The Career Success Doctor

The Career Success Doctor guides talented professional women to career success

  • Home
  • Blog
  • Career Success Stories
  • Career Resources
    • Online Career Success Programme
    • Career Success Webinar
    • Special Career Resources
    • Books And Stuff
  • Coaching
    • Private VIP Career Breakthrough
    • Personal Career Coaching
    • Group Career Coaching
  • About
  • Contact Us

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?

 
Contact Us For Career Coaching Or A Career Review

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”

Contact Us For Career Coaching

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

What The Pope Can Teach Us About Leadership

Written by The Career Success Doctor

What The Pope Can Teach Us About LeadershipMy PhD is in spirituality and leadership, so I was really interested to read an article this morning discussing what the Pope can teach us about leadership. I’m not a Catholic, but I have been really impressed by some of the actions Pope Francis has taken. He is clearly living in accordance with his beliefs – starting with the washing of the feet of some of the most alienated people in society – and, as this article shows, he walks his talk.

The research on leadership  shows clearly that people look for leaders they can trust, and authenticity (walking the talk, living by your beliefs and being willing to stand up and stand out for what you believe in) is an important element in creating that trust. So is the ability to trust others through delegation. The best leaders give opportunities to their people, they stretch them, they rejoice in their development. And they recognise that, to be a truly successful leader you cannot do it on your own.

As a student of what makes a good leader, I have looked at many leadership models, including authentic leadership and servant leadership, and the Pope incorporates many of these models into his leadership style.

If you are in a leadership role, or you aspire to move into a leadership role, then the current Pope is a powerful example of what good leadership looks like, irrespective of whether or not you support his religious views.

You can read the full article on the 7 management lessons of Pope Francis here, and if you’re interested in seeing a copy of a paper I wrote on the subject of leadership and spirituality, leave a comment in the comments box below.

Contact Us For Career Coaching

Photo: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pope_Francis_in_March_2013.jpg

 

Filed Under: Business, Leadership Tagged With: Authentic Leadership, Authenticity, Leadership, Pope Francis, Servant Leadership

Female Leadership: The Most Undervalued Traits

Written by Natalia

women leadershipIt’s not such a long time ago that we wrote about a piece of research on female leadership , where we saw that people have actually started to recognise women as leaders. After our last post on Top Qualities Of Effective Leaders, I wanted to come back on the subject of female leadership. And, believe me, not without reason!

I received an email on Monday night telling me I had to read a great article published some days ago on Forbes. To be completely honest with you, even as I’m writing this, I have already read the article 4 times! And every time I see in it more people I recognise; traits of women I look up to, role models, even relatives.  Glenn Llopis, the author, has written the most comprehensive article on women’s psychology and way of thinking I’ve read for a long time. And from my point of view, the most extraordinary thing is that it is written by a man.

“I was surrounded by strong-willed, hardworking and purpose-driven women. It is through their leadership that the traditions, values and legacy of our family have been upheld.  My grandmother, mother, wife, and sister-in-law all possess natural leadership skills and they are masters of opportunity management – seamlessly keeping us all in check while running the family household and at the same time supporting our family businesses.  They have taught me that a woman’s instincts and emotional intelligence can be off the chart. They seamlessly manage crisis and change and are turnaround experts – sensing and neutralizing any signs of danger well before it invades our path. It is because of the women in our family that we are well-organized, full of love, spiritually aligned and well-balanced. We are by no means a perfect family, but we are a modern family who embraces traditions even as we adapt to changing times.”

I could almost feel you nodding while you were reading that. And even for our male readers I bet it was difficult not to think of their mother, their sister, their wife. Throughout this article, you will see attributes of almost every woman you have ever known.

These attributes are what makes women great leaders. We are born with these characteristics. These traits are in our genes. It’s up to us to make use of these traits and become the leaders we were meant to be.

Although there has been a huge improvement over the last years on rejecting gender stereotypes that want women not to be “leader material”, we have a long road ahead of us. But we can’t expect the world to see things differently, unless we teach them how to see things from another perspective. We have to show them they are wrong. We have to show them that female leadership is not just a ‘trendy’ phrase, nor a joke. If we want to change the world, we have to show them that women can be great leaders!

Read the article here: “The Most Undervalued Leadership Traits Of Women”

I’ll close with the author’s last two sentences with the hope his wish comes true: “Rarely have I read something from a man who has been inspired and influenced by the wisdom of a woman’s leadership.  Hopefully this perspective helps awaken more of us to the opportunity of learning about leadership from the women in our lives, whether in the home or at work.”

.

Contact Us For Career Coaching

Filed Under: Career, Leadership, Success Tagged With: Authentic Leadership, female leadership, Leadership, leadership attributes, leadership traits, Success, undervalued leadership traits of women, women as leaders

Brian Tracy – Top Qualities Of Effective Leaders

Written by The Career Success Doctor

Qualities Of Effective Leaders Brian TracyMoodling round the internet, looking for ideas for a summit a colleague and I are creating (more of that to come), I came across an article and video by Brian Tracy on the Top Qualities Of Effective Leaders. Since my PhD thesis is on Leadership and Spirituality, I’m always curious to find out what other people have to say on the subject of Leadership.

As well as being a personal development expert, Tracy is also a super salesman, so this recent article on leadership is very much geared up to selling his book. However, he does know a thing or two whereof he speaks, and he does have good ideas, so I took a few moments just to absorb what he has to say on the subject.

Change The Way You Think Of Yourself As A Leader

As Tracy points out, Leadership is essential in all walks of life. It’s easy to say ‘Oh, I’m not a leader’ but if you want real career or business success, then you’d better step up and become one! I remember going on a leadership course over 15 years ago. It was a personal development course, and I thought I wanted to be seen as a leader at work. What I discovered was that, if you’re going lead others, whether it’s in the workplace, at home, in your social life, in your helping the community life, you first have to learn how to lead yourself.

Pity I hadn’t studied with Tracy (although I’m not sure effective leadership was his thing back in 1996), because he talks about the importance of personal/self development for leaders.  I love the following comment: ‘You are what you think you are. Your self-concept determines your performance. You can become a much more effective leader by changing your self-concept, by changing the way you think about yourself as a leader.’

‘Your self-concept determines your performance’. Have you noticed that in your life and career?

What ARE The Qualities Of Effective Leaders?

In the video on The Qualities Of Effective Leaders which is linked to the article – and which, presentationally, is a bit clunky, but never mind – Tracy highlights the following points which we need to take on board to become good or great leaders.

  • Top leaders focus on their strengths and developing their strengths and the strengths of those around them.
  • Good leaders know how to be role models in and outside work
  • Integrity – people follow people they trust
  • Choose your boss with care.

I particularly like the last one!

Meantime here is the link to the rest of the article on 2 Leadership Traits Needed to Become a Great Leader.

What do you think? I’d love to see your comments.

Contact Us For Career Coaching Or A Career Review

 

 

Filed Under: Career, Career success, Leadership Tagged With: Brian Tracy, Effective Leadership, Leadership, Qualities Of Effective Leaders

Next Page »

Follow Us!

Follow Us on FacebookFollow Us on TwitterFollow Us on LinkedInFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on Google+Follow Us on Pinterest

Free Immediate Download

Follow Me On Twitter

Tweets by @CareerJane

Recent Posts

  • How Mad Is The High Heels At Work Debate?
  • What’s The Cost of Caring On Your Career?
  • Why Free Publicity Is Important For Career Women Too
  • Career Success And Your Area Of Expertise
  • The Irony Of Fear Of Failure

Categories

Google+ | About | Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions