Leadership Horizons
This podcast aims to help leaders understand current and future leadership trends and encourage leaders to explore their horizons and understand the skills that will help them become even more successful moving forward.
Welcome to Leadership Horizons, where we explore leadership at its most transformative through two unique perspectives. I am Lois Burton, an executive coach and leadership development specialist and I've witnessed first hand how great leadership can transform organizations across sectors - from global corporations to public services, from manufacturing to the arts.
"Each week, I'll bring you either an in-depth conversation with a visionary leader who's redefining what's possible..."
"...or be inviting you to join me for focused explorations of critical leadership themes, where I'll share proven strategies and insights from my years of leadership development experience and research."
"Leadership Horizons, helping you to lead beyond boundaries -- Because the future of leadership knows no bounds. I'm looking forward to you joining me there"
Leadership Horizons
The Third Pillar: How Inner Drive Transforms Good Leaders Into Great Ones
What propels exceptional leaders forward when everything around them says "stop"?
After two decades coaching senior executives across sectors, I've discovered that thriving leadership doesn't stem from intelligence or experience alone—it comes from resilience, particularly the critical third pillar: inner drive.
This episode unpacks the transformative power of inner drive through the story of Sadia, a senior executive whose major digital transformation project hit devastating setbacks. Despite budget cuts, team resistance, and technology failures, her inner drive not only saved the project but elevated her to become one of the most influential leaders in her organization. Her journey reveals the five essential components that create unshakable leadership momentum.
Discover why external motivators inevitably fail while intrinsic motivation provides renewable energy (try my "3am test" to gauge your own). Learn the distinction between blind persistence and true commitment—what I call "flexible commitment"—and how connecting daily work to broader purpose transforms engagement.
We explore the contagious nature of a leader's emotional state and why self-regulation under pressure may be your most underrated leadership skill. Finally, understand how persistence isn't about grinding harder but adapting smarter.
I share practical strategies from my coaching practice, including an "inner drive audit" for your team, modeling vulnerability as a leader, and creating regular conversations that connect individual contributions to collective impact. Remember—resilience isn't about bouncing back; it's about bouncing forward. With inner drive as your foundation, you'll navigate both the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
Free masterclasses are coming soon—watch for announcements on LinkedIn, Facebook, and email. Join us next week as we explore the fourth resilience pillar with insights from executive teams navigating major organizational change.
Leadership Horizons - Helping You Lead Beyond Boundaries
Hello and welcome back to Leadership Horizons, where we explore leadership at its most transformative. I'm Lois Burton, and if you're joining us for the first time, let me share a bit about why I'm so passionate about this work. Over the past couple of decades, I've had the privilege of coaching senior leaders and executives across multiple sectors, and one thing I've learned from working alongside all these great leaders is that the leaders who truly thrive aren't necessarily the smartest or the most experienced. They're the most resilient. So I've dug deep into resilience and I'm doing a lot of work now on this really important topic. So that brings us to today's deep dive into the third pillar of resilience. If you've been following our resilience series, you'll know we've explored the first two pillars already, and now we're coming to inner drive, and this is where transformation starts to really happen. Let me start with a story.
Speaker 1:Last year, I was working with a senior executive let's call her Sadia who was leading a major digital transformation in the higher education library arena. Three months in, her project hit a wall. There were budget cuts. The sector's under immense pressure at the moment. There was team resistance, there were technology failures. Almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Her vice chancellor was losing confidence. Her team was demoralized and, frankly, she was questioning everything. But here's the thing Sadia had something that made all the difference. She had immense inner drive and at the end of our coaching journey, not only did she turn that project around, but she emerged as one of the most influential leaders in her organization. So what exactly is inner drive? It's that unshakable force that propels you forward when everything else says stop. It's made up of five critical components and today we're going to explore each one.
Speaker 1:Component one intrinsic motivation. Here's the brutal truth about leadership today. External motivators will fail you. The promotion, the bonus, the recognition, they're all great to have, but they're all temporary fuel. But intrinsic motivation, that's where the renewable energy is. In my coaching practice, I often use what's called the 3am test. If you woke up at 3am with a solution to a work challenge, would you be excited or would you be frustrated and think why hadn't this come to me before? Why, at 3am, leaders with strong intrinsic motivation get excited? They're driven by the work itself, by the challenge and by the impact they can make. I remember working with the CEO in the housing sector who told me Lois, I'm starting to dread Monday mornings, major red flag. We spent weeks reconnecting him with what originally drew him to his work, which was providing homes for families. He'd lost sight of that, but once we reignited that intrinsic spark, his entire leadership transformed. His team noticed, his board noticed and his results brought volumes.
