The Leader's Suitcase: The Leader's Suitcase, #1

By Carolyn Stuart

All leaders carry with them a metaphorical suitcase that is packed with the tools and strategies they will need to successfully navigate the leadership journey. The Leader's Suitcase trilogy uses the idea of three packing cells to logically organise the leader's equipment. This book explores the first packing cell which contains the tools and strategies we need to set ourselves up for success. It is full of fresh ideas and approaches that leaders can deploy to become the leader they aspire to be and the leader others need them to be. 

How do today's leaders set themselves up for success in a world that is becoming increasingly complex? What tools and strategies does a leader need to have in their metaphorical suitcase, to thrive and not just survive? Today more than ever we need leaders who are equipped to lead using a strengths-based approach, ensuring positive outcomes for themselves and the people they lead.

Drawing on strategies from the field of Positive Psychology, intertwined with sound leadership practices, this book takes leaders on the journey from surviving to thriving. It is a playbook for positive deviance, equipping leaders with the strategies and practices for a positive and thriving future.

Other books in The Leader's Suitcase Trilogy:

Setting Others Up for Success

Setting Organisations Up for Success

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carolyn Stuart
• Release date: Sep 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781922357618

Book preview

Introduction:

The Leader’s Suitcase

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Leadership is a journey. Like any journey on which we embark, it is important to be equipped with the things we need to make the trip a positive one. To thrive as a leader, we need to carry with us a Leader’s Suitcase that has everything in it that ensures our success, the success of the people we lead, and the success of our organisation. At times, leadership can feel overwhelming, so it is important to not only have our Leader’s Suitcase packed, but to have the suitcase organised in such a way that we can quickly locate what we need to lead ourselves, others, and our organisations.

A few years ago, a friend introduced me to packing cells. Sometimes called packing cubes, these individually zipped containers sit inside my suitcase and have revolutionised the way I pack and retrieve things. Packing is now a breeze as I am able to separate the different things I need for a trip into specific packing cells. My gym gear goes in one cell, while my business attire goes in another. No longer do I waste time dredging through all the things in my suitcase to find that elusive pair of socks! Not having to unpack then repack my suitcase as I move from place to place, being able to quickly locate the things I need, has greatly reduced my travelling stress.

In the same way that I use packing cells to organise the things in my physical suitcase, I have used the idea of packing cells to organise my metaphorical Leader’s Suitcase. It is so important for leaders to be able to locate the right thing, at the right time, for the right purpose. We never want to be that leader who, in the middle of a crisis, is floundering around trying to locate the thing they need or, worse still, randomly applying different tools in the hope that something will work. Using the notion of packing cells to help us think logically and systematically about what we need to take with us as leaders helps us to better navigate all the twists, turns, and bumps we will encounter on our leadership journey.

To thrive as leaders, it is essential to:

arr.jpg Set Yourself Up for Success

arr.jpg Set Others Up for Success

arr.jpg Set Organisations Up for Success.

And so, in a Leader’s Suitcase, we organise our materials and approaches for these different types of success into three packing cells. One cell contains material that sets oneself up for success, one for others, and the final cell has the strategies for organisational success. With these three cells in our Leader’s Suitcase, we have everything we need.

The enjoyment and success of a journey is determined by what it is we carry. Without the right things to hand, we end up surviving instead of thriving. Worse still, when leaders are not thriving, then it is likely that the people they work with and their organisation won’t be thriving either.

Thriving leaders have in their suitcases everything that ensures the success of themselves, the people they work with, and their organisation. Smart leaders – no matter how experienced – stay smart by always being on the lookout for new items to add to the packing cells in their suitcase, discarding things that are no longer useful. They carefully choose the things most suited to their current leadership context. Knowledge about what effective leaders do continues to grow through the sharing of research findings and the experience of others. We need to continually check that the things in our Leader’s Suitcase are up-to-date and relevant.

In the same way that we pack our suitcases ahead of a journey, leaders can pack, in advance, their own Leader’s Suitcase. We don’t have to wait until we are in a leadership position to start acquiring the resources we will need; we can start packing at any time. In fact, it is often prudent to begin accumulating the material we will need before venturing forth.

Following this are listed the three packing cells that leaders – and those aspiring to become leaders – need to fill in order to be equipped for the journey. Together, as illustrated on the cover of this book, they fill our Leader’s Suitcase. This book equips you with the tools and strategies you’ll find in Packing Cell One: Setting Yourself Up for Success. The second and third books in the series fill packing cells two and three.

