Feb 123 min read

Letting go of the Ego...and inviting knowledge share

If people are not empowered by you as a leader, how can they contribute?

Great leaders are able to get team members on board with their vision and mission and they do this by inviting them into the conversation, by encouraging knowledge share, by allowing contributions and accepting that other team members may have more knowledge about a certain area and allowing that information to flow.

In this short video, Nick Bailey explains how and why CEO's need to learn to invite knowledge share from team members.

Leadership traits - it's ok NOT to have all the answers

In our previous blog, you may recall that we said that at the beginning of any crisis, as the leader, it's important to have AN answer to give people direction and get moving. But then it's important to re-group and revisit the solution and invite opinion to make adaptations to the plan to get to the right result.

So what stops good leaders doing that?

And this again comes back to the idea of the ego. And I'm not talking about it from a toxic perspective, I'm talking about the ego from the from the perspective that

"I am what it says on the business card - I can't reach out, I can't ask for help, I can't say I don't know. I can't be corrected in front of all these people, because I'm the top dog. And as a top dog, what does that say about me?"

Often it is this self talk or perception of "What a leader is" that gets in the way. Let me give you an example of this. I was on a call the other day and we were talking about education and leadership in education. And I was corrected by somebody, or at least, somebody put my point across in a more succinct, and actually better fashion.

There were two responses to this, I could have let negative self-talk in and allowed myself to think

"Oh, I'm out now. I'm not going to speak again because 20 people in this room now all think I'm useless and I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm supposed to be the expert, this is my field."

But what I actually did, was acknowledged the other person's comments, and actually said "thank you, that was a cleaner summary, I'll write that down!". And we proceeded to have a very good call.

Creating a trust culture to empower your team

I think, when we're trying to navigate crisis and uncertainty and frankly, complexity, we must take it away from authority and power.

And the openness and the trust, the listening to all opinions and knowledge, I think is a key dynamic in creating a really holistic place from which you can constantly question and critically evaluate because all information should be a conversation.

When it comes to addressing a crisis, or just in directing a team, I invite you to think when you open discussions:

"I may know my field, but that doesn't make me the only expert here. I am here, not just to impart knowledge to you, but for you to impart knowledge to me and by the end of it, hopefully, we've all learned something and moved ahead. And we have some questions that are worth answering."

You can hear more about 'creating a trust culture' from Dr John Jupp in our next blog "creating a trust culture" or reading his paper "Trust for organisational success"