Lessons for Leaders That Want to Last.......
Lessons for Leaders That Want to Last.......
Are you a leader that wants to leave a LEGACY? How would you like to be remembered? What leadership lessons will you share to help other leaders?
Most of us at some point in lives; can remember someone who has inspired us; perhaps a manager’s support and guidance has encouraged us to apply for and get a job we thought was well above our pay grade; maybe a friend’s actions went above and beyond, their kindness touched us and was enough to help us move forward at a difficult time in our lives; or possibly a conversation with a business colleague gives us the opportunity of a lifetime and as a result; our lives were enriched beyond our greatest expectations.
Often the interventions and interactions that these inspiring individuals undertake with us are so small that they don’t even realise they have helped us; yet they are incredibly valuable to us and to our lives and as a result even years later; we still remember them and re-count how they happened and the impact they had on our lives.
These individuals who care enough to share these moments with us go on to become the true leaders who linger in our thoughts and leave a lasting legacy on a lives.
Is it important for us to leave a Legacy?
Leaving a legacy is an incredibly personal thing and not everyone feels the need to do this. Some might say our desire to leave a legacy is inherent in us; our ability to procreate provides us with the perfect reason as to why we should ultimately leave something behind.
Others decide to leave a legacy because of the experiences that they have been through in their lives; they want to be able to give back and to do something that will help others and finally some people simply want to leave a legacy because they feel that by doing so, their life has in some way, had meaning.
This was my reason and why my legacy started.
Losing my Identity through Infertility
In 2014 at the tender age of 40 and after 2 rounds of IVF treatment, I was told to give up on my dream of having my own baby; and the chance to pass on the learnings and my experience to my own child that I had gained over a 25 years career, was gone. Dealing with my own infertility and being unable to leave my own biological legacy was the catalyst that lead me to first become; a teacher, a Director of Education and now a Leadership coach.
Finding Myself after Losing My Chance to Be A Mum
Recognising why I became a Leadership coach and the legacy I want to leave is incredibly important to me and is what drives me to do what I do, every day.
Over the last few years I have begun to realise that leadership is not just about status; it’s very much about our identity; who we are, what we stand for; what we’ve achieved in our lives, the difference we’ve made; and these very much impact on how we lead our own lives and how we lead others.
If you lose your faith in who you are; then finding a reason to move forward and to be the leader you can be is incredibly difficult, and it can make you start to lose confidence in everything that you do and that’s exactly what infertility did to me.
I questioned everything about me, the person I was; I mean, what kind of woman can’t have a baby; my achievements and previous accolades meant nothing, because the one thing I wanted desperately I couldn’t have; and most importantly what was I going to do with the rest of my life. There were times when I even wondered if there was any point to my life; if what I had learned over a lifetime through hard work and perseverance would never be passed on.
I came out of the process; a different person, with a different outlook on life.
I wanted to share my knowledge and experience with as many people as I could, I wanted to work with young children; if I couldn’t have my own then I damn well wanted to help other people’s. I wanted them to have access to a great education so they could to experience the life and the career that I too had enjoyed.
I am privileged to have been able to make a very small difference to the young men and woman over the last four and a half years through my role as Director of STEM and as a teacher at the FE College I worked at in the Lake District.
My priority now though is to develop others, to help them to find their place in life and to make sure that they live the life they want. I was lucky enough not only to be able to develop our learners, but I was given the opportunity to work with my leadership team and to help them to hone their leadership skills.
Since leaving the college, I have started to do this through the creation of a leadership development model and a suite of courses that start first by looking at the individual and then developing individuals into leaders by applying a range of skills.
Paying it Forward
I am now in a position to ‘Pay it Forward’. The young girl that started as an apprentice at a Radiator factory in Team Valley and ended up, a Director of a Further Education College who then went on to work for herself is now very much leaving a legacy. I’m proud to say that I’ve already identified and given opportunities to a number of young people and leaders. I strive every day to help others; to work with people to find what drives them to make a difference and to help them to be able leave their legacy in life; whatever that looks and feels like.
I’ve put together a short list of the lessons that I’ve learned from leaders whose messages have left a lasting impact on my life and I wanted to share them with you!
Lessons that will help your Leadership Last:-
1. Use ‘ME’ when your staff experience failure but use ‘YOU’ when you acknowledge their success.
Great leaders are those who recognise their role in the development of their staff, so they use terms like ‘we’, ‘the team’ when they are working with their people. As a result of this, staff are not afraid to admit when things go wrong or raise their hand if they’re not sure what they need to do next. The benefits of this are that staff know who to go to if they encounter a problem and this builds confidence in themselves and in their ability to sort out problems.
Most importantly what differentiates these leaders is that when things go wrong, they don’t immediately seek to apportion blame or question capability; instead what they question first is; was there anything they could have done differently to have changed the outcome of the activity. Their immediate focus when things go wrong is on the ME first, then the WE and only on the YOU when success is achieved.
2. DEVELOP your staff so your staff can DEVELOP the organisation.
Leaders who make a difference are the ones that recognise the importance and impact that professional development has on staff and the organisation. These are the leaders who offer their staff the opportunity to take their place at courses when the dates don’t work in their diaries. They are the ones who leave books in the bays that people work in; they understand the importance of being better than they were yesterday and they are constantly seeking to better themselves through belonging to best practice groups.
Leaders like this realise that if they develop their staff, they will increase their level of skills, knowledge and understanding and their confidence; and from this, their staff will ultimately develop the organisation for them.
3. Create a fear-less environment by accepting a fail-more culture.
Many leaders themselves still struggle to accept that it is better to make mistakes and learn from these and be able to move forward than it is to maintain the status quo, play it safe and to not take any chances at all, for fear of mistakes and repercussions. The concept therefore of encouraging and supporting staff when they make mistakes is too much for some leaders to contend with.
What these leaders don’t realise is that when we make mistakes and we do so without the fear of retribution, we are not only liberated, and become more creative but we also become much more resilient; and see failure not as a negative but as an opportunity to practice, to learn and to master. We also develop more confidence in ourselves and our ability to resolve issues, so we start to become more reflective, more resourceful and much more responsive; because we want to see success happen more quickly. Reflection is an incredibly important skill that the best leaders do consistently to ensure that they learn from everything that they do. By allowing our staff the opportunity to reflect on what went well and what didn’t; we give them the chance to reassess their decisions and their actions and to really become experts in assessing whether situations are going to work or cause us major problems and by this they are far more willing to take risks and it is through taking calculated risks that organisations and individuals really grow.
4. Empower people to understand their ‘why’ so they can excel at their ‘what’.
Leaders who leave lasting legacies help their staff to find out who they are and what they want from their work. The difference between these leaders and other leaders is that they provide opportunities for their staff to experience their “why’s” so they can then go about mastering their “what”. Leaders who genuinely want the best for their staff will even go as far as supporting them when they decide to leave the organisation, because what’s most important is what’s right for the person. I myself, have spent much time with individuals talking through what options they have for their careers, knowing that I’m likely losing an incredibly valuable employee but realising it’s the right thing for them! People may disagree with this but if a person is unhappy in what they do, it will manifest itself somehow in their work and in the way, they serve their customers. It is far better that they find something they love, that they want to do with all of their passion even if it means leaving a well-paid job and losing a well-respected member of the team.
On December 13th 2019 at Huddersfield, I finally shared my full story and l was able leave my legacy.
My question to you is;
Are you able to make a difference to someone today? Is there someone who you can help pay it forward for? What will your legacy be and who will you help to benefit from it?
