August is all about being real and genuine with the people you lead. Your ability to connect with people comes into play quite often in a leadership position, and the more connected you are, the more you will inspire respect and a passion for the bigger picture within your people. There are many benefits to connecting genuinely… read on to learn more about them and how this type of openness can catapult your work into a bright and prosperous future.
Five Benefits of Genuinely Connecting as a Mindful Leader
1. There are more heads in the game. Solving problems is a fact of daily life, especially when it comes to running a company or team. What many leaders didn’t realize in the more traditional corporate environment is that problem-solving requires the innovation, creativity, and ideas of many people as opposed to just one; everyone’s ideas are valuable. If you’ve ever participated in or had your own brainstorming session about a certain idea or concept, you can probably recall the infectious blaze of one idea connecting to the next, synapses firing in the brain, and feeding off of the energy of other people who are excited about the same thing. This fuels incredible creative thinking, which is vital to solving problems while looking at numerous different angles of them. Don’t write off an idea simply because it didn’t come from you… maybe the issue just needed a new set of eyes or someone else’s perspective to be solved.
2. Enhanced productivity and performance. When people feel heard, inspired, and encouraged to be creative, they thrive. This rings true for everyone, and because the workplace is where you spend a great deal of time, it stands to reason that a large aspect of long-term sustainability involves ongoing inspiration and excitement. One way of helping this happen consistently is by connecting with your people. If they can trust you because they feel connected with you, then they are much more likely to follow your example when dealing with an “off” day.
3. Team-building becomes easier with trust. Your team may go through its growing pains, as most teams do, and that’s where your transparency and the team interconnecting and working together becomes vital. Your team is much more likely to be able to solve a problem if they have all of the information, so don’t hold anything back because you might scare them or hurt their feelings. Being transparent about a detail you think they may not like can often empower them to try harder or take on challenges they may not have taken on before, so make sure they have all of the information they need to find the best possible solution.
4. Authentic and genuine growth. When a group of people faces the same challenge and has to work together to overcome it, they are essentially bonded. As a team, your people will repeat this cycle many times over and get to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. You will also get to know them better, and vice versa. This leads to genuine growth and connection between everyone involved, no matter how crazy things get during the whole process. People may clash, some may be more open than others, and some disagreements may occur, but your job as a mindful leader is to keep them on course, participate and enable them to do their jobs as well as humanly possible. Once the problem has been successfully solved and the challenges overcome, your team will be closer and have a deeper respect for one another as well as for you.
5. Organic growth of respect through word of mouth. Workers will often bad-mouth their bosses; that’s just a fact of life. Unfortunately, all of this criticism tends to happen behind the boss’s back, and oftentimes it’s valuable input that could help improve leadership. Now wouldn’t it be amazing if your team trusted you enough to bring any issues they have to you directly because they know you’ll hear them and take it into consideration? Wouldn’t it also be amazing if your leadership skills, as well as your problem-solving skills and ability to handle critique, were put into active practice, too, allowing you to grow? Of course, this also means that your team may actually have positive things to say about you and all of their colleagues when nobody is watching. Shh! Don’t tell anyone! ;)
You can obviously tell that there are a number of benefits to being connected on a genuine level to your team. As a mindful leader, you probably already recognize the value your team brings to the table. It’s never a bad idea to remind them that they matter and that you respect what they contribute. This encouragement may just be the inspiration they need to battle through a bad day or re-examine a challenge they’re frustrated with. On that note… happy leading!
