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Courageous Leadership

Written by: Deborah Kimmett

Article Overview: How TO Be Flexible as a Leader. How to Cultivate Courage by Saying Yes.

Courageous Leadership

THE COURAGEOUS LEADER


As leadership becomes more demanding, supervisors need to develop more open, flexible and responsive skills. One needs the ability to assess the environment, and to coach the team to respond to situations as they present themselves in the moment.

Improvisation Helps Cultivate This Movement.



THE FUNDAMENTALS OF IMPROVISATION:

1.) Say Yes, And.
2.) Make the Other Person Look Good.
RISK THE FOUR C’S
If we wish to develop courage Guy Claxon says we must risk the 4 Cs.

Consistency: The same old way of doing things.

Comfort: Trying new things can feel uncomfortable.

Confidence: We have to try things in a new way before we become confident. And we sometimes will have to deal with 80 percent certainty.

Competence: Must Risk knowing ahead of time how things will turn out.


Risk Comfort: When we first try doing something we feel uncomfortable, but repetition soon makes us feel more comfortable. Our mind is like a search engine that automatically finds patterns and strategies within the new structure, and comes up with ways to solve the problem.



Risk Consistency: We need to trick our minds into creating new ideas. A good example is physical exercise. The reason a personal trainer changes up the exercises is to surprise the muscles by acting in a new way. Solutions will present themselves when you do something physical. Or different.



Risk Confidence: Not ALL ideas are going to be 100 percent perfect, but an entrepreneur must try new ways of doing things. It’s like a correspondence course. We will get instruction on what the next right step is as we go. And again, we will develop trust in our ability to find answers as we go along.


Risk Competence: A courageous person makes mistakes, and this needs to happen in order for new ideas to come forward. Also, the mistake will often lead to a new idea, which leads to an even better idea. If you can cultivate this in yourself, you are leading by example.


LISTEN ACTIVELY: Often, people listen competitively, or long enough to interrupt. Sometimes we one-up the person to gain power. Another way to block improvising is to pepper conversations with questions. If you are a leader you need to be aware of the final destination, but be open to the many ways of getting there. Our employees have experiences and ideas. As a great leader we want to allow them the dignity of being right sometimes. It will nurture an environment for people to solve the problems that are theirs to solve.





LEAD PEOPLE TO YOUR IDEAS: Are your ideas being received? You may think you are clear, concise and creative, but because of people’s personal filters YOU have to make sure they are receiving what you are saying. If you have been with a concept longer than a member of your team, it will take repetition and consistency in order for them to really understand what you are getting at. If you are new to leadership you will have to go through the hoops of moving from a peer to a leader. So, it’s imperative to communicate more often and check out what is being said.

One way to do this is to speak directly and not through voice mail or email. A lot of communication is body language so you have a higher chance at being understood in front of a person.



SAY YES: FOUR STYLES OF COMMUNICATION:
No, But
No, And
Yes, But
Yes, And

Yes, And is the best way for effective problem solving and idea generating sessions. Often a lot of us live in the land of Yes, But. Sometimes, it’s just a habit or a way of resisting someone else being right, or a way to look like we already know. But coming from a leader, it creates a sense of superiority. Yes, And means Building on Ideas rather than knocking them down, and it allows you and your team to create a solution in the moment.



ALLOW STRATEGIES TO EMERGE IN THE MOMENT: As a leader you often know where you have to get the team to end up. But teams are ultimately creative, and if you set the environment for some flexibility in ideas, teams have wonderful ways of finding entrepreneurial solutions.

Just as negative energy builds, so does positive. The more we create an opportunity for strategies to emerge, or the more we Yes, And, we allow a certain positive energy to build and people start to trust their own ability to find solutions.

In plain English, let other people win a few.

ACT YOUR WAY INTO GOOD THINKING: Courage is acting, not thinking about it. We need to take one action daily that challenges our old way of thinking. Act first, and the thinking around risk will change. We get better with practice. Set one goal a day that stretches that old muscle your brain.



FEED YOUR MIND: Although an improvisational organization may look like there is no script, it is exactly the opposite. Improvisational organizations are constantly looking for opportunities, and feeding their minds with new ideas.

Your mind spits back to you what you feed it. Committing to ways you can Yes, And, primes the pump for the Change to Happen. Developing an improvisational or entrepreneurial style doesn’t just happen; you need to practice it daily and create measurable change behaviours.

Related Articles
  Courageous Conversations
  LEADERS DISPLAY COURAGE BY CHOICE NOT BY CHANCE.
  Wanted: Courageous Leaders
  Developing Your Leadership Skills
  The Three Most Important Leadership Qualities in Small Business.

Article Tags: courage, humour improvisation, leadership, resonating



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