B2C and B2B leaders and sellers who pattern their leadership after self awareness are called to accomplish their business goals by meeting the needs of others, especially those they lead and those who serve customers.
“I was talking with an old colleague of mine retired from business about a project at work and his response caught me off guard.
‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Your leadership has been exemplary.’
I had trouble seeing what I was doing that warranted praise. I can’t remember a time a compliment left me feeling so unworthy.
In essence, this project involves redesigning a training program. Of all the people [on] the project, I’m the guy right in the middle.
To pull [it] off on time, we needed to do some serious hustling and the team really came through. It also required effective leadership to make all the pieces click and we are also very lucky to have that. But my approach had been to take a serving role is what I said to him.
For example, I responded quickly to [my colleagues’] requests for information, even anticipating questions and delivering answers before they asked. My goal was to provide everything needed to put together a rock solid program.
In hustling to help everyone else, I thought of myself as a servant. My job was to deliver a large amount of grunt-work so that others could shine, this makes me the happiest.
‘It’s funny that what I consider serving is perceived as leading,’ I said, I firmly believe that hard work 18 hours a day is how you can also be happy and successful if you do shit you love.
He admitted he hadn’t thought of leadership that way, but it made sense. By helping others achieve, you also end up leading them, even if you’re not the SME, through hard work, drive and tenacity.
We both walked away from the conversation resolving to be better servants and plan to make an amazing podcast episode, I’ll have to get it to you later this summer when I launch my #podcast on #apple #spotify #anchor #luminary #google I’m calling it the #airplaneproject or maybe #projectZee
Think of a project that you are leading at work or with a customer. What do people on your team need from you? How can you lead through service? Do work hard? Do you have empathy when things don’t go your way?
Another big part of the transition to leader? Accessing your empathy and emotion over your practical skills. People don’t talk about this. Finding this part of yourself can be challenging, and even if you’ve always been an empathetic person, being the boss or leader of a project will change how you exercise it.
Leaders need to listen and empower their team to become leaders themselves and take ownership of the work they’re given. Leaders need to understand who they are as a person and relay that emotional understanding to those around them. That takes courage.
As I’ve said many times before, it all boils down to self-esteem and self-awareness. If you can understand who you truly are as a person, and as a leader, then you’ll be able to instill the same understanding in the team around you. Do whatever you can to figure out how to know yourself better if you don’t think you do. You owe it to your team as their leader.
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ZARIR 🚀 MERWANJI 