#040 Space to Lead

Whether you're leading an organisation, a team, a mission, your family or even just yourself, it's important to make time and space for the things that get you out of the weeds and be the best you can be.

In this episode I offer up eight different types of 'Space' we need to create for ourselves to be the best leaders we can be. 

• Space for thinking & reflection
• Space for planning, strategising & innovating
• Space for action & reaction
• Space for listening & understanding
• Space for connection & relationships
• Space for learning & development
• Space for being & wellbeing
• Space for authenticity & expression 

Transcript

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Hello there lovely humans. I hope you are doing incredibly well today. I am in yet another lock down here in Melbourne. And it has been a while since I've shared an episode with you and I'll be sharing a little bit more about why that is in maybe the next couple of episodes, but I am back on the podcast train. And hope to be sharing more with you over the coming weeks. There was a very good reason, which I'm excited to share with you soon, but I'm just holding that one to myself for just a little bit longer. 

So today, I thought it would be lovely to share with you something that has been coming up a lot in my coaching sessions, particularly with business leaders and organisational leaders and small business leaders. 

It is this idea of the space that leaders need to create in order to lead well.  And when I say space to lead,  I mean space  in a few different ways, there's kind of the physical space in terms of creating time in calendars and making sure that there's actual gaps in the day to get things done. There's the mental space to make sure that,  a leader has the, ability to think clearly and has not got so many things on their plate that their just so overwhelmed with everything that they can't really think clearly. And then there's kind of that emotional space. And is there enough space to hold everything emotionally that you might have to hold as a leader? 

And I've been thinking about what the kind of main different kind of, I suppose, categories of space are that leaders need to create. 

And I just want to kind of preface this by saying, when I say later, you don't necessarily have to be a leader of people in the traditional sense of having a team or having an organization that you're running, you could be a solo leader and you could be leading a mission or a cause you could be a family leader, a community leader. There's all kinds of different ways that we can lead and look, even if you're just leading yourself. I think these things are still really, really important as well. 

So there are essentially kind of  eight categories of this space to lead that I've created, and I'm not saying that these are the only things there could be more and I'm happy for you to share your thoughts with me if you think there are some ones that you would add to this, but I'll just go through them first and then I'll dig a little bit into each different ones. 

So we have space for thinking and reflection. Space for planning, strategizing, and innovating. Space for action and reaction. Space for listening and understanding. Space for connection and relationships. Space for learning and development. Space for being and wellbeing. And space for authenticity and expression. 

So let's start off with space for thinking and reflection. Now I put this first because I think it is one of the ones that is absolutely key to great leadership. And it's often the one that falls down the priority list really really easily . And space for thinking and reflection is taking time out of the busy-ness of the week of the things that you've got to get done that big fat to do list, the other people's demands that you might need to be attending to the meetings. And almost like having a meeting with yourself to take stock of everything that's going on. The things that you do need to take some time to think about the things that you need to reflect on, whether they be things going on in your organization or your business. Or things going on with you. If we don't take time to step back and reflect, it's easy to just be reactive to everything that's going on around us all the time. 

And I think great leadership is really something where we don't want to be in that reactive state all the time. So it's something that a lot of my clients have been playing with in terms of thinking and reflection is actually carving out a time once a week. or once a fortnight. Particularly in a time where, you know, there's going to  be less interruptions, to step back and do some of this reflection. Some of them have lists of things that they reflect on every, every week. Some of them have more of an open time to see what pops up and kind of write notes for themselves during the week about things that they need to think about, but really just making sure that that's in the diary is something that's super key for making sure that that reflection time gets done. And we all know that reflection is such a key part of development and becoming the best version of ourselves. And so. I really encourage you to carve some of that out for yourself. And look, I do this for myself once a week, too. I do it on a Monday morning. I go to my favorite cafe. Well, when we're not in lockdown, 

I kept myself you know, a nice coffee or a hot chocolate or something. And maybe even some, some brunch, if I'm being a little bit indulgent and, you know, that makes that thinking and reflection time, something that I look forward to and something I'm always going to make sure I carve out. So, when are you going to carve out some time for thinking and reflection? And, you know, looking back on the things that are important to you and the things that might move the needle in a really important way, and you might reflect on your goals, you might reflect on your values. You might reflect on how things are going with your team. It could be any number of things, and even taking some time prior to creating a kind of more regular rhythm. You might like to sit down and think about what that reflection needs to look like. So that was space for thinking and reflection. 

