For the past 6 months, our podcasts have been focused on sharing with you how to be authentic and true to yourself.
And the question being asked is this—in a business scenario, where collaborations are necessary, how do you collaborate and yet stay true to yourself?
This is, actually, a leadership skill.
It's how you take the people's inner self and connect it to the vision.
In life, it’s no different. It's how you connect with all the people around you, with yourself, to be yourself.
Whilst it’s easy to say not to ignore anyone, the reality is that we do so. That stems from being a certain personality type. For example, there is a personality type that would go in and ask everyone for their opinion yet in the end they would go ahead and do what they think is the right way. This is quite common in the business world.
What’s happening here is that someone's ticking the box and just hearing, not listening. Doing half the process and not going all the way.
It’s a paradox really.
On one hand, one must listen and listen well in order to gauge if what is being said resonates with one's self. On the other, one must be detached and emotionally intelligent enough to realise if what is being said is an opinion or a fact-based advice.
It's easier said than done.
And this is situational.
If it’s your own life and your own beliefs then you need to be true to yourself.
In business as a leader, you need to be able to have that skill to create the connections required between the vision you, as the leader, see and where your people should be heading.
It’s this connection that makes the energies right. When the connect is not there that's when things go awry. In getting this connect one does collaborate.
As an example, let's say you're getting information and you arrive at a consensus opinion or you are the expert in that issue and you have an opinion, or you get an expert opinion on the issue. You have a decision to make as you're responsible for it. And you make that decision. Post the decision making you must give feedback on how you made your decision. This feedback is critical as this is what creates the connect, between the vision you see and how the people see the benefit.
Good leaders connect with people's inner beliefs and their purpose in life.
If a business’s purpose is linked to the people's individual purpose that becomes a massively powerful driver. That is, of course, the ideal.
So how do you help someone who is caught up in the dilemma of wanting to be true to themselves and getting a very different opinion to the one they have, given that they need to take a decision?
It all comes back to how the opinion was influenced.
One must find out what is the basis on which such a diverse point of view that’s coming across. It's understandable if the information is different. But if the information is the same then you need to go back and understand how the opinion was formed, the perceptions and experiences that influenced it.
The key to influence is to look at why that opinion was formed and what were the dynamics at play in order to get the perceptions that were formed. Then you start to see where the differences happened. That is the power of influence.
When you need to stick to something that your heart believes in you've got to get to the rationale behind why others are saying something that's not quite the same.
This works when one has time. But if there's a fire, you need to take the decision you feel is right. Go back later and explain so that there's a connect, through the rationale, as to why you took the decision you did.
The key is having the people understand the rationale. So, in future, the group moves as one towards what you, as a leader, is trying to achieve.
In the process of explaining the rationale, a conversation opens and it becomes a two-way
