Leadership Skills For 21st Century | Jason Campbell

Hey everybody, this is Jason Campbell and we're going to be talking about how to be a better leader in the workplace. Now, I love this topic, particularly because there's so many people I've had a chance to speak with that talk about what is this new emerging type of leadership that you want to see within the workplace. And we might have come across these memes on the Internet that talk about the differences between a boss and a leader. And I don't know if you're currently in a leadership position or you're looking at maybe your own boss or your own leader and hoping they would do things better. You're going to learn a few things in this video are actually going to be the key skills you can work on to become a better leader and how you can communicate that to people on your team as well. But I first want to address the fact that it seems like it's only recently that we've really added a lot of new responsibilities on the people that are on the management front to take on these things around leadership as some of their core competencies to be able to be effective at their job. If you fast. No, you rewind a few years back, let's say back in the 1950s, 1960s, it was very different back then. And the idea of having a boss that would just tell you what to do seemed like a much more common thing. I mean, the people that were in those positions of management wanted to get the most amount of output from the people that were working for them. And so the jobs back then were a little more repetitive, they demanded a little less sophistication and there was a lot of available labor. And so there was almost a sense of that's the way things are and there's not really anything you can do about it. Fact is, when we look at the types of jobs that are necessary today, they demand so much more levels of critical thinking, of innovation. And if you look at the past videos where we talked about the future of work, those are the kinds of teams that are going to be needed to be in place, the ones that have analytical learning abilities. So very complicated tasks. And there's not that many people that are extremely good at doing those types of tasks. You're talking about getting eight players now is becoming a more scarce thing. So where in the past we might have gotten away, if you had a boss that just said, alright, we're going to take these people, we're going to work them to death, and then if I need to replace one, it'll be easy today you need to invest a lot more into the employee. And I think that's a very good trend to see because it's making us not only happier in the workplace, but it's also making the companies more efficient and more productive, given all the technology trends that are happening. And so what are we looking for in a leader now? There's a lot of work that needs to be done to become a better leader. And I want to first congratulate you, because if you came to this video looking to become a better leader, much better than if you would have been looking for the video that says, how can I get the people on my team to do what I want? And that's often the bad approach, if you're coming from a place of growth, is not about how you want other people to do more for you, but if you want to be a better leader, people want to be working for someone that has a higher level of self awareness, higher level of self mastery, or self management. And all of these qualities are really around the one core skill that you want to be aware of as a leader, which is emotional intelligence. If you studied the work of Daniel Goleman, who wrote the book on emotional intelligence over 20 years ago, the topic is so relevant today. Because before you even start understanding how others feel, you really want to be as a leader, someone that has so much awareness and control over the way that you react into situations. I mean, if we talk back in the video that we did a couple weeks ago, which was all about having conflict with colleagues, a lot of it had to do with these crucial conversations. Being able to go into any kind of discussion speaking with honesty, with respect. And if you're someone that explodes whenever somebody comes up with feedback, then already you're seeing that not being able to take feedback is not something that is desirable for any kind of leader. Because you need to be able to take in more and more data companies, Big companies that just did not embrace ideas around innovation have failed after being around for so long. And you start wondering why? Well, if the leadership is acting more like bosses and not allowing ideas to flow forward, then innovation completely stops. And this is really why I want to introduce the topic of psychological safety. I had a chance to interview the author of the book around psychological safety in the Workplace, Dr. Timothy Clark, and he speaks about this being one of the core skills leaders need to nurture for the 21st century. And the term was very new to me. So I want to break it down to you so you can maybe recognize at what level your workplace culture is. And you'll understand what it takes to bring it forward. The minimum of having psychological safety is inclusion. If people are feeling included in any conversation, included in the workplace, included in the discussion, whenever there's a voice boardroom meeting, they will be disengaged. And so if you're noticing that in your workplace, people never contribute when there's a meeting and there's one personality that's just dominating the conversation, everyone's so afraid to even participate, they're just not feeling even included, they just nod and agree. Then you've not nurtured any place with psychological safety, which might be great if you just want to get the job done right now the way you want it. The problem is your top talent is going to leave, because top talent doesn't want average work following orders. They want to be in a place where they can innovate and learn, which is the next level of psychological safety. You want to be able to have an environment that promotes people being able to learn. If people are able to learn. That also comes with the caveat