Being a leader
To be a good leader you need to first understand who you are and what your values are. You need to be able to ‘be humble to see your mistakes, courageous to admit them, and wise enough to correct them’ (Amine Ayad, business leader and author). You also need to be willing to listen, and let people know they have been heard, plus remain open to the lessons that the world provides, and you need to keep learning. American pastor and author,
John C Maxwell, says, ‘If you want to lead, you need to grow. Good leaders are always good learners’.
To be a leader, I believe the below attributes will set you on the pathway of leadership;
• Authenticity
• Empathy
• Vulnerability
• Trustworthiness
• Self-awareness
Personal values
The effective leader is one who has personal grounding—a personal set of values, principles and beliefs (faith or philosophy)—that act as a reference, and support consistent behaviour in a range of situations. Authentic leaders have the moral courage of their convictions and
are expected to stand up for their beliefs. If leaders do not have core beliefs, and are constantly changing their position on issues, they will be perceived as inconsistent
and possibly political in their behaviour. Leadership is about doing things well. However the ability to do leadership well depends on the strength of your convictions—particularly those you have about yourself. This means that you need a ‘psychology’ of leadership. You must have confidence in your judgement and be willing to back yourself, and put yourself and your beliefs on the line.
In 2018 during a residential program (Accelerated Leadership Program) there were six questions that had been rated by our peers/leaders within our 360-degree feedback, which related to our personal values. My two highest-rated questions were ‘stands up for her values and beliefs,’ and ‘exhibits a real passion, even ‘love’ for her work and its meaning’. For me, this was a great result, as it reflected the energy I had put in to being more authentic and bringing my whole self to work, over the past 12 months. Within this section of my 360-degree feedback I had scored fairly high in all areas, which was pleasing. I also received feedback through comments that people were enjoying getting to know me, and wanted to see it more often at work and within working situations. This was huge encouragement for me to keep doing what I was doing.
Once we had worked through our feedback, we were asked to spend some time thinking about our values. We were told they should be things you know about yourself to be true, things you would stand up for today, things you would defend and stand up for even if there was a cost to you in doing so. At home we have our family values on our hallway wall. It is a decal that we found online, and it really resonated.
The decal states:
‘In this house: We do real. We do mistakes. We do I’m sorry.
We do second chances. We do fun. We do hugs. We do
forgiveness. We do really loud. We do family. We do love.’
This helped me pull out the key themes that mean a
lot to me, which are love, laughter, trust, and forgiveness.
And to leave judgement at the door. Earlier that year,
I undertook further work on my values and got them
down to my three Fs: fun, forgiveness and family.
....
If you would like to know more or what to know what my values me to me, get your own copy of People: People First People Always available from www.peoplefirstpeoplealways.com - book is an easy read, written in a conversational style (140 pages, 14 Chapters)
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