My last post on the Leadership Lobby drew on speaking up, the second of Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s keys to success. Moss Kanter has identified six characteristics of people working in healthy, inclusive and successful organisations.
Moss Kanter’s third key is to ‘look up’. I think this is worth considering both literally and metaphorically. When we think about it, so much of our time is spent looking at things at close quarters: looking at text, working at a screen, focusing just on what is in front of us.
How often do we take a break from this and look up at the sky? It needn’t take long and when we do it, we can find a bigger perspective on the things we’re currently tackling. Also, the sky is beautiful, and we all need more beauty in our lives!
The main thing we are encouraged to do when looking up is to tap into the higher vision we have for our work. And to bring other people with us. We all crave meaningful work and when we talk about our values and how they breathe through our plans and actions we find renewed energy and purpose. This helps us to see beyond the weeds and takes us to a bigger picture of why our work is important.
From a personal point of view, I find it helpful to remind myself of why I’m doing the work. It means that the mundane and sometimes tedious parts of the job are just the price I have to pay to get my ideas out, like writing this post!
And finally, we could argue that looking up taps into the way we work together. This from Mike Krzyzewski, American basketball coach is a helpful reminder:
‘We win and lose together. Handling responsibility for wins and losses together removes the burden from one individual’s shoulders and distributes it among each member of the team. That atmosphere is conducive to high-level performance and places you and your team in the position to be bold and unafraid, and if you should lose, you are not alone.’
I’ll be reflecting on the other keys in future posts.
And the Leadership Lobby is now live! It’s a paced leadership course blended with live sessions over 4 terms with Andrew Morrish. If you’d like to know more, here’s a link to our recent webinar.
I hope this is helpful, feedback welcome!
Until next time
Mary