12MinuteLeadership

Episode 2: How YOU Can Lead Anyone Part 1 - The Power Behind the Leader | 12MinuteLeadership

• Elise Boggs Morales • Season 1 • Episode 2

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Personal power determines whether people follow you or forget you, and it has nothing to do with title but everything to do with knowing who you are and where you're headed. Clarity in vision and values allows leaders to inspire commitment rather than simply demanding compliance.

• Personal power is exemplified by Mother Teresa who, despite her small stature and lack of resources, got the world to listen because of her clear vision
• Many leaders struggle with being clear and communicating with clarity, even at the highest levels
• Signs you need to build personal power: chronic indecisiveness, avoiding confrontation, difficulty defending ideas
• Case study of CEO "Adam" who transformed an architectural firm by developing his leadership philosophy rather than bulldozing through resistance
• Creating a personal leadership philosophy includes defining your values, vision, and what you want to be known for
• Five questions to develop your philosophy: qualities you admire in leaders, your values, how you want to be described, your personal cause, and what you want to influence

Pick up my book Lead Anyone on Amazon and visit www.eliseboggs.com to learn about executive retreats, customized training, and coaching to help you level up your leadership and accelerate results.


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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the 12-Minute Leadership Podcast where, in 12 minutes or less, I'll share small things that you can put into immediate practice that will make a big difference in your leadership effectiveness. I'm your host, elise Boggs-Morales leadership professor, consultant and coach. For the last 17 years, I have helped thousands of leaders level up their influence and achieve remarkable results. If you want to trade compliance for true commitment and create your dream team, you are in the right place. Get ready for a quick hit of practical wisdom to increase your team's engagement, inspire top performance and retain your best talent. Ready to level up your influence and get better results. 12 Minutes starts now. Hi everyone, elise here, welcome to episode four how you Can Lead Anyone.

Speaker 1:

Since my book Lead Anyone just came out, I thought it might be fun to give you a sneak peek into some of my favorite chapters. I love the way that this book is set up for busy leaders. It's a series of 28 short daily readings that introduce a skill, tell the true story of a struggling leader who was coached into learning that skill. You'll hear about the results that they achieved and then some actions anyone can take right away some in as little as 15 minutes or less to achieve the same result. Today's episode is taken from day three, which talks about something that quietly determines whether people follow you or forget you. It's personal power, and it's easy to associate this with the loudest person in the room or the person with the corner office, but personal power actually has nothing to do with the title and everything to do with how clearly you know who you are and where you're headed. One of my favorite examples of personal power is Mother Teresa. In my 20s, I spent some time living in India and volunteered at her home for the dying. Mother Teresa is fascinating to me in that she was so small in stature and had no personal resources of her own, and yet she got the whole world to listen to her. Why? Because she had a clear vision and was able to communicate in a compelling way to invite others to help her fulfill that vision.

Speaker 1:

In my work, I have facilitated thousands of leadership 360s, and what I have found to be a common theme of feedback for many leaders is a need for clear vision and values for others to follow. Being clear and being able to communicate with clarity is a common struggle for leaders, even at the highest levels. So how do you know that you may need to build your skill set and personal power. Here are three symptoms you find yourself being indecisive or overthinking leadership decisions, and of course, that's going to happen from time to time, but is it a consistent pattern? Another one you notice that you are avoiding confrontations with your team, even if that's what is needed to solve a problem. One more you sometimes find it difficult to defend your ideas to your peers or team and can get easily swayed by others' opinions. If you can relate to any of these and most of us can it might not be about strategy or skill. It might be about building your sense of personal power. To show you what building your sense of personal power can look like, in today's episode I'm going to share a real story from a real leader that I worked with, who completely transformed a company culture and it wasn't by force but by vision and we'll talk about how you can take those same lessons to build your own sense of personal power.

