What Makes a Great Leader?

As a leader, “you” are in charge of your teams’ morale

Photo by Matthew Fournier on Unsplash

When you are in charge of a team/teams, you need more attention and focus on what you do and tell as the impact you have on them will have the ripple effect. Your team/direct reports will easily, involuntarily, subconsciously copy your approach, your insight and your mental blocks, even if they know it is not the case. So, I decided to write a series of topics what makes a great leader. Morale has such a great impact on motivation and performance, personally, it is the most important fact to predict a team will make it or not, thus the team lead is a successful one or not. So, today’s topic is positivity: How it can easily slip through your control, and how to get it back.

Put Positivity Hat/Crown on:

You have to make sure the goals are achievable and your team is capable of achieving it. There may be moments where your faith drops, either the questions answered or the reports prepared may not pass your quality standards, but do remember it is a longer journey than a question or a report. Building trust, a team does take longer, and it is a never-ending battle. Every challenge is a test, and to pass you have to make sure you have decluttered your brain. If you struggle, check:

• How much input are you taking? Think about the daily and weekly data you are receiving. Compared to before (last week/last month — when last time you felt OK), how much more are you receiving input? Review the number of your subscriptions, reports, emails, meetings per day. Any increase would easily block your mental space to think freely, if not overwhelmed, it can easily do a projection of how hard the next couple of weeks will be -if you don’t take action now- and lead to negativity.
• How many choices do you have? Too many choices can make the decision-making process to go through a harder lap, and spend more effort and energy it normally does. The more tired brain you have, the more stressed your body will be, and the more steroid hormones it will produce, which are called glucocorticoids, which include cortisol, often referred to as the “stress hormone”
• How much negativity are you exposed to during the day? Similar to your eating habits, as they can impact your energy levels, the people and the conversations around you can impact your reflections, responses, and attitudes. If your resilience system is not built, if your reflexes and context awareness is not ready for the specific cases (which is always in constant growth), they may even slip into your daily life, if not hunt you on your sleep. If you can anticipate the challenging, negative meetings in advance, pick your time in the day (morning vs afternoon) where you have more energy, colour code the meetings so you will be prepared mentally. Even you may try doing a battle card to respond on specific cases where you can feel you will stay on top of the play.
• How many of the priority tasks left at the end of the day? Focusing on the full list, and not taking action from top to bottom priorities may make you feel comfortable, but the real focus items still waiting, if not for days, but hours, will create more pressure towards the end of your day/week. If you are finding yourself still working after 5 pm, on a Friday, you need a review on your todo list and learn to ignore smaller priority tasks (assuming you have done the priorities). It is a traded off your work-life balance.
• How many breaks do you take? Do you block your dairy between meetings, not only to reflect back, write reports, respond emails but also to take a deep breath and even do some meditation? With remote working, it is easier to get your calendar fully booked if you have not allocated self 1–1s. And you may find it more challenging if your calendar is so used to be double, if not tripled booked. That’s where it will be easier to lose yourself, give up the priority from yourself to the rest of the world.

The amount of water and exercise/meditation you have done daily does also ad. All of us are different and each five-item listed above will have a different impact on your positivity, and can easily drag you down the rabbit hole before you notice the journey. How about rewarding yourself for the amount of the strain you have taken and zoom out, looking at the big picture, you find ways to make tomorrow a better one, better self?

Looking forward to hearing your tips and tricks to be aware of the day’s hidden gremlins and how to boost your energy?