How Your Current Identity is Preventing You from Empowering Your Team as a Humanitarian and Development Leader

How might you be sabotaging your ability to develop a high performance team, without even realizing it?

In this episode, we challenge the belief that time and patience are what’s holding you back from empowering your team. The real issue? You might be leading from your present self, not your future self — and it’s affecting your growth as a modern humanitarian leader.

In this episode you'll discover:

• Why lack of vision — not time — is the true block to leadership development.
• Learn how acting from your future self can transform how your team shows up.
• Understand how small daily decisions can help you build the confident, independent team you’ve always wanted.

Press play now to shift your leadership mindset and finally start building the team you’ve envisioned for your future.

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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 BELOW:

Find out how you are getting in your own way of creating a more proactive, confident team and what to do about it 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 humanitarian development leader. I hope you're having a wonderful week. So in today's episode, you're going to [00:01:00] discover. Why time and patience are not the real reasons behind you being unable to empower your team. Number two, the extreme differences in acting from your present versus your future self.

And number three, why having a clear picture of your future self is a powerful way to change your own behavior so that you can become the leader you hope to be. All right, so last episode I talked about why your team is not the problem with becoming more proactive or being receptive to coming up with more ideas.

It is the way we engage with the team. That's the problem. We are training them how to engage with us. So that is one piece of the puzzle here. But another thing that I find is that a lot of leaders choose. To just tell their teams what to do and not empower [00:02:00] them because of their own lack of future vision of themselves as a leader and the lack of vision of how they want their teams to be.

So let me explain. When it comes to becoming a modern leader, many of my students tell me that they want to empower their teams. They want to spend time developing their teams, asking them questions to come up with their own solutions, coaching them through their own, getting out of their own way. But they can't, they say that they don't have the time and they don't have the patience to empower and coach their teams because, in their words "it is easier to tell their teams what to do rather than help them and spend time to find solutions for themselves."

What I've seen though is that they think that time and patience is a problem, but that is really not the problem. These are [00:03:00] symptoms of a bigger issue. One of the main reasons that leaders do not practice coaching or empowering their teams or taking the time to help them come up with their own solutions is not because of time or patience.

It's because they don't have a clear idea of their future self and their future self as a leader. So once again, let me explain. They are making decisions about how they use their time from who they are now and not who they want to be in the future. You can choose to use your time to empower your team, but the leader you are now feels that is just not worth the time.

Maybe you don't realize that by investing that time [00:04:00] upfront, you will see a different type of team in the future. You're focused on the present and your present self, and the way you've always been doing it so far is just telling them what to do. And so that is easier and that is the default.

This is why it is so important to have a vision of who you are becoming as a modern leader. Who do you hope to become? Who can you think about, as a leader that you aspire to be? Who Is that person? How do they lead and how does that differ from how you are leading now? This is a very important distinction.

So in psychology there's a concept called the present versus the future self. We tend to go back and forth between them, both. [00:05:00] The present self, our present self, who we are now focuses on the present. Duh. Makes sense. But this is really important distinction because when we're focused on the present, we are focused on immediate gratification, short term desires and needs, and we

act or take action from a place of just wanting to feel better immediately, wanting to feel good. So when we act from our present self, we will say yes to, for example, the extra cookie because we just want the immediate pleasure of having that cookie, or we will delay doing that report because it feels better to be on social media.

Or we tell ourselves that we don't have time to empower our team because it's quicker and more satisfying in the moment to just [00:06:00] tell them what to do. These are all examples of acting from our present self of who we are now and just getting immediate gratification. On the other hand, our future self is who we want to become. And our future self is when we make decisions based on long term goals or who we hope to be rather than who we are now, and therefore delaying a lot of times gratification to benefit our future self.

So think about it. Most of the things that are very rewarding in the short term are usually not going to benefit us in the long run. Sometimes they will, but a lot of things like doing exercise, like eating healthy, like doing the report now, coaching our [00:07:00] team. These are all examples of things that might take a little bit more time and we might resist doing because it doesn't immediately feel good, but in the long run, they pay off.

So the future self is more rational and is willing to make sacrifices in the short term in order to realize that long-term vision of ourselves. For example, saying no to the extra cookie, knowing that you might gain weight or saving money instead of spending it or taking the time and the patience to empower your team because in the long run you will benefit and so will they from a more empowered independent team.

So the best way to know who you want to become is to have a clear vision of that leader, of who you want to be as a [00:08:00] leader. And then you start acting now from that vision. What would that leader do today? If I want to be the type of leader who has a more proactive, independent team, my actions right now

probably wouldn't be to tell them what to do and to be very directive and micromanaging my actions today instead would be more likely to help them coach them and develop them so that in the long run they become more proactive and independent. So when you have this clear vision of who you are becoming, you can act from that vision.

You can align your daily activities with that vision so that it's leading you. That the things you do today, the decisions you make today are leading you to become that person and you can override the need for [00:09:00] short term satisfaction. So a lot of times the need for just doing something quickly and not having patience.

Telling our team what to do a lot of times is short term gratification. It just feels more productive because we're moving through our day. But in the long run, if we're looking at the type of leader we want to be and the type of team we want to develop, it probably does not align.

And this is why people do vision boards and vision statements, because when we make it clear for ourselves, we can become clear on the type of actions that align with our new identity. Just even having that vision at all can really help us to even subconsciously make these decisions. This is also why in my course becoming the modern humanitarian and development leader, I have a whole lesson dedicated to thinking about [00:10:00] who are you becoming as a leader, and how are your current actions now aligning or not aligning with that vision.

Yeah. So once again, I want you to really think about the differences between. Who you are become who you are acting from Now? Are you acting for your present self, which means short term gratification and just telling your team what to do because it's easier and it's quicker? Or are you acting from your future self, which is thinking about the type of team that you want to create, which is more proactive, more independent, more confident, and able to grow.

Think about it and start aligning those actions now. Alright. Until next week, keep evolving. Bye for now.

Are you the type of leader that tells others what to [00:11:00] do, or do you let them figure it out for themselves? Understanding your leadership style is a 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.