WHO WE ARE: NATURE, NURTURE, CHOICE

The first step to understanding ourselves and finding the answers to these questions is to understand how we have become the person we are today. This requires taking the time to examine our lives, looking for clues about who we are innately as a person, how our experiences and upbringing have impacted us, and how our choices in response to those experiences have shaped the person we are today. In other words, we are all a combination of our nature, our nurture, and our choices.

Our nature is the hardwired part of us that determines our natural way of looking at the world and making decisions - it’s a personality mixture unique to each of us. Nurture is the combined effect of our life experiences, cultural pressures and expectations, and the manner in which we were raised. Lastly, our choices comprise the actions and decisions we’ve made in response to all these things. It’s the exercising of our own free will in an effort to become whoever it is we want to become.

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Personal Power Versus Greater Good

So as leaders, what do we do when we receive praise? The ability to deflect praise toward those who deserve it is important for a number of reasons. Giving credit to others keeps us from becoming conceited, self-absorbed, or a Personal Power leader. In addition, it allows those who had a contributing role to experience the success as well. Praising others also shows our personal desire to be a servant, a true mark of amazing leadership.

This attitude does not come naturally to most people. To this end, we must commit to something much greater than ourselves. If we’re constantly looking for glory and praise from being a Personal Power Leader, then our priorities are wrong. The same is true if we choose to give others praise, but in a showy, “look at me” manner.

It seems we expect strength, speed, toughness, and confidence—even cockiness in order to excel as a leader. I would offer that meekness, gentleness, and humility might better serve today’s leader, if we are looking for a long-term impact toward the Greater Good . And don’t forget –we all need cheerleaders in our lives.

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How to Increase Your Credibility

“Trust is built on Credibility”

There is no shortcut to establishing credibility. You’ve got to know your stuff and maintain the capacity to listen deeply in the moment to the greatest needs of the individuals in front of you. At the heart, however, I believe there are three phases that you need to go through in order to establish credibility:

Phase One: I know the content intellectually Yes, you need to know what you are talking about.

Phase Two: I live the content personally I’ve come to the conclusion that people either do this one really well or really poorly. Credibility is established through the integration of what you know into who you are.

Phase Three: I transfer the content powerfully When you are living the content personally, you will begin to transfer the content powerfully.

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Dominator or Liberator

It isn’t about your team’s competence, it is how much of that competence the leader can draw out and maximize for the good of the organization.

To avoid the pull of Dominating Behaviors and Dominion Building tendencies, follow the Liberator approach to strengthening your bench:

1. Stay on Watch– Liberators know competence comes in many flavors and types. Sample them all to deal most productively with the range of problems that challenge your organization.

2. Find the Natural Genius in Your Team – Learn your team’s natural wiring and what skills come easily to them so you can identify contributions they can make without exhausting their time, energy, and passions.

3. Build Team Capacity– Once you know the areas in which your people excel, give them responsibilities that tap into it. Set them free to do their best work.

4. Avoid Trip Wires– Health Warning: When you are intentional to build relational apprenticeship to personally coach and invest in a teammate, know that the “herd of insecurity” may see this as a threat.

So what kind of Leader are you?

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Telling Your Time Where to Go (Instead of Wondering Where it Went)

“A budget is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went.” Dave Ramsey

ADMIT YOU DO HAVE CONTROL

Admitting is half the journey. When I ask people where they spend most of their free time, however, a common answer I get is, “Free time, what’s that?!” Free time isn’t empty time. Free time isn’t the moment you tell yourself, “Wow, I’ve got three extra hours today that I have no idea what I’m going to do with”

IDENTIFY TIME BARRIERS

Let’s consider what free time looks like. Use the following questions to think about how you use it…

• Where do you spend most of your free time?

• The last time you had a choice about what you did with your time, what did you use that time for?

CONSIDER YOUR IDEAL WEEK

Another helpful exercise is to think through your week and block out what you would love your ideal week to look like.

PROTECT THE FLOW OF YOUR DAY

Even when we have an idea of how we would like our days to look, our reality doesn’t always match.

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What is the bedrock of your organization’s success?

Below are 8 helpful rungs of insight to climb that will ensure your organization’s bedrock has the integrity to hold your lofty aspirations for success.

Step 1: Explain It: Clearly outline your organizational culture.

