Opening Remarks

How’s your presence as a leader? Sometimes we get in seasons of individual work, a lot of calls, meetings, travel, and a lot of attention given to serving up. All of these have a time, a place, and a purpose. But when we’re doing all this work, we’re not spending time with and around our people. And this means we’re losing in touch with what our team needs, resourcing, customers, product or service performance, and the list goes on. The more we spend out of the the business, the more out of touch we get.

But I thought I was supposed to work on my business and not in my business?! Yes. Both. And that’s a constant balancing act - being in the business enough to know what’s going on, and where you should be focused, and on the business to build out tomorrow, and look out for tomorrow, because tomorrow is coming.

Presence Over Perfect

Your presence is important, even if your business runs without you. This does not mean you need to be chained to your desk or office, it means they need to know you’re there, their work has purpose, you care, and you see them. It may sound cheesy, but your operation needs you, not in a physical or even an essential business sense, but they need to feel your power and energy.

Your presence is power, and it’s important to feel the business and people, and see when you need to be there. There have been many times where I have gone into the office, traveled, or joined a meeting remotely, because I just needed to be there to support my team. Not because they needed me, because it’s a vote of confidence and conviction in what we are doing when I show my face in the meeting.

Be a present leader, and be engaged, to know your business, and know your people.

How

• Walk the floor

• Walk the office

• Set-up your work with your people

• Stroll thru pit

• Front lines

• Town Halls

• Roundtables

• Set-up in person or online chat with you sessions

• Eat lunch with the team

Why

• Pulse of the people

• Understand the culture and satisfaction

• Learning opportunities

• Organically learn about issues, challenges, roadblocks, areas for improvement, resource constraints, and opportunities

In my experience, the more time I spent around teams I was leading, the more trust, understanding, and connection grew, which made the business and people better.

Engaged leaders are not:

• Micromanaging in a negative way

• Too in the weeds

• Ignoring strategy

• Overly involved

• Hovering over their teams

Engaged leaders are:

• Aware of the business

• Know enough to help/support/enable

• In tune with the state of morale and team dynamics

• Feel and live the culture

• Using the real business stuff to help craft their vision and strategy

Often you can look back and see who the most engaged and leaders who really care about their people. Unengaged leaders can also care, but it is typically perceived as they don’t care. People don’t work as hard if they don’t think the leader cares.

One point or sign to think about to gauge how much you really care about your team, and it may provide an areas to reflect. Are you a leader who forgets their people as soon as they leave or they move on? Or do you truly want to see their success and would drop anything to help people?

Are you available for those who have at least earned it. If they reach out, will you be there for them? That may show your true level of care.

At minimum, have you thanked those who believed in you or have you reached out to those you believe in. Sometimes people need a little belief in them to make it over that hump.

Great message from Shaan Puri and Sam Parr from MFM on thanking those who believed in you or who you believe in.

The more your team, past, future, and present know you are there for them, have their best interest in mind, and show your level of engagement is vested in their success and future, the more your team will deliver and exceed on results objectives.

Closing Bell

Hopefully, this added a little value to your business or leadership journey. Thank you for reading. If you think this may help someone else, please repost ♻️ or share. Thanks for being here. 🌍🏔️.

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