Conversant’s Post

Transcript

Well, you and I have been talking about the purposeful leader for years in some sort of version. And I'm so excited that we're actually. Going to be doing it in January it wasn't originally named the purposeful leader and it took us a little while to arrive at that name. What for you sort of clicked in place that said like that's what we should call this great question I. Keep running into. Ourselves sometimes, but often clients who have kind of forgotten why they're actually there and you know when people hire into a company there's usually something they're excited about but often what happens pretty quickly is people get into doing the work and. And kind of set aside why it is and what was important for their participation. And so purposeful leader I think is the title because we believe so much in the power of purpose is a place to make conversation go better. And those conversations helping execution and helping us contribute more and helping us perform better. So yeah, I love that. And in particular because this leadership development experience is really targeted at for individuals who lead. The matrix or have to lead without authority, Yeah, that that purpose becomes that much more important. So when I'm managing A-Team, it's really clear on the who's asking who to do what and what those lines of communication and frankly, power are going to be in the in a team. But when I now have to lead in a matrix organization or get people in different parts of the organization, maybe my peers to work alongside, purpose really becomes paramount in terms of what galvanizes people to work out their differences. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think we both experienced it in our careers. We had closer supervision roles and we started in management or supervision. And then suddenly you're faced with that day where you're trying to influence people that. They don't report to you and they did you would have to do. Yeah, yeah. So I think the notion of leading without authority is, is going to be the the context for our program. And almost all the leaders that we work with hit this point in their career at some point. And I think there's three skills that we're really trying to target inside of the time that we're going to spend with this group of leaders. The first is listening to learn. Inside of what we just said, why do you think listening to learning is so important? Well, the. If we're trying to work with people that we don't have authority over and can just tell them what to do, then trying to find a purpose means that we have to really be sensitive to what's important to them, what their circumstances are, what's going on in their world, what their experiences are. And so to be able to engage with them in conversation and learn what's important to them to form a purpose a mutually. Mutually powerful purpose is why listening to learn is important. Yeah, because I can't just come in and say here is the purpose, we actually have to discover it together. And so listening to learn is really a critical skill for us to be able to do that together and not have it done to you. And then emotional agility becomes really important because in that listening to learn, you may say some stuff that I don't like or I don't want to hear or, or it's hard for me to hear. Yeah. And so really understanding how I tend to react in the face of. Threat or scarcity or fear or disruption, Yeah. And how that impacts my ability to lead, I think is the second critical skill that we're going to be focused on. That's right. And I think as we get better, knowing ourselves and our reactivity, we can stay more purposeful and we have more of a sensitivity to way we're engaging others because often when we're leading without authority, what we're stepping into could cause some reactions on the others part as well. So knowing the notion of. Emotional agility and our own piece of that is really important. And it's gonna require feedback all along the way because some of the times I don't even recognize that my reaction has caused something in the system. And so really getting really great at giving and receiving feedback and having it come from purpose. So having the feedback be related to the purpose at hand. So how am I contributing to or detracting from the purpose becomes really important. It does, yeah, feedback often is. Annoyance with somebody or yours. With mine, you're with me. But having that strong purpose allows us really to. To step into it and be more open and work together. So I'm excited about getting to spend a week with leaders who have challenges right in front of them that they wanna lean into in their ability to influence across the system or influence without authority. Me too.