In order to be successful at leading those around you, whether it’s in a family situation, sport or business, Step 1 is to actually have the ability to lead yourself. And in order to be able to lead yourself, to successfully address problems or issues - you need to be able to monitor your own emotions, your own reactions so that you can make good decisions. It’s all about awareness…which is the key to high performance.
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Awareness as the cornerstone for high performance
As a leader, the best way of getting high performance out of an organisation is to enable your next line leaders to coach themselves and then to turn their attention to coaching others within their group, who coach others within their group….and it rolls on, effectively like waves rolling onto a beach. But if you don’t start from the cornerstone of awareness, you can’t even begin to get the momentum to put that wave into motion.
The best way for me to describe this is to use a footy example. When I played for Collingwood, our head coach couldn’t run onto the field in the middle of a game and tell me “hey mate that’s not right.” I had to have my concentration turned up to full, be aware of the job I was supposed to be doing, be aware of what I was actually doing and know if there was any shortfall. I had to sort it out for myself and then mid-match, coach the younger ones around me on the ground, so that they could step up to what they were supposed to be doing. In turn, when I retired, these younger guys took over the process of coaching the more inexperienced guys around them on the ground and so the wave rolls on.
Strengths and weaknesses
In order to achieve this kind of high performance (whether personal, or to motivate others), you must first have awareness; and the key to awareness is to understand your strengths and weaknesses and to consistently review them. The critical move is to not only work on your weaknesses in order to improve them, but in tandem, to continue to work on your strengths. Awareness is all about this process of internal monitoring and maintaining balance. A common mistake is to fine-tune all of your attention toward something you want to improve, and drop the ball on everything else. You might improve that one thing with persistence and effort, but if in the process you let go of the things you were doing right you can quickly find yourself back to square one. If you think that this sounds tricky, at least you have the benefit of thinking about how it applies to you, in advance, from the comfort of wherever you’re reading…I had to learn the hard way, in the thick of it both on and off the field! But I’m hoping this experience gained by hard yards will benefit all at WHI to be the best they can be.
Understanding and compassion
The take home message here is to get the best out of yourself and in doing that, try and get the best out of everyone around you. Constantly monitor your strengths and weaknesses, make sure you have the facts on things, but also learn to trust your instincts more. The more your self-confidence increases, the more this will happen. The other side of the equation is that in order to maximise your awareness you need understanding (of both yourself and others) and to reach understanding you need compassion. Put yourself in the other one’s shoes. If on your view they are falling short, then there’s going to be a good reason for that, and not one that they are necessarily broadcasting. Be aware enough to care and to ask, and to try. This whole process can best be summed up by the idea of ‘compassionate leadership’. And that also means being compassionate to yourself. Be more forgiving when you aspire to goals but don’t quite reach them. Support yourself and take time out for a 5 minute relaxation to reset the compass towards calmness, not only to benefit your day, but in order to lead others to be their best as well.
