Leadership is hard. In any organisation, at any level, being a leader requires clarity, calm and consideration. It requires people to paint such a compelling picture of a possible future that it seems like it could be a reality today. So much of the role of leaders is based on how they speak – and whether those words match their actions.
I was wowed when I heard this statement from a leader’s opening remarks earlier this year. Rodrigo leads part of a large multi-national financial services provider. His words and actions impact work that serves millions of customers. He leads quarterly planning events that have thousands of attendees, and during his opening address, he said something that will stay with me forever:
Your children know my name and I’ll have never met them. Your team members’ children know your name. What do you want them to say about you?”
This was such an ingeniously human way of describing the impact leaders have, not just in the workplace, but in our lives more broadly. He knew that, whilst he won’t ever meet many of his team members’ children, they have probably heard his name at home. And he wants his people to talk about him positively to their children. By extension, he was making an extraordinary invitation to consider the impact his leaders have on their respective team members.
We can all think of leaders and managers we have talked about with disdain at home – to loved ones, friends, family (and children pick up on everything!). Those people close to us will have formed views and opinions of that leader and, potentially, by extension, that organisation. And because these people love us and want what’s best for us, their views will be strong-held based on what they hear. So, this wonderful statement was to ask us to consider how we’d like to be talked about when we’re not there. Do we want to be the leader that people are stressed and upset about and worry about interacting with, keeping people awake on a Sunday night; or do we want to be the leader that enthuses people to speak well about our organisation at home, to look forward to working with them, to bringing their best selves to work with us?
As my coaching supervisor says to me, ‘how we do anything is how we do everything’and here’s a perfect example of how this can play out: our lives are complex webs of social interactions where each part of the system has an impact on the other.
What kind of impact do you want to have on others?
Sam Grayston 