Consciously Leading
I spend a lot of time thinking about leadership – OK, so it is my job to do that and enabling people to find their own “inner leader” is part of what I care very deeply about – but I still spend a lot of time thinking about and reflecting on my own leadership. My recent thoughts have taken me on an interesting track though, sparked by a delegate on a programme sharing her thinking about “Conscious Choice”. She had read: “consciously using situations and challenges as opportunities to learn and grow……You’ll be conscious of what you want as a leader ahead of meetings, conversations and challenges” Leadership Plain and Simple by Steve Radcliffe
She describes her own situation – driven by deadlines and a school timetable (she is a teacher) she was constantly moving to the next thing where often the previous thing hadn’t been completed – she realised in reading the book that she hadn’t learnt anything about herself or her practice or even thought of herself as a leader. She was just getting by, ticking things off, getting to the end of the list.
Her realisation was that – for it to any different she needed to make a different Choice. She hadn’t had any focus on that. Sounds obvious doesn’t it? Many of you, coaching her, may well have asked her what she needed to do differently to break the cycle of “doing stuff” that she was in. The power of her realisation was that she was asking herself the question.
To operate differently needs to be a choice – the choice to pause before a “thing” or an event and ask what we are intending to do in that “Thing” and how would we like to be. We are all too busy in our lives for it to be any other than a choice – other “stuff” keeps getting in the way – the e-mails, the calls, the deadlines, the demands, the bills, the children’s taxi service, requests for help, the run we were hoping to fit in, the trip to the gym, the shopping…….the list is endless. It is about developing a new habit of taking a moment for Consciously Choosing and asking:
“What do I want from this?”
“How do I want to BE in this?”
This influences how we show up as leader – and we can all be leaders.
I thought about my own choices and how many shape how I show up as a leader – a leader in all the roles that I have – facilitator, coach, consultant, wife, mother…….. I realised that sometimes I am hijacked into “getting by” by following my rigid to do list or forgetting what really is important in that moment. I know I need to take a bit of space in order to really operate at my best – why then do I not do this? I think it’s because I sometimes don’t make a choice or I make the choice to be busy or do what I think I should instead of choosing to think about how I want to show up in a situation. But I can be a better leader as facilitator, coach, consultant, wife or mother if I make different choices and choose a few moments of space before I launch in.
I wonder what choices you could make to impact how you lead….?
