FEATURE EFFORTLESSLY EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP


Guinevere Ellis, entrepreneur and international speaker, explains how to make your leadership feel less like hard work whilst delivering the best results.


Is anything really ‘effortless’?


Especially when it comes to leadership. With all the complexities of modern businesses as well as navigating the various personalities and needs of your staff in a post- Covid ‘flexible working’ culture.


As a senior manager in any industry, there is no doubt that there are many things to consider whilst balancing the results you want to achieve with the desires of the people who help you create them and your own goals as a leader.


It sure doesn’t feel ‘effortless’ most of the time.


So how does this concept of ‘effortless’ actually work in practice?


Firstly, we’re not talking effort-zero - we’re talking effort- less. So, let’s dive in.


To make your leadership feel l ess like hard work, you first need to understand yourself and how your mind actually works. I’m not talking about intellectually deciding on the best strategy and then delegating and so on. I’m talking about your inner subconscious mind and how it’s driving your style as a person and as a leader.


I’m sure you’ve heard of the concept of the ‘subconscious mind’ but do you understand how it’s affecting your leadership style as well as the results of your team?


Inside your subconscious is a ‘program’ that controls the way you see the world; it controls the way you see yourself, the way you see other people, the way you understand and perceive what someone is saying, what you see as ‘good’ results, what you see as ‘unacceptable’ standards and so on.


This ‘program’ is sometimes referred to as ‘conditioning’, but I’m not talking about general conditioning by society - I’m talking about how every individual is programmed completely differently.


95% of it comes from the way you were brought up - what your parents’ style of parenting was, their views on success, hard work, what kind of behaviour was and was not acceptable and so on.


By the time you were eight years old most of the ‘programming’ was done. Since then, you’ve been living by those hundreds and thousands of ‘rules of life’ that you believe are ‘right’, factual, true, correct.


Like - your beliefs about how hard people ‘should’ work, how they ‘should’ treat others, how they ‘should’ behave in meetings, what they ‘should’ do if they miss a deadline and so on.


Obviously you think that your ‘should’ views are the right way - you wouldn’t believe something if you didn’t think it was actually true.


But most of them are not ‘true’ - they’re just beliefs, opinions, preferences, styles etc.


To lead in a more effortless way, it takes a huge degree of self-awareness - to realise that our way of perceiving a situation isn’t the ‘correct’ way - it’s just a preferred way, an opinion, an educated and experienced one at that yes, but not actual ‘fact’. It’s all just programming.


Being aware of this will make you a much more compassionate leader.


Because once you understand your own mind, you’ll also understand other people’s behaviour and why they do what they do.


Let’s look at your team as an example:


You ask for a task to be completed by the end of the week, but the results your team come back with are nowhere near what you expected. You’re sure that you explained it correctly, but you swear they must have heard a different message somehow.


Now think of this concept of the ‘subconscious’ programming. All your team were brought up by different parents, families, schools, cultures.


What you think is ‘obvious’ is not ‘obvious’ to others who have a different program.


Additionally, when you give directions to your team, you’re talking to their conscious intellectual mind. But that isn’t the part of the mind that’s responsible for their behavour, performance and results - that comes from their own programming.


You can tell John and Julie the exact same instructions and they’ll go off and do completely different things.


Let’s tie this concept of ‘programming’ in with this concept of ‘effortlessly effective’ leadership and how to actually do it in practice.


Firstly, be aware that the way something makes sense in your own head isn’t going to land the same way with anyone else as it does with you - everyone has their own lens (program) through which they see the world. The key is to explain clearly what your expectations are without leaving anything to interpretation by a wide range of different programs.


Secondly, when you decide on goals, targets, objectives - ask the team/individual to repeat back to you what you’ve asked them to do, how they’re going to do it and what


18 | TOMORROW’S FM


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