Packing Cell One: Setting Yourself Up for Success

The first person every leader leads is themselves. In fact, the mark of an authentic leader is one who uses their own behaviour to exemplify the expectations they hold for others. When we have leadership over our own lives, our life has greater meaning, our values underpin our identity as a leader, and our decisions, boundaries, and habits align with the leader we aspire to be. We utilise our strengths, effectively manage our time and workload, and employ strategies that bring positivity and happiness to our lives.

Whether an experienced leader, someone just starting out on the leadership journey, or someone aspiring to lead, we have a choice as to whether we thrive or just survive. We may not always be able to control what happens to us, but we can always control our response.

This book draws on many of the theories of positive psychology and weaves them together with sound leadership practices to help us thrive and not just survive as leaders. By the end of this book, you will be clear on the purpose that underpins your leadership and know how to use your personal values to make wise decisions, set and keep boundaries, and develop habits that will enable you to thrive. You will also be armed with an array of strategies to help you tackle every situation in a positive and sustaining manner.

When we set ourselves up for success, we are choosing to positively deviate from the survival mode so many leaders find themselves in today. Thriving as a leader is the best way to ensure the success of those we lead and significantly contributes to the success of our organisations.

Packing Cell Two: Setting Others Up for Success

Packing Cell Two, the second book in this series, equips leaders to lead others. We set others up for success when we lead with empathy and in a way that both supports and challenges everyone to be the best version of themselves.

Authentic relationships, built on trust, sit at the heart of this work. The people we lead need to know they can trust us, and we, in turn, need to be able to trust them. They also need to be able to trust each other. Growing high-functioning teams that work together so that everyone meets their accountabilities is some of the most important work a leader does.

In Packing Cell Two, you will discover how to grow the capacity of others using a strengths-based approach. You will understand the importance of relationships that both support and challenge. You will learn how to transform the conversations you once saw as difficult, into opportunities to foster growth, connection, and belonging. You will also learn about how to set team members up to work with each other successfully.

Packing Cell Three: Setting Organisations Up for Success

The goal of the third book is to take many of the strategies and tools from the previous packing cells and to utilise them within the broader organisational context. Packing Cell Three will equip you with approaches that will help you affect organisational change, irrespective of your place in the hierarchy.

At the heart of every successful organisation is a compelling vision that gives purpose and meaning to the work. This vision is the glue that binds every part of the organisation together. But having a compelling vision and great culture is not enough. There needs to be a well-thought-out strategy to ensure the vision translates into action. Developing the strategy is the key work of senior leaders, as is identifying and tracking the key priorities needed to deliver the strategy. Operationalising the priorities is the important work of the mid-tier leaders. For a vision to come to life, everyone in an organisation needs to understand their role and be supported in it.

This book will show you how to weave together your organisation's vision, values, mission, and strategy into an approach that sees everyone in your organisation focused on delivering your priorities. It will also equip you with tools and strategies from the field of design thinking to lead change in a way that keeps people at the centre of the process.

While senior leaders hold the ultimate responsibility for setting their organisation up for success, this packing cell equips all leaders to fulfil their roles.

So Let the Journey Begin

This book tackles Packing Cell One: Setting Yourself Up for Success.

Packing Cell One contains our individualised resources. When we pack for a real trip, this is the packing cell where we put the things that are rarely seen by others. This is the cell that contains our personal items. It is also the cell that contains the things most critical to the success of any journey.

This book is all about setting ourselves up for success, and is full of fresh ideas and approaches we can deploy to become the leader we aspire to be and that others need us to be. The first person we always lead is ourselves. When we thrive, the people we work with are more likely to thrive, as is the organisation. Thriving as a leader starts with us.

In addition to this book there are Masterclasses you can register for that will help you apply what you learn in this book to your personal leadership journey. The QR code below will take you to further information about this.

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1.

Becoming a Positive Deviant

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No matter how far life pushes you down, no matter how much you hurt, you can always bounce back.

- Sheryl Swoopes

Life happens to all of us. Sometimes the things that happen are good; at other times, they are not. Sometimes we can find ourselves in a place where the only thing we have control over is how we respond to what is happening to us. This is the space where we get to choose if the current situation we are navigating will make us arrogant or humble, bitter or better. This is the space where we get to choose to be like everyone else, or to respond differently. Do we become a conformist or a deviant?

Often when we think about the label deviant, we see it as something bad. It actually isn’t. A deviant is simply someone who behaves in a way that is different from the norm, as in something that is usual, typical or standard. A negative deviant is someone whose actions fall below the norm, whereas a positive deviant is someone whose response exceeds it. Negative deviance is a response that falls below the norm, whereas positive deviance is a response that exceeds it. The relationship between norms, and positive and negative deviance, is illustrated in Figure 1.1.

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