Leadership is a Choice, and it must be an Intentional Choice.
Leadership is a Choice and it must be an Intentional Choice.
A friend of mine decided to become the CEO and own his startup. He used to head the R&D for a large tech company. Being creative and techy in nature, his exposure to delivery management is less. He felt he must develop a deep understanding of the organization’s functions. A bird’s eye view of the organization and exposure to all the units and how they function is critical for him to succeed. So, he made an uncomfortable choice by choosing roles that were not a natural fit for him. He did this purely to get a deeper understanding.
He will not trade this decision for anything else if you ask him.
So, I asked him how he managed his conflicts due to lack of skill (or) lack of time while still leading the unit.
His answer is very simple.
Whenever there is a conflict in his mind, he changes his perspective about the conflict by being mindful of the thought process. He is pretty intelligent and agile about this.
Our thoughts, specifically conflicting one, hijacks us. We lose our logical thinking framework and become highly emotional if unaware of such processes.
He used to pause and step out of the zone. See the situation as an outsider.
Stepping out helps you create a gap between the situation and your response. This is the place from which you can choose behaviors based on your values rather than indulging in what your thoughts, emotions, and stories are insisting you do. This newly-created space allows you to be sensitive to context and to shift your actions from being driven by mindless impulses to being driven by a measured sense of what will work here and now.
Then he used to choose the decisions based on “Values.”
I can relate to this very much as Values-based leadership, and is the most resilient one.
When you’re mindful of your fear, you can observe it with greater sensitivity, focus, and emotional clarity, perhaps discovering where the fear is coming from. You might find that your “fear” is sadness or other emotion.
To live an intentional, meaningful life and to thrive, one of the most critical skills to develop is this ability to take a meta-view, the view from above that broadens your perspective and makes you sensitive to context.
This approach, coupled with “Values” based leadership, can give you the inner strength to navigate. In turn, this helps you to change the perspective of any situation.
Isn’t the golden circle model that is talked about in leadership roles?
