Maintain the Edge - Leadership Renewal

There are more pressures on leaders today than ever before to perform and ensure their teams are performing.  These expectations are often competing and therefore potentially depleting  making it more important than ever for leaders to take time out to look at renewing, grounding and energising themselves in their role as a leader.  Stephen R Covey’s highlights the need for renewal in his book ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ - ‘Sharpening the Saw – Principles of Balanced Self – Renewal’.

These same pressures on leaders can also lead to busyness that becomes a ‘badge of honour’ rather than stopping and taking stock of what is important.  Just ‘sawing’ isn’t enough to be an effective leader, taking time out to ‘sharpen’ the tools that you have to be an effective leader is essential (Covey).

Let’s explore four key principles towards leadership renewal. 

Keeping it Energized – these are the things that uplift you.  Energising practices are typically personal, things that you reflect on, your goals and passions.  Keeping it energised is to have a deep understanding of your centre and your purpose.  This is reviewing and living out your day in alignment to your goals and passions and to your core values.  When we get busy as leaders, this is often the one that we let go of first.  Taking regular time out to review what energises you and cultivate systems to build energy will assist you not drop the ball on this one. 

Keeping it Grounded - mindfulness starts with self-awareness, knowing yourself enables you to make choices about how you respond to people and situations.  A deep knowledge about yourself enables you to be consistent, to present yourself authentically.  Grounding allows you to notice the subtle clues that tell you to attend carefully to self, others or your surroundings.  A mentor that I have in business explains it to me that being grounded is like a balancing act - balancing our experiences with our purpose, our emotions.  This can also be framed as acceptance, instead of struggling with certain thoughts and feelings accept and acknowledge this is how I'm feeling without the need to act. 

Keeping it Real – This one is real simple yet one that we can easily push to the side due to being too busy.  Our bodies need certain things to function well.  What do we need to keep healthy to feed our body the right things it needs to function well in the other areas?  Exercise, relaxation, rest and food are all needed to help our bodies cope well with stress, to think clearly and keep focussed.  When it comes to keeping it real, we often see this as too hard as we may have to make some changes to our life.  There are some people that will jump into this one and do well to keep it a regular routine, others will jump in and will fade as things get busy.  If you think that’s you then start out by making incremental steps of change that can be maintained. Simple steps and simple changes maintained consistently over time lead to big benefits.  Keeping it real is very much about keeping this simple so that the daily practices we implement to keep healthy and well can be sustained over the long term. Keeping it real is really about self-leadership.  The things we do and hold ourselves accountable for our own well-being and maintenance. 

Keeping it Connected – Connection is about community and being in relationship with others.  However, connectedness in the context of renewal isn’t about connection with the people you lead. It is this about cultivating mutual connection with people that accept you for who you are, that speak into your life – it goes two ways.  For leaders this is about having good coaches and mentors that can help shape your leadership as you grow, that are not afraid to speak truth and keep you accountable as a leader.

A good friend of ours David Swift wrote a paper investigating the experience of current leaders in the disability field and what leaders needed to do to renew and sustain themselves.  His findings showed most importantly the interconnection of these principles is crucial for renewal.  Taking time out from leadership won’t give you the sort of renewal that you need to be a more effective leader.  However, attending to the responsibilities of your leadership, ensuring self-maintenance, growth and nurture will enable you to look continuously at investing in your renewal which will enable you to grow your effectiveness as a leader.

In leadership we can face mounting pressures, discouragement and loneliness. It comes with the territory. However, by taking time out for regular renewal, leadership effectiveness is not only maintained but growth and enjoyment whilst leading can be experienced.  Leading others is a privilege and it is a sacred trust to be able to bring influence into the life of another.  By actively cultivating daily practices of renewal your leadership and influence will be deep, long term and sustainable.

Ian and Marcia Watts 

Covey, R Stephen, “The 7 Habits of Highly effective People”, https://www.stephencovey.com/7habits/7habits.php 

Swift, David, 2004, “Renewal: A Picture of Current Strategies in leadership”.  http://www.cru.org.au/docs/OccasionalPapers/occasional.htm