In Episode 1 I was delighted to be joined by Jon Rennie, CEO of his own production company, author and host of The Deep Leadership Podcast.
Here are my Top Takeaways from our discussion
For those that prefer audio visual, you can head over to my YouTube or TikTok channels where all of these Top Takeaways will be going live over the next week or so
Humility opens the door to learning: They say that ego is the enemy of leadership. As a leader, you need to accept that you don’t have the answers to everything, but you do need to listen long enough to know what questions you should be asking. To be an effective leader you need to be humble enough to listen to your critics to find those nuggets to help you learn, develop and improve.
There’s a dark side to leadership. Some people are effective individual contributors to an organisation, and because of their skill are moved in to management positions. But this is often without the right support and training, leading to a misunderstanding of the leadership functions embedded in management and an inability to engage with teams, and therefore an inability to retain an engaged workforce.
The people who are looking for improvement find it. But it’s not the people who are actively looking to improve that are the ones with the longest journey of improvement ahead of them. It’s generally those people who think they’re great and doing just fine are the ones that need the greatest improvement.
The monkey at the top of the tree sees the smiling faces of all of its troop below. The monkeys at the bottom look up and see, well, you can guess the rest. This is just like leadership! Unless leaders get out of their tree they’re never going to see what other people see. Leaders need to move around their tree to get the reality check thy need – just like Jon does in his company on Fridays on the Floor.
Cultivate your complainers, because they may be trying to make things better. Some people who complain will do so from a position of genuine concern, so you’ve really got to develop a thick skin as a leader, and learn to be open to the complainers, and hear what they’re saying, rather than how they’re saying it
A lot of great answers come from the quieter voices. Make sure you create opportunities for introverts to share their ideas and have their voices heard in your organisation. We tend to pass by the introverts who are sitting and thinking silently whilst the extroverts are taking up the airspace. Listen to the quiet voices in your organisation because sometimes they’re the ones with the best answers. You can also find out more about introverts and self aware leadership in Episode 6 of Series 1 where I talked to Joanna Rawbone.