Welcome to this episode of Jack Chat and another tiny lesson in leadership, straight up.
In this episode, I’d like to talk about well… tiny leadership lessons.
I realize that Jack Chat is likely your most cherished and staggeringly effective source of tiny leadership lessons. But the truth is there are tiny (and not so tiny) leadership lessons all around you. Every day. You just don’t notice them.
How intriguing… let’s explore this…
If you’re like most leaders, you became a leader because you know a thing or two about the work your team does.
While that’s a really good thing for being able to support your employees, it makes it easy to fall into a pattern of…
- answering more questions than you ask
- getting impatient with others’ learning curve
- or maybe even contributing to conversations as a way to show others how much you know. C’mon – I know you’ve done it 🙂
The problem, of course, is that this pattern interferes with your learning as a leader. It also interferes with the insight and innovation that comes from employees contributing their unique perspectives and ideas.
What’s a leader to do? Briefly stated: Practice being LESS certain and MORE curious.
A few self-reflection questions might help here. Use these questions to help dial down your instinct to be so sure and increase the likelihood you won’t miss the next leadership lesson that comes your way.
- How do you decide how much you should contribute to a conversation?
- What do you do to ensure others feel safe to speak up in a conversation with you?
- How might telling less and asking more benefit you as a leader?
Give those questions some thought, learn something new…and join me again for another chat!