that people need to be allowed to fail. Is failure encouraged or discouraged within your team? If someone fails, do you reprimand them? It's not the best way to do it because then you've actually taught the whole team not to learn, because failures will not be tolerated. So build on a culture to make people understand that they can take risks, they can learn, they can invest in themselves. And this makes it psychologically a little safer for people to take risks and bring those new ideas forward. The third layer above that is actually contribution. That means people feel okay to bring their ideas to contribute in the conversation. And again, be careful, because if you're somebody that's going to shut down somebody's bad idea, someone brings somebody like, wow, that's so stupid, then that person's going to shut off and they're not going to want to contribute any idea. And again, you're going to be putting a block on innovation and growth. And the last one is the most interesting one because it's about the challenging the status quo. Do your meetings include people that oppose each other's views, that debate them without personally attacking anybody else? That is the highest level of psychological safety. And as a leader, you're able to cultivate that. That means that if someone disagrees with you, you can reward them, acknowledge them, because you know that you're all working towards the same goal, which is keeping focus on the big picture of making the workplace more effective, delivering better products, better services, making an impact in the world. Everything that ties to that clear mission of the workplace. You, as a leader will have created the culture and the environment, and having that skill set will be one of the most sought after skills for top leaders and top companies. So now that we've dealt with the emotional part of leading and the skills you need to nurture, make a bit of an assessment here. I'd be curious to know. In your workplace, where do you score on the psychological safety? There's a poll that's in the little box. You can click here to let me know if you are at the challenge level, Are you at the contribute level, Are you at the learning level, Are you at the inclusion level? Or is there no psychological safety at all? I'd love to read your comment to hear about what your workplace culture is like. And as a leader, you do have a responsibility to be able to nurture that. And if you listen to the podcast Superhumans at Work with the episode with Timothy Clark, we go way more in depth on developing that skill set and I highly encourage it. But now that you've dealt with the emotional nurturing of the skills, there's another big part of leadership that's important and it's beating the drum on making people understand that the most important thing is the important thing that people are working on. I mean, this has been a Jack Welch quote. It's also been what we do here at Mindvalley is actually focus on objectives and key results. OKRs, a terminology that was popularized by John Dewar. But having clarity on what is the thing that everybody should be working on and why it's important. We talked about being more productive in the workplace in a past episode and having that clarity. You, as a leader are the messenger to everyone on your team to make them understand why they're doing what they're doing every day. So if you want to be someone that nurtures the team to be more productive, make sure that you're always beating the drum on the why and you're communicating with them, every single one of these employees, as to why their task is important to keep them motivated and actually excited about getting it done. Bill Jensen wrote a book about the future of work who talked about in the past, companies had to look for employees by saying, this is what we do. This is what our team's about. You should join us. And now the difference in the future of work is that people will come to you, the top eight players, and tell you, this is what I'm about and this is what I'm looking for. How can you help Companies are expected to invest as much into their employees as employees are going to be investing in the company. So as a leader, are you looking out for the well being of the growth of your employees individually, professionally, personally and emotionally? Because the more you can nurture their growth, the longer you'll be able to retain a players. And as a leader, if you're able to build a team of high performers, you will always be on the winning side and you will be an excellent leader that everybody wants to work with. See, people don't leave jobs because of the work, they usually leave because of bad managers. So if you want to be one of the better leaders, work on the emotional intelligence and develop that as much as possible. Make sure you're always letting people know what is important about what they do and continuously beat that drum so that they get motivated to work more and finally invest into each of these employees. And yes it does take time, but when you do it, you'll have a more productive team that is working on important things and making a true difference and you will be the one that's on the leader side and not on the boss side. So this is the final episode of our mini series for season one and we had so much fun bringing these ideas together and I would love to hear your feedback on how you like the topics that we covered. We went through six major topics that we know are super important within the workplace and we're going to be preparing to do this again and I'd love to hear from you about what are the topics you would want me to cover. So please leave some comments, let us know what you liked, what you would want me to bring forward, and of course if you love this video, give me a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel. And we want to make sure that you're going to have all the insights you need to be the best version of yourself in the workplace. By getting all the answers you need to show up strong, prepared for the future and really making a dent in the universe. This has been Jason Campbell. Thank you so much for watching and see you next season. Sam.