What Is The BEST Leadership Ingredient You Are Missing?

Imagine standing at a crossroad and looking in every direction. And every direction you look at challenges your courage. It tests your integrity and shapes your team's future. This isn't just a metaphorical journey. This is the plight of leaders every single day. Courage isn't about facing fears. It's about making tough decisions and standing up on top of those tough decisions instead of shying away and worrying about the backlash. That employees may think. Courage is asking for tough feedback and leading by example when the stakes have never been higher. We're going to dive right into the heart of courageous leadership, where asking for honest and critical feedback isn't just being brave, it's necessary. Because in leadership, courage is actually the currency of trust. There are many requirements and expectations of a leader, but without courage, your role will be significantly more difficult. A courageous leader leads their teams to having more trust in them. It takes courage to make tough decisions and to take critical action. It also takes courage to see ourselves as others see us, even if their perception of ourselves doesn't match how we see ourselves. Today's business world Too many leaders lack self awareness and mistakenly believe that others see us as we see ourselves. Because most leaders overestimate how positively others see them. And a great way to learn and determine to figure that out is to ask. It's very important to learn how to ask for the feedback and I'm going to share with you the difference. If you ask an employee, can you give me some feedback on how I am as a leader? First off, that's a cop out way to ask. Most employees are going to respond with a nice gesture of oh, I love working with you. You support me in all the things that I want and need versus asking it this way. I could really use your advice. Can you give me two areas that I can focus on that will help make me a better leader? That takes courage to gain real insights on how you are perceived by your team. And most leaders probably haven't even lasted this long. In the video, they're going to keep scrolling thinking that they're awesome and their employees believe that they're awesome. But the good news is we have to give employees permission to give us bad news. The leaders that ask for it, receive it, develop trust and tend to be rated higher than those that don't ask. Look, it isn't easy when you have to stand on making tough decisions, especially those that are very unpopular. Being transparent takes courage and ultimately leads to trust because delivering bad news is important and it takes courage. But it's the right thing to do during the pandemic, survival was definitely not assured. When the world stops hiring and I'm the CEO of a staffing company, I was literally scared to death, not sure what tomorrow would bring. But instead of laying people off, we decided to make a 20% pay cut across the board so that there was a shared sacrifice amongst all employees. And while that impacted everybody, those are the toughest phone calls that I've ever had to make to tell people that we're going to cut their pay by 20%. But everyone understood and supported it because it was a shared sacrifice and no one was the ultimate sacrifice and got laid off. I know that won't be the last hard decision that I have to make. There's one last suggestion that I'd like to make. Have the courage to say you're sorry. It's okay to make mistakes. When you fall on your sword and admit to those mistakes, it also sends the signal to the rest of the team that it's okay to make mistakes. So understanding the important connection between courage and trust is critical. It'll give you knowledge of acting instead of burying your head and pretending nothing is happening and hoping things get better as usual. Like comment and Share. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where all things are leadership and personal development.