Limitless Leadership™ is based on the premise of learning, unlearning, forever evolving and having an infinite mindset of what could be. Whether you are managing teams on site or remotely, leadership can be learnt and built upon.
In today’s workforce, managers can often be the unsung heroes. Pivotal to an employee’s performance, motivation and happiness at work they have the power to influence how engaged employees are. In essence they drive how people may think, feel and act, therefore have great impact on the culture of their organisation. Continue reading Limitless Leadership™: Supercharge Working Remotely
I’ll be the first to say that our business has been hit hard as so much of our client interaction is face to face. At times like this we need to pivot, innovate and explore new ways of working.
Navigating the virtual leadership world
Earlier this week I ran a virtual workshop to a group of senior leaders of ways to navigate and lead through this time of great uncertainty. One of the exercises we explored was how to leverage time to balance your leadership and stay connected.
How do break up the way you manage yourself to manage time working remotely?
We broke it down into 3 key areas of our balanced leadership model:
Lead People (progressive):
Think things like coaching, mentoring, strategic thinking and team interactions. Plan virtual team catch ups at the start of week and keep 1:1s consistent and locked in.
Manage activity (maintenance):
Think things that are day to day and operational, more in your team than on it. This includes things such as meetings and performance management, task allocation and so on.
Develop self: (leverage you)
Taking your growth, knowledge and leadership to the next level through reading, podcast and webcasts. Things that assist you in being an industry expert. Saving travel time, optimise these cracks of time for self growth.
By gaining balance in each area you will find they feed into each other. Self growth can increase leadership and role capability which therefore impacts on the way you lead.
Looking to continue to invest in your teams leaning, connection and motivation?
We are running our development programs as virtual workshops and group coaching sessions. Contact us to find out more.
What can you do in each area to assist you to innovate in this time of uncertainty?
Lead to be limitless…
If this article has resonated with you in any way – I’d love to hear your thoughts – get in touch. Being in service to my clients is why I do what I do and your feedback, insight and any suggestions are always embraced.
Find out where you sit on the Leadership Ladder, your responses are anonymous and the results summarised to help us better understand where our market sits, so that we can continue to provide, insights, tools and solutions to assist you move up to be LIMITLESS, co-creative and stand out.
I evolve, learn and unlearn in order to grow! I evolve, learn and unlearn in order to grow!
Thank you for all your responses to our Limitless Leader™ Indicator Tool. This tool allows you to see where you sit as a LIMITLESS LEADER™ and how to take your leadership to the next level and be LIMITLESS!
Your responses continue to provide valuable insight into our work and how we can be in service to you, our amazing clients, and collaborate with you on your success.
If you haven't had a chance to do this simply click here.
Thank you for all your responses to our Limitless Leader™ Indicator Tool. This tool allows you to see where you sit as a LIMITLESS LEADER™ and how to take your leadership to the next level and be LIMITLESS!
Your responses continue to provide valuable insight into our work and how we can be in service to you, our amazing clients, and collaborate with you on your success.
If you haven't had a chance to do this simply click here.
A whopping 78% of respondents consider that they actively evolve, learn and unlearn in order to grow. Unlearning can be as important as learning in leadership, but first there is a need to recognise those traits that need to be reframed, before learnt traits can be employed.
Question how you do things.
Shake up your day-to-day thinking, as this will impact your actions.
With a clear purpose and solid belief in yourself and others, you can develop and nurture a leadership mindset or mind-shift. Nothing should be set, a shift is fluid and open to change and further development.
What activities do you choose that can develop you as a leader?
Invest time and focus in this area to flourish. It will serve you and your team well.
Effective leaders don’t look at things in the same way during their whole career. What goes on in their head has to change and evolve—much like our beliefs. A singular mindset won’t fuel and serve you forever – like a tradesman’s tool that needs to be serviced and updated in order to perform its specific job.
Be prepared to update what isn’t working and let in new thoughts, ideas and exercises to build your mindset muscle.
How can you develop your mindset agility?
What do you need to learn, or unlearn?
As always, we would love to hear what works for you?
For more of my tips on how change can equate to growth, get in touch. I look forward to
working with you in the future!
Find out where you sit on the Leadership Ladder, your responses are anonymous and the results summarised to help us better understand where our market sits, so that we can continue to provide, insights, tools and solutions to assist you move up to be LIMITLESS, co-creative and stand out.
Self-management wins over time management every day. Time is what it is.
“Your actions and results stem directly from how effectively or ineffectively you manage yourself.”
Across the many industries I work in and at all levels of leadership, being time poor is the biggest challenge I see and hear about.
In today's workplace there are less people doing more and this often sets an unrealistic expectation of what can be achieved, leaving so many people feeling unmotivated, unfulfilled and therefore guilty of what is not being achieved opposed to what is.
As a person who leverages the hell out of every minute, I really believe your success in managing yourself comes down to being aware of two key things, I believe we need balance in and that is “headspace” and our “energy”.
In order to lead and serve ourselves, our teams and organisations we need to do the right things at the right time and feel fulfilled. A focus on these two areas is imperative as they directly correlate with your perception and use of time.
Why is it that some people do and be so much in the time they have versus others who complain they can’t fit anything in?
