Response-able leadership at home and work

You are stressed and worn out by the needs of your team. Why are they so needy? I hear you.

Being in a contact state of stress can also be damaging your ability to deal with each situation or questions your team throws at you. Unfortunately, as you can tell, being stuck in this situation is like being on a merry-go-round. If you don't change something, you will keep seeing the same scary again and again. Same goes for your reaction to situations with your big and small people at home.

Ok, so how do you step back and get off the merry-go-round?

You breathe and work on your mindset first.

Being a responsible leader, means being able to respond at your best. However, your responses are influenced by a whole host of factors way beyond just this moment with this team member. By developing an awareness of your go-to responses, you can how up as a calmer and more relaxed leader. When you're in a situation and your reaction is not ideal try these 3 steps (popularised by Eckhart Tolle).

Let's say your team member seems to be always late.

1. Acknowledge what is happening and your part in it - Ok they have actually been late 3 times this month (not always)

2. Look for the learnings - How can you better set expectations for the behaviour you want? How could you have dealt with this better the first time they were late? Are you always on time?

3. Move forward with Joy (and Empathy) - Think to yourself "I'm so lucky to have this amazing person on my team, once I can help to change this behaviour we will all be much happier", and then go off to chat to them with that mentality in mind.

Once I was getting really angry when my son was asking me for something I had said no to several times. I think it was watching TV. I took a breathe, and acknowledged that yesterday I broke my own rule about TV during the week and so the usual boundary was now unclear. I learned that I needed to reset the expectation and explain why the rule was changed yesterday. I also learned that if I responded within this angry state It hadn't ended well for me. So I turned and opened the fridge, put my head in it and waited for 3 deep breaths. Then I went back and picked him up spun him around and distracted him from the problem with a fun change of pace, and later told him I understood why he seemed upset.

Let me know how you go when you try this today - I love to hear how these techniques make a difference for you,

If this sounds a bit hard, a great place to start working on your mindset is my 5 day Lost to Mind Boss course available at www.themindsetcorner.com.

Photo by Kylie Haulk on Unsplash