In this TED Talk on leadership, Matt Beeton shares both what it’s not, and what it is, based on years of research.
Firstly, what great leadership is not:
- Your IQ – some of the most brilliant minds are poor leaders
- Privilege – be it money or educational privilege, they are not determinants of good leaders.
- Job title – respect needs to be earned and is not something that is afforded by title.
3 key areas that Matt’s focuses on are:
People
And more specifically within that broad term, connection. You must understand yourself fully to be connected to the people around you. To go deeper on this, you need:
- Self-reflection – understand what makes you happy, sad, motivated, driven to get the results you are after.
- Self-regulation – around how you deal with responses and challenges when emotions come into play.
- Self-perception – how close is this to other people’s belief? The closer these 2 are the better, otherwise there becomes quite a disjoint.
Through working on these aspects, along with creating safe environments and a climate where people can share ideas, connection can occur. This also leads to creativity. Matt contends that nothing amazing happens without creativity.
2. Vision
There must be a destination. And an exciting one at that. Without this vision people and projects will meander along, ticking through the motions. Make it emotional and tangible, draw it out. Not just words on a page.
As vision is generally something off in the future, there also needs to be design stops and celebrations along the way. Otherwise it can be hard to keep people focused on that end goal.
3. Passion
“A leader without passion and enthusiasm lacks credibility”. Matt encourages us to infect people with passion. Emotion moves people into action; and use strategic mental rehearsal to help with this.
Conclusion
These 3 areas help create a tipping point where having developed yourself, you can then transfer that development to others. And gaining happiness as you pass on this success is all a part of great leadership.
Check out the full 12-minute TED talk here to hear the examples provided by Matt.
Want to watch even more TED Talks we have shared. Check them all out here.
