Leadership Unleashed

In part 1 of this blog, I explained that there are 4 levels of listening and that listening is a lost art in our fast-paced, whats-in-it-for-me world. We talked about the first 2 levels of listening.  In this blog post, we’ll explore Levels 3 and 4 of effective listening.

Level 1 listening is when all your focus is on yourself when you’re listening to another.  And Level 2 listening is when all your focus is on the other person when you’re listening.  Usually level 2 is a better form of listening however there is a time and place for level 1 listening now and again.

Level 3 listening is when it’s all about the space in-between.  We call it the system or the relationship between the two or more people. And we see that system as a third entity that has a voice and needs and wants.  So listening at level 3 is listening to what’s in the system?  What is the relationship saying? What does it want, or need?  When we tune in at this level of listening, we tap into the wisdom of the system, which the members of the system are usually unaware of.  In some ways this is like extrapolating from the sum of what everyone in the system is saying.

Level 4 listening is when we tune in to everything that is going on and ask “What’s wanting to happen here?” It means taking a 10,000-foot view and using your intuition to feel into the insight in the situation and the next step.  We need to look holographically at what is taking place and anticipate what is wanted.  The leader that uses level 4 listening is the leader that’s one step ahead of everyone else.

Now that we’ve covered the 4 levels of listening, ask yourself which is your natural default?  And which listening level provides the greatest opportunity for improvement?  Your job now is to practice noticing yourself moving in and out of levels 1 and 2 while you’re in conversations, and play with stretching into levels 3 and 4.  Remember the objective is to master them all so that you have maximum range, or behaviour flexibility, and can use any or all listening levels as needed!

Having said all of this about learning to listen in a new way, it is possible to listen too much, as I recently found out.  When you listen too much, you miss your opportunity to be heard and to share.  Others don’t get the chance to get to know you when you listen all the time.  And you can eventually feel depleted and drained if your conversations are all lopsided, and you don’t get to enjoy being listened to as well.  It’s about striking a balance, and sometimes that means grabbing the reigns of the conversation (especially at networking events!) and interjecting so that you can speak and share for a while.

I encourage you to practice the 4 levels of listening and then play with the conversational dance between speaking and listening to create fulfilling and meaningful discussions.

I’d love your feedback! And don’t forget to leave a link back to your own blog too if you have one via the commentluv feature here on the site.

Until next time,

Sue

I am a trained listener and what I’ve noticed is that listening is a missing skill in our social, educational and business training, and it has a huge impact on how we show up in the world as leaders. But, did you know that there are actually 4 levels of listening? In this blog post, we’ll talk about the first two levels.

When we listen to another human being, and I mean really listen, the I’m-all-ears kind of listening, we are giving a beautiful gift to another.  We’re allowing them to be witnessed, and to be heard.

When I hear “Thanks for listening” I know that I’ve been there for someone, to support, absorb, and allow them to say what needed to be said.

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Yes, it seems that the world is going to hell in a hand basket. And – we don’t have to go crazy along with it!  With change occurring faster around us, and the frequency and intensity of unexpected events increasing, we’ve never before needed to be able to bounce back more quickly than we do now.  So, here are the 3 principles of bouncebackability to get you on your feet faster after a setback:

1. Change the way you think about failure or crisis.  Our society raises us to believe that failure is a very bad thing; that it should be avoided at all cost, lest we be ridiculed and ostracized.  And yet there are so many examples of famous people who failed so very many times but we only hear about the eventual success they had.  It was said that Thomas Edison failed more than 1000 times while inventing the light bulb, and to this he commented, “I have not failed 1,000 times. I have successfully discovered 1,000 ways to NOT make a light bulb.” The key here is that failure is learning, and what a wonderful thing!  The same is true of crisis.  The universe doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle.  And this experience, no matter how frenzied and chaotic, presents massive learning for you, if you choose to see it.
2. Manage your emotions.  It’s important to know that it is normal to feel negative emotions with a setback, and with the right emotional processing system, you can move through those emotions quickly and effectively to get to rebound. The system we teach in the Rock-Solid Foundation program is simple.  Notice it, feel it, express it, learn from it and move on. You get to have your emotions.  It’s a basic human right. Use your emotions wisely.
3. Get the learning. I have already alluded to this in the first two points, and I can’t stress it enough. The fastest way to move yourself through a setback is to get the learning from it.  Every experience we have gives us learning, and our emotions are the guidance system to what the learning might be.  If we feel angry, then there is a boundary to be set or a corrective measure to be taken, for example.

It’s humanly impossible to go through life without setbacks, so why do we set this unrealistic standard for ourselves?

I challenge you to embrace the setbacks, challenges and failures and use your emotional guidance systems to acquire the learning.  Happy bouncing!

Share your thoughts with me right here on the blog. Don’t forget to leave a link back to your own blog too if you have one via the commentluv feature here on the site.

Until next time, be resilient.

Sue

I’ve been talking about resilience for a few years now because I’m pretty passionate about it.  In fact, I believe it’s the single most important leadership competency that you can develop in this day and age of unprecedented change and unpredictability. But, what in the world is resilience?

