"You lead by focusing on clear accountability and motivating your people," said one of my bosses as she was training me. "Your success always follows if you start there."

Success did indeed follow, but we could never sustain it. The deeper qualities we needed to grow in the longer term, like trust, determination, mutual respect, and loyalty, were never discussed, let alone taught. We led for the short term and paid the price in poor attitudes, relationships and staff turnover - all symptoms of constantly putting self before team.

Sometimes I wonder if we could be teaching leadership the wrong way? When I share my experiences with other ANE leaders they seem to agree. 

The leader's job is always to get the right focus for conversations in difficult situations. So should the leader focus on the output, the people, or what? The answer is that rather than telling people what to do they are often perfectly able to solve things for themselves if we set the right tone. That's why we connect to our spiritual center first in situations. Our calm, confident, connected attitude sets the tone for discussions. Accountability and motivation, still so important, become less the focus and more the consequence of shared deeper values. 

This week, try this experiment at your decision making meetings. Instead of starting with "What do we have to get done, and who's going to do it?", start with "Are we all fully present, committed, and confident about the decision making we have to do?" Let these deeper qualities come to the surface at the start so that people's comments can guide your conversation.

Stephen
Calm, Confident, Connected

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