’s of leadership was an abbreviation for Act, Build and Commit. Under the current circumstances, perhaps it’s time for a new acronym. What do you think about Korn Ferry’s Accountability, Belief and Capability?
Accountability. The accountability we wish to see in others starts with each of us. In other words, we must first be accountable to ourselves for our own behaviors. Believe it, say it, mean it, act it!
Belief. When we believe we can make a difference - that change is possible - then our actions will follow. And if we don’t believe, we won’t achieve..
Capability. This is a broad brush: listening, connecting, inspiring, giving and getting honest feedback, expanding networks, exploring with others, and constantly looking for opportunities to learn. It’s all about allowing belief and accountability to shine through actions.
Look and you will see
I’m pretty good at not carrying regrets around and I choose to be happy. I no longer allow negative things in my life to spoil the good things. I have been described as a skilled strategic developer. My things are planning from conception to implementation whilst defining the corporate mission, objectives and branding. How can I get to the heart of the change I am trying to make in the world?
It matters to me that human beings step up and speak their truth. It’s important to me that we look each other in the eyes and take advantage of this moment we have, as in reality no one knows how long we will have these opportunities. I think all of us are more powerful than we can even imagine and all of us have the ability to make things better.
The truth is a good enough story
It is well understood by the human resources community that engagement translates into profit. We have all seen or heard about people around us that have been dreadfully treated by business people, whether it’s #MeToo, exploitation or psychopathic bullying. I think that organisations’ who create an environment where their people can thrive and achieve will see increased profits, sales, greater customer experience, etc.
How can we help individuals and departments develop to match the future challenges your organisation will face? What motivates them to get excited about what isn’t yet known? Send me an e-mail and let’s arrange a physical or virtual meeting to discuss a workshop for your organisation.
What makes a great leader?
I think you need to be passionate about what you are doing and have these three qualities:
You need to be honest with your team,
You need perseverance, and
You need to be decisive
In my experience this is what all leaders have in common:
Leaders have charisma!
You don’t need charisma to become a leader as being a leader gives you charisma.Leaders build a culture!
By using a secret language that shows whether you are in or out.Leaders have curiosity!
I mean they have curiosity about people both in and outside of the community.
Are you reward and money motivated?
Simon Sinek said we should always start with the why and then develop thought leadership around that question. From there, produce cornerstones content on a consistent basis around that thought leadership and hopefully you’ll be able to drive revenue from it.
Do you have clarity around your point of view on thought leadership?
Do you have that big important WHY?
Are you clear about why you do what you do?
And who do you do it for?
And how is that helpful?
Contact me via e-mail when you are ready to take a deeper dive into your purpose.
Look over your shoulder
I had never met an owner who was not content if your team increased revenue, reduced expenditure and grew customer satisfaction, until I came to Denmark.
Dear Managers,
Your job is not to make people work harder. Your responsibility to help your team achieve their goals, let them know that their work matters and then recognize and reward those who consistently help the team deliver timely, high quality and positive outcomes. Please contact me via E: sb@stephenburrell.com, if would like any guidance further clarification on these matters.
Yours faithfully
Stephen Burrell
We can always do it better
Via Getty Images
Stephen Covey said, ”We should always start with the end in mind”. And getting really clear about not only the vital priorities that organisations are trying to pursue in gaining clarity around that but also what are the vital metrics that they use (KPIs). Essentially, what are the data points that are used to determine if they are on track?
Now if we have these and know what the performance metrics are, in other words when it's green and when it's red - then focus on how we can do more green stuff. And what are the things we need to do to fit into that? Will it become a predictive and repeatable model (best practice)? This does not mean it works perfectly or that some of the predictions are inaccurate because life changes and business is not static. I think being able to go into a marketing campaign or thought leadership campaign with the end in mind will certainly increases our chances of being successful by a factor of 10. And this is because of having that thoughtful planning from the outset.
Are you looking for a team who you can trust and have your best interests at heart? A team who really want to help your business navigate around the thought leadership process? A team who can help you generate revenue from that content, so you can do a better job in front of your customers?
Are you afraid?
Diversity is about differences, inclusion is about embracing those differences. The hard truth is that to find new solutions to old problems we must often work with people we don’t really understand. What makes matters worse is that we often do not appreciate the value of diversity when we see it. I won’t pretend this is easy, as I think that people are not afraid of failure, they are afraid of blame.
“Having an outsider around helped us solve problems, but don’t expect us to be grateful, or even to notice anything other than social discomfort.”
Learn how to sell
You cannot change the system all at once, but what you can change is the voice in your head. And if the voice in your head is holding you back then that's not helping, in reality, what this means is the power structure has corrupted the voice in your head and put it to work for themselves. What is essential, whatever we are trying to get people in power to listen to, is to first change the voice in our own head. Find out how to befriend the “lizard brain” and the resistance, and not let it sabotage what we are doing. I think that what people like in us, is our confidence, our authority, our belief in what we are actually doing and working that out helps us get 80% of the way there.
Learning how to sell, learning how to talk to somebody about something you care about and getting them to believe you and pay you money for it. Nowadays, we are in the ideas business, I mean we have the opportunity to show up with an idea that’s worth more than it costs. And some people are going to be stuck in their “old ways”, so afraid of a person like you that they are not going to buy from you, but their competition will and that’s how we change culture. We change the culture because the losers learn a lesson, and the lesson they learn is that diversity pays off.
It doesn’t matter what the messenger looks like or the clothes the messenger is wearing, what matters is what will get you to move forward. I am optimistic that we are at the cusp of this cultural change happening even more. Hopefully people will look beyond DNA, gender or sexuality and start to understand that seeing people for who they are and understanding ideas for what they offer is where we need to go. Along the way a lot of people like me are paying the price. It’s bad enough that you have to deal with the voices outside of your head but you can begin by straightening out the voices in your head, because this is something that everyone has wrestled with. It’s always that same voice, learn how to dance with it, learn how to befriend it to understand that we have got a chance.