Every time we turn around these days there’s some new guru, movie star, or government official being declared as our new models of leadership. Whether it is for their brash “take no prisoners” attitude or their millions of followers and dollars, leaders are being held up as the people we should model ourselves after.
Let’s be honest here—there are many leaders who are secretly pulling their hair out. The reason is that in spite of all the accolades, they cannot get the best results out of their team, colleagues, or tribe. They are simply not executing excellence. They are allowing mediocrity and “doing whatever they feel” to dominate the way that they lead. The media has misinformed the masses about what it takes to be an admirable example of leadership.
Leadership needs to cost you something in your own growth. Executing excellence every day means showing up ready to lead in a way that teaches you something significant about yourself, especially when it comes to conflict. The way a leader deals with conflict is a message about what they know about executing excellence. These 4 tips from the book, “Closing Conflict For Leaders: How To Be A Bold Leader And Develop A Kick-Ass, High-Functioning, Happy AF Team” will get you started.
Four Tips for Achieving Excellence in Leadership:
1.You Don’t Have to Respond to Everything Bad that Someone Says About You
In other words, sometimes you just have to ignore what people say. With the popularity of social media, specifically Twitter, we are seeing leaders in every arena ‘clapping back’ at every remark made against them harder and faster. This is the opposite of what your team needs to feel; they need to feel safe to make mistakes and learn how to do their best for you and the business. Bold Leadership requires a higher skill level when managing feelings, triggers and reactions. People are often unhappy under the leadership of a person who doesn’t know how to walk away, or who just cannot let a remark go unanswered.
2. Do Unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto You
The best work climates are those where people feel respected and cared for, and where leaders live by this rule. These leaders don’t name-call, scream, berate and/or intimidate their team in order to get them to fear them and be more productive.
The mistake often made by leaders is that they wind up doing the things that were done to them even though they hated it. Bold Leaders know that the very things they hate being done to them are the things that will cause resentment, dissatisfaction, and a desire to leave the company.
3. Apologies are a Necessary Part of the Work
Apologies are hard work, even for those of us who don’t find it that difficult to apologize. Saying the words is the easy part. The difficulty lies in the work that we need to do in order to get us to the place where we realize that we need to apologize. The key to apologies is knowing and remembering that most conflicts, misunderstandings, and feelings often set up the need for an apology.
Be prepared to examine your own mindset, words, beliefs, and actions whenever you are involved in a conflict since the apology may need to come from you. If so, keep in mind that with so much negative stigma attached to saying the words “I’m sorry” and “I apologize,” you may not want or need to lead with an apology. In conversation, people want to know that they have been heard and that you can recognize you’re wrong from their point of view. Reflecting their words back to them and then apologizing at the end can be even more heart-felt because an understanding has been established.
4. Look for Meaning in Your Words and Actions
Doing the work to understand the meaning of your actions and words allows room for the possibility that you may not know the true meaning of other’s words and actions. Most people look at making mistakes and getting into conflict as a bad thing that must be avoided at all costs. When in fact, digging deep in to the untapped wisdom in conflict allows us to find the meaning behind the conditioned responses that we’ve come to believe are our true selves in conflict.
Society has taught us that looking within and finding meaning behind our words and actions makes our leadership look weak. Buying into these beliefs has taken you away from the wisdom that lies within you. It has prevented you from being the powerful, impactful, influential, skilled, confident, Bold Leader that you are here to be.
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