Leading Without Authority
Chap 1 What is leadership behavior
Listen mindfully
When you’re mindfully listening, you’re paying attention to a person’s words, their tone of voice, their body language, small changes in their facial expression, and other nuances that will give you a more holistic picture of the person and conversation.
- focus, and don’t wander away, and don’t get distracted
mindful listening helps
- boost your self esteem
- help retain information
- increase attention ability
When distracted:
- ask clarifying questions and keep yourself engaged
- Physically moving, a nod, shift in seat can also help attention
- if you have to fidget… keep it low key
Mindful listening helps you sort and frame information and when you do speak, they listen because they know you’ve taken in everything including, most importantly, their point of view
Adding Value to every meeting
if you want more authority,
- you need to get invited to important meetings.
- You need to get yourself on the agenda and make sure you’re part of the conversation.
- You also need to learn how to introduce a subject in a meeting,
- ask the right questions,
- summarize information,
- identify action items,
- wrap things up before everyone gets bored of you talking.
Steps to take:
- Planning If you are the one planning the meeting, send out an agenda, describe what you want to accomplish in the meeting
- include accurate timeframe.
- a quick standup huddle can be more productive than a 30 minute meeting.
- if you’re not the one planning the meeting, getting on the agenda is a great way to increase your informal authority.
- Think about how you can add real value to the attendees and don’t be afraid to speak up in advance.
- think about what can you do during the meeting? No matter what your role, meetings always benefit from someone asking the right questions.
- if you want to position yourself as a leader, ask action-oriented questions.
- make sure the meeting is comprehensive and actionable.
- ask in a collaborative tone
- the more you listen, the better questions you will be able to ask. Think quality here, not quantity.
- Summarizing: you can lead by summarizing the meeting and making sure there are action steps moving forward.
- End the meeting positively, and thank