Recent blog posts

The Leadership Dilemma: Why Purpose Isn’t Enough

Let’s dive into a little truth bomb – purpose is undeniably important, but it’s not the sole secret sauce for success. Shocked? Don’t be! Let me break it down for you.

Recently, I ran a poll on LinkedIn, tapping into the insights of executives just like you. Guess what? 83% of respondents agreed that while purpose is crucial, it’s not the sole driver of success. Enter: motivation.

When we talk about purpose, it often revolves around the organisation’s or team’s overarching mission. Take my experience leading an in-house legal team for a bank, for example. Our purpose, as defined by the organisation, was all about managing legal risks inside and out. Sounds noble, right? But did it light a fire in each lawyer’s belly every Monday morning? Not so much.

Here’s where mindful leadership kicks in: recognising the missing puzzle piece – motivation. It’s not just about having a purpose; it’s about ensuring that each team member’s internal drive aligns with that purpose. That’s the real game-changer.

This critical alignment starts right from the hiring stage. Remember, skills and experience matter, but they should never overshadow internal motivation. In fact, motivation trumps skills and experience.

And then there’s engagement. Crafting your collective purpose isn’t a one-person job. It’s about involving your team in the process, fostering a culture of shared responsibility and ownership. That’s where compassionate leadership shines, nurturing an environment where every voice matters.

If your team’s been through some changes lately, now’s the perfect time to reignite that purpose-motivation combo. Reach out to me, and let’s explore how I can help you accelerate your team’s performance. Together, let’s lead with purpose, passion, and compassion!

How To Unlock Your Leadership Potential

The best executive leaders know that authenticity is critical to effective leadership. But what does it mean to lead with authenticity? And how can we cultivate and sustain it over time, especially during difficult and challenging times?

To me, leading with authenticity means aligning your thoughts, actions and behaviours with your values, and your purpose. It means continually evolving as a person, professional and leader while staying grounded in who you truly are or, if you prefer, your uniqueness.

So how do you do this in practice?

Here are some tips for leading with authenticity:

1. Practice self compassion
Self compassion is about showing yourself the same understanding you would a friend. It’s a crucial leadership skill, particularly during difficult times and constant change. We all know that perfection is a myth. Instead of beating yourself up the next time you make a mistake, treat yourself with kindness and understanding, allowing yourself to feel your emotions as they are, without judgement. Then, learn from your mistake in the same way that you would counsel a team member through their learning.

2. Embrace vulnerability
Vulnerability is the courage to be yourself, fully, as a leader. It means acknowledging your strengths and fears but not letting them hold you back from trying new things. The courage to embrace unpredictability, risk and uncertainty by making consciously courageous choices. Being vulnerable (within the framework of leadership) can be scary, but it’s also essential to building authentic trust and connection with your team. When your team sees you being vulnerable and ‘real’, they’ll feel more comfortable doing the same with you and each other.

3. Be compassionately challenging, not critical
If your aim as a leader is professional evolution not stagnation, authentic leadership means you practise this for yourself and your team. By compassionately challenging your team members to be their best selves, you are encouraging growth aligned with their strengths and values, and inspiring them to lead authentically too.

4. Stop problem solving
In a constantly changing environment, tried and tested solutions only get you so far at best, and may not work at worst. Curiously enquiring into what’s possible rather than “what’s the problem we want to fix” leads to very different results.

5. Evolve not revolve
Regularly take time to assess your personal progress towards leading a life aligned with your purpose, and do the same for your team. Without it, you may find that your leadership and life keeps revolving rather than evolving. Consider:

  • How often do you take time and energy to ensure that your purpose and values are closely aligned with who you are now?
  • How have you incorporated recent market, personal and professional changes into your purpose and values?
  • When was the last time you immersed yourself in 2 or 3 days of deep personal reflection, review and rejuvenation to recharge your mind, body and spirit?

Leading with authenticity is, like most other leadership skills, a practice. It is a way of “being” rather than something that you do. It requires ongoing self-reflection, self-awareness, and self compassion. The rewards are immense – greater trust, engagement, and impact for ourselves and our teams. Not to mention immense personal and professional growth.

How are you evolving as a person, professional and leader?

Be everything you are: The path to fulfilment

I know this is controversial but hear me out.  We are led to believe that we can do anything, be successful at anything and achieve anything that we want.  To some extent, you can achieve some level of success if you work hard.  The problem is that you often end up sacrificing yourself and your soul in the process.

The ancient yogis believe that everyone has a psychophysiological nature that determines where you flourish.  Let’s call this your inclination.  Each person’s inclination towards thriving is different.

When you work in alignment with your natural inclination, you feel alive, experience flow and are more likely to succeed with some degree of ease.

When you are not aligned with your natural inclination, you’re more likely to dislike what you do and find that it takes more effort.

In my corporate career, as part of the talent program, the aim of which was to build future senior leaders for the organisation, I found myself leading a large national operations team.

The theory behind the program was to rotate leaders into various roles within the organisation to become “well rounded” in readiness for further promotion.  The assumption was that you needed to be good at all types of leadership to succeed in the C-Suite.

I disliked this role and found it extremely difficult, energy draining and demotivating.  It contained very little of my natural inclinations of strategic, complex decision making and growing and developing people.

Within 4 months I realised that I had made a mistake in moving into that role.  I was incredibly fortunate that my organisation helped me to move back into a role that supported my natural inclinations.

As leaders, we need to learn about the natural inclinations of our team members.  Hiring for natural strengths that align with the role is the starting point.  This will enable your team members to thrive and do their best work.  They will experience higher levels of wellbeing, engagement and thriving.

In allocating projects, look for a natural strengths alignment with project requirements.  You will receive higher productivity, customer service and team engagement.

For yourself, in making career decisions, ask yourself  “How does this role enable me to be everything that I truly am?”

There will always be parts of a role that we dislike or that feel like incredibly hard work.  The aim is to ensure that this is the smallest part of the role or find someone for whom this is a natural strength.

 

If you’d like help understanding the natural inclinations of your team, I can help. Contact me to find out more. 

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Excerpt from Elevate

Discover mindful leadership strategies grounded in neuroscience, and positive psychology to evolve from reactivity to resonance and lead with lasting impact.