Leaders Worth Following…
● Are self-aware
● Have empathy
● Are willing to teach
● Have great expectations and an even greater heart
● Face reality
● Own their weaknesses and know how to ask for help
● Are mentally tough and emotionally predictable
● Change themselves first.
Leaders Worth Following are self-aware
The first thing that comes to mind when I think of self-awareness is the story of the emperor and his new clothes. I’m sure you’re familiar with the tale, whereby a trickster convinces the emperor that he’s wearing a really expensive outfit, when the reality is that he’s wearing no clothes at all. He has so little self-awareness that he parades through the town naked. The other analogy I frequently use to describe self-awareness is that of the wake you leave behind your leadership “boat”.
I discuss your leadership wake in much greater detail in both Parts 1 and 2 of this book. In short though, A Leader Worth Following is not only aware that they leave a wake, but they are also cognizant of how this affects others and will therefore take action to minimize the disruption caused by their wake wherever possible.
Being self-aware doesn’t only mean being aware of your impact on those around you, it also means understanding emotions, both your own and those experienced by others. Early on in my career, I used to think of emotions as a bad thing. I believed that you needed to be emotionless when you led – I’m sure it’s why Spock from Star Trek was my hero for years. But the challenge with being an emotionless leader is that you miss the ability to tap into things that are unique about the human experience that will help you make better decisions – your emotions and gut feelings.
Many people, not only leaders, are unaware of the eight basic emotions and their relationship with them. However, even if we’re unaware of these emotions on a conscious level, we still feel them. These eight basic emotions are actually pairs, each has an opposite. They are:
● Anger – Fear
● Disgust – Trust
● Sadness – Joy
● Surprise – Anticipation
To illustrate why being aware of our emotions and being able to identify them is so important, let’s look at the anger – fear pairing as an example. In western culture, men are taught not to show weakness, it’s seen as negative. However, the problem is that when you feel fear, you also feel weak and society has told you that, as a man, you shouldn’t feel weak. If you don’t understand and explore your fear, you’ll turn to its opposite: anger.
In reality, feeling fear at times is normal, for men and women. Just imagine how different our society would be if everybody understood that anger was the opposite of fear, and had the self-awareness to sit with their fear and not be freaked out by it to the point that they resort to anger. Leaders who are self-aware and understand these eight basic emotions don’t become angry when they face uncertainty, because they are able to understand that they’re feeling fear and can examine their emotions without becoming overwhelmed by them. This not only enables them to make better decisions, but also means they are more emotionally predictable when working with their teams.
A great first step in creating self-awareness is to develop a Leadership Point of View. This can be done individually through one on one coaching or as part of a group session working through the Becoming a Leader Worth Following Book Club.
Leaders Worth Following have empathy
If you don’t have empathy then it means you don’t really care about the people you’re working with, the wake that you’re leaving, or helping others develop and grow to become the fullest person they can be. To work on becoming more self-aware, you need to care both about yourself and others, which is why self-awareness and empathy support one another.
I’ll explain the concept of empathy in greater detail in Chapter 6, and explore the difference between empathy and sympathy. For now, all you need to understand is that empathy means joining someone where they are. The concept of mirror neurons is also important when it comes to empathy. Studies have found that when we are communicating with another person and are in tune with them emotionally, we feel what they feel. When this happens, the same part of our brain lights up as theirs, effectively “mirroring” what they are feeling.
The reason it’s important to understand mirror neurons is that, when you are self-aware, you are able to recognize that this is what’s happening and that the emotions you’re feeling may not be yours. When you know these are emotions that someone else is projecting onto you, it allows you to put yourself in their place without actually being in their place and this takes a lot of the power out of the emotions you feel as a result. When those are emotions like stress, anxiety or anger, it’s particularly important that you are able to distance yourself from them so that you remain calm and behave appropriately.
I believe that we are unable to give to others what we have not given to ourselves and this holds true with empathy. Working on empathy in one-on-one coaching sessions can be very effective. We begin with the Self Care Transformation process and the Three Legged Stool of Self-Love. Once these are in place we explore the power of mirror neurons and the development of active listening skills to learn how to hold space for others and show them proper empathy.
Leaders Worth Following are willing to teach
As much as Leaders Worth Following are willing to teach, they are also willing to learn. The reason I mention learning is because if we don’t want to learn or if we believe we’ve learned it all, then we aren’t going to be much of a teacher. In my experience, the best teachers are people who are curious and always learning themselves. When they learn new things, they want to share them with other people.
As I mentioned in my Leadership Point of View, I have trained in Tae Kwon Do and, like all martial arts, you work your way through different colors of belt as you progress, starting at white and moving through the full spectrum of colors until you reach black – which represents all the colors combined. Once you achieve your black belt, you progress in what are called “dans”, and the way you earn each new dan is not by learning more yourself but by teaching others. The reason that you teach is that this allows you to learn everything all over again as you truly learn it the first time.
This isn’t only true in the world of martial arts. It’s a universal truth that if you want to truly learn any topic, the best way to do so is to teach it. So, if you really want to be a great leader, teach leadership – and beyond that, if you want to journey towards becoming A Leader Worth Following, teach others how to do the same.
Leaders who are willing to teach would do well to begin with facilitating a book club on a leadership book of interest to the leader and the team. I provide complimentary support to a leader who is facilitating a book club using content from "Becoming a Leader Worth Following and can provide a guest appearance to discuss topics of interest.
