“I’m Starting With The Man In
The Mirror, I’m Asking Him To Change
His Ways, And No Message Could Have
Been Any Clearer, If You Wanna Make The World
A Better Place, Take A Look At Yourself, And
Then Make A Change”
Michael Jackson

Let’s be real for a moment here. You personally have been impacted by the economy and the tough decisions you have had to make. For example, even though you are senior leader, you may not have the career growth opportunities that you once expected to have. You may be doing the job of several colleagues who were let go. And on top of your own losses, you might have to sit with the reality that many other people have experienced difficulties as a result of the tough calls that you had to make. If you are an intrinsically good leader, you may experience the tension created by both the reality of the “maybe” of not doing it all right or with the integrity you desire and knowing that you did the best you could given the information that was available to you at the time.

You are at a crossroads of another kind. You can allow these challenges in your leadership to make you hard or to become transformative events that will allow you to grow exponentially as you have never grown before. You can become and embody the change that you want to create in your organization by first winning back your own heart and mind. You need to find out what that looks like for you. How do you re-engage yourself with your own career and to your own organization and find hope for the future? How do you become an engaging leader (one who is both engaged personally and able to facilitate the engagement of others)?

To answer these questions, you need to learn and begin to adopt some of the personal practices of engaging leaders.

1. Begin to set aside think time, not just “do” time. All leaders are action-oriented. It is the essence of leadership to envision a future and to have a burning desire to be at the helm and take others there. Great leaders balance their external actions with equal amounts of internal reflection. Beth is one of those great leaders. She is one of the few leaders whose employees never would say that her change efforts are a “flavor of the month,” because every one of her change efforts was implemented and integrated into her organization. The secret behind her successful track record is that she never undertook a change effort that she didn’t think about in detail beforehand. In other words, she thinks as much as she does.
2. Look at more stuff and think about it harder. Engaging leaders know that learning is not just about events, but also a daily practice. As important as it is to read and take advantage of specific developmental opportunities such as workshops, coaching and stretch assignments, it is even more important to learn by looking at the world around you and becoming curious. Engaging leaders ask questions in order to better understand what is going on, surround themselves with people brighter than they are, and incorporate what they learn into practice. David is the poster child for this type of creative leader. This is not only because his office is full of books, but also because David learns from everyone by whom he is surrounded. And he readily adopts best practices from other organizations, whether they are in his industry or not.
3. Look inside to examine the styles of relating that drive your leadership and quit doing what may have worked in the past but no longer does. Engaging leaders know that that we are not compartmentalized beings, that we are spiritual and emotional beings and those parts of us do not stay home when we show up to work. They also know that we bring our strengths as well as our baggage to work. For the most part, work is not strictly business…much of it is personal. Engaging leaders are willing to let go of strategies they have adopted to cope with life when those strategies clearly stop working.
4. Seek to understand the “whys” and “hows” behind your decisions, not just the “whats.” (“Ready, aim, fire” vs. “Fire, fire, fire.”) Engaging leaders do not make decisions just for the sake of action. They know why they made those decisions. They know why they want to reposition their brand in the minds of the consumers. They know why it is better for business to centralize training vs. having separate training departments in each business unit. They know why there should be one playbook for customer service for all departments across a global organization. Because they know the whys, they are able to see their desired changes come to fruition and communicate the rationale to employees in such a way that it makes sense intellectually and emotionally. These engaging leaders are trusted because there is a bigger picture for why they do what they do.
5. Be brutally honest about how you think about and use your power. Is your career all about your own personal ambition or about having an honest-to-God belief that you can help others through your leadership? If your career and leadership is all about you and gaining more power for yourself, you will never become an engaging leader and you have little hope of capturing a real “heart” commitment from your employees and customers. At the end of the day, there are not equally viable leadership philosophies. A control philosophy of leadership always leaves a wreckage of bodies.

The bottom line
Challenges are always opportunities for growth in disguise, if you allow them to be. Take advantage of this take to assess how you feel about your leadership and career potential. Select one personal practice of an engaging leader to implement this week. And, finally, set aside 15 minutes per day to think, observe and reflect.

Are you ready to take your leadership and organizational effectiveness to the next level? Check out the other resources available online at www.acceleraconsultinggroup.com or give us a call at 407.376.8522 for a free consultation. We accelerate results by igniting leadership and organizational potential!