October 7

A life-changing insight before we even started

One of the participants in this year’s Impact Accelerator programme just had a life-changing insight… before the first session even started!

They’d watched an introductory video and they were completing a brief worksheet in preparation for our first session.

The worksheet made them think in some different ways about what it will take to be exponentially more successful in the future.

Firstly, they realised that “to become more successful, I actually need to focus on my team’s success instead of on my own success.” This isn’t so surprising of course, but actually writing it down often creates a new commitment to the idea.

But the real (and surprising) revelation came when they looked a little deeper:

"I’m realising that I’m actually afraid that if I selflessly develop my team and teach them everything I know, that my own value will diminish. I’m scared that I’ll lose the recognition and rewards that I currently enjoy, and will end up broke and alone."

First of all: kudos to this leader who took the worksheet seriously enough to give it real thought, and was courageous enough to take a deep look inside and honestly face their fears.

Secondly: what a key insight! If they’d not surfaced this, their managerial future would have been perhaps fatally wounded. How can you be a great manager if, deep down, you’re scared that developing your team will undermine your own value instead of enhancing it?

The life-changing potential comes in the fact that they can now choose a more liberating narrative that will support their future success. After all, how much more valuable is a star performer who knows how to raise up other top performers, compared with a single high achiever?

What was interesting to me is the specific language the leader used. Always listen out for the vocabulary you’re using (or that you’re hearing from your own people). It reveals the deeper assumptions and beliefs. The word that jumped out to me in this case was ‘selfless’.

As I said to this leader, “be careful with your choice of words. Perhaps it’s not so much about selflessly developing your team - sacrificing yourself so they improve and you diminish! Perhaps you’re creating a win/win - whereby they improve and you become even more successful and valued as a result?”

Let me offer you a life-changing moment of your own:

1 - What programmes, books, trainings are you currently engaged in? Are you giving them lip-service, or truly giving them thoughtful consideration to find your own breakthrough insight?

2 - How will you need to change your own behaviours to become more impactful? And what’s the fear that’s kept you from making this shift up to now?


PLUS, whenever you're ready, why not hit the accelerator on your journey of exponential impact by working with us, or by picking up a copy of Making TIME For Strategy?

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