Leaders Worth Following have great expectations and an even greater heart
These two elements balance one another well. When we have great expectations, this means we have expectations of ourselves and hold ourselves to a high standard. We also inspire others by having great expectations for them. We help others learn, we stretch them and we encourage them to do things that we know they can do, even if they are unsure of their abilities in themselves.
Leaders who have great expectations of their people pull the best out of them, but these expectations have to be tempered by having empathy and being self-aware. You have to know when your people are drowning and you need to reach in and pull them out. This is what having a greater heart is all about. You have to show people your kindness and tenderness; you have to help them see your personal humanity. When you do, they won’t be scared when you ask them to do the impossible because they will know that you’re capable of understanding them and feeling their pain. They can see you have a big heart.
Helping leaders to create their own personal vision and strategic alignment within themselves can be a powerful goal in a coaching/mentoring relationship.
Leaders Worth Following face reality
The first reality all Leaders Worth Following have to face is about themselves – you are not omnipotent. As a leader, you are not perfect. You are human just like everybody else; you don’t know all the answers, you will make mistakes and that is okay. When talking about servant leadership, Ken Blanchard says, “Servant leaders don’t think less of themselves, they think of themselves less.” This speaks to putting aside your ego and being able to face the reality that you don’t come first.
Another crucial aspect of facing reality is being able to accept feedback, even when that feedback is really difficult to hear. You have to receive feedback with an open mind and a degree of curiosity. As I mentioned when talking about Leaders Worth Following being willing to teach, this curiosity has to begin with yourself. Question why you do certain things, and dig into what’s truly going on in any given situation. All of the elements of A Leader Worth Following that I have already laid out work together to help you face reality.
What’s more, by modeling your ability to be open to feedback, even when that feedback is uncomfortable, you will encourage the people around you to embrace feedback in a similar way.
Everyone loves the idea of feedback, but often people need support and coaching to translate that feedback into sustainable action. Connecting a leader to a trusted partner to develop and administer a 360 degree feedback instrument in the starting point and then providing ongoing support is essential to make meaningful change.
Leaders Worth Following own their weaknesses and know how to ask for help
This is an essential step that comes once you face your reality, because when you’re honest with yourself, your reality might tell you that things aren’t very good at the moment. Owning our weaknesses means we accept responsibility for our own stuff and don’t put that onto other people, especially those we are leading. The next step is to address our weaknesses; to do something about them, and this is where asking for help comes in.
Leaders who are not afraid of their weaknesses and who know how to ask for help inspire people. When you are open about your weaknesses and ask for help, people will want to be led by you because they see that you are continually improving and therefore know that you will help them to do the same. To be vulnerable in this way, we need that self-awareness and empathy to ensure that when we show others our weaknesses, it doesn’t make us feel weak and feed into a sense of fear or anger. We need to know ourselves deeply and understand our emotions so that we can regulate them.
One part of a coaching relationship is having someone who caringly and empathetically "holds up a mirror" so a leader can get a real look at themselves.
Leaders Worth Following are mentally tough and emotionally predictable
Following on from being able to own our weaknesses and ask for help is the seventh element of being A Leader Worth Following – being mentally tough and emotionally predictable. All leaders need a healthy dose of resiliency, especially in today’s world. For me, being mentally tough means being able to withstand being uncomfortable for a while.
Often it feels as though society doesn’t want us to feel uncomfortable and makes being uncomfortable a bad thing, when the reality is that being uncomfortable is part of life and often when we can push through that discomfort it leads to better things. Think of a yoga practice as an example – often the postures you hold feel uncomfortable, but when you hold through that discomfort, you find a release that simply isn’t possible without dealing with that discomfort first.
It’s important, however, that we don’t conflate the concept of toughness with being unbending or unyielding. Toughness is about having flexibility so that we are able to withstand external forces acting on us without breaking. As leaders, being mentally tough and able to function when we are uncomfortable is important, but so too is being emotionally predictable for our people.
Emotional predictability doesn’t mean that we can’t have moments where we let off steam, but it does mean that we make sure we let off steam at an appropriate time. Uncertainty is something that most of us find challenging to deal with, so when we are emotionally predictable as leaders, we remove a layer of uncertainty in any situation. The people around us will therefore know how we will react and how we are going to behave, which in turn gives everyone room and safety to function well. I’ll talk more about how you can cultivate emotional control and therefore deliver that emotional predictability in Chapter 4.
Emotional regulation is an important part of leadership and through the coaching process these skills can become an easily accessible tool that the leader using is a proactive manner.
Leaders Worth Following change themselves first
Every element I have set out here is something that we should be working on in ourselves first. None of them are a destination, they are all part of a journey – our leadership journey. One thing I have observed on my own leadership journey and in my interactions with other leaders, is that it’s incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to ask other people to change if you’re not willing to change yourself.
If you want to teach your people the path of becoming A Leader Worth Following, the best way to do so is by modeling that behavior and embracing it. All eight elements of becoming A Leader Worth Following come from within you – and when you are able to put in the work in each of those areas, you’ll notice that those around you often start doing the same. It is fitting, then, that we begin our exploration of what it takes to become A Leader Worth Following by diving into your leadership foundation: self-management, focus and leadership.
Leaders who understand the change process can be the change they want to see in themselves and thier teams. Leaders can learn about the 5 Stages of Change through the "Becoming a Leader Worth Following Change Managment process based of the proven techniques from Motivational Interviewing and the latest techniques from Susan Fowler's research on motivational science.