Leading with Passion, Agility and Resilience
Everyone, Thank you for attending FountainBlue's February 15 When She Speaks program, on the topic of 'Leading with Passion, Agility and Resilience'. Please join me in thanking our esteemed panelists.
We were fortunate to have such a diverse and dynamic panel this afternoon to speak about leading with passion, agility and resilience. In this dynamic business climate, our panelists are experiencing a wide range of change, including organizational (M&A), financial (fundings and private equity), technological, and social.
They each shared some best practices for leading with passion, agility and resilience through these changes:
Choose Self Awareness and Manage Your Self-Talk.
Choose to be flexible and roll with inevitable changes.
Consider the concept of Agency - focusing on the things you CAN impact and change rather than feeling overwhelmed by the things you can't change.
Take a longer-term view if you have to slog through shorter-term challenges.
Consistently Choose to Grow.
Adopt a 'Growth Mindset', thinking positively and constructively.
Make that perceived poison exactly the medicine you need.
Be curious about the possibilities rather than hanging on to what-worked-before.
Embrace a 'Learning Attitude' and be better and stronger for the challenges you've navigated.
Relationships Matter.
Build trust and grow relationships. They keep you centered and help you succeed.
Create those magical team connections so that the team succeeds and grows better together.
Choose to do the things that matter because you care, not because you expect a reward for it. It's amazing how that benefited our panelists in unanticipated ways!
Help everyone around you become better versions of themselves - because you can, because it helps everyone, because it's the right thing to do!
Connect the Why, the What and the How to drive trust and empower and inspire the team to deliver results.
Frame Your Choice by Business Needs, not just personal needs.
Be 'Customer Focus', even when it's overwhelming personally to deal with the changes around you.
Act with rational intentionality, with a view of the business drivers.
Speak about the business imperatives for leading with passion, agility and resilience.
Our panelists shared stories about how the following helped them better lead with passion, agility, and resilience:
Defining clearly the organization's/team's Passion/Purpose and how individuals support that purpose
Seizing opportunities to be creativity, resourceful and agile while solving problems
Creating Collaborations across teams within and outside the organization
Adopting Culture-Forward Initiatives from the top-down, from the bottom-up
Adopting a New Technology/Plan/Process/Structure to address new challenges and opportunities
Delivering on Customer-Focused Projects
Below are some suggestions to help reset and recover your own confidence, passion, agility and resilience:
Lean on your relationships to help unplug
Leverage Mentors/Sponsors/Champions for their support, perspective and insights
See challenges as an opportunity for you and your team to showcase some creative Problem-Solving
Adopt a Fail-Forward Strategy, accepting failure as a growth opportunity, a badge of courage
Build Alliances and Partnerships
Read about and welcome qualities of a Proactive, Engaged Culture
Showcase your Bottom-Line Results - even if they don't quite meet the expected levels
Brainstorm - How can we all better lead with passion, agility and resilience when so much is unknown?
Lead by example
Getting people engaged
Getting feedback and input from trusted others
Embrace the change
Learning mindset
Grow despite the circumstances
Encourage innovation
Listen and take a temperature
Lead with Curiosity, Understand Gaps
No matter where you sit in the org chart at work, leadership is a challenge and a privilege. Those who choose to lead with passion, agility, and resilience will leave a positive and lasting mark on us all.