Welcome back to my blog for the 3rd edition, and thanks again for the continued great comments – thankfully no one has taken me up on the sweetcorn pasta and I have had no kitchen disasters 🧯. To add, we have now had a visitor from sunny Spain, “Bienvenido” ☀️
A few weeks ago, I asked for input on what to cover and I have had a few messages around servant leadership. So that is my theme for this week…
I will start by saying I’m not the biggest fan of the word ‘servant’ – a key pillar in this style is being authentic, so lets go with authentic leadership. 🏋🏽♀️
Going back to Meerkat’s – in their team a key role is a ‘sentry’ who watches over the tribe, with the role being to spot danger and warn other members when threats are posed. Who could be a sentry in their team? Well, any of the team members!
The same applies to successful teams – leadership is not a position, it is a mindset. This mindset around authentic leadership can be broken down into 5 key characteristics:
- Authenticity – being true to oneself.
- Humility – show strength and focuses on others.
- Compassion – caring for others.
- Courage – standing up for what is right.
- Accountability – being responsible.
Lets take an example where leadership is not shown by title, but rather it can be represented by the right mindset and behaviour. For my wife’s birthday, I took her to an escape room adventure 🧩.
Authentic leadership in this case would have been working together, being responsible, solving the puzzle and empowering the other member to succeed. Well, quite the opposite occurred, we failed miserably, I ended up taking over and did not work as a team, resulting in a silent drive home (I’m still thinking what was worse, failing the task in hand or the silent drive home 🤔). Happy birthday wife… no more escape rooms or games of monopoly to add since. 🎲
Anyone can be a leader and we should all believe in our own superpowers. 🔋
Whilst working on the board at Enactus Aston, I saw this evidence in abundance. Enactus Aston are dedicated to creating a better world while developing the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders and social innovators. An activity which brought me great joy was in giving interview advice and helping those who needed support with their CV. What stood out for me was that undergraduate students who were selfless in their support of those who needed it and they clearly showed the ‘think about others first mentality’. You are more Meerkat and clearly signify authentic leadership. ⭐️
See you all next week and always remember to be the best version of you! ✌🏾