Men and Women Leading Forward Now-3Q Leadership
10 Steps to Building the Leadership Strengths YOU Need Now
1 Post & 10 bonus leadership links
A Pink Paper-Shorter than a white paper, but more extensive that a regular post!
© Irene Becker | www.justcoachit.com -The 3Q Edge™ | Improved Reach-Resonance-Results
Helping smart people and organizations lead & communicate forward smarter, faster, happier is what I do best
“Neuroplasticity is better than mind over matter. It’s mind turning into matter.”
Deepak Chopra and Rudolph Tanzi from a great book, Super Brain
The differences between men and women have been documented, argued, joked about; while experts have discovered that there are fundamental biological differences in the way women’s and men’s brains are structured and how they react, the most critical linchpin for 21st Century is the development of a more androgynous brain. Yes, the focus must be in learning and relearning new ways to make male and female brains more effective/androgynous, if you will. Focusing on gender differences is interesting, but it is our ability to not only use intrinsic strengths but reset default patterns and retrain our brains that will help us optimize, humanize and monetize human potential and leadership abilities. The need to find new ways, faster and more effective ways to not only develop the type of leadership strengths we need has never been greater. The emphasis of leadership, the focus of those who lead must encompass the development of improved strategic thought in high stress, high change, and diverse arenas as well as the communication and collaboration that transforms vision into action, strategy into execution, possibility into opportunity and results.
The New Leader, the Successful Leader is a strategic thinker, a whole brained leader (androgynous thinker) with what I call 3Q abilities or strengths; enhanced ideation under stress, improved emotional intelligence and engaged spiritual quotient-values as primary drivers and motivators. Our definition of success is changing and it will continue to change. Corporations and individuals are facing a new reality. Success demands mobilization and optimization of human potential, achieving it means tapping into the purpose that drives human beings. Enabling engagement, empowerment, improved ideation, cognition, communication, collaboration is a core leadership competency. A competency that means developing a more androgynous brain; a competency that means learning and relearning new ways of thinking, doing and communicating that make Peter Senge’s visionary model and ideal of the learning organization must become a reality. And, the organizations we build must be not only learning, but living, leading and contributing entities. Purpose = profit. Human beings need purpose and meaning to be motivated when the going gets tough; and, let’s face it the going is going to get tougher as we continue the march from the age of information to the age of innovation.
Command and control leadership, while still alive and well is a short term, disengaging mode that will lead to a toxic workplace where learning, communicating and doing are obscured. The imperative to coach and train those who lead and those who aspire to greater leadership to develop their 3Q Edge is critical. The coachable moment, the executive focus must be geared towards helping clients/constituents develop R-E-A-C-H (redirect focus, improve confidence, actualize potential, communicate effectively and harvest results) in arenas of high change, high stress and increasing diversity and opportunity.
Ten Steps to Building 3Q Leadership Strengths:
1. Embrace Your Failures. Learn, re-learn, fail and succeed forward. Practice it, model it, and optimize it. Yes, that means getting naked with your failures, taking off the shield of invulnerability and looking at what has not worked, what is not working with new eyes. Eyes that will not only help you lead forward, but help you teach, mentor and coach those you lead to fail forward, faster and better.
2. Understand how your brain works. Use it or risk losing it. Get in the know. The World Health Organization forecasts that stress will be the major cause of disability by the year 2020. American corporations spend in excess of $300 million a year on stress related addictions, problems, presenteeism, absenteeism, personal problems etc. Stop, reflect on your ability to learn brain basics that will help you understand YOUR power to learn, relearn and model/coach and teach others to think, communicate and collaborate more effectively under stress. You do not need to become a neuro-nut, but you need to comprehend YOUR ability to learn, re-learn and re-set default patterns of thinking, doing and communicating that will not help you develop the leadership strengths you need to succeed and to inspire the best in those you lead. Deepak Chopra and Rudolph E. Tanzi recently published an excellent book on brain basics, Super Brain.
3. Practice simple but powerful exercises that help your brain grow, stretch and evolve. Take a few minutes each day to think differently. How? Start by changing a simple routine. Brush your teeth with your non-dominant hand. Try writing sentences backwards. Take a different route to work. Walk down the street and look for things you have never seen before. Take a time each day to feel gratitude. Take time each day to simply laugh and enjoy. Take time each day to learn something new. Practice putting your brain into an alpha state, and important brain state for creativity, ideation, increased focus and improved spiritual connection. What? Yes, get alpha. Here is a quick, but powerful exercise you can do to get into the alpha groove.
4. Human doing is not enough. Human being is the way. Being a cog in a wheel, acting with complacency and blindly following the status quo will not work going forward. Put your head and heart to work. Human relationships count. Employee disengagement, presenteeism are rife in organizations, and they erode potential from inside out. Building trust, engagement, effectiveness; developing a Community of Purpose starts with human being better, not simply doing faster than ever before. Stop, pause, find new ways to develop empathy by building not only greater self awareness, but awareness of the needs and motivations of others. Developing vertical and horizontal relationships, developing human connections, person-person, social/digital network to people
5. Understand gender differences, and use them to learn, relearn and reset default patterns. IF you want to lead, you want to build a more androgynous brain. Make learn, relearn, fail forward and succeed your mantra. Yes, most women are better communicators than men and they have greater facility at understanding non verbal cues. Yes, woman are biologically hardwired to be able to move between left and right hemispheres of the brain thus being more aware of feelings and being able to ideate and communicate at the same. Women also appear to have greater facility mediating conflict/tending and befriending during stressful situations. Yes, most men are generally stronger at left brain activities (task orientation, problem solving, spacial ability, mathematical computation). So what? So now it is time to develop a more androgynous brain, to build your abilities regardless of gender.
