What is it like to be led by you?

An essential ingredient for building a high performance consulting firm is defining a set of effective leadership principles. Effective leadership is a differentiator on the battlefield and is a topic that is of strong interest for many of our members. Nevertheless, many owners of consulting firms don’t spend significant amounts of time reflecting on what it is to be led by them.

So we invited Martin Coburn, leadership facilitator, director and coach to encourage them to do just that. Martin is founding director of Natural Direction, which designs and delivers high impact leadership, culture change and communication programmes across a range of sectors. Martin’s webinar was interactive and asked attendees to complete a variety of exercises to consider their leadership capabilities.

Aqui estão algumas amostras do que Martin compartilhou com nossos membros durante sua sessão. A última vez que você pensou em sua reputação? equipe. Ao fazer isso, eles foram convidados a considerar as razões pelas quais eles podem ser escolhidos e as reservas em potencial que alguém pode ter sobre escolhê -las. A chave para este exercício foi entender o que estabelece seu autêntico modelo de liderança pessoal. Isso será particularmente testado durante tempos turbulentos em que as percepções do seu estilo de liderança podem ser impactadas pelos comportamentos das sombras. Martin conduziu um exercício que exemplifica como a lacuna de percepção pode aumentar inesperadamente à medida que outros recebem menos exposição a você, o que normalmente é o caso à medida que você se torna mais sênior. A questão -chave que muitos têm é o potencial retorno de investir em se tornar extraordinário. Ele mostrou dados que destacam o kicker nos retornos dos líderes em desenvolvimento entre os 20% melhores de sua indústria - a grande liderança faz um

Reflecting on your leadership capabilities

Martin started off by asking attendees three questions to consider the gap between their perceived and actual leadership capabilities:

1. When was the last time you thought about your reputation?
2. Do you really know what it is like to be led by you?
3. What demands are you making on yourself to improve?

What’s it like to be led by you?

The audience was then asked to consider a situation where they are being picked for a team. In doing so, they were asked to consider the reasons why they may be picked and the potential reservations someone may have about picking them. The key to this exercise was to understand what establishes their authentic personal leadership model.

Martin pointed out that others’ feedback mainly revolves around who you are being while you are doing and knowing. This will be particularly tested during turbulent times where perceptions of your leadership style can be impacted by shadow behaviors. Martin conducted an exercise which exemplifies how the perception gap can unexpectedly increase as others get less exposure to you, which is typically the case as you become more senior.

Great leadership makes a difference, but what consitutes it?

Next Martin highlighted the importance of understanding where you can be an extraordinary leader. The key question many have is on the potential return on investing in becoming extraordinary. He showed data that highlights the kicker in the returns from developing leaders in the top 20% of their industry – great leadership makes a GRANDE DIFEREIRA. Martin explicou que você não precisa ser bom em todos eles, mas é importante ser bom em alguns deles. Inspirando e motivador outras pessoas a alto desempenho foi observado como uma competência crítica. Embora, disse Martin, isso é normalmente em que os líderes são menos bons. Também houve muitas perguntas perspicazes dos participantes, o que levou a uma discussão interessante sobre como lidar com questões de liderança específicas enfrentadas pelos participantes. A gravação completa da excelente sessão de Martin, juntamente com gravações de todos os nossos eventos, está disponível para os membros através do

The 16 competencies that differentiate extraordinary leaders were then outlines. Martin explained that you don’t need to be good at all of them, but it is important to be good at some of them. Inspiring and motivating others to high performance was noted as being a critical competency. Although, said Martin, this is typically what leaders are least good at.

The session finished with attendees getting into break out groups to discuss their leadership philosophies. There were also lots of insightful questions from attendees, which led to some interesting follow-on discussion on how to deal with specific leadership issues faced by participants. The full recording of Martin’s excellent session, along with recordings of all our events, is available to members via the Hub de crescimento.