How To Know If You're Truly a Successful Leader as a Humanitarian and International Development Supervisor

What really makes someone a successful leader—and how might the popular definition of a "successful leader" be wrong?

If you're in the NGO sector, you may have unknowingly adopted a definition of leadership rooted in power, prestige, or control. In this episode, we’ll challenge that idea and explore a more inspiring, sustainable version of success—one that benefits both you and your team.

In this episode you'll discover:

• 4 overlooked signs of true leadership success (hint: none involve titles or salaries)
• Why your team’s ability to operate without you is your greatest leadership test
• Find out how believing in others before they believe in themselves can spark powerful transformations

Press play to redefine what it means to be a successful leader and walk away with practical tools to grow your team and yourself.

Becoming the Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader course is open for registration!!! Learn more or register by clicking here.

What Is Your Leadership Style?  Free Quiz:

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 EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

ind out how to know if you are succeeding as a leader in today's 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 [00:01:00] NGO Leader. I hope you're having a wonderful week. So in today's episode, you're going to discover what makes a leader successful, how to know if you are a successful leader, and how to gain even more success as a leader, because we can always become a more successful leader.

So before we get into that, just wanna say Happy Songkran for those celebrating it.

And for those who do not know what Songkran is, it's a Buddhist New Year holiday, celebrated here in Thailand and Myanmar, and I believe in Laos. And basically it's one of the most fun times to be living in Thailand because everyone goes out in the street and if you do go outside, you're going to get wet because they believe that throwing water on others is offering a blessing.

But it has also [00:02:00] evolved into a kind of huge citywide street water fight. So yesterday I went out with some friends and some water guns, and it was just so fun. So fun.

The other thing that I wanted to let you know is that registration is open for the May course, Becoming the Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader.

We already have a few signed up and I'm so excited to share these tools.

I am even hearing now about some of the results that my former students are getting as they are applying what they've learned. They're discovering how much better their teams are performing, how much more motivated they are. They're strengthening their trust with their teams and their relationships, and they're just being more successful leaders in general.

So if that is of interest to you, then look in the link for the link [00:03:00] in the show notes in order to sign up for the May 6th course.

I thought it would be good to talk about success as a leader because I think it is something that we don't always look at, our own definition of what is success for a leader.

And I think sometimes we blindly inherit the definition from others. And I wanna give a shout out to one of my former students, Ayana Angelo, for tagging me in a post on LinkedIn about this. I've actually done a podcast episode previously that was a little more specific to certain people, but today I'm gonna keep it a little bit general, but also go into why it's important to understand our own definitions of a successful leader.

I'm going to focus on mine today, but I think that my definition will probably be [00:04:00] very much in line with yours if you listen to this, and especially in the Western world, but also globally. I have seen many references to successful leaders as being those with money and those with power or control. I think that's one of the more popular, especially Western definitions of success.

And this could go into non-Western definitions as well, but I especially see it in the western world. And I actually think that money and power are not definitions of a successful leader and unfortunately, we have started associating them. And so when we see a leader who has both, we think that they must be doing something right.

And so I see so and so recommending all these books, as you know, a successful leader and [00:05:00] so and so, who is recommending this or that to be a successful leader. And the so and so I'm talking about are people who have lots of money and potentially power such as, in particular, the one I'm thinking of tagged in the, the LinkedIn post as well, Elon Musk.

But even others. Many others we can think of right now that are seen as having made it because of their positions of power and money, but not because they're actually good leaders. What I think is very ironic is that by definition these people are not leaders. A leader by definition has followers.

And you could say that some of them have followers in the sense that people admire them for their money and power, or people follow them because of their money and power. But to me, the definition of leadership means people who follow because they're [00:06:00] inspired, and if you took away the money and power, it wouldn't matter that they would be inspired anyways to follow these people because they look up to them as wanting to be more like them, not for money and power, but because of the way they live their lives, because of the role model that they bring to their work, because of the example of what they show that's possible.

So in order to deepen this discussion around what makes a successful leader, let's look at some other definitions of leadership. So to me, there are two main components. Leaders inspire themselves. So, yes, you can lead yourself. You can model an example of what is possible [00:07:00] and grow into the best version of yourself.

This, to me, starts with inspiration of yourself. You have to inspire yourself in order to act from that and to grow and to go through the hard things to come out on the other side in order to inspire others. Leaders inspire themselves and they also inspire others to do their best in the interest of a shared goal or a vision.