I work with resilience in several contexts, such as lifestyle resilience and community resilience, but what I will focus on here is leadership resilience.

First, some definitions…  Resilience is the capacity to withstand, adapt, rebound and transform as necessary in the face of unexpected or disruptive events.  Anyone who’s been in or around the military will be familiar with this motto: Improvise – Adapt – Overcome.  It’s a great resilience rally cry. Or how about the slogan from the Survivor TV series: Outwit, Outplay, Outlast.

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While it has been said that Canadians are some of the nicest folk on the planet, I think many people, including those beyond our Canadian borders are ineffective in their communication and perhaps don’t tell the truth because they’re too nice.

Why is it so hard to say “No”?

So you’re having a party and you invite all your friends, and then you start receiving the rsvp’s.  Inevitably some people will say “I’ll see what I can do…” or “We’ll try to make it…” or “I’ve pencilled it in…” All of these answers are a “no” that was not wanting to be spoken.

We’re afraid of hurting the person, or being seen as rude or mean.  And heaven forbid, if we were to actually decline an invitation and not have a valid reason for not going!  Somehow, we feel that we need to have an excuse, a prior commitment, a more pressing responsibility, before we can send our regrets.

It’s all hogwash.

We deserve the truth. And we can be honest, compassionately.  The party host is grateful for clean yes and no rsvp’s because then he/she can plan accordingly.  There’s nothing worse that preparing food and refreshments knowing that you have a dozen people who are maybe’s.

The same is true for giving feedback. Your team, students or children deserve the truth about their performance and behaviour.

Effective feedback is a gift.

It doesn’t matter if someone is telling you that you have food on your face, or if they’re telling you that your reports aren’t up to snuff, if they deliver the feedback honestly, compassionately and constructively (with detailed suggestions for behaviour improvement) then they are doing you a huge favour.  They are handing you a beautiful opportunity to become a better person, or to get better at what you do.

Have the courage to give the gift of effective feedback so the world is a better place.

And here’s the flipside…

You are colluding with a person’s inner saboteur if you are complacent about their performance.  You’re enabling them to continue under-performing.  And you are propagating mediocrity in the world.    YUCK!!   Aren’t you up to bigger things than that?!

Share your thoughts with me right here on the blog. Don’t forget to leave a link back to your own blog too if you have one via the commentluv feature here on the site.

Until next time, be resilient.

Sue

There are two emotions that people are notorious for feeling on a regular basis that actually do us no good whatsoever.  One of these emotions keeps us focused in the past and the other has us preoccupied with the future.   And knowing that emotions are simply a signal to pay attention to something, these two emotions are actually alerting us to some deeper emotions beneath, but in and of themselves are pretty useless emotions.  In fact, these emotions are so insidious that they can be crippling to us if we let them run wild in our imaginations and in our bodies.  They reduce our productivity and impact, distract our mental focus, and can keep us in a state of inertia.

Can you guess what they are?

The two useless emotions are guilt and worry.  Let’s take a look at them one at a time.

We’ve all known a worrywart – this is a person that is more engaged with the future that they’re imagining in their heads than they are with what’s happening in the present moment.   Every conceivable negative possibility is on their mind, and they’re consumed with it.

Worry is a state of anxiety or uneasiness over actual or potential problems. Worry however, is an unproductive emotion. The same thoughts just keep cycling without ever churning out a lesson or an action.

What we need to do to stop that unproductive cycle is recognize that worry is a form of fear. And the purpose of fear is to keep us out of harm’s way; it’s a survival instinct.  So fear tells us that some action must be taken and/or something must be protected.  This is also true for worry.

The next time you’re worrying about something, ask yourself, “What must be done?” and then do it. Get it handled, so you can let go of the worry.  It serves no purpose otherwise.

Guilt, on the other hand, is focused on the past. People who are consumed with guilt will re-hash past events over and over in their minds, pondering all the could’ve’s, should’ve’s, and wish-I’d’s.  The reality is we can’t change the past.  All of this regurgitating of past events is a waste of energy.

Guilt is a feeling of being at fault; of having committed an offense.  The reason we feel guilty is that upon reflection, we feel badly about our behaviour.  And we feel badly about our behaviour because we behaved in a way that was against to our core values.  Once we recognize this, we can re-align ourselves to our core values and recommit to honouring them by choosing to do it differently next time.

The next step is to take action to right our behaviour from the past that we’re feeling badly about.  This may be done by communicating with the people involved, or it may be done alone by writing a letter that is never sent, or simply making peace within you by sending a blessing, for example.  Either way, once you take action, you can let go of the guilt.

I’d love to hear how you’ve stepped out of the guilt and worry cycles. And don’t forget to leave a link back to your own blog too if you have one via the commentluv feature here on the site.

Until next time,

Sue

In Part 1 of this blog we explored the difference between power-over and personal power.  In fact there is a third type of power… power-with, but that’s another blog post to come. In order to reclaim our personal power, we need to identify where we’re giving it away. Here are 5 ways we give away our personal power.

