Becoming Deliberate: Changing the Game of Leadership from the Inside Out

By Cheryl Bonini Ellis

The need for effective leadership is greater than ever, and the requirements have changed dramatically. Today’s leaders need to cultivate a level of influence by building connections that develop trust and inspire followers. Deliberate and intentional leadership is needed at every level of every organization. Building leadership ability and credibility is a lifelong process, and the best leaders work at it consistently; they also know that leadership emanates from the inside out, and it all starts with the right thinking and the right mindset.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781630474041

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Case for Leadership:

Does It Really Matter?

The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.

—Harvard psychologist William James

Effective leadership starts with the right thinking and the right mindset.

This book will teach you how to build the critical foundation that must be in place before you can lead others to great success. It will challenge how you think about the notion of leadership. It will help you to recognize the detriment of negative thinking and teach you how to deactivate it and transform your thinking—and your leadership. Ultimately, it will help to shape your inner voice from one filled with doubt to one that projects strength and support to your team.

As a result of implementing this improved mindset, new thought process, and better habits, you will find yourself more confident in your leadership ability as you quickly gain more credibility as a leader. You will improve your ability to connect with others and influence them. All this will lead to better results and more meaningful impact as a leader.

Reaching the ultimate level of leadership is directly connected with what you stand for and what you represent. In other words, it is more about who you are than what you do. And who you are starts with how you think. Becoming Deliberate will help you think like—and become—a more effective and more influential leader.

In the movie The Iron Lady, starring Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher, the first woman prime minister of Great Britain (who held that post the longest of anyone in the twentieth century) was paraphrasing Mahatma Gandhi when she said:

Our thoughts become our words.

Our words become our actions.

Our actions become our habits.

Our habits form our character and

Our character ultimately becomes our destiny.

The power of your thoughts to control your destiny is profound. It is the reason so many bestselling books on the subject have been written, and then read over and over again by those in managerial and leadership positions. They do this to ultimately take advantage of their thinking and to support the success in their lives. Together, we will take a very similar but unique journey to architect a more impactful and meaningful destiny.

The power of your thoughts to control your destiny is profound.

Evolution of Leadership

Over the past four decades, both the nature and requirements of leadership have dramatically changed. Once upon a time, business leaders relied solely on their positions or titles or other credentials to effect change or to direct the actions of others. They didn’t expect to be questioned or challenged, only obeyed. Mostly, everyone worked under one roof where they could be closely watched and managed.

Managers were required to set and then communicate expectations, hold team members accountable for their actions, and provide feedback on their performance. Most of that feedback consisted of pointing out mistakes and requesting improvement. Developmental goals were set and monitored. More feedback was offered to fix what was perceived as broken.

It became more challenging for leaders as the workforce expanded to include more women and different cultures. They needed their teams to buy into the vision and work together collaboratively. Sometimes those teams were geographically dispersed, which made clear and consistent communication more difficult. Leaders were required to attend diversity training, aimed at helping them to understand and value differences so that they could identify and leverage strengths and avoid offensive behavior. Almost overnight, leadership became extremely complicated.

Today, leaders who attempt to rely on the position type of leadership that worked in the past rarely succeed to move others to action. The typical response is that most workers do only the minimum required and often with a poor attitude, leaving work as soon as they are able. Productivity suffers, customer service is lacking, and turnover remains high.

Workers today have higher expectations from their work and from their leaders. They want recognition, appreciation, and the opportunity to learn and grow. They look for purpose and fulfillment at their place of employment and become disengaged and uninterested when it is not delivered upon. They want to make a difference. They want a positive work/life balance. And they will not stay where they do not get what they desire.

As a result, it takes much more intention and attention for leaders to provide the type of motivational environment where people have a desire to perform at their best. Team members have more options than ever before, and they can pursue the options more easily with the aid of a quick Internet search for new job opportunities or the use of social media to learn about the culture of an organization and whether or not it fits their needs.

In the future, leadership will continue to evolve. The expansion of technology makes working from anywhere and anytime a growing reality. This will require leaders to create crystal-clear expectations and minimize the impact of blind spots. They will need better ways to measure performance and productivity. To succeed, leaders will need to excel at providing the direction and the resources to support the accomplishment of goals, objectives, and the desired results.

As the world moves at the speed of light, and things keep changing all around us, leaders will find the need for more skills, greater flexibility and adaptability.

As a leader, you have access to more information than ever before in history. You have more choices and therefore more decisions to make. And when it comes to leading others, you have more responsibility too. People are looking to you to show them the way. And it’s important to lead them deliberately, with intention, and on purpose.

As you think about the implications of this evolution for your own leadership effectiveness, it’s important to recognize the lifelong nature of leadership development and be willing to commit to an ongoing, consistent, and intentional process. When you decide to commit, you will continue to evolve as a leader. The demand for effective leadership will continue to evolve as well.

Clearly, the landscape and responsibilities of leadership have changed. But, I would argue, they have changed for the better. We now play in a more flexible and creative backdrop, allowing leadership to appear in many forms. And now that you understand the challenges ahead of you as a leader, let me help you by framing a way to turn the challenges into opportunities. To fully engage and start your journey to grow into an impactful leader, consider the fabric that makes up our new-age leaders. These four key concepts will provide a basis for the way you look at the most important work of leaders:

Key #1: The Inside Work Is the Most Important Work

Your vision for yourself—and what’s possible—should not be limited by your current knowledge and capabilities.

—Brendon Burchard

From my experience and observations as a business leader, and from the thought leaders I’ve been privileged to work with and study, the most important lesson I’ve learned is this: building leadership capability requires doing the tough inside work.

Remember, leadership is no longer about title or position. Rather, it’s about your ability to connect with others and your ability to influence others. And since everyone has the opportunity to connect with others and to influence even one person, everyone has the opportunity to lead.

Leadership is not about title or position. It’s about your ability to connect with others and your ability to influence others.

In order to be fully effective at connecting and influencing, begin by facing the biggest leadership challenge head-on: leading yourself. In other words, you have to learn to lead from the inside out. I call this process Learning to Lead from Within™ and I’ve created a framework to guide you through the essential steps. It starts with managing your personal psychology—how you think, how you feel, and how you behave. We will explore in greater depth later on, but for now, understand that thought manifests actions and actions lead to results. Learning how to think, how to feel, and how to behave is the foundation of all leadership development.

To be a better leader you may need to learn to be a better person. Learning to be a better person is the inside work of leadership. As you master the inside work and allow that better person to shine through to the outside, you increase your ability to connect with others and influence