The  next one is space for planning, strategizing, and innovating. So this one can actually go with your thinking and reflection time. Some of my clients do all of this kind of in one session. But I thought I had to pull it out separately because it's really easy again, to get stuck in the action and the doing and the planning and the strategizing kind of is something that always gets put to the side. And it's one of those good old...if we think about the Eisenhower matrix. It's one of those things that is not necessarily urgent, but is very important. If as a leader you're not planning and strategizing, then it's difficult to really move the needle for the important things and keep doing that busy work. 

And I added innovating in here too, because I think, you know, Off the back of that reflection time, if you're thinking about what's working and not, what's not working. If you start strategizing, you then need to take time to think about the creative solutions to the problems and do that deeper work on how you're going to make the changes that you need to make. Whether that be at a personal level, a team level, an organizational level, it doesn't really matter, but it takes a different type of thinking. This more deep planning strategy, strategizing and innovative work, and it really uses that kind of creative part of our brain. And so again, it's really important that the time you take for this is time where you're going to be on your game, don't do this on the Friday afternoon, if you find yourself at the end of the week being absolutely tired and not having energy for this kind of thing. 

Equally, you might not want to do it on a Monday morning if you're the type of person who feels really like you can't get started on your wake until you've kind of really looked at everything that's going on in your week. I do do this on a Monday morning because that helps me start off my week. And it might be that you need to split planning and strategizing and innovating. 

And they might not be activities that go together for you, but it's important to create that space for those activities. And look, it doesn't always have to be something you do on your own, either thinking about who you can do strategy work with, who do you need in the room to help you make the best decisions from a strategy and innovation perspective or from a planning perspective of course, too? 

When I see leaders not taking the time for this. Work becomes very reactive. And a lot of the time and energy that they're putting into their day that they're putting into their week is more about attending to what other people need necessarily than attending to what needs to be done to really make a difference on priorities that matter to the leader that matter to the business. So, would you put that together with thinking and reflection it's really up to you. But yeah, definitely take that time for some space for planning, strategizing and innovating. 

So the next one we have is space for action and reaction. So kind of in the opposite of what I've just been talking about. In some cases, I see the case where some leaders will get so into the planning and the strategizing and the innovating and the reflection and the deep work that the action can end up taking a backseat. So it's really about finding that balance and making sure that there is time to do the doing as well as the reflecting and the planning. 

And then I've got the time for reaction in here too. Now what do I mean by time for reaction? Now I hear this so often from leaders that, you know, I've got this much time to do all these things in my week, but it all goes pear shaped when there's something that I need to do that comes out of the blue. There's something that I need to do for team member. There's something that I need to do in relation to a client, which I wasn't expecting and now I have to attend to it. And my whole week has blown up because I didn't have time in my diary for that. So we need space for taking the steps and doing the tasks and moving through the  task lists and getting things done. But we need a bit of almost buffer room so that when something happens that is unexpected and there is always something that's unexpected that we have time to, to react to that. And we're not cannibalizing other things that we're supposed to be doing. So it sounds crazy. And I know a lot of leaders, like  I couldn't possibly have open space in my diary. But if you do, then you've got time for this. And when I say open space, it shouldn't be open space because you should have  some time, like blocked out for problem solving for attending to things that need to be done last minute. 

We have a space for listening and understanding. Now I've probably mentioned before in the podcast that my background and past life career was in human centered design and design thinking. And co-design and a big part of what I did was taking the time to listen to people. Whether that was customers or internal staff. And I would do research around trying to solve problems and create solutions for organizations through listening and understanding what people needed. 

And one of the things that I saw so much when I was doing this work is that often leaders don't take this time to listen and understand. I'm not saying all leaders but stepping back and whether it's listening to employees or  your people or listening to customers or listening to suppliers, but taking that time to actively ask questions of the the people that are most important to you individually to the business or the organization that you're running, is really, really key. And then taking that extra time to not just listen, but to really understand what's going on in the understanding isn't necessarily just in listening to one person, it can often be in listening to multiple people. 

So let's take an example. Let's have say that as as a leader of a team that you're having a particular challenge with something that's going on in the team. I can guarantee you, what you need to do is take some time to listen to them and to Take each person aside and ask the right questions and see what the lay of the land is from other people's perspectives. 

And once you get a collection of those, then you can begin to draw a picture of what's actually going on and how you can begin to solve that problem. Again, it comes back to time and I know time is precious and it's hard to find, but if you dive into solving for a challenge, that's going on without taking time to listen and understand the people that are involved in that challenge, then you will almost always come up with solutions that aren't fit for purpose and aren't fit for the people involved. And then ends up being just more time wasted. So take that time to listen and to understand the people most important to the things that you're doing. And you can do that in a really casual way, or you can do it in a formal way. There's many ways you can do it. And you know, if it's not something that you're comfortable with, then you might want to do some training around human centered design or research or empathy or something like that. But it's a really, really critical, critical skill in leading well, in my opinion, at least. 

