I’ve recently had the absolute joy and honour to be a guest speaker in one of the Leadership courses at the University of Toronto!

And, well, we talked about how leadership has changed and where it’s headed.

What we’ve all agreed on was that the crisis has only accelerated a change that was already there, even before the pandemic…

That people around the world had more time to search for answers to questions that mattered to them…

That the level of individual self-awareness has increased tremendously during that past almost 2 years…

That all of the ‘Greats’ that we’re talking about today: Great resignation, Great re-shuffle, Great come-back, you name your Great… really come as no surprise, because individual priorities have changed.

We’ve prioritized for meaning and purpose in our life, both our home AND work lives. Our work has become more personal than it’s ever been.

What I caught myself thinking is this: how can we now start moving from individual self-awareness to collective self-awareness?

3 Things You Can Do Daily to Become a Better Leader:

We’ve already started with the foundation for great leadership: emotional intelligence.

As I predominantly work with millennial leaders, the shift is very clear. Leadership will build on these 3 main skills muscles in 2022 and beyond:

1. Emotional Intelligence
2. Coaching and Mentoring
3. Feedback

Because it’s these muscles that will help us all be present, empathetic, kind, adaptable and motivated. Individually and collectively.

So train these skills muscles regularly.

1. Build on that Emotional Intelligence muscle.

– Start with noticing what motivates you and what doesn’t.

– Notice what you’d rather put your energy doing and why.

– Decide which behaviors are helpful to you and which are not, and how you’re going to change the ones that aren’t useful.

2. Become a great coach and mentor for your team.

– Ask more questions than you give advice.

– Being the coach in your people’s corner is going to boost everyone’s motivation.

– Everyone’s challenges are different and advice from outside rarely works if we don’t have the full picture.

3. Give feedback regularly.

– Remember to give positive feedback regularly.

– Practice how you give constructive feedback that is non-blameful and that is solution oriented, not blame pointing.

– Make it a dialogue, not a lecture!

For those of you interested, we can continue the conversation in the ‘Top 3 Strategies to Build a Strong Emotional Intelligence Skills Muscle’ live workshop on November 24, 12 pm EST: https://mailchi.mp/e030d009f591/emotional-intelligence-the-number-one-leadership-skill-in-2022beyond