I’ve been running quite a lot of leadership programmes this year. During them, participants and I have explored many of the usual topics: ‘How does leadership differentiate from management?’ How can you ignite the full collective intelligence of your team and your organisation? What can you do to tackle subconscious bias and genuinely drive gender parity? For some people the journey is tough, requiring mindset, attitudinal, and behavioural changes at a deep level; however there are six quite simple practices that anyone can adopt to quite radically change reactive management of tasks and individuals to a more thoughtful approach to leading. Indeed these practices can be valuable to any individual wanting to improve personal performance, but they are really critical for anyone in a leadership position.
Follow these and I guarantee you will see improvements in yourself, your people. and their results.
1. Spend a couple of hours at the beginning of each month to write down the goals you want to achieve in the next 4 weeks. Include mission critical tasks, as well as people management and personal stuff.
2. Spend time to plan your week ahead. Plan time to prepare for meetings and to record outcomes and follow up. Include face to face with people to show recognition and discuss feedforward for development opportunities.
3. Take an hour at the end of each week to reflect and record what you actually achieved. Write down what needs to be achieved in the next week to keep you on target for your monthly goals.
4. Schedule thinking time each week. Allow yourself to day dream. Strategic visions are just dreams with plans.
5. Invest time to reflect on your leadership purpose and values. How well are you doing? How is your motivation for leadership? How is it perceived by others? What are you willing to do differently to improve?
6. Get some exercise. Have fun, connect with friends. Your effectiveness and resilience at work is about more than your rational or intellectual ability. It depends on a balance of body, mind, spiritual and emotional health and wellbeing.
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