Defining your leadership roots …
In my last blog, I highlighted the importance of organizational culture, and the responsibility of every leader - no matter their position in the hierarchy - to spend time intentionally creating the conditions that build a vibrant, engaging, and, ultimately, thriving, workplace. While a quick Google search will highlight all the academic benefits of a healthy workplace, there are deeply personal reasons, too.
Most of us spend far more hours at work over a week than we do with the people and practices that we love: family, friends, hobbies. Given that, shouldn’t we love what we do? And shouldn’t the conditions in which we work be engaging, give us a sense of purpose, and maybe (just maybe) bring a small amount of joy to our lives? This is why the right leadership matters. It’s why as leaders that it is imperative that we help cultivate these conditions for all, that we create and nurture the environment that allows worklife to flourish.
So what does this look like? Where should one begin? Quite honestly, it starts with you, the leader and a few small, but incredibly challenging, moments of self-reflection and internally focused questions: who am I as a leader? What do I stand for? What’s most important to me? If I’m not a leader forever (hey, things happen!), what will be the legacy I create for others?
These questions rattled around my brain many years ago, during a well-deserved break. By this point, I had been in the public service for more than a decade, and in various leadership roles for almost as long. And while I was finding some successes, I wasn’t feeling complete. Deliverables were being met, work was produced by my team on time and on budget, and many other standard measures of bureaucratic success were being met. Yet I was feeling like something significant was missing. It was an ethereal, yet highly palpable, sentiment, and I could feel it in the teams I served as well. It was like we were going through the motions, riding the waves on a river, but never really navigating it artfully. I wanted to steer the boat more precisely and intentionally, not bounce from rock to rock.
It was then, during what my business partner eloquently refers to as “windshield time,” that I had my own leadership epiphany: I was managing well, heck I was even leading at times, but in no way was I a capital-L Leader. Sure, I had the titles that anointed me a leadership position on some abandoned organizational chart, but I truly wasn’t feeling like the leader I inspired to be. Looking out that window, some now forgotten song on the radio, I asked myself: who am I as a leader and what do I stand for? Why on earth would/should people follow me (because isn’t that what we ask people to do as leaders?)?
With that, a sharp realization struck: I needed to define myself as a leader. I needed to delineate and share what I stand for, what guideposts shape my leadership philosophy. And whatever I came up with, I needed to make it mine, make it clear, communicate it often, and, most importantly, live and breathe it.
I suppose I was a bit lucky. Asking that question - what do I stand for? - produced three words very quickly and a subsequent memorable acronym.
The result? I now had a guiding compass, my own north star, if you will, and teams I led responded eagerly. I was able to align my actions to my core values, navigate challenges and make informed decisions through a refined lens, and, perhaps most importantly, build and maintain a stronger organizational culture rooted in exactly what I stood for, and what I aspired to create. I had a transparent, easily transmitted, well-understood leadership approach, one that resonates and is transferable across diverse portfolios.
This approach - these three simple guideposts - have served me incredibly well. Years later, they are still applicable, and I continue to champion them in our consulting practice. What makes them special is that they represent me; they’re not borrowed, they’re not adapted from some book. And while these three small words are universally applicable no matter the organization, they are also uniquely me.
So what does this mean for you? Where should you begin? As with so many things in life, it starts with a question, a moment of self-reflection ….
As a leader, what do you stand for?
IH
PS. Interested in learning more about this three-word leadership philosophy? Please reach out!!