Courageous Leader BLUEprint™ – 4th edition
Welcome!
This is the fourth edition of our Courageous Leader BLUEprint™ newsletter.
Every three weeks, you’ll get quick, thoughtful leadership insights without the fluff.
Read time: 5 minutes
We hope you’ve been able to put the newsletter resources to good use so far!
We have two requests for you to consider:
1- If you have had a success story with the “5 Free Ways to Improve Morale” or “Coaching Tips”, we’d love to hear about it.
2- We want to know, what kind of leadership issues, challenges, or opportunities are you dealing with? That way we can create the content that is most relevant for you!
In this edition, we will continue with the Courageous Leader BLUEprint™, a framework designed to support your success as a courageous leader.
Last time, we talked about how B stands for Be Bold.
The L stands for Learn.
Being bold while maintaining a willingness to learn is what makes up the inner work of
leadership.
Leaders who are no longer willing to learn are no longer leaders
That may sound controversial or even harsh at first, but think about it…would you want to work for a boss who refused to learn?
Probably not!
Leaders who refuse to accept that there is always more to learn have an ego problem.
There is undoubtedly a welcome place for ego in leadership. That’s because leaders need to be bold!
However, courageous leaders have a healthy ego – one that is characterized by resilience, self-awareness, self-confidence, emotional regulation, and humility.
Humility is having the courage to be imperfect and admit you don’t know it all.
And humility can be tough. Trust me, I’m the humblest person I know 😂
All kidding aside, here are some considerations to rate your own humility:
You have an accurate self-perception:
Too harsh: “I’m never good enough. Why bother?”
Too proud: “I’m the best, obviously.”
Balanced: “I am competent but can always be growing.”
You are good at receiving feedback:
Too harsh: “You’re right, I’m always messing up.”
Too proud: “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Balanced: “Thank you for sharing that; I’ll consider how I might apply it.”
You are good at talking about yourself:
Too harsh: “I just got lucky.”
Too proud: “Here’s how I nailed it…that’s just how good I am.
Balanced: “I’ve been successful with my approach and would be happy to share what I’ve learned.”
You have a healthy view of relationships and teamwork:
Too harsh: “They’d be better off without me.”
Too proud: “They couldn’t live without me.”
Balanced: “I bring strengths, as do you. Let’s work this out together.”
You understand how to use failure:
Too harsh: “I’m just a failure.”
Too proud: “It was other people’s fault.”
Balanced: “This was not the outcome I wanted, but what can I learn from the experience?”
You know you must keep learning:
Too harsh: “I’m so far behind!”
Too proud: “I know everything.”
Balanced: “I have come a long way, but I’m continuously learning.”
How did you feel about these statements? Did some resonate?
The beautiful part about humility is that you’ll never be perfectly humble, nor will I.
Like leadership, humility is a lifelong journey.
Humility is a mix of confidence about who you are and curiosity about how you could get even better.
Confident, not proud. Curious, not harsh.
Sometimes, we can be overly harsh on ourselves or excessively proud of ourselves. This is human nature.
If you’ve ever felt like you might be too harsh on yourself, or maybe you wonder if your ego is getting in the way, we’ve created this PDF with some ideas that may help:
“8 Ways to Practice Humility” [Download it here]
*Blue Lion Leadership is a Dallas-based distributor of Coaching for Improved Performance and Results
Since humility is one of the building blocks of emotional intelligence, it makes sense to take a closer look at how emotions show up in the workplace.
Did you know? I’m is a certified GENOS Emotional Intelligence Practitioner, and we have a FREE tool that can help identify the emotional climate in your organization.
GENOS is a leading Emotional Intelligence research organization based in Australia with certified practitioners all over the world.
It was a professional highlight to become certified because emotional intelligence is a foundation of healthy workplace cultures.
At GENOS, they “call our work game-changing for business, and life-changing for people.”
When I first entered the workforce, it felt like there was an unwritten rule that emotions were not welcome.
The truth is, it is completely normal to experience a wide range of both pleasant and unpleasant feelings at work.
But! According to research, the employees at the most productive workplaces collectively
experience more pleasant emotions and less unpleasant emotions.
Curious how your employees are feeling?
It could be worthwhile to find out.
Remember from our last newsletter that half of the workforce is stressed and actively looking for a new job, and about 70% is disengaged (Gallup).
Our guess is that stressed, disengaged employees who are looking for a new job are probably experiencing more unpleasant emotions than pleasant ones.
Here’s some great news: GENOS provides its practitioners with a free assessment tool called the Emotional Culture Index.
It’s simple for us to get started, and the process includes three easy steps:
We create a link with customized demographics for you to send to your employees
Employees can take the survey in less than five minutes
We schedule a time to debrief your results
From there, if you are satisfied with the results, that is awesome!
If you see an area for potential improvement and would like to know how our emotional
intelligence assessments or programs might help, we’d be glad to discuss.
Either way, we’ll be cheering you and your organization on to
have the emotionally intelligent culture people want to work in.