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Great Leaders Make You Feel Safe

Written by Natalia

leaders make you feel safeWe recently talked about how the altruistic leadership model impacts employees’ performance and a company’s success. But apart from being humble, great leaders make you feel safe.

According to management theorist Simon Sinek, in a recent TED Talk “Why good leaders make you feel safe“, leaders should make employees feel safe in the organisation in order to trigger the feelings of trust and cooperation.

“You see, if the conditions are wrong, we are forced to expend our own time and energy to protect ourselves from each other, and that inherently weakens the organization. When we feel safe inside the organization, we will naturally combine our talents and our strengths and work tirelessly to face the dangers outside and seize the opportunities.”

Good leaders make you feel safe by putting their interests aside for the greater good; by wanting you to achieve more; by helping you when you need it. As he puts it, “Great leaders would never sacrifice the people to save the numbers. They would sooner sacrifice the numbers to save the people”. Isn’t this altruistic?

As he analyses the importance of feeling safe at your job, he gives examples of how some organisations provide safety to their employees and what results they produced. He compares leadership to parenthood, but what stood out to me was the likeness to military life.

In the video below you can watch his whole speech. And in my opinion, these are 12 minutes well spent.

Leadership is a choice; not a rank. Leadership means courage and taking risks. Do not confuse leadership with authority. We never follow authorities, we obey because there’s the element of fear. We follow leaders. And great leaders create trust and make you feel safe.

 

Isn’t that the organization we would all like to work in?

 
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Filed Under: Career, Leadership Tagged With: Altruistic Leadership, Leaders create trust and safety, Leadership, leadership attributes, Simon Sinek, TED Talk

A Humble Leader Is The Best Leader

Written by Natalia

humble leaderThe dictionary defines humility as modesty, not being arrogant, having a feeling of insignificance, not believing that you are superior to others and being courteously respectful. But what humility has to do with leadership? Why being a humble leader is so important?

A recent study by Catalyst (“Inclusive Leadership: The View From Six Countries“) shows that when employees feel more included in their work groups, they are more innovative in their jobs (identifying opportunities for new products and processes and trying out new ideas and approaches to problems) and more engaged in team citizenship behaviours (going above and beyond the “call of duty” to help other team members and meet work group objectives).

According to the study, in order to create an environment where employees feel included, managers need to follow the altruistic leadership model. The four attributes of altruistic leadership are empowerment (empower employees to learn, develop and excel), humility (such as learning from criticism, admitting mistakes, and seeking contributors), courage (such as putting personal interests aside for the general good and taking personal risks), and accountability (showing confidence to employees by holding them responsible for results).

Being a humble leader was the second most important behaviour in this study (humility was right after empowerment), although it might be a little unusual to link humility with leadership. When we think of leadership, we often think attributes like self-promotion. But, as the study shows, being and altruistic leader -thus, a humble leader- will help your employees create the sense of belonging and uniqueness; the key elements of feeling included.

How to be a humble leader?

  • Admit your mistakes, learn from them and share them so that others can learn too
  • Listen, engage in dialogues and learn from others’ point of view
  • When uncertain, or lacking certain skills and/or knowledge, admit it and seek the right people who can contribute to the team

Erica Bell, in her article in talentzoo.com, provides some good tips on how to be a humble leader.

” If you want to be a CEO, COO, or hold any leadership position, you’ll have to manage others effectively. Part of being an effective leader is remaining humble. While you may be able to request major adjustments within the company as whole or your customer call center department, you won’t be successful unless you have the respect of those who are executing the projects you’ve planned. Humble leaders make others feel important and valued. Being humble isn’t always easy after working hard to get to a leadership position. Here’s what you can do to stay more grounded… “

Read the whole article here: “How to Be a Humble Leader”

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Filed Under: Career, Leadership Tagged With: Altruistic Leadership, Be a humble leader, Humility, Inclusive Leadership, Leadership

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