Love Leadership
Let us introduce our new columnist Katherine Farnworth, who offers advice and insight into how she helps people throughout the world to love leadership
Based in Lancashire most of my life, I have been a management consultant involved in training for 20 years and a freelance consultant for almost a decade, working in the UK and internationally, most recently in Australia.
So, let’s start with you…
Have you been recently promoted or maybe you have been a manager for a while? Did you receive management training and do you enjoy your role as manager?
If you ask most people what are the attributes of a good leader, they might mention the ability to provide clarity, stay calm, be approachable, listen to ideas, and empower others, whilst of course, recognising good performance and not being afraid to face into poor performance.
In any management development training, the first person to focus on is you. Hold a mirror to yourself, without judgement, before considering how to manage others. Self-awareness is a key part of emotional intelligence (EI) – a theory introduced by Salovey and Mayer and later developed by Daniel Goleman. In essence, emotional intelligence is being aware of, and managing, self, and being aware of, and understanding your impact on, others. Managed well, this can create great relationships, a key part of leadership.
It is important to be aware of your strengths, rather than dwell on your ‘weakness’. People have more energy around their strengths and it is good to know how you positively contribute. We do, however, need to be aware of our ‘emotional triggers’.
We all have triggers. And triggers need not be a problem at all, unless they start to negatively impact on others. There does seem to be a few common ones that some of us might identify with. Being a perfectionist, not a bad thing at all, can occasionally however make it difficult to ‘let go’, because of the desire to maintain a high standard only you can achieve.
The impact might be you do not empower others, and they might feel you do not have confidence in them. This might not be the intention, but is the impact. Likewise, the need to be in control might mean that you ‘tell’ others what to do most of the time, with the aim of giving clear direction, but the impact can be others do not feel trusted to know what needs to be done. A trigger might even be threatened by a strong performer in your team. You might become defensive and not celebrate or develop others. Triggers are understandable, we are human, but not always helpful.
A trigger could drive an emotional reaction that negatively impacts on others. Your need overrides theirs. A good leader identifies what others need, and provides that. It is how a leader makes people feel that determines how others view their leadership capability. Incidentally, if we cannot manage our emotional reaction, that dramatically decreases our ability to stay calm and be approachable. All those great attributes of a leader we identified earlier.
So, what are your strengths? What are your triggers? And importantly, how can you manage your emotional reaction so you allow your strengths to shine through, and work for your team, and you.