1. Letting others decide what you want.

You are the only person who truly knows what you want. If you’ve chosen your profession because of your parents, or you’re deferring to your spouse about your vacation location, then you’ve given away your power. Knowing what you want and intentionally going after it, is empowering.

2. Not knowing what you stand for. 

If you’re unclear on your values, wishy-washy about your beliefs, and you’re not sure what your stake in the ground is, then you’re giving away your power.  Know your stake and then make decisions from there.

3. Blame.

The instant you blame someone or something for what’s wrong, you’re giving away your power.  You’re essentially saying that you have no control, and all the power rests with your boss, your partner, the markets or whoever else you’re blaming.  If this sounds familiar, “I can’t because so-and-so…” then you’ve given it away.  Decide to believe in your awesome ability to create your experiences, and then take responsibility for getting the results you want.

4. Being deprived and depleted.

If you’re not aware of your core needs and actively getting them met, you’re giving away your power.  Whether it’s a need for rest or recognition, or a need for alone time or connection, you must take responsibility for getting that need met, because no one else will do it for you.  This includes keeping your energy up, and recharging on a daily basis, so that you only give your excess energy to your partner, family, work or community.

5. Letting ourselves be used or taken advantage of.

It’s crucial to recognize when someone is stepping over the line, taking advantage, or using up more of your resources (time, money and energy) than you want to give.  If they are, then you’re giving away your power.  To take it back, you need to set and enforce personal boundaries.  This requires clear communication about what you will and will not do and the consequences.  Set your boundaries and reclaim your power today!

Developing personal power is a life-long task, and you can start immediately by determining where you’re giving it away. Let me know where you’re giving your power away. I’d love to hear. And don’t forget to leave a link back to your own blog too if you have one via the commentluv feature here on the site.

Until next time,

Sue

Power is such a fascinating thing.  Most of us are familiar with the hunger for external power in the world, which is acquired using influence, authority, rewards and consequences.  This type of power over another is used as a means of control, and more often than we’d like to admit, with manipulation and fear.  This power-over model can be abused and misused, stifling those who are under the influence of the person using the power-over strategies.

Another type of power is personal power: the strength and confidence to stand up for yourself and for something you believe in, the clarity of purpose of your impact in the world, and the freedom to be more fully who you really are. Personal power gives you the feeling that you are in charge of your actions and your life, and that you have the power to create the changes you want to see.

Notice that power-over is only in relation to another; it does not exist without the other.  Whereas personal power exists independently of others… as empowerment.

How would you like to be able to feel more empowered, deliberately, immediately with just a few small actions?

Would it be useful to you to be able to reverse the draining dynamics between you and others you find challenging to deal with in your life?

All of this and more is possible when you follow these life-changing secrets to reclaiming your personal power:  Know what you want and what you stand for, take responsibility for your results, get your needs met and keep your energy reservoir overflowing, and set personal boundaries.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this blog where we’ll take a look at the key signs that you’re giving your power away.

Where do you feel most challenged in claiming your personal power?

Until next time,

Sue

Let’s face it – we are a control-freak nation.  We seem to have created a society hell-bent on managing and manipulating every possible detail that it can, when in reality we’re expending so much more effort than we need to with only incremental improvements in our results. The challenge is to learn how to become a tribal leader.

Is this you?

• You’re exhausted and often overwhelmed
• You are behind on your responsibilities and do not have a plan to get caught up
• You’re spending so much time fixing problems and fighting fires that you can’t get anything productive done

These are the signs of a hub-and-spoke leader, a leader focused on control. And, hub-and-spoke leaders inevitably crash.

The Tribal Leadership leader on the other hand, knows how to surround themselves with strong, capable people, and nurtures these people to be empowered, connected and responsible.

In a hub-and-spoke scenario, the leader is at the centre and is the point person for ALL communication on the team.  Sometimes, the hub-and-spoke leader will provide information selectively in order to maintain control, thus leaving team members with incomplete information and needing to connect back in with the leader to complete projects.  This leader is often acting as a referee with problems and disagreements arise within the team.

A great leader is one who creates more great leaders not one who creates more followers.

In Tribal Leadership, the leader encourages and in fact, insists that team members resolve issues amongst themselves. The tribal leader will deliberately link 2 or more team members or collaborators to work together on tasks, so that the tribal leader doesn’t need to be involved.  It takes courage to open up communication flow, to share all relevant information, to trust that work will be done as agreed, and remove oneself from the hands-on work.  To do this, the leader must make the necessary resources available for the team members to be able to accomplish their work effectively and efficiently.

This is especially challenging for many entrepreneurs as they shift from being solo to building a team.  They are used to having all the information because they’re doing it all, and it can be scary to loosen the reins on their business and trust others to do the work and provide updates.

Hub-and-spoke leaders are chronically overworked and exhausted… because they’re too involved!  Once you learn to trust and let go to capable people, you can begin to re-design your approach and free yourself to do the creative and strategic thinking that your project or your business needs.

Share your thoughts with me. I love getting feedback. And don’t forget to leave a link back to your own blog too if you have one, via the commentluv feature here on the site.

Until next time,

Sue