Forme Partners’ Post

Transcript

I think first of all, it's important to acknowledge that it is important to make mistakes and have failures. Failures give us feedback, and feedback is the source of growth. Failures also help us build resilience, which is a requirement for leadership. The ability to face into challenges and setbacks and keep going, that's a critical part of leadership. I think the times I learned the most and probably relevant for anyone that's rising through the ranks in an organization was the learning that suddenly as you become more senior, many more people are looking not just to you for strategic guidance. We're looking at you for your behaviors, your emotions, how you come across, your mood, your energy. As a leader, you will be infectious in an organization in both good and bad ways. And three quick things I want to call out. Firstly, managing bad days. We all have them. We'll continue to have them, but we have to find ways as leaders to avoid our bad day becoming our teams bad day, or indeed the whole company's bad day. And it's hard on a leader to not leak that out when we're having a tough time after all his leaders, We are humans too. But teams need consistency. They need to know. How to act, how to respond, how to operate in an environment and when you're not consistent, that can be hard for people. And so personally, I found a couple of things that have really helped me. The most important is taking a few minutes to meditate or free mindful to check in on how I'm feeling physically, emotionally, mentally as I leave the house and make my way to work. Being aware of my own bad days. The most important first step. Then secondly, it's about adapting, which again is going to be personal to all of our situations, but it might mean cancelling some meetings to Eastern pressure. It might mean. Taking a moment to deal with the cause of my bad day, whatever it is. Often I find it's important too to be mindful during the work day. If you're having a tough time, you're in a meeting, you know you're likely to be triggered, taking a breath before reacting. There's a great quote that I love from Victor Frankel where he talks about in between the stimulus and the response, there is space. And in that space is the power to choose our response. And it's in our response that lies our growth and our freedom. And for me that always is really relevant when I'm having a tough day. The second thing is managing. Our energy as a leader, you'll be very busy, there'll be lots of demands on your time. And as a leader, whilst time is important, there are people that can help with that. You can delegate their assistance, that can help plan things. The thing no one else can really help you with is your own energy. And so I really encourage you to manage your energy and not your time. Whatever it is, work it out for you and then protect your energy religiously in your schedule. And then the third thing I've really learned is about remaining optimistic but realistic in all situations. And again, as leaders, we're human. We feel the pressures when things don't go well or we have setbacks. But a critical role is to help our teams get through the ups and the downs, to stay the course, be consistent, focus on the opportunity as well as facing to the realities of today. At times in my career my tendency has been to try and make everyone feel better. In tough times I want people to feel good and So what I've done in the past is not acknowledge it and potentially sugarcoat things. Telling people things are fine when in reality they know it is an and you know it isn't. Equally I've worked for people that go the other way and can sink into despair and you focus on how tough it is. Today can be real drains of energy, forgetting why we all turn up. In the 1st place. And so the key is a leaders to hold almost these two opposing thoughts at the same time, being realistic and honest about today but optimistic about tomorrow.