Obviously, we all have different lives, priorities, motivations and things that drive us but if you want to leverage your best self, I reckon you need to tap into what you are thinking about and how this affects our energy and therefore our level of self-management.
Self-Management = Headspace & Energy
Getting home at a decent time from work and thinking about the day that was and the next big presentation coming up is going to affect your headspace and more importantly how you are at home. This internal chatter is consuming your thoughts and this then flows onto your energy. As we all know when our minds go into overdrive and the monkey mind sets in our physical, emotional, spiritual and mental energy is affected.
Did you know your brain is actually spilt into 3 smaller brains; the reptilian brain, the monkey brain and the logical brain, also known as the leadership brain.
In a nutshell, the reptilian brains primary focus is to survive and if/when you are under pressure or threat this brain kicks in that fight or flight response we all know.
Our relationship brain, also referred to as the monkey brain can become easily distracted as its job is to look for connection and this brain is the one that sometimes struggles to focus on one thing, causes internal chatter and can be the trigger of self-doubt. We are all familiar with this one, the cheeky and distracting brain.
The Leadership brain or logical brain (neocortex) is the one that looks into the future and its key role is to create and think about a better world and solve problems creatively. This is where I believe successful leaders operate from.
Sounds easy? Not at all, I believe this is a constant battle for most people but by being aware of the three brains I think we can at least be consciously aware of where we are operating from.
So, take time to control the monkey brain and don’t buy into its chatter. Look into what negative inner dialogue you are hearing and flip it. What unresolved situations are you carrying around that turns the clearness of your world opaque.
Our thoughts are the only thing we can control and as much as it takes time, focus and laser-like discipline the pay-off is huge. By having what I call purposeful thoughts and by being deeply self-aware, you can prevent the reptile brain from kicking in and triggering that fight or flight response.
For more of my tips on how change can equate to growth, get in touch. I look forward to working with you in the future!
Find out where you sit on the Leadership Ladder, your responses are anonymous and the results summarised to help us better understand where our market sits, so that we can continue to provide, insights, tools and solutions to assist you move up to be LIMITLESS, co-creative and stand out.
In any role we need to lead self and master our leadership from the inside out. Self-leadership is the centre of our success irrelevant of whether you are leading a direct team or not. Too often we can get caught up in the sole responsibility of what we are doing and only believe we are leading those directly reporting to us, this is not the case.
I visually see leadership in any role as a cross with self-leadership positioned and embedded in the centre. We cannot lead others or influence decisions without a clear purpose, self-belief, commitment and motivation, all the key ingredients that make up the recipe for strong self-leadership.
“I believe the choice to be excellent begins with aligning your thoughts and words with the intention to require more from yourself.”
Self-leadership is forever evolving and we need to learn and unlearn to take this to the next level and not maintain the status quo.
From there we can look at leading in a cross functional sense.
Cross-leadership focus points
As leaders there are three non-negotiable areas of focus, in the below order:
Focus on people
Focus on process
Focus on progress
By focusing on people before progress and praising process, I strongly believe we can build a limitless culture, where everyone is realising their full potential as one team resulting in performance that is on purpose.
Too often, there is a focus on progress and the people, their strengths and contributions get left by the way side with the outcome results in being less than desirable, morale is low and the cultures become soulless and empty.
I ask you…”How can we best help such collaborations address our pressing challenges at the magnitude and complexity at which they exist?”
I believe we need to be cross-functional in our leadership and invest time, energy and headspace into our peers, managers and indirect and direct reports.
Take the time to share and collaborate with your peers, not only in your division but also across the business. Add value by sharing best practice and asking them to do the same. Many of us are time poor so start with an area or person you believe you could contribute to the most and go from there. Many organisations I am working with have started to do monthly catch-ups under 40 minutes sharing key insights and learnings and adding value to each other. Don't make this a time to show case your achievements, the focus is on learnings, lessons and adding value to each other. Keep the conversations laser focused and with intention.
Leading upwards
If I had a dollar for every time a client asked me to manage upwards, I would be a very wealthy person. Firstly, a reframe of ‘Managing upwards” could be helpful. Maybe you could ask, “How could I stretch myself to connect even better with managers?”
Many times managing upwards is another way of saying, “How can I push back or ask for more help or support so we are both on the same page”. We have all had amazing managers and then we have had those managers I call “The Gift”. The ones that teach us how not to be. All teach us something and it’s what we do with these lessons that counts. To be on the same page be open, honest and ask yourself ‘What will it cost me not to connect and be on the same page as my manager”?
Managing up could be up to your manager’s peers so don’t discount this also as a portal to growth and learnings and exposure to build on your strategic agility.
Leading direct and indirect reports
Whether or not you have direct reports you are leading and influencing decisions and those around you.
Remember, your role is to build and be part of a team, achieve impact and make decisions and solve problems. Coaching and mentoring others is imperative as a leader as by doing this you are delegating thinking (which is coaching when you think of it) and then you can focus on what matters and create the space to empower and grow others, in the process, creating future leaders. Those people reporting through to your peers are still part of your team and also those 2 layers down in your direct team. So often people dismiss investing time and energy in this area due to lack of time and awareness of the pay off of doing this.
By being across those in other teams and in your indirect teams you can foster a highly collaborative culture and encourage peer coaching, sharing of best practice and limitless possibilities.
