In this episode of the Meet My Potential podcast, we are joined by Dani Poch Managing Director of AddVenture and a faculty at the Coaches Training Institute to discuss aerodynamic leadership. He shares with us his input based on his experience and that of his clients, providing us with valuable perspective in our professional and personal lives. Being an aerodynamic leader expands from individual impact to affecting everyone the leader comes in contact with, improving the overall well-being of their world.
Here’s a summary of the episode. Listen to the entire podcast at:
What does “aerodynamic leadership” mean?
Being an aerodynamic leader means managing your energy, being agile, passionately serving others, and genuinely enjoying the opportunity to lead.
When you are experiencing these feelings as a leader, you likely feel very light and empowered, easily handling any challenges that come your way and recovering when things might not go your way. This also means that you are leading from the lightness within you and are self-aware, managing your emotions to avoid being visibly angry or frustrated despite the circumstances.
How can we make daily choices to be aerodynamic?
5 Practices of an Aerodynamic Leader
- Show passion in what you do by connecting to your true longings. Bring a sense of easiness, lightness and playfulnessin what you do, this is very critical in today’s environment.
- Make choices based on what brings aliveness to you and others.
- See yourself as providerse. Ask yourself the question: What is the contribution I need to do to create a better life for me and others?
- Manage your emotions:That’s why leadership is very connected to mindfulness. Put your energy where needed and don’t get trapped negative feelings, anger or frustration that we can experience at work.
- Recover Fast:by bring compassionate with yourself. Forgive yourself and forgive others.
Every day, an aerodynamic leader will spend some time in a mindfulness practice to remain self-aware and connected to their true values, focusing on the present moment. All of your choices will then be based on what will keep you in line with your true values, no matter what happens that might try to derail you.
Leaders are great in serving others and what they need more is to create space for themselves. Journaling is an important practice that gives you feedback and helps you to reflect. Journaling about your experience, where you succeed, where you fail creates space for greatness within.
Find your lightness and greatness inside to put it at service of others.
What are potential barriers to being aerodynamic?
It can sometimes be difficult to distinguish how to keep a healthy tension between your purpose or passion and the need for safety, which may lead you to not provide feedback when it is merited or hold back when the opportunity is presented to be vulnerable.
Questions you can ask yourself are:
- How am I managing the dilemmas of purpose and safety in my everyday work?
- How am I making choices between purpose and safety?
We face these challenges at work and at times at home.
A concrete example from Dani on the challenge’s leaders face.
Sometimes executives find it hard to give feedback to CEO’s when they feel the CEO is not doing the right thing. Giving feedback to the CEO is choosing authenticity and serving in a good way for themselves and for others. Sometimes executives are trapped in the “Move Up” the pyramid and so they choose to comply and not speak about that.
This damages the energy, the relationship and the organization in the long term. Executives usually have a high pressure on their back, their families, their people and it’s not easy to be authentic and open powerful conversations. Executives need to consider what is the cost of not being authentic. How does this impact their level of energy?
This can sometimes be related to fear of being misunderstood or overlooked for a promotion or fear of losing your job because you provided constructive criticism, but you must remember that being clear about your intension and being honest is always more aerodynamic than mincing words or not being authentic.
What is Dani’s tip for listeners?
4 Practices to develop Aerodynamic leader
- Discern your purpose and values. Why are you here and what matters to you most? This is needed to resolve the dilemma between purpose and safety.
- Use your purpose and values to create a complete and clear vision
- Know your fears, shadows, and doubts.
- Engage yourself in courageous conversations every week.
Make a list of pending conversations you know you need to have so it is easier to engage in a weekly conversation.
“We create our world together every day.” – CTI
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