Greetings!
Welcome to “Cultivating your Leadership Brand” series.
The purpose of this series is to provide tips, tools and resources to help you develop an effective leadership brand that drives high quality performance and allows you to bring your best self to work everyday while inspiring others to do the same!
Successful leaders are aware of how they are perceived and recognized in the organization by those they manage, their peers and senior leadership. Driving results in your organization is rooted in how well you can motivate, develop, and productively interact with others. Successful leaders have the ability to manage their behaviors, in the moment, as well as manage their relationships with others.
They have high Emotional Intelligence.
Great leaders are willing and able to overcome obstacles to get what they want. They are
resilient!
They know how to cope in spite of setbacks and are able to bounce back from adversity and disappointments to achieve their vision. Great leaders persevere and are diligent in face of failures.
How do they do it with such ease and grace?
For starters, successful leaders practice healthy living. We can’t be resilient if we’re lacking sleep, are stressed, don't manage our physical activity or diet. If you want to increase your resiliency, the first step is to identify ways to build in periods of rest and renewal so you can face life’s inevitable tough times with strength.
Next, successful leaders see setbacks as temporary and failures as isolated and short term. They don't dwell, get stuck in the past or second guess important decisions that prevent them from moving forward.
Of course, even the most successful leaders experience negative “self-talk”. You know that little voice in your head that says “what were you thinking?” or “you’ll never come back from this one.”
In order to become or remain resilient, it’s important to understand your own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Do they contribute to your resilience or make it more difficult? Once you understand the impact your thoughts, feelings, and actions can have, you are better able to make positive changes.
Challenge the negative “self-talk” by asking yourself, “what’s my real belief here?” and “is there any evidence behind this self-doubt?”
In the book,
The Resilience Factor,
Karen Reivich, Ph.D. and Andrew Shatte, Ph.D., share
7 Essential Skills for Overcoming Life’s Inevitable Obstacles.
The following "Putting it into Perspective Tool"
is adapted from the book and allows you to create more accurate thinking regarding a situation resulting in greater personal resilience.
Write down your beliefs regarding the situation that is holding you back:
- What is the worst thing that can happen? It is important to remember the items that you can really be sure about. The rest is guesswork.
- Assess the probability of the worst case. How likely is it to happen?
- What is one thing I can do to help stop the worst thing from happening? It’s important to break free of the chain of future-threat beliefs. It is in your best interest to establish what’s most likely to happen and take steps to prepare for it.
- Alternatively, and in addition, what is the best thing that can happen? What does it take to climb out of a future-threat rut? It’s critically important to create best-case scenarios. This will help you move beyond the worst-case scenario.
- Be creative and wildly optimistic. What is one thing I can do to make the best thing happen? Once you have the worst- and best- case scenarios in place as a frame, it is easier for you to locate the most likely outcomes.
- What is the most likely thing that will happen? Write down your solution strategies; devise two or three ways that you can fix the real problems that stem from your adversity.
- What can I do to handle the most likely thing if it happens? What steps can you take to handle the most likely outcome? Work on zeroing in on the most likely outcome.
Need additional support? Seek help from others in your life such as family and friends, coworkers, or a professional leadership coach. You don’t have to go it alone!
Do you seek out new ideas and approaches or do you become anxious or hesitant when confronted with change? Next week we will explore tips for
developing
Creativity and Innovation.
Ready to take your leadership brand to the next level?
Invest in yourself, your people and your organization by registering for our eye-opening and dynamic 2-day workshop designed to cultivate your leadership brand and keep you and your employees performing at their best.