6. Develop new and better ways to transform stress. Stress reactions are rooted in hormones released and our primal fight or flight reaction. Our ability to transmute, to learn to bypass or circumvent the fight or flight reaction is real, and doing so is critical. Work with a coach who can help you learn to circumvent fight or flight so that you can respond rather than react or run away from the problem at hand. Understand that change is a constant. You can try to fight it, but you are waging a losing battle. Transforming your relationship with change and with stressors is not important, it is critical. Helping others do the same will become critical in your role as a leader and engager of potential.
7. Root out toxicity-Harvest Values and Value. Toxic teams, toxic relationships, toxic interactions are part of the human dynamic. Root them out. Toxicity grows and spreads. You need to build and in some cases to reconstruct teams where passive aggressive behaviors, misalignment of values and objectives are addressed. Systems theory tells us that one consistent change will change the whole system. Put theory into practice by rooting out the creep of toxicity and modeling the leadership, communication and collaborative strengths that will take you forward.
8. Embrace your ability to R-E-A-C-H. Develop new ways to redirect focus, improve confidence, actualize potential, communicate effectively and harvest results. Start with yourself, your self awareness, your areas of strength and challenge. Become a master and learning, re-learning, failing forward and succeeding. Learn new ways, better ways to build your 3Q’s (enhanced ideation under stress, improved emotional intelligence and resiliency, engaged spiritual quotient or values alignment. Master it. Do it… then teach R-E-A-C-H to others.
9. Get back to basics. Your passion, your purpose, your ability to use both strengths and challenges to develop solutions, collaborative relationships, and communication is real. Find and understand your passion, your purpose, your unique footprint as leader. The end game is your life, your purpose, your ability to be able to contribute something of value to a greater whole.
10. Get simple for a second. While there is debate around whether happiness is a driver of success, there is a great deal of information and substantive longitudinal studies pointing to the fact that we need to get happy, to become empowered in order to really optimize our potential. Your happiness counts. Learning simple ways to get happier each day, no matter what challenges you face is critical to your health, your potential, your wellness and your ability to lead forward. Getting happier, introducing laughter and fun time is important and has been proven to improve the immune system, boost creativity and many believe also strengthen cognition and ideation.
More on 3Q Leadership, R-E-A-C-H and Leading Forward? You Betcha!
Interview on Building 3Q Leadership and R-E-A-C-H
•Short Video on Building R-E-A-C-H
•Ten Steps to Building Employee Engagement
•Five Ways to LEAD Forward by Championing the Challenge
•Five Ways to Take Control of YOUR Potential
The Secret to Personal Development and Growth
•Five Ways to Communicate and Lead Forward http://bit.ly/PMww6F
•The Agile Management and Leadership Toolkit http://bit.ly/Pf1BQ8
•Top Ten Posts on Leadership and Communication (June to Aug 2012)
•Leadership is Olympian-Time to Lead Forward
• The Pause 3 Min Powerful Exercise http://bit.ly/JWI9yd | Alpha brain state can improve focus, ideation, resiliency
Is it time to REACH- Redirect-empower-actualize-communicate and harvest YOUR potential to lead forward?
Get Executive Coaching, Training that Sticks? Enjoy an insightful and inspiring keynote?
Just Coach It for reach, resonance, results. Executive Coaching, Consulting, Keynotes and Workshops with as 3Q Edge™
Irene Becker, Chief Success Officer, Just Coach It–The 3Q Edge™| Reach-Resonance-Results Toronto and Virtually Everywhere | Face-Face, By Tel, Skype or Video Conferencing www.justcoachit.com Tel: 1-416-671-4726 Email: irene@justcoachitcom
Twitter @justcoachit Skype: beckerirene
@justcoachit # 5 Canada, #363 English #855 Globally Most Recommended on Twitter October 2012
The World Health Organization forecasts that by 2020 the leading cause of disability will be stress. Clearly, the quality of our life and our ability to compete and excel in a global marketplace is at risk. People in the western world, people who are still largely insulated from the extreme poverty and survival situation of 2/3 of the globe are fighting a new war every day, every week, every moment. We are fighting a new war that began when we achieved greater prosperity and independence than ever before in human history. We are fighting a new war with a new opponent; the most difficult opponent that we could ever face because our opponent is OUR SELF. No matter what happens to us, it is our thoughts that will strengthen or undermine our power. Our thoughts determine our actions, and our actions determine our results. What we focus on grows, and if we feed our minds a steady diet if negativity, fear and ego based desire for command and control power we are arming our internal opponent and we will lose the war with our greatest opponent…our self.