Speaker 1:

One of my favorite examples of this comes from a coaching client of mine. Let's call him Adam. Adam stepped into the role of CEO at a successful architectural firm. The leadership before him had been in the role for 20 plus years, so he had some pretty big shoes to fill and the executive team that he inherited. They were mostly his senior, mostly skeptical, and they were deeply rooted in a culture of autonomy that on one hand worked well but had also developed into silos that were no longer collaborating with each other. So there wasn't a lot of alignment at the top. Their focus was mostly on the work and on the client, not so much strengthening the internal culture that supported the work. Also, they had experienced a certain level of success.

Speaker 1:

So why change? One compelling reason was the needs and desires of the new millennial workforce, and many of you leaders will relate to this. They want a culture of purpose beyond the work, a strong sense of community with those they work with. They want mentorship and career development opportunities. So Adam was at odds, with two different cultures, needing two different things and having two different philosophies. The former was kind of a sink or swim attitude and the other, the new workforce coming in would need a lot more hands on engagement to be able to succeed. So to bridge that gap, adam needed to have a strong sense of personal power. Adam knew something had to change, but he also knew this that if he tried to bulldoze his way through long-held tradition, he definitely would lose some trust, so we had to think of a long-term strategy that would allow Adam to establish himself as the new leader and would align the two cultures.

Speaker 1:

We did several different things, and I'm going to highlight one of those things today, because I believe it was the most important thing that laid the foundation for everything that was to follow. The first thing that I encouraged Adam to do was to build his personal leadership philosophy, and I'm curious how many of you out there have done this. A personal leadership philosophy includes your values, your vision and what you want to be known for as a leader. When Adam did this, that clarity gave him the footing to build trust, not only with himself in terms of confidence, but also with his team, not by demanding it, but by living it. His philosophy served as a guide for decision-making, establishing priorities and also informed some difficult conversations that needed to be had. With the clarity that his leadership philosophy provided.

Speaker 1:

We then got to work, building relationships and rapport with both groups. We did a series of engagement interviews, got really valuable data that helped us get a clear picture of where things were at, where people wanted to see things go and how Adam could find both common ground and fill the gaps with new ideas for the future. Inevitably, he encountered some resistance, but he stayed true to his values, true to his vision, and over time things started to get into alignment and 10 years later the firm is thriving. In fact, it's the model office that so many other offices in the company look to for development. That's the power of personal power. So how can you get the same kind of results that Adam did? Here's what you can do Create your own personal philosophy.

Speaker 1:

Here are some questions to consider when you're putting that together. It's typically one to two paragraphs, short, succinct but clear. Number one what are the qualities of the leaders you respect and admire the most? Two what are your own leadership values? Three how do you want others to describe you as a person and leader? Number four what is your personal cause? And five what do you want to be able to influence through your leadership? Here's an example of a leadership philosophy based on those questions.

Speaker 1:

I lead a team that achieves remarkable results. I inspire others with a clear and compelling vision and empower people to use their strengths and pursue their passions. I make myself accessible to mentor and guide my team, and I am intentional about creating more leaders. I set lofty goals and create a sense of excitement to achieve big things. My hope is that you are inspired by Adam's story. Maybe you're stepping into a new leadership role or you just don't feel aligned with your team. Maybe it's about getting clear, and one of the first steps that you can do to get clear and increase your personal power is to create a personal leadership philosophy.

Speaker 1:

The amount of time you spent today listening to today's podcast is about the same amount of time in reading a chapter of my book. As I mentioned before, each day is a series of short daily readings packed with practical leadership wisdom and action steps you can take right away. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Join me next time for part two of how you Can Lead. Anyone See you then Like what you heard on today's episode and wanna go deeper? Subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. You can also pick up my book Lead Anyone on Amazon. Then go to my website to check out ways that we can support your leadership goals. From executive retreats to customized training and coaching, my team of experts will help you level up your leadership and accelerate your results. Go to wwweliseboggscom for more info.