So next we have space for connection and relationships, and you might say, well, isn't this like listening and understanding? And in a sense that they're really connected. Yes. But the way that I see space for connection in relationships is that it's actually that you're really building something with someone it's not just about you kind of gathering information from them. It's about finding those shared points of value or interest and taking the time to seek that out. Again in the relationships that are important to you. Now, this could be really personal. This could be your partner or your kids or your family or your friends? 

And I say that's really important to being a great leader because we need to have that time for people that, that aren't our work people. We need to have those connections with loved ones for, for us to be happy and healthy and well. And if our relationships begin to suffer at a personal level, that does make its way into our working lives. We all know it does. We are not living our lives in compartments. We are not working in compartments work and life is so intermingled that making sure that we've got the space for those relationships and we're nurturing them, it's important for us and it's important for the people around us. And important for us turning up as well as we possibly can. 

And then there's the connection with, again, the people that are important to our work. You know, building the connections with the right stakeholders, taking the time to nurture those relationships. And you can bring that listening and understanding into this one too. And you know, that just builds on that connection even more. 

I think when we are leading our potential grows exponentially when we connect with others. It's not a one plus one equals two type thing. It's usually one plus one equals three or four, because the space between our relationships has value in it. And that social capital that we have with people helps us do the work that we want to do, make the change we want to change, have the impact that we want to have. And particularly when you find people that connect on a level of purpose or a level of meaning that they're trying to achieve the same things that you're trying to achieve, those people are so incredibly important. And when you find those people that are aligned to you, you can do amazing things when you come together. But you need to create the space to find and and create and maintain those connections. Otherwise again, you can get caught up in the day to day and it just never happens. And slowly those relationships begin to dwindle. And they don't stay. They don't stay as robust and they don't stay as healthy. And then when you need them, like we all do at times in our careers or in our work or in our lives, then there's not as much goodwill there, if, if we're not maintaining them. So think about who are those people that you really, really want to maintain those connections with and look at your network and think about how that network can support you and how you can support that network as well, so that you can all lift each other up. 

So next we have space for learning and development. I think this one goes without saying. We can't sit on our hands as leaders. We need to constantly be learning and growing. And again, this one's very related to thinking and reflection too, as you know, reflection time is a great way to develop ourselves when we're taking intentional time to reflect on ourselves. But learning time. What are the things that you want to develop in yourself as a leader in making sure you're carving out that time to do that? 

I actually have a learning plan, I'm a solo worker  but I write myself out of learning plan and I have a really a clear idea of the things that I want to learn now, the things that I might want to learn in the future. And all the different courses and things that I could potentially do to, to learn that, or whether it might be mentoring or coaching or some other way to learn. 

And also, you know, having a coach or having someone that you take time out with to enable you to develop yourself personally and professionally, or even spiritually. If that's of interest to you, then carving out time to spend with someone else who can help you do that work because often it's as a leader, you find yourself on your own or leading quite a solitary work-life a lot of the time. So having that person that can help you and support you on that development journey, and maybe can also help you with the reflection and the strategizing and the planning, can be so helpful in your growth and your development. 

So also, I think it's really important to think about, well, what are the things that are going to be most important for me to learn, to be the best that I can be? And when we're in positions of leadership, a lot of the research tells us that the things that are better for us to develop and grow are the things that we're actually good at and become better at the things we're good at rather than working on fixing our weaknesses. 

I'm really a huge fan of strengths work. And I'm a big fan of the Gallup strengths test and something I love about Gallup is that when you kind of dive into your strengths and you can kind of see your top five or your top 10 strengths, and then you can see the ones all the way down the bottom at number kind of 34 is, is your bottom strength. Is that it's actually about looking at, well, you might already be using your strengths to actually compensate for your weaknesses. So you're not actually fixing the things that you're not good at your using the strengths that you have to find ways around them. So to give you an example, my number 34 strength is discipline. Not the best one to have as an number 34, but I still managed to get things done and it's because I use my other strengths and really lean into those in order to help me do the things I want to do and become better. So, When we're learning and developing, thinking about, you know, not just the weaknesses, but how we're building on those strengths and in leadership that is so important. 

Next we'll do space for being and wellbeing. So by being, I mean, not doing. To be effective as a leader, we need downtime and we need time where we're not in activity. For a couple of reasons, we need our brains to rest, but also when we're doing things that aren't particularly active. That's often when creative ideas and thinking comes it's like when you're standing in the shower and you have that aha moment about how to fix something. It's because where, I mean, other than showering, obviously, but it's not a particularly active activity. It's just something you do. You go through the motions, you don't have to think about it. 

