Day in and day out we meet many colleagues, peers, seniors in professional life. But, some of them who inspire us are leaders. And very few of them leaves us in ‘awe’ about their personality and aura. I recently met, got inspired and ‘awe’d about one of such leaders, who is majestic at his leadership, gentle in personality, fun as human and powerful at thoughts. This is a combination which is magical & I connected with him discussing on few situations and his point of view. To build this, we need the right ecosystem around. We need to think beyond definitions of leadership and expectations in goal sheet. Sharing the simple seven tips carved out from his chat for all of us to reflect upon and implement. These are great inputs for building right ecosystem in professional environment –
- Don’t be judgemental : I like observing positive traits of people , but I also introspected recently to understand I can easily get judgmental on others. In my current phase of learning how not to be judgemental, I looked up to this leader, who doesn’t label anyone rather let people be themselves. We usually tend to find our kind of people, with our comfort level, but when we get non judgemental, we can create a good ecosystem for everyone.
- Build leaders : Managers will grow up the ladders themselves, but we need to build the leaders. And beauty is everyone have leadership qualities. They need someone who can enable them to become leaders.
- Role vs ego : When we get into arguments, fighting with the other persons ego is not going to make anything better. We are here for a role, for work to get over. Taking things personal and spoiling with ego is not going to be fruitful for anyone, mostly for the role we have at work.
- Don’t be transactional always : Today most of the conversations, meetings at professional life becomes very transactional. I want this report, let me share this data etc. It is very important to jump out of the transactional phase and connect with people at work.
- Belongingness before anything : The first step in any team formation is trust. We all know this from many examples. How to build trust? It comes with belongingness. Creating the environment where each member feels they are part of it, they feel responsible and involved – is the base for any success and growth together.
- Encourage failures : I was shocked when this leader casually said, I encourage failures. The agile methodology speaks about fail safe, fail fast. But having the confidence that our leader is there to back you up during failure is the mindset which will also lead innovations. Simple example is when we learn to ride a bicycle, the parent will hold the backside of the cycle. We will start riding confidently that someone is holding us , to catch if we fall. This works well in leadership too.
- Acceptance : How have people accepted you? How have you accepted people? This is a great point to ponder. We might have competent leaders with incredible success, but if people have not accepted one as a leader, there is no starting point. Once there is acceptance, we are open to be ourselves both ways.
The above 7 points really made my morning introspection today, drawing inspiration from an amazing leader at work. Hope the tips also help you start your journey towards building the right ecosystem with growth.