Great leadership starts with self-leadership | Lars Sudmann | TEDxUCLouvain

[Applause] [Music] [Applause] good afternoon today I want to share with you my leadership Utopia and when I was discussing this with a friend of mine he was asking leadership in Utopia would we even need leadership in Utopia isn't Utopia finally the place and the moment where we can get rid of all of these leaders and live free well I don't know I think in uh Utopia there will be humans hopefully and if they're humans they will hopefully still be social beings as well and whenever there are social beings they come together as well and form

sometimes groups sometimes organizations as well and when there are these organizations then I think the words of Peter draa are true only three things happen naturally in organizations friction confusion and under performance therefore you don't need anything but everything else requires leadership so I do think also in Utopia we should look at a leadership but the question is what kind of leadership should we look at the hero model of leadership where the shining star is the ideal person I don't know today I want to explore with you a different kind of leadership and for this

I want you to do a little thought experiment think about the best leader you have ever worked with take a couple of seconds think about that person what did he or she do say and so on now all of you will have experienced other people but I would dare to say I don't think you will have things like well you know the way that person yelled at me in the morning that was excellent that was that was just brilliant the way and I wanted always have more probably not probably that person would have done different

things and I want to explore that together with you now I do think leadership is an interesting thing and sometimes it's over glorified but whenever you you become a leader and I had the chance to lead small teams large organizations nonprofit profit organizations whenever you become a leader you have like a Rendevous with reality leadership is a bit like parenting right you have all these visions and ideas what you will do and then you're in the moment and then what I would call the leadership problem formula kicks in and probably the people you have thought

about just as second ago have mastered this formula what does that formula look like every leader and every of you who has ever been in a leadership position might have face these challenges I think every leader faces the leadership problem formula and that goes TLT times people times power first one is TLT which for me stands for too little time there's just not enough time to do things and you can't pass it around oh somebody will take care of it no it's you and then you need to do something and what many people then fall

back in is what I would call The Headless Chicken syndrome they run around and say oh no no you do that you do that you do that you do that and that might then not be the greatest leadership then comes as well people all leaders have to deal with people and for me I'm always reminded of my very first official leadership position more than 10 years ago so I would have my first direct reports and the first direct report was coming into the room and I had it all lined up I had the vision I

had the team spirit I had the story to tell basically and that was a very assertive young gentleman who came to me and said L that's all nice but I have a question for you actually I studed the email policy of the company and you know I have a motto I live by and I always include this and I have this for the past five years I always include this in my email signature can I do this as well in this company and there I was with all my stories and with all my vision and

so on I was like what is that what leadership is all about so was studying the manuals for two hours and so on finally we said okay let's go ahead with this one but everybody who's ever leaded will see like it's not always about the Glorious and shiny things it's all about the little things the little discussion that we have to do the last element is power that's an interesting one there's a very interesting study done University of Berkeley in 98 and they brought in random students and selected them randomly in groups of three and

from these groups of three two of them had to do a two-hour assignment and one of them was randomly assigned to be the supervisor and then as social science experiments goes there was a special twist to it at half an hour the researchers then brought in cookies and of course it was videotaped and then they observed what happens actually there they had some hypothesis and sure enough the people who were randomly assigned to be supervisors significantly at more the cookies but not only this they actually left significantly more of the breadcrumbs as well on the

table like I'm this and it was very visually measurable and that it shows after 30 minutes of random status higher status this power thing kicks in it's something within as in humans and I think that is also something to be need to take care of now I do think these are the cassic leadership problems that are not very often taken care of but I think in a Utopia we need to address those so how do we do that what is the way out for this one I think we need to travel back in time actually

almost 18 1900 years to Rome to a person called marus aelius now some of you might know Marcus aelius Marcus aelius is one of the predominant figures of the stoic School of philosophy the stoics like the Zen of the West almost but Marcus orus is interesting for leadership because he was running a little like you know little side business also on the side he had a little side job in Moonlighting he was and that's why on the Statue he's also you see in there on a horse as well he was at the time as well

on top of being a philosopher he had the side job of being the emperor of Rome at the time and the historian William Irvine calls him actually the true Beacon of enlighted leadership he was supposed to be one of the last of the five good Kings of Rome now Marcus aelius what we know of him said things like this the happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts he said so act virtuous use your time well and be cheerful then when you drop from life's tree you will drop like ripe fruit now

