One of the best speakers I've ever heard, over my 25 years in association management, was Carla Harris, a Keppler Speakers presenter on Intentional Leadership at the ACCE Annual Meeting in Long Beach.
She started by giving one of her pearls.
"Currency comes in the form of performance and relationships. You need a sponsor within the organization, which is not your mentor."
Once you perform, you now get to relationship currency. You need to build relationship currency with everyone you touch in the organization.
Yes, it’s office politics! She defines that as you must invest in relationships in your professional environment.
She then went on to talk about the 8 things that defines Intentional Leadership!
- Authenticity - your competitive advantage. You can only be you! The ability to meet people where you are, what you live and understand who you are.
- Building trust - go to territory’s unknown. You must deliver, that’s how you lead, that’s trust. They will follow you!
- Clarity - you must build clarity around something (quarter, month, week, day). Explain that here’s where we’re going and you can help. Today, we’re just trying to do this! Define the goal.
- Create other leaders - to help you execute your program of work. Allow your team to shine. You must be willing to let go!
- Diversity - you need diversity in your teams. It’s a way of thinking. Lot’s of ideas are needed from different perspectives. Perspectives are born from experiences. You need to start with a lot of perspectives (generational, cultural, etc.).
- Innovation - you must be intentional on innovation and teach your team to fail. Push the envelope. Celebrate the failures. You learn from failures and you build on that for your next successful endeavor.
- Inclusion - solicit people voices. You need to get their input. Look at all sides of an issue. People want to be heard, I hear you, I see you!
- Voice - you must exercise your voice. When it’s not right, call a thing a thing. You must speak to the pink elephant in the room.
Success does not just happen. You must be intentional on creating and defining your own scorecard and over deliver on it.
Carla's final statement, "you must own you!"
