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Shawn Stratton works with organizations to strengthen leadership skills that translate into powerful teams. Founder of the LiveMore Group, an organization that helps people maximize their potential and productivity, Shawn has designed presentations and retreats for both small businesses and large corporations, offering teams of all sizes the inspiration and tools to flourish in this unpredictable, exciting economic environment.
7 Ways Great Leaders Show Humility
With Remembrance Day this week in Canada and around the world I have been thinking about leadership in the military and what we can learn from the great military leaders. It seems any time I read an article or hear a US Navy Seal interviewed about leadership, the word ‘humility’ comes up. When you think of classic military style leadership as portrayed in the movies, you often think of masculine, dominant, and authoritarian characteristics of a leader. Humility is probably not the first leadership trait which comes to mind when you think of the military but for these elite soldiers, humility is an essential quality of an outstanding leader. There is a common misunderstanding that humble leaders may lack confidence or may not be able to motivate others. In fact, humble leaders willingly admit both their strengths and weaknesses, have a high level of self-confidence, and are appreciative of others’ strengths. As a leader, displaying humility is one of the key ways in commanding team respect and convincing them to follow you. Think of a person in a leadership position who lacks humility. Now think about your respect level for that person. The journal Administrative Science published research in 2014, which showed “that bold and assertive leaders who lack genuine concern for others undermine their influence on subordinates.” They also discovered leaders’ humility gains acceptance from their team by appealing to the interests of the team and restraining their own ego. Humility doesn’t mean a leader is lacking confidence or is a pushover, the opposite in fact. Here are 7 ways great leaders show humility: 1. GIVE CREDIT WHERE CREDIT...
5 Steps to Set Your Team up for Success!
The fundamental role of leaders is to set their team up for success. For any leader to be successful, the team needs to be successful first. The famous former CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch had tremendous success because his business team was successful. The NBA basketball coach Phil Jackson achieved extraordinary success because of how his teams performed. You may think “that’s because they had some all stars on their team” but most teams have a few all-stars and that far from guarantees success. Setting up a new team for success means you need to put the work in early and often so you can watch them blossom later on. The first week on an expedition with a new team was always the busiest. Not only did the team need a lot of direction and instruction from their leaders, but also they needed clear expectations and established norms to work within. An essential part of a leader’s role is establishing expectation and guiding the development of norms within the group. Without a conscious effort to deliver these early and often in the begining stages of a team’s development, you are doing a disservice to the team and are not setting them up for success. You are the leader, the role model, and they are watching your every move. If you show up late to meetings, they will start coming late. If swearing is part of your vocabulary, they will start swearing more often. If you send emails on the weekend, they will expect they need to work on the weekends. If you don’t address inappropriate behavior, they will...
Why Your Team Will Never Think or Act Like You
You are the leader, you think and act differently than your team, stop expecting or wanting them to think like you. Many leaders I have worked with have a common complaint: their team doesn’t look at or even get the big picture. They are not committed, and are not flexible in their role. The fact is most of your team members want to do a good job at their specific tasks to help the team move forward in reaching the team’s goal. They also want to cover their ass and leave work on time. As a leader, you can be ok with this because they are filling their responsibility to move the team forward. They are also not stressing about concerns and needs not related to their responsibility or laying around on vacation thinking about new initiatives to implement in the organization or how they are going to make payroll on Friday or how to reinvest last year’s profits. As a leader, this can be frustrating at times because you just want to shout ‘Don’t you get it? Don’t you care?’ But their job is not to “get or care about everything” going on in the team and department/organization. That is your job. You are the one to connect the dots. You are the leader. As a leader, I often feel I need eyes in the back of my head so I can see absolutely everything that is going on in my team when I am stress about a particular aspect of a project. I found myself in this predicament when I founded and directed a community triathlon for...
Shawn Stratton, Leadership Motivational Speaker and Consultant
“His use of story telling, humor and photography delivered a powerful message on the importance of finding our true passion as an indicator of success. ” -Ian Shortall read more
