To continue my learnings from the PMI Leadership Institute meetings I wanted to share with you what Troy Hazard discussed regarding leadership. Troy has started several businesses and also has seen several of them fail, losing all he gained. Based on his experience he has collected real life strategies to improve leadership and relationships to make sure he does not lose everything again.
Let’s look at the leadership strategies first:
1. Are you really true to yourself?
- Are you living your values?
- Are your actions supporting your values?
- Are you living the life you think you are supposed to live OR the life you want to live?
How do you find out if you are really true to yourself? First, you need to stop long enough from the day-to-day grind to sit in silence and/or meditate to see what you are missing while going 100 miles an hour. Be aware of the effect you are having on other people while living the life you are living. Take a moment in silence EVERY day to be aware of your surroundings. You will find a deeper awareness at home, with friends and with loved ones.
Your ability to connect with others will make you a better leader. It will help you to understand more about what makes them tick and to connect with them on a personal level.
2. What is your purpose in life?
Activity 4 in Mondays post helps you to get your purpose. A mentor, advisor or a personal coach can great sources to help you on the path of clarifying and realizing your purpose in life. Rule of thumb: if you don’t know why you are doing something, stop doing it.
3. You make too many decisions on fear instead of truth and reality – yes that is a statement!
We are hard wired to be too afraid to make a change; at least the status quo is a known and change by its nature means unknown territories. If you are not happy in your current situation and you are not acting to change it, the reality is most likely that you are too afraid to act.
Think about the last three or four decisions you made in your life – did you make them in truth or in fear. You HAVE GOT to live your life in TRUTH.
4. Are you a confident or arrogant leader?
As a leader you need to take responsibility. Confident leaders ask their teams what the team is not getting from them to be able to perform. Arrogant leaders threaten their teams to finish the work and also have too much ego to build a relationship with the team.
These steps are not an one time activity. To succeed and continue to succeed you have to do them EVERY day!!
Now let’s look at the relationship strategies:
Even more in today’s digital age, you need to invest in the relationships with the people around you. As in sales where it is easier to sell to existing clients instead of finding new ones, in relationships the magic happens in the relationships you already have, not the ones you still need to get.
1. Talk TO the other person
If you are lucky, the other person will let you know that “You are not talking to me you are talking at me”, however, in general they will think this and make a mental note that you do not care about them. Also extremely important, do NOT use acronyms. Take it from someone who speaks English as a second language, the brain get hung up on the one word it does not understand. It simply will disregard any information coming after until it has figured out what that word means.
Do not hide the truth, tell your stakeholders when you are going to be done and tell them when you are going to be late. You will be surprised how much trust that builds.
2. Information needs to be ABOUT the other person
Two questions to answer: 1) Is it going to solving their problem?, 2) Is it something they can understand?
Our communication is TOO high tech. How often are you really communicating? The real relationship is build when you make a point of following up and finding out what you can do for the other person. It is real connection what counts and this only happens through real contact: calls and personal meetings.
Invest in “Personal Touch”, it pays off!!