can you imagine these words being Ed by some of the leaders like Trump and so on today most likely not really what did he do and we know a couple of things that were transmitted from this one I think that is a sign for Utopia leadership that we can dive into he was focusing a lot of his time on an field which I would call Self leadership leading oneself first before going out and leading others and I think that in my leadership challenge has helped me enormously to actually face some of the challenges of the

leadership um formula that I've shared with you the founder Visa de hwan said if you want to lead invest at least 40% of your time in leading yourself first before you go out to others now now how do you do that and what I want to share with you are a couple of strategies that I've tested that I've worked with and so on to really try to see what can we do with that field of self- leadership the first strategy and the first field of self- leadership that is out there is self awareness when you

become a leader it's actually some of the crucial things to be self-aware of yourself but it's getting more and more difficult any of you have ever been a leadership in a leadership position if you've ever asked tried to ask for feedback that's not so easy h you ask like hey team hey group do you have some feedback and very often what you encounter is this silence like in these ancient western movies with these dust balls come on some feedback yeah brilliant everything's fine and you know no that's not right well there I mean you're signing

the the the paycheck basically and they're like no great brilliant now there are some ways on of course to learn to ask also for better feedback but one of the things I thing every leader can do is to check that for themselves and one of the tools that I have is what I would call the character traits check a character traits check you can do that on a rainy Sunday and do the following ask yourself for example what was the worst leader that you ever had and then think what your face does then with this

this is me reflecting upon this and then go further and ask like what did he or she do actually to be such a worst leader did he yell or did she yell or did he maybe withhold information when I was was doing this exercise I was like well that bad leader withholding information and here comes now the trick and this tool give yourself a score from one to five for yourself how good are you for example at sharing or withholding information how bad are you at this one and for me that was like oh I'm

actually not very good at this so what is my plan to move that up to become very good at this one because we what we find bad in others very often resonates also with ourselves one of the key things to do from time to time but if you do that you will see also the way Trail effect you do that the next morning you're fully engaged but then like one of these trails at the beginning it's very sharp but later on it goes it fades away and that's why what you can do is a strategy

that Marcus aelius did every day and that is self-reflection taking just a couple of minutes during the day and thinking about the challenges that you have achieved but also that you are maybe about to have during the day Marcus radios was famous for doing that in the night for me this five minute reflection sometimes in the evening sometimes off in the morning going to pan having a quick coffee and then just opening my black book and just asking couple of questions what are the challenges that I'm about to say how did my leadership go yesterday

how would the leader I would like to be do and face the challenges that I'm about to face today then asking this and putting this answer in just one or two minutes of those actually the interesting studies University of California just one or two minut minutes of those can help raise your your compassion level as well for others and maybe beat that cookie problem that we've talked about easier earlier as well before self-reflection 2 to five minutes and then we come to the last one and that is self-regulation you know you've done your awareness you've

done your reflection but you still will encounter the moments you will still encounter the meeting the the discussions that you have where people come in who've promised you yes I will do everything I will have everything ready and they come in the room and say and let's talk it like let's talk what the report you said it was ready oh oh sorry I don't have this and all the other things the people who challenge you think they should be on your side and you should be on the other side and so on and all these

moments where that you will face as a leader when these moments you think that stop doing this do what I told you now this is of course not the best leadership but how do we do best through that self-regulation and one tool that has helped me enormously is what is called reframing reframing is a simple tool where you think like when you have this this coming up like I want you to know you stop and ask yourself for one to two seconds well on a scale from 1 to 10 how important is that issue right

now with 10 being really my life goal so to speak where is that if it's a 10 well then you better engage really fully in it but maybe very often it's more like a two or three and so on and that reframing that taking a step back can help you enormously and actually addressing the situation small strategies small things but what I would encourage you to do is think about this when you have a leadership position invest this time in self-awareness self-reflection self-regulation and self- leadership in general before you go out and Lead others because

very often we hear about leadership like people want to lead others we want to do everything but why not start first leading yourself I think if we all did this this will lead to leadership Utopia that we can strive for and I think we can start all by doing now and hopefully if you all start doing now and some asked in 10 20 years maybe in our Utopia the question who was the best leader that you've ever worked with then maybe they think of you thank you