But also when I say being, I mean, presence, I mean, finding practices that enable you to quieten down to calm the mind to get into flow with nature. And it's often during that time that we feel most alive and We often feel most at peace. And when you're alive and at peace all at the same time, that is just gold for leadership because that's when I think we really come to life and we have our best ideas and we are our best selves. 

And then of course wellbeing. And this is obviously linked to what I said about, about being. But we have to look after our mental and our physical health. If we're going to show up as the best as best we can, we can't be getting sick. We can't be getting injured all the time. We need to deal with stress and anxiety and any other mental health challenges that might come up. And that takes a lot of work sometimes. But if we're not doing it all the rest can absolutely fall apart. 

Obviously there are so many things that you can do for your wellbeing. And we could do about 10 podcasts on wellbeing alone, but think about those really foundational elements. For example, I mean, meditation is one that I think should be in every leader's toolkit. Meditation is going to help you reduce stress, improve your mental clarity, improve focus, improve creativity. There's so much research now it's undeniable. So if you're not meditating get, meditating. And then of course there's exercise, making sure that we are exercising regularly. Eating well or as well as possible, you know, a little bit of indulgence every now and then doesn't go astray. 

But making sure that you've got those foundational elements of wellbeing in place. And I'd also say too, Just being really tuned into your, your own mental health and getting help when needed. So I'm a mental health first aider and it just astounds me how often I can see through through the training that I've done in mental health, first aid, how many people don't reach out when they need support and you know, the best thing to do, if you even have an inkling that things might not be right, is have a chat to you, be your GP so that you can get the referrals that you need. Get the help that you need. Even just to have a conversation with someone can sometimes help somebody who's a trained professional. So, you know, don't let mental health be the thing that's always last on the list. And you know, I think these days it's becoming something that's far more acceptable, you know, it's not something we hide anymore. You know, we all have our mental health challenges at times, you know, particularly during these challenging times, like COVID. And there is help out there. So yes, making sure that you're looking after your wellbeing from all facets. And that's just only going to help you become a better leader in all aspects of what you do. 

And then finally, we've got the space for authenticity and expression. Now, the reason why I left this to last is because all of the other ones kind of, it's something that we need to take time out for. It's something that we need to carve out a space in our diaries, or go and do something for it to happen. 

Now the space for authenticity and expression is a little bit different. Yes, there might be some things that we need to do, but it's more about creating space within yourself and allowing authenticity and expression of who you are, your unique self, your unique strengths, talents, purpose – all of  what makes you, you it's, it's allowing that to shine. 

A lot of what I work with leaders on is helping bring this out and what I've seen time and time and time again, is that if a leader is not leading in line with who they are, they are just not as tuned in. They're not as successful. They don't have as great an impact. You have the best impact when you are absolutely aligned to what's most authentic to you. And that can sometimes be really difficult, particularly if you're working in an organization or an industry or a business where , maybe your outside of the norm and you do things a little bit differently, but you have to learn how to harness the best in you and not do things the way that everybody else has done them, just because that's how they're doing them. 

If you can find that authentic expression of your leadership and create the space for that to flow through everything that you do. You will flourish. And the impact that you're having as a leader will just explode. That's what we want to see. We want to see that impact that you have expanding. We want you to elevate it and we don't need cookie cutters of other people to do that. We need you, we need your brilliance  and we need your uniqueness. So think about how are you creating space for your authentic leadership and the expression of who you are to shine through your leadership. 

So, that was the space to lead. The eight spaces to lead. So I'll just go through them again. So we've got space for thinking and reflection. Space for planning, strategizing and innovating. Space for action and reaction. Space for listening and understanding. Space for connection and relationships. Space for learning and development space for being, and wellbeing and space for authenticity and expression. 

There is so much juicy goodness in each of those. And you could dive into them and we could do a podcast on every one of them. And maybe we will. But I'd love you to take away  those eight different points and just think about what are the ones that are my strengths that I'm doing really well with right now? 

What are the ones that I could use a bit of support with, or that could maybe be bolstered by some of my strengths if I were to think about them? And maybe also ask yourself if there was one of these that I would like to work on right now, what would it be and why? 

I'd love to hear how you go with this. Please share your thoughts with me. I do love to hear them. Come and say hello on Instagram or LinkedIn or wherever you like. Shoot me an email. Come say hi on the website. And yeah, share with me. What do you need to make space for in your leadership? 

Thanks so much for joining me today. I've really enjoyed diving into this topic with you. And I will see you in the next episode.