Tag: values

Your edge

FabrizioLeave a comment

The easiest thing to do with your fear, anxiety, tiredness, stress, mistake, inadequacy, disappointment is to place them on others. Yell, demote, gossip, badmouth, exhaust, demand. It’s almost automatic to resort to these when things get tough.

The alternative is owning all of that. Knowing that’s part of you, identifying it in time, expressing it with words so that you don’t have to do it with actions. It is the long road, it is challenging and it takes time and practice to get there. And that’s where you’ll find your edge.

New leaders

FabrizioLeave a comment

How do you communicate with your team? This is an excellent example.

That does not mean you have to be a mum and make jokes about the smell of your child’s nappies. It’s about understanding the situation, being able to show your vulnerabilities and reminding yourself that literally no one in your team (whether it’s 5 or 5 million people) expects you to be a god-like creature with all the answers to all the questions.

The idea that as leaders we are flawless, unwavering and enlightened is out-of-date and makes more harm than good day after day. It’s time to promote new types of leadership. And already it feels we have been talking about this forever.

Break

FabrizioLeave a comment

If you have not yet, now it is a very good time to reach out to your colleagues and team members and ask how they are doing and what they need.

Perhaps initially this work-from-home-with-social-distancing-and-home-schooling-during-a-pandemic sounded like a nice turn of event, something that could help people refocus and companies reorganize e restrategize. More than two months into this, the reality is very different.

So, here is a list of question to start asking consistently during work days. Whether you are one or not, act as a leader, because that’s what people need right now.

P.S.: here is a good example of what a true leader does when they are guided by empathy.

Subtractive

FabrizioLeave a comment

Whenever you make a decision, something is left behind.

Not necessarily something bad. It might be a great idea, a wonderful opportunity, a majestic new era. The better the people around you, the better what is discarded will be. And yet, it needs to be this way, because there is no time, energy, resources, speed for all of it.

Making a decision is always a subtractive process, you have to remove what does not fit (at least this time) until you are left with a plan that makes sense and that can lead forward. It’s a loss, to many people, and it’s important to treat it as such. Mourn, communicate, reach out, grieve. And then, together, execute.

The way you go about this will determine how much people will contribute and how committed their contribution will be.

Burden

FabrizioLeave a comment

What good is a category if all it does is burdening our days with indignation, anger, resentment and negativity?

It’s positive to identify as this or that, use categories to make sense of the world around us, but let’s forgo their capacity of pitching us against the others. It is just another face of resistance, and it does not serve any of our purposes.