While conducting webinars and live presentations based upon my book, ‘Bring Out the Best in Every Employee’, a distinct pattern of topics has begun to emerge in the questions I field. I’d like to begin to tackle two recurrent topics here, and take on more in future blogs:
1. The first topic for discussion appears across a broad spectrum of questions I get; ‘I am a new manager, what is the best advice you can give me?’, ‘What is the #1 thing a manager can do to lower turnover?’, ‘We have new leaders in our organization (state government), and how do we overcome low levels of trust and confidence from their teams?’, ’I work for a large global team of over 200 people and the team is not feeling important and appreciated, how can we fix this?’. All of these invoke what I consider to be the number one leadership competency of the 21st century – learning to be present. I’ve covered the importance of being present in earlier blogs, yet the how-to’s often have to be left out of a 500-word blog entry. Let’s fix that – if you would like to try out the top-20 strategies for getting better at awareness of and attention, go to https://www.donbrown.org/ and just put in your first name and email. You’ll get a PDF that my readers tell me offers solid tips for increasing the quality and frequency their interactions. Go for it. It pays off at home even more so than at work.
2. The second topic for today deals with a single question that comes out in every session I conduct – ‘What are some of the best ways to increase my energy for leading?’ Let’s get a start on this. You’ll note in my last two books, the banner of my website and in quite a few facets of my work, a stylized character just like the one you see above. This character is that of happiness (actually, with a little bit of luck and fortune in there as well). A character often represents one’s identity, or personal philosophy. My philosophy of life and work is one of happiness, certainly for myself, but also in what I can contribute to the happiness of others. My working definition of happiness boils down to prosperity and contentment – and it sits at the very core of all that leaders do professionally and personally.
Make no mistake, prosperity doesn’t mean a lack of hard work, and contentment does not connote freedom from desire or want. My goal in working with leaders is to help them find a path of contentment and prosperity. What does that have to do with energy? Happiness releases passion, and passion creates energy. Let’s face it, leadership is a contact sport. Leadership is personal. Leadership is full time and full service. It takes energy, and ‘happiness’ is the fuel we’ve been looking for.
Consider these two topics then…learn to be present and build energy through happiness. In my next blog I’ll get at the common denominators of energy – I think you’ll be surprised to find them already in your life.
