Wanting to be your best self? Check out our articles on Building confidence, being your most authentic self, time management, and other ways to build your overall resilience
Amy Jen Su was live on Facebook discussing how to handle the workload of being a leader today and the 4 P’s of leadership endurance: your Personal Operating System, People, Priorities, and Presence.    WATCH THE VIDEO
As the next Olympics draws near, we will again be reminded of the courage it takes to achieve results. Think back to the Canadian figure skater who skated her way to a bronze medal, just days after losing her mother to a heart attack. Or, Â Shaun White, having already won a gold medal, demonstrating his spirit for the sport by attempting a new trick on the world stage, elevating the difficulty of the sport to a new level. Each of these is a very different example of courage, showcasing what can be achieved by overcoming fears or pain, facing danger, and still taking action.
Courage extends well beyond these expertly trained athletes. Every day we perform acts of courage for ourselves, at home and at work. Courage is the ability to face a difficult situation and take decisive action. Leadership courage can take place in the context of giving an employee tough feedback, telling a client that a project is not going as well as it should, or raising an issue to management that affects the entire company. Whatever the situation, those with leadership courage are able to take action where others are unwilling to step up. The ability to do this takes confidence, a willingness to take a risk and the knowledge to consider all sides of a situation.
There can also be a downside to leadership courage. If you take a stand all of the time, on every issue, your peers, employees or clients may have a different perception of you. You might be perceived as a complainer, a self- promoter, unable to listen to others, or overly negative. Leadership courage, therefore, requires striking a delicate balance between your own voice, taking a stand for what you believe, and having a voice for others. So how do you achieve this balance?
I recently had a client who required assistance with this question. Kristin was a senior member of a project team and up for a promotion. She was facing increasing pressure to deliver more work for a client, and within the same project deadline. Her project team was falling behind schedule with the out of scope tasks and becoming burnt out with the extra demands. Kristin was worried about approaching her boss, for fear that he would think she was complaining, while the team would view her as weak for not speaking up. Using the framework below, we prepared for the discussion:
Kristin approached her boss with a crisp description of the problem and two possible solutions. She learned that there were other factors driving the clientâs demand that were outside of the project teamâs control. She was able to adjust the project priorities and set more clear direction with her team. Kristinâs boss provided the feedback that he was pleased to see that she had a pulse on the team, and could quickly adapt to the changing circumstances.
Olympic athletes are well-trained, ingraining physical movements into their bodies, visualizing the actions they will take each time they step up to a start line. This occurs because of rigorous and routine practice. Just like athletes, we can train ourselves through practice, enabling us to ingrain leadership courage as a skill. You may not always have the time to prepare for the situation, as Kristin did, but practice this model for effective Leadership Courage each time you confront a situation, and it will become second nature over time.
– Erin McCants Parker
Confidence. It is an attribute we seek to have and look for in others, especially those in positions of leadership. Yet, time and time again, we meet executives who lack a confident presence. (We also encounter those who are overly confident â to the point that they are blinded by it â but that is a topic for another time). What many fail to realize is that confidence is dynamic and not a static emotion. Just like a physical muscle that needs exercise to grow stronger, a leaderâs confidence requires continuous attention. Â Â Â READ ARTICLE
As your role grows in scale and influence, so too must your ability to listen. But listening is one of the toughest skills to master â and requires uncovering deeper barriers within oneself.
Take, for example, our client, Janet, a successful principal in a management consulting firm. She recently received 360-degree feedback from colleagues that she needed to improve her listening skills. This confused her â she had always thought of herself as an active listener. When we asked her colleagues why, they described how she wouldnât exactly answer questions in meetings â and how she often had different takeaways from the rest of the team. Janet wanted to explore what was happening. It seemed simple enough, and yet why was she having trouble? The key, ironically, is to focus on yourself. READ ARTICLE
Authenticity â what is it, who has it, and how do you get it? Most people associate authenticity with being true to oneself â or âwalking the talk.â But thereâs a problem with that association; it focuses on how youfeel about yourself. Authenticity is actually a relational behavior, not a self-centered one. Meaning that to be truly authentic, you must not only be comfortable with yourself, but must also comfortably connect with others. READ ARTICLE
According to a study at Sun Microsystems, mentees were promoted five times more often than those without a mentor. Eighty-eight percent of respondents to a Center for Creative Leadership survey believe that having a mentor is useful for career development. It never hurts to have a few good mentors behind you. But what happens when a good mentor goes bad? Â Â Â READ ARTICLE
Clashing management styles do not always lead to management clashes. Recently, weâve noticed a trend with clients asking for help in coaching and consulting around issues of differing styles â issues that weâve had to sort out ourselves as weâve grown our business. Â Â Â READ ARTICLE
If you want to empower, engage, or motivate others, donât just focus on increasing your positive behaviors. Pay attention to what you need to stop doing as well. Why? Because people remember the bad more than the good. To quote from a previous HBR article, How to Play to Your Strengths, âMultiple studies have shown that people pay keen attention to negative information. For example, when asked to recall important emotional events; people remember four negative memories to every positive one.â So, which behaviors do leaders most need to avoid? Â Â Â READ ARTICLE
Your palms are sweaty. You stumble over your words. You donât seem to be getting a clear message across. You look around the table â everyone is more senior than you â both in age and title. You wonder if youâll ever be taken seriously. Sound familiar? If so, you are among many who experience what we call the âgrey hair complex.â The grey hair complex is a self-induced state of intimidation in the presence of more senior executives. It often begins with the false conviction that you would have more credibility if only you had the physical attributes that convey a higher level of seniority. To overcome these feelings of insecurity, you need to condition yourself in three areas: mental, technical, and physical. Hereâs how.   READ ARTICLE
Youâre at the weekly team meeting. Everyone around the table vigorously nods their heads and agrees to a series of action steps. Meeting ends. Three days later, you find out that one of your peers must have blacked out during the head nodding â because he went off and did his own thing. And itâs not the first time heâs done this⌠it happens over and over again. Welcome to the passive-aggressive peer club. What is the meaning of the paradoxical term passive aggression, all too often loosely used to describe fellow co-workers (and relatives, too, but thatâs a whole other blog post not befitting of HBR)?    READ ARTICLE
You were fired up at the start â you pushed yourself and the team hard to get over the 50-yard lineâŚyou kept the momentum going over the 30 yard lineâŚand as you finally approached the 20-yard line, you felt for the first time the end zone was clearly in sight. Great time to pause? Take a rest? Turn your energies towards a new exciting idea you have?    READ ARTICLE
When was the last time you did any of the following at work?
