The Raw Leadership™ Process is elemental … simple. Each step in our process is foundational and logical, and necessary for growth.
The Leadership Macro-Mindset™
The starting point in any engagement is to look at the whole. What is the business environment? What is the health of the organization? Who are the players and how do they interact? How do these interactions (and players) impact the business? What are the layers? Is the corporate culture development oriented? Do they embrace change?
Understanding the business with a macro-mindset, from a macro level – the systems, the culture, and the layout, while evaluating the starting point (i.e. goals, expectations, SWOT, structure, mores, etc.) is a critical first step. Once we have a Leadership Macro View, we can break it down and begin the real development work.
The Raw Leadership™ Process:
Leadership Detox
Most leaders, do not have awareness of their impact on the environment, their people, their business. Please believe me when I tell you this. In working with hundreds of business leaders, I’ve seen that very few understand the depth or breadth of their impact. It is usually “somebody else’s fault”, as if they operate alone, in a vacuum. Having had the luxury of seeing both sides of the story, I can tell you, it is usually a “team effort” that leads to disengagement, confusion, frustration, misunderstanding, and loss of trust and confidence.
Leaders often get in their own way. Leadership Detox™ focuses on truth. Blind-spots. Awareness and feedback regarding impact. Whether at the individual level or the organization level. Many clients have heard (or said!) this phrase at some point in their careers: “The leader is excellent at getting things done but often leaves dead bodies in their wake”. Whether a single individual, a team, or the corporate culture, this is the wake-up call stage.
Peel Back the Layers
Who are you? Without your titles and accomplishments, who are you??!
A high-ranking executive stopped dead in her tracks when asked this question …this was when her perspective shifted regarding her development work. Everyone has layers. And an outer shell. The same could be said for an organization.
Who are you? What do you represent? Sometimes we get so comfortable with the layers, we forget what’s inside. It’s important to peel back these layers to discover what goodness is on the inside. These layers act as barriers to the Core Self (at a organizational level, it is often referred to as the heart & soul of the business!) and prevent people from seeing us (which is usually the intent). In the process we often lose sight of ourselves, our compass, our true North, our authentic self, our real self. This stage allows us to rediscover it.
Get to the Core
When taking an assessment, clients will often ask, “should I take this as if I’m at home or at work?” They instinctively know they bring different aspects of themselves into each environment.
Their paradigm of “who I should be” dictates who they reveal to the world, and even their perception of themselves and their capability. Often, there is a disconnect between what the world sees and “who I am” at the core. The bigger the (unrealized) gap, the more unhappiness, disengagement, and loss of productivity, in life and in the workplace.
We would recommend you bring your “whole self” to each engagement. The same holds true for the organization. The bigger the gap, the bigger the loss in productivity, the more “business continuance” meetings, the more employee disengagement. Through development work – coaching, assessments, feedback, and observations – getting to the core proves to be pivotal. What do you stand for? What are you good at? What are your core principles?
Getting to a leader’s core, the organization’s core, taps into their authenticity, a key ingredient in, and the foundation of, great leadership. It’s the good stuff. And the foundation on which to build.
Key Ingredients
Think of your tastiest, most delicious, favorite food. Now eliminate the top 3 key ingredients. Still the same tasty, delicious dish? No, probably not.
The same holds true for great leadership. The key ingredients, or basic leadership principles, are essential in making a leader worth following. When asked “what are the ingredients to being a great leader”, answers like “charisma”, “experience”, “an MBA”, and “management background” are common answers. Although excellent qualities, studies show that authenticity, credibility, honesty, and belief-in-making-a-difference are some of the true keys to being a successful leader.
The Raw Leadership™ process promotes these key ingredients as well as other developmental essentials, including educational learning techniques, models, theories, best practices, and experiential-hands-on-relevant exercises. We use and model these principles in our development interactions, and encourage and challenge clients to adopt and integrate them into their workplaces and lives.
A leader’s character is reflected in how he/she practices and integrates leadership-essential key ingredients, and is a predictor of a leader who is followed, as well as an organization which attracts top talent.
Selecting, Growing, and Leveraging Top Talent
This stage is about the people. Once you’ve honed the leadership skills within yourself, your team, and/or the organization, and refined your sense-of-self (although it is a never-ending process!), you are able to, with intention and deliberateness, more successfully lead others.
The Raw Leadership process encourages growth in clients’ skill set, so leaders can:
- Select the best people – they understand the layers of top talent, and are able to assess an individual’s core
- Grow and develop the best people – yes, nurturing…not hand-holding – nurturing, “feeding”, encouraging, providing feedback, giving direction, setting expectations, and other key emotionally-intelligent aspects
- Leverage the best individuals and teams – know what “key elements” work best together, how to get the most out of people by building them up instead of motivating through fear and intimidation.
This process eliminates blind spots and builds capability related to best practices in leading individual contributors and teams, and allows for the selecting, growing, and leveraging the top talent.
In our experience, most leaders scoff at the insinuation that they use fear and intimidation to accomplish their goals (yes, scoff!)…although it might not be their intention, it is their impact.
Just talk to their people… I do.
Maintenance: 70/30
70/30 is my ratio. It doesn’t matter what the number is, or even what it represents. Every leader must find their own, and be diligent about adhering to it (that’s the really difficult part!). Be mindful. Be deliberate. Be intentional. Your ratio might represent your plan for being strategic vs. tactical. Or maybe spending time on people vs. tasks? Your ratio could be about being hands-on vs. sitting-behind-the-desk?
Being intentional in your leadership is critical. Understanding your leadership goals, having a plan, and knowing where you want to spend your time is crucial in the maintenance process. Unfortunately, some leaders treat development like an event, as in “Woohoo, I’ve graduated!”. But great leadership requires ongoing, mindful attention and deliberate action, regardless of the development support system.
In this stage, clients develop their moving-forward plan, get support during implementation, ideas to improve it, and install the accountability to carry it out.
The Macro Leader
Macro Leader Qualities:
- Authentic
- Intentional
- Self-aware
- Emotionally intelligent
- Healthy
- Inspiring and influential
- Mindful
- Deliberate
- Self-evaluative
- Accountable
- Strategists
- Engaged
- Confident
- Growth-oriented
- Courageous (self development requires it!)
- Transparent
- Well-rounded
- Open
- Decisive
- “Other” aware
- Critical thinkers
- Real
Macro Leader Behaviors:
- Lead by example
- Know who they are at the core
- Understand their triggers
- Sense who others are at their core
- Have done the hard work of self-development
- Hire, grow, and develop top talent
- Are able to lead the organization/their department at the macro level
- Continue to self-develop
- Can step outside of their own view and understand the perceptions of others
- Lead their teams and/or the organization with a macro-mindset