Step 2: Set It: Cultural attributes define expectations around attitude, collaboration, autonomy, and generally how behavior is regulated.

Step 3: Teach It: Modeling is the best way to educate team members about culture and expectations.

Step 4: Communicate It: Directly share with your teams what culture looks like, why it is important, and how it connects to your strategic direction.

Step 5: Loop it: Integrate culture through everything you do.

Step 6: Measure it: Evaluation of culture is essential in promoting accountability across each level of your organization.

Step 7: Celebrate it: Every organization has highly-regarded leaders who are the ambassadors of healthy culture.

Step 8: Live it: ! Healthy culture attracts talent more than salary or benefits.

Do you question the strength of your company’s culture, or are you wondering how to clarify it?

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3 Questions to Help Maximize Your Influence

Most people are in it for themselves.

We don’t like to think that, mind you. We typically consider ourselves, as a whole, to be rather altruistic. While most of us would count our relationships as congenial at worst and certainly non-self-serving at best, the truth is that at the end of the relationship for most of us stands a transaction. There is something we want to get out of it.

Think about it this way…

How carefully do you choose your words or your timing in a conversation in order to obtain the end result you want?

Be honest with yourself. We might not go into the conversation thinking about manipulating things to our benefit, but many times we do just that. We know that if we approach the person at the right moment, using the right words, our chances of getting what we’re after increase.

At GiANT, we like to help people discover these barriers to influence by asking three self-reflecting questions:

1. What are you afraid of losing?

2. What are you trying to hide?

3. What are you trying to prove? To whom?

#GiAntworldwide #Ginconsultinggroup #linkedinlocalKC #leadership #maximizinginfluence

Rest: The Secret Weapon for Success

“He that can take rest is greater than he that can take cities.” – Benjamin Franklin

Work/life effectiveness is a prevailing table topic across the corporate leaders we serve, with rest as the centerpiece of challenge. To a person, these leaders call out the linkage between rest and success.

1. Rest as an Antidote - Intentional rest is the general antiseptic to unhealthy stress.

2. Deeper Connection - A day set aside for rest allows for opportunities to strengthen and deepen your key relationships.

3. Balcony View - Taking one day of your week to dedicated rest might force us to actually have a personality outside of the work world and broaden relationships outside of your familiar employees.

4. Accelerated Productivity - More work is not better work. Smarter work is better work.

5. Reserve - Starting the discipline of intentional rest today will give access to needed reserves for staying physically propped up during the expected and unforeseen realities ahead.

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The Effect of Culture and Environment on Preference and Creativity

The “Oughts and Shoulds” of Culture

Cultures Idealize Specific Personalities and Tendencies

It’s about envisioning a future and bringing it to fruition.

Cultural Expectations and Dissonance

Years of nurturing influence from our parents, communities, cultural groups, and broader society have placed a set of powerful expectations on our lives that both consciously and subconsciously affect the decisions we make.

Personality Ideals Indicate Cultural Values

In some cultures, to work for the government is the pinnacle of achievement, and if you can’t do that, then you work in education, because they’re the two most stable, recognized professional systems.

Impact of Environment on Creativity

And while we don’t get to utilize our dominant hand all the time, it’s really helpful to know where we start from naturally, and how our work environment impacts our productivity and creativity as a result.

The Role of Art: Sensors and Intuitives

When it comes down to it, a great deal of Intuitives use the things they see as triggers to the future, while Sensors usually prefer to store memory and preserve the knowledge of concrete places they’ve been.

#GiANTworldwide #SensorsandIntuitives #LinkedIn #Culture

Everyone speaks. Not everyone is heard

What organizational benefits await those who firmly understand their primary Leadership Voice?

1. Greater Self-Awareness – A solid understanding of what it’s like to be on the other side of your leadership.

2. Better Alignment – Discovered sweet spots of those on your team allowing for enhanced team alignment and performance.

3. Clear Communication – A model of Communication established to support and challenge without people taking it the wrong way and getting offended.

4.Effective Delegation – A model that supports more effective delegation of tasks saving time and increasing productivity.

5. High Performance – A model to equip high-performing teams, rather than taking random shots in the dark in the hopes employees and teams do their jobs well.

6. Quicker Decisions – A model that strengthens collective listening and effective questioning techniques allowing for efficient team decision-making.

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