1 Thing You Must Have to Become An Amazing Leader as a Humanitarian and International Development Supervisor

We spend a lot of time forming job descriptions and action plans. But what about time on how you want to be remembered as a unique leader?

Today's 9 minute quick quote episode is inspired by this quote by Rosabeth Moss Kanter:

“A vision is not just a picture of what could be, it’s an appeal to our better selves, to become something more.”

This episode dives into the crucial role of having a personal leadership vision, how to start forming one and how to use it.

You will discover how to:

1. Define a leadership impact goal that resonates with your values and aspirations.
2. Make better decisions that align with your vision, fostering a more inclusive and empowering environment for their teams.
3. Tap into your emotions as a guide to grow as a leader and inspire others effectively.

Tune in now to unlock the keys to becoming the leader you aspire to be and start making a meaningful impact today!

WHAT IS YOUR LEADERSHIP STYLE?

Want to know how to lead better?  It starts by understanding your leadership style.   To find out yours, take my free quiz “What Is Your Leadership Style” - you’ll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.  Just click on the link fill out your quiz and click submit.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

The one thing that makes it less likely that you will become the leader you hope to be in this quick quote, episode,

Welcome to The Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader podcast, the podcast helping humanitarian and development supervisors make a greater impact by taking control of your time, leading more inclusively and empowering your team all the while avoiding stress, burnout, and overwhelm. I'm your host, leadership coach and former aid worker, Torrey Peace.

Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hello, my aspiring modern humanitarian and development leader. I hope you're having a wonderful week. And today we're having our quick quote episode. I'll make it quick. Today's quote is by Rosabeth Moss Kanter.

She is a Harvard professor and sociologist.

Her quote is: "a vision is not just a picture of what could be. It's an appeal to our better selves to become something more." So one more time: "a vision is not just a picture of what could be. It's an appeal to our better selves to become something more". I love this quote, because I think that it does capture the importance behind having a vision as a leader. And not only of the importance of having a vision, but the importance of making it something that we are passionate about, or that motivates us, that inspires us. That appeals to our better selves to become something greater. And this is where I feel like sometimes as leaders, we don't take a step back and think about: our own vision in terms of who we want to become as a leader? What does that look like?

And have you even thought about who you would like to be as a leader? I think we all have vague ideas of the types of leaders we like, and maybe who we admire and who we would like to become more like. But there's a lot of value to be said to doing what I mentioned in Monday's episode on performance planning. And even making this part of one of your performance plan goals around your leadership impact, what is the impact you want to leave on your team? And on those around you?

And really thinking about who do you need to become in order to do that? And if we don't take the time to really think about this then we end up following other people's visions. And so that's why it's so important.

This is something that I have my students do in my course, my six week course "Becoming the Modern Humanitarian Development Leader". The first thing that I have them do in the first week is to create a leadership impact goal.

And the reason behind that is because it really gives them a vision of first of all, the why behind, why do they want to learn and apply coaching and their work as leaders? And it's usually has something to do with wanting to empower our teams and so on. But it also is a step-by-step process on how to create this goal, how to make sure that it's measurable in some way, how you want to measure it and then how you can implement it and think through all the challenges that might come up and how you can overcome them. And we do some coaching around that as well. So it is a process.

But that's not to say that you couldn't get started even today on just starting to think about what is it that appeals to you in terms of you wanting to become a better leader and how you want to be remembered by your team and by those around you in the future. And this is a very personal thing. And that's why I like how the quote mentioned, it's an appeal to our better selves. It's something that when you think about it, when you think about your leadership impact goal or vision, It should motivate you, excite you, inspire you. It drives you to become a bigger leader, a better leader to step out of your comfort zone to take more risks than you would normally.

This is a power behind having a clear vision. And one thing I emphasize in creating this leadership impact goal or vision with my students is to use your emotions as a guide , like when you think about becoming a leader who trusts your team, how do you feel about that?

Maybe you feel like that's something that you would like to improve on, or maybe it's around becoming better at open communication. Or becoming a leader who is able to promote a lot of people around them.

So another really important reason to have a vision when it relates to our leadership. Is because it helps us to make better decisions. And decisions in line with the leader we want to become. So really quickly, I'll give you an example. If you're asked by your supervisor to plan an upcoming donor visit, for example, let's say it's a very big donor visit and they ask you to organize and plan it. And let's say that your leadership impact goal is to provide more opportunities to your team.

You want to empower your team more, give them more responsibility, help them grow. That's one of your leadership, visions or goals. If that is the case, then when you think about how do I make the decision of how to proceed with organizing this donor visit, you are much more likely to delegate more, to really involve your team more to trust them more in taking more responsibility. Maybe that requires a little bit of coaching or training on your part. But you're more likely to take that time out of your schedule and to prioritize it.

Whereas if your goal or you didn't have, let's say a leadership vision or your leadership vision did not, it did not include empowering your team. Maybe that's just not important to you for whatever reason. Although I would argue the modern leader, this is one of the priorities is to empower those around us. Then you might just do it all yourself or tell others what to do because it's easier, it's faster. But if you're doing that, you are not becoming the leader you want to be, which is this leader that empowers those around them.

So your vision or your leadership impact goal should be personal to you. It should be unique. It should be something that when you think about it, it really inspires you, it motivates you. It encourages you to make decisions in line with it and to step out of your comfort zone so that you grow. And once again, that's in line with this quote of it's an appeal to our better selves, the person that we hope to become. To become something more. And I think most of you, if you're listening to this podcast, it's because you want to become something more as a leader.

And so it's really important that you take the time to do this. All right, because this is a quick quote. I'm going to end there. But if you wanted to start now, my suggestion would be as a first step to just become familiar with that part of you which is motivated to become something more.

And what is it that you see in other leaders that you also want to adapt and your own leadership style? And how can you get more clarity around that in one or two statements around the type of leader that you hope to be? All right until next time, keep evolving bye for now.

Are you the type of leader that tells others what to do? Or do you let them figure it out for themselves? Understanding your leadership style is the first step to deciding what's working for you and what's not. To find out your leadership style, take my free quiz "what is your leadership style?" You'll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team, and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.

Just click on the link in the show notes, www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz fill out your quiz and click submit. So what are you waiting for? Go to www.aidforaidworkers.com.Quiz and discover your leadership style now. Your team will thank you for it!