Speaker 1:The second component is maintaining commitment during setbacks. This is where many leaders stumble. They confuse commitment with blind persistence. True commitment isn't blind persistence, it's adaptive resilience. It's asking how can I find another way? Not why isn't this working? We just need to keep pushing through. Let me share something from my from my own personal experience.
Speaker 1:My colleague lynn and I developed the Coaching Solution now in its 12th year, but in year two we had a massive setback. A program that should have been a success building from the year before became our biggest challenge. We could have just kept pushing through with the same strategies and thinking this worked last year, it must work this year or we could have abandoned it. Instead, we asked different questions, we adapted, we evolved. That potential failure taught us everything we needed to know about genuine team dynamics. The key is what I call flexible commitment unwavering dedication to the outcome, but complete flexibility about the path.
Speaker 1:The third component connecting daily work to broader purpose. This might be the most underestimated component of Inner Drive when your team understands the why behind the what everything changes. It's the difference between compliance and commitment, between effort and excellence. I often work with leaders who are brilliant at their own intrinsic motivation because they can see the bigger picture, but they struggle to help their teams connect to that. It's so important that leaders become the translators of the links with everyday work to the bigger picture for their teams. One manufacturing director I coach was frustrated because his team seemed disconnected from their work. We spent time helping him to articulate not just what they were producing but how their work contributed to their customer success, to their community's prosperity and to their own professional growth. The transformation was really remarkable. Productivity increased, but, more importantly, engagement soared. Productivity increased, but, more importantly, engagement soared. People weren't just showing up, they were showing up with purpose.
Speaker 1:The fourth component is self-regulation under pressure. Here's where emotional intelligence and positive psychology really come into play. Self-regulation isn't about suppressing emotions, it's about channeling them effectively. Think about it when the pressure mounts, your team is watching Not just what you do, but how you do it. Your emotional state becomes contagious. I've seen brilliant leaders derail entire projects because they couldn't regulate their stress response during critical moments. I work with my coaches on how to take a pause. So before reacting to high pressure situations, here's one simple technique Take three conscious breaths and ask yourself what response would best serve my team and our goals. Right now it sounds simple, but it can be transformational.
Speaker 1:The final component is the capstone of inner drive, and that's persistence in the face of obstacles. Here's what most people get wrong about persistence. It's not about grinding harder, it's about adapting smarter. I had a conversation with a group a few months ago and they said, yes, but resilience can only take us so far. That's because they were only viewing resilience through the grinding harder lens. They weren't seeing the adapting smarter lens. So in my years of coaching, I've observed that truly persistent leaders share three characteristics. Firstly, they view obstacles as information, not verdicts. They maintain long-term vision while making short-term adjustments, and they understand that persistence is a team sport, not a solo journey. So let me bring all this together with some practical applications.
Speaker 1:If you're leading a team, here are three actions you can take this week. First of all, conduct what I call an inner drive audit with your team. Ask them honestly what really motivates them, what obstacles are they facing? How connected do they feel right now to your organisation's larger purpose? You might be surprised by what you discover. Secondly, model the behaviour you want to see. Share your own struggles with maintaining commitment during setbacks. Show them how you connect your daily work to broader purpose and demonstrate self-regulation. Under pressure, your vulnerability becomes their permission to be authentic. Thirdly, create regular conversations that help your team see how their individual contributions connect to collective impact. This isn't a one-time exercise. It's an ongoing leadership practice. I've referred to it in other places. These regular conversations can be so powerful for teams.
Speaker 1:So in my years of coaching, I've learned that resilience isn't just about bouncing back. It's about bouncing forward. Inner drive is what makes that possible. It's what transforms sadia from a struggling project manager into an influential organizational leader. It's what can transform your leadership and your team's performance. Remember the way we lied. Yesterday won't lead us into tomorrow, but with nurturing that strong inner drive we can navigate both the challenges and the immense opportunities ahead of us. Next week we'll explore the fourth pillar of resilience and I'll be sharing insights from my recent work with executive teams navigating major organizational change. Remember also to look out for the free masterclasses. The information will be popping up on LinkedIn and on Facebook and if you're on our email list, you'll be getting some emails about it and I hope you'll be able to join us. Until then. I'm Lois Burton and this has been Leadership Horizons. Keep pushing those boundaries, keep expanding those horizons and remember the future of leadership knows no bounds. Thank you so much for being here today.