So here are some signs that you are truly a successful leader and not because of money and power, but because of the true definition of leadership. So as you listen to these, I want you to think of where you are already doing well and where maybe you could improve more, because we can always improve.

This is something I used to tell my team all the time. We can always do better. There is no [00:08:00] destination where we think, okay, we've arrived. That's it. If we are really always growing and pushing ourselves, we're always evolving. We're always looking to improve, not in a perfectionist or an exhausting type of way, but in an inspirational and a motivating type of way.

So as you listen to this, I want you to think of where could, maybe I get better amongst these things and where could I, uh, or where am I doing well? Because I promise you, in some areas you'll probably be doing really well and others you might not.

Okay, so one is you are an example to yourself and to others of what is possible. You take care of yourself, including setting boundaries as needed so you take care of yourself because you understand that by taking care of yourself, you can then show up bigger and better for others.

We need to prioritize our own [00:09:00] wellbeing, and by doing that, you are also allowing others to do them the same for themselves. You are always seeking to grow and learn. You are able to admit that you don't know everything. You are always working toward bigger goals that are not necessarily easy, but challenge you to evolve as a leader and as a person.

So in other words, you are an example of what is possible through the way you treat yourself and through the way you treat others. But in particular, the way you treat yourself will allow others to treat themselves in a kinder and more challenged way. in other words, challenging yourself to grow and become even better and evolve as a leader. So as an example, [00:10:00] let's say that I've heard leaders before talk about do what I say, but not what I do. And in particular when it comes to wellbeing. So I want to, to, I tell my team that they need to take care of their wellbeing. That they shouldn't send emails at night, they should not work on weekends.

That they should, um, create boundaries and not always feel like they have to be available or always say yes to extra work. And yet, I turn around as a leader and I do all of those things. And so what you do is actually more powerful than what you say in these situations. The same with trust building. The model we demonstrate will speak more loudly.

Like they say, actions speak louder than words than what we [00:11:00] say we're going to do. So. It's very important as leaders that we model what we say we want our teams to do. So if that's not sending emails at night, or not answering calls or sending texts at all hours of the day, or not working on weekends, we need to aspire and show that we are an example of that so that they can also feel like they can be an example of that because I promise you they are watching you and it is very much monkey see, monkey do like, like, um, whatever you do, that's what they're going to follow. They're not going to follow what you say. So very important that we set an example for our own wellbeing, we take care of ourselves.

We're not out sick because we're burnout or like we're doing too much. We're not taking care of ourselves. [00:12:00] We show our team how they can take care of themselves, how they can say no, how they can set boundaries. This is very important and often overlooked. Number two, your team can work well without your presence.

So even if you step away, if you're absent suddenly for no reason at all, let's say tomorrow you're gone for a week and you have no communication with your team, that they can continue without you, that your presence isn't vital for them to continue the work. So that means that they are used to thinking for themselves one, so they don't need to be always told what to do, and they regularly develop themselves, whether that's through your coaching them so that they can build skills on the job, like we talked about, I believe it was in last week's podcast, or because [00:13:00] they are following their development plan and they're, you know, constantly learning, evolving and achieving the skills that they need in order to get better. And of course part of this also is developing confidence in themselves. And the more that you show that you trust them, the more they will develop that confidence. So I want to give another example here of a former student. Shout out Salif.

Salif was one of my amazing students of the older version of my course, uh, when it was more focused on just coaching. And he worked for A NGO called DECLIC, which is in Senegal and Salif,. When he first used or learned coaching, when he first came into the course, he was very much in managerial mode.

He was telling others what to do. His team was very dependent on him. So if he was to miss a week without communication, [00:14:00] they would've just had to stop working. They probably wouldn't have been able to do anything. They would've been frozen. However, what he saw was that he was the bottleneck, and so he started to use the coaching skills to empower his team and those around him to become more independent, to think for themselves, and he saw them get better, get stronger, take on more responsibility. And that meant that as they took more responsibility as they could function more without him, he could take more time off. He could, um, focus on bigger picture things and strategic things like fundraising and so on. And so it was really in a sense, a win-win because the win, because the team was able to get stronger and develop and become more independent and win because Salif was able to

be freed up without having to answer every single person's [00:15:00] questions about something or approve every single thing so that he could focus and step away from the work when he needed to. So that's the other one. The second one, your team can work well without your presence.

Number three, for, for number three let's say that somebody comes to your office or they come to your workplace and they pull aside one of your team members, and they ask them what is the team vision or goal? And how does your work contribute to it? That they, that person could answer that. So in other words, a successful leader,

signs of a successful leader is when your team is aware of what is the shared vision that you have, the shared goal the entire team has, and how my individual work contributes to that shared goal. So if I were to come to your office today and pull aside a team member what would they say? [00:16:00] So I have two examples of this.

