I once worked on a strategy for a Prime Minister. Our team did months of work, collaborated with hundreds of stakeholders and produced pages of analysis and recommendations. Our findings shaped a spending review and made a difference to what was prioritised and delivered. It succeeded because we did good work. But to this day I believe that at least some of that success was down to the fact that we were able to boil the whole thing down to one page of A4.
An amazing leader I work with asked me last week if we could try to distill the key take-aways from our coaching on one such single page. She wanted to take it with her, from notebook to notebook, from job to job. So, we had a go. It was great to take a step back and review everything we had covered in a year… and it made me want to do the same with you.
So, here’s the first half of my “Top of Pops” for 2023… the themes and insights that came up most often and most resonated with me and the leaders I coach. Perhaps these are the ones we’ll dance to for years to come. (A countdown, of course – with the top five coming in the new year!)
🔟Be reliable too: building trust comes up again and again in our leadership struggles, from how we create safe environments for our people to get the best out of everyone, through to how we work effectively with fellow leaders to become more than the sum of our parts. Being credible and vulnerable is essential, and well-known, but the aspect I find is most often overlooked is reliability. Do you turn up? Do you do what you say you will do? Being an expert and showing your human side aren’t enough, be reliable too. (See the Trust Equation for more on this).
9️⃣Curiouser and curiouser: it has been said that we come to any situation from one of four places: from fear, judgement, curiosity or compassion. I’ve seen how shifting myself out of fear or judgement and into curiosity liberates me from a whole host of assumptions (about myself and others) that were making me less effective and stopping me learning. The step to compassion can be harder but there’s even greater growth there.
8️⃣Stop the thought: rumination, worry and anxiety about what we did, decided or said or must do, or decide or say next can plague us as leaders and make it harder to leave work at the door. How much sleep is lost to action-replays in your head or catastrophic visions of the future? Training my brain to catch these thoughts and stop them in their ruinous tracks has been one of the hardest-fought wins of my year. After much trial and error, I\’ve found a way to spot when I was falling into a loop of biased thinking, to pause and question the thought and to flip it into something more grounded. Thanks especially to my coach and to the work of Byron Katie.
7️⃣Try it on: we all know that experimentation is a key part of the change process, whether that’s trying out a new leadership technique, shifting careers or challenging a deeply held assumption that holds us back in some ways. I’ve found myself going back to first principles on this one, talking through the concept of experimenting, where the idea is to gather data, to test and explore hypotheses, and not necessarily to ‘just do it’. A shopping analogy has helped: I might go out looking for jeans and come back with a hat, but I can’t decide in theory – I’ll only know what I really want if I try it on and see how it looks. Herminia Ibarra\’s Working Identity is a great read for this.
6️⃣Let it go: \”I just want to make them feel [fill in the blank]\”. Letting go of the idea that we can make anyone else feel (or understand or even hear) what we choose paves the way for exploring what we can influence instead. This helps us face difficult conversations with more meaningful intent and greater compassion for ourselves. So much of our leadership and our potential for growth depends on getting comfortable with not being in control.
Next time, the top 5, including the stories we tell ourselves and getting out of the drama…
What’s in your top ten this year?
