The 5 Drivers of Leadership

S.E.R.V.E Model

“The manager does things right; The leader does the right thing.” - Warren Bennis

What percentage of time do you believe should be spent managing tasks and what percentage should be spent leading people? This question should nudge us all to think about where our beliefs and our daily actions could be creating cognitive dissonance.  What percentage of your time do you currently invest in leading people, and do your actions match your beliefs?

We are all in different stages of our leadership journey, and each stage requires different skill sets to keep our growth evolving in order to keep pace with our desired results. One thing is certain, we all must keep growing in the following five areas: Self-Awareness, Extending Trust, Real Connection, Vision Focused, and Enabling Others to Shine.  Please note these fit nicely into a S.E.R.V.E. acronym for that is what a leader truly is, a servant to those led.  Leaders inspire others and motivate them to work hard and that requires being very astute in the craft of emotional connection: first to yourself, then to others, and finally to the organization. Today, we will highlight Self-Awareness and commit to hit each of the drivers in future editions.

Why Self-Awareness

Daniel Goleman is the godfather of the term emotional intelligence. He pretty much sums up the why we should do self-work via self-awareness with this famous quote,

“If your emotional abilities aren't in hand, if you don't have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can't have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.” -  Daniel Goleman

Self-awareness is the most important area a leader can invest in for themselves and their people. Our intellect and cognitive abilities may get us hired, but it is our ever evolving emotional intelligence that gets us promoted and respected. It does require great humility and confidence to be self-reflective, living from a growth mindset, but you’ve got what it takes. I believe in you!

As your coach, I am continually doing this work myself. My latest obsession is Enneagram and I’m using it with our executives and their teams. Getting my certification was a brutal exercise in self-awareness…one that has changed me forever. I still believe in starting with DISC, DRIVING FORCES and EQ,, but my goodness this has been an incredible deep dive for me.  

Self-Awareness Defined

The first step in defining self-awareness is the ability to recognize and understand your moods, emotions and drives. The next is to understand how others experience you and the impact you are having as you walk across the room as a leader. It is the competency to know yourself and articulate your strengths, weaknesses, biases, triggers, communication style, and what motivates you to action. It is the desire to never stop learning about the greatest person you know, YOU.

Lead Others by Example

As you model your ever-growing self-awareness, you naturally will want to bring up (level up) your teammates, your partners, your entire organization alongside, and invite them to grow with you.  The natural consequence of surrounding yourself with self-aware people is your push to keep driving deeper into your self-work, as your team grows, you must keep growing and keep out in front of them in this area of leadership.

I recently took on a young CEO who hired us to coach her to the next level. She is a brilliant leader, and she knew she did not have all the answers, but wanted to acquire tools and skills to grow, so she could develop the hungry team beneath her. As we keep rolling out tools for her, she is now leading the charge to roll them out to her team. Their collected desire for healthy growth is refreshing and now they are moving faster and smarter because of the team’s newfound self-awareness and commitment to healthy growth.

RECOMMENDATIONS TO GROW YOUR SELF-AWARENESS:

1. Take Your Emotional Temperature.

STEP 1: Set a reminder on your smartphone / watch to remind you 5X a day for one week to take your emotional temperature.

STEP 2: Ask yourself am I Clear, Cloudy or Red emotionally? (see 3 min video: Brains under stress)

STEP 3: Then ask yourself what you are feeling? Name the emotion.

STEP 4: Finally, ask yourself what caused me to feel this way?

STEP 5: Write it down and after one week note any patterns.

2. Engage in a 360 feedback process for yourself first and then your team

• We recommend having a third party conduct it for you. We have incredible results when a leader is willing to use our tool and proven process.
• If your budget does not allow for a 3rd party, you can conduct a more informal 360 yourself using Survey Monkey, Google Forms, etc. by asking a few pointed questions. These are just a few examples to get you thinking:

• What are 3 adjectives that describe my leadership style?
• What would you recommend I stop doing to be a more effective leader?
• What should I start doing to be a more effective leader?
• What should I continue doing, because it is effective?
• How do you feel when I walk into the room? How could I improve?

3. Use your assessments to grow your wisdom

Most of you on this newsletter have taken some form of the TTI Talent Insight assessment. In our debrief, we spent time getting to know your behavior (DISC) style and what motivates you (DRIVING FORCES) to action.  

• DIG IT OUT and use it. Depending how long it has been, just reply with the date you took it and I will resend it to you with the fancy new graphs. If you have never taken it, there is no better time than now to grow yourself.

• New tool: Subscribe to our 66 seconds with Shandel Group weekly email campaign that gives a quick tip / reminder / nudge to take your DISC / Driving Force  / EQ learning to the next level one minute at a time. It is in it’s beta stage, thus free for all who join now.

• Been awhile? If it has been awhile and/or you want to get your team re-engaged, focused, inspired and on the same page, we have a brand new simplified and cost effective assessment called The Engagement Report. We love this quick version of DISC and Driving Forces in the new look and feel format.

• Get Certified in DISC and Driving Forces so you can lead your people with confidence into their next level. We have a new 6 session zoom class that will allow you to increase your awareness using online tools and materials as well as class instruction and cohorts to grow in the 2 sciences of self. We see this training kick start huge breakthroughs for people to grow themselves, invest in their high performing employees or to become a certified trainer within the organization.  Our current class has 4 HR professionals, 2 Executives and 3 coaches. Find out more about our next  SG CERTIFICATION LAB 1 - it is so exciting!

4. Invest in the self-awareness of your organization, by investing in leaders

• Join a mastermind group, YPO, EO, Vistage or other organizations that will give you honest feedback via a group of peers.
• Invest in yourself, your future leaders as well as your seasoned ones with our SG Leadership Labs. We take each of the S.E.R.V.E. traits mentioned above and have built 90-day classes to train leaders.
• Read books, listen to podcasts, and Google self-awareness to learn more. But really the key to self-awareness is listening to yourself, your gut, your true self. I find working with clients, self-awareness is one of the main problems, they are wearing so many masks that they have forgotten what their real voice sounds like. Learn to trust yourself by finding your true self.

If you are going to listen to a podcast on leadership, consider LEAD WITH CLARITY. My husband and I are loving our new experience as podcasters. He just sold his dental practice and has joined our Shandel Group team. We need questions so send them to me and we will answer them on air.

We have so many tools we are uploading to share at Shandel.com. Our daily quote is one I love and I have over 2000 leadership quotes to share with you.

Thank you for allowing me to be your coach and extending me your trust!

BE the Best YOU Can BE, Today!