So one is, when I was, overseeing a country program, we had a donor visit and during the donor visit, the donor when they were in the car with the team, and part of the team was the driver, but also the project staff. And at one point, for some reason, the driver was alone with the donor, and the donor asked the driver, what is this team goal here, like for this project, what is the team goal? Or what is the shared vision? And the driver was able to express it because we had talked about it so often and so much that the driver knew automatically and he also knew his role in that vision. And the donor I remember saying that they were very impressed with that because they normally find that, not everyone

really is able to articulate that, but we had it so on top of mind, I think every week we talked about [00:17:00] our shared vision as a team, an overall team.

And, and this is the second part of this, I had everyone, we had developed a strategy for the country program. And when we did our performance plans, everyone had to take one piece of that strategy, the shared overall team strategy, and say how their work helped achieve that strategy.

So even if you were a driver, even if you were in finance, how did you help achieve the project strategy of helping Timorese achieve better nutrition rates? And through that exercise, I think we became a more united team. But to me, this is also a sign of a successful leader is when the team understands what they're all working towards and how their role [00:18:00] contributes toward that.

Even if it, you know, it doesn't always, like it doesn't always immediately align that the admin officer, how they contribute toward, better agricultural outputs or whatever. But you can make that connection. And when you do. To me, I think it is a powerful one. And we even brought people from the admin teams, finance teams, and the teams that wouldn't normally go out to the field to go to the community and see the impact as well, which I think also helped a lot.

Okay. And number four, you inspire your team to become the best version of themselves. So symptoms of this would be, you see them getting promoted. You see them taking on more responsibility. You see them stepping out of their comfort zone. You see them motivated and wanting to take on [00:19:00] more. These are all signs that you have inspired your team to become an even better version of themselves.

And what an amazing thing is that? That we as leaders have the privilege to help others become the best version of themselves. Yeah, this is something that we do in coaching. We help others become the best version of themselves. I mean, I just don't know as a leader how much more, rewarding it can get to be able to help other humans grow into the best version of themselves.

So they believe in themselves because you believe in them. So when I was promoted to country manager in, Timor, I had leaders around me, both my country representative, but also other leaders, but in particular at the time, my, my cr, my country [00:20:00] representative. He believed in me. He saw something in me that I did not see in myself because I would not have necessarily applied for that position.

But he approached me and talked to me about it. I remember we had this meeting with one of the people that was going to be deciding who was going to be the next country manager. Because my CR was leaving and it was becoming a country manager post. And I remember this senior leader was at this dinner with me and with my CR and I just really, I fumbled the ball as they say.

I really, really, uh, did not communicate well. I did not show the best version of myself. And I remember afterwards my CR, I could tell that he was a little disappointed, but he told me, he's like, I know you can do this. I know you can become the next country manager, but you need to show the senior leader [00:21:00] that you can do it.

And so then we had another opportunity, a call later on and I was able to, because my CR had said those things to me, I believed in myself more. And through that self-belief, I was able to articulate myself better. I was able to have the confidence to communicate and to really bring my vision to him.

And yeah, they ended up hiring me. So, this is an example of how powerful it can be when we believe in our team, before they even believe in themselves. And this is one of the foundations of coaching, is that we see in others what they can't always see in themselves. What we believe, that they can solve their own problems, and that they already, they already know the answers.

We just have to ask them the [00:22:00] questions.

So I hope that this overview of what makes a successful leader can help you to think about where are you doing well in some of these areas, and maybe where do you want to to do better? Like maybe you want to demonstrate better how you take care of yourself, or maybe you want to challenge yourself more to grow in ways that you have not, or maybe you want to strengthen your team and empower them in a way you have not, and trust that they can do the thing. That without you they'll be fine. And inspire them by really showing that you see something in them that they might not see in themselves. And that is a very, very powerful way to lead and to grow true followers. [00:23:00] So once again, successful leader is in summary, is one who is an example for yourself and others what is possible, has an independent team that can work on their own as needed, has clearly expressed a shared vision or a goal that is known by all the team members as well as their contribution to it, and inspires your team to be the best, best version of themselves, in part by giving them more responsibility, but also by believing in them. Alright, until next week keep evolving. Bye for now.

Are you the type of leader that tells others what to do or to let them figure it out for themselves? Understanding your leadership style is a first [00:24:00] 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.