Intentional Leaders Podcast with Cyndi Wentland
Welcome to the Intentional Leaders Podcast with Cyndi Wentland. Where we’re all about creating confident, successful, and focused leaders who manage with purpose and impact. I’m Cyndi Wentland, the founder of Intentionaleaders. And I’m passionate about learning, teaching, and coaching on all things leadership related. My purpose is to equip leaders like you with the tools, resources, and support to accomplish your goals. To learn when you want, how you want. So, if you’re an aspiring leader, first-time manager, experienced executive, or you just want to make a bigger impact in your role as an individual contributor—this podcast is for you. Because each week we’ll focus on relevant, applicable, and easy to implement skills and practices—to create focus and a deliberate path to employee engagement and business results. I know that leadership has its challenges but learning to lead shouldn’t be one of them.
Intentional Leaders Podcast with Cyndi Wentland
5 Shifts to a Leadership Mindset
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Unlock the transformative power of a leadership mindset that transcends titles and roles. Join us for 5 shifts to get in touch with mindset, which impacts our daily behaviors and actions. We delve into the essence of self-awareness, not just skimming the surface of our strengths and weaknesses, but probing into the subconscious forces that drive our actions. In this episode, we debunk the myth that empathy is a fixed trait and showcase it as a skill that can be cultivated to nurture an environment of inclusivity and respect.
This conversation also serves as a call for leaders to inspire trust and have the bravery to let go of the reins, empowering their team members to reach new heights. Reflect on your leadership style and make intentional choices that will affect your legacy today.
Be the Best Leader You Know
Perform with Power, Lead with Impact, Inspire Growth
To sharpen your skills and increase your confidence, check out the Confident Leader Course: https://www.intentionaleaders.com/confident-leader
Hello and welcome to the Intentional Leaders podcast. We are on episode 130, five Shifts to a Leadership Mindset.
Cyndi:In today's episode, I want to focus on a leadership mindset. I have spent the last oh three plus decades teaching leadership skills, behaviors and practices, and I've come to realize that mindset plays a significant part of what we do every day, because knowing our mindset influences our behavior and our decision making, and also that has a huge effect on our resilience and also how we engage others, how much power we give them. Ultimately, it creates a significant impact on the culture around us. So mindset is huge. In this episode, what I want to focus on are a few things that will help you to think about your current mindset and what it is. And again, I don't think of leadership necessarily connected to a role. I think you can be an individual contributor with a significant leadership impact. So this goes out to anyone who is a manager or is aspiring leader or someone who has and wants more influence organizationally. But number one you have to have a vision. You have to have a perspective and a clear vision of where you want to go, and I don't just mean an organizational vision, I also mean a personal vision that is an alignment with the business but is also unique to whatever needs you are serving organizationally. But having clarity about where you want to go, what's important to you, your values, that has to be very purposefully articulated and when I talk to especially newer leaders or people who are aspiring leaders, they don't always have clarity on what that vision is. And that makes sense, because why would you if you haven't asked yourself that question? But that is instrumental. What are the things that are important? What values, ideas are important to you? And that is where you influence others to want to follow you.
Cyndi:Leadership mindset is also deeply connected to your own self-awareness, and I am going to dedicate my whole next episode to self-awareness and how to cultivate it, because I believe it is the most critical area that differentiates good to excellent leaders. Without clarity about who you are and I don't just mean superficially, if you think, okay, I have self-awareness, I know what I like, I know what I'm good at, I know what I'm not good at. Even if you know your values, it does not mean that you are deeply self-aware. Tasha Eurich has a great TED Talk out there her statistics on self-awareness, and this has rung true because I tend to ask a lot of people this in my classes is do you have self-awareness? The majority of people think they do. However, according to Tasha's research she said about 95% of people do believe they are self-aware, but only about 10% are, and I think that is absolutely true in my practices as well. That is observable in terms of people not understanding some of their subconscious needs, some of their automatic behaviors, way that they process and make decisions. We have to get beyond that surface level to understand ourselves truly and deeply and also what effect we're having on other people. So I will absolutely expand on all that in our next episode. But If we're going to bring a vision to life, we also have to be aware of how we're navigating and engaging others to embrace that vision.
Cyndi:I think the third one that's so important in a leadership mindset is to cultivate empathy. I think sometimes people believe you either have empathy or you don't, and I do believe to some extent that's true. Some people are born with more empathy than others. In our family we call that the empathy gene, which many of us did not have, but it can be cultivated and we can strengthen her ability to be empathetic and compassionate to those around us. It is important in order to have an effect on others, we have to know where they're coming from and how they're feeling. That helps create inclusiveness. It helps generate respect, in a sense where people feel valued. Empathy and compassion are foundational to great leadership and also a leadership mindset.
Cyndi:The next one is, I think, a little controversial because I hear this a lot from people that they say I want to lead by example and I actually have a whole podcast episode that says Stop Leading by Example. Oh, the irony of it all. But back in the day I thought I led by example. I worked hard, I was a perfectionist, I had no boundaries, I was stressed out all the time and I thought I'm leading by example. So here's my tip on leading by example, because your actions do speak louder than your words. That's what sometimes people mean is my words and my actions are aligned. In order to be a good role model, you bet those two things have to be in alignment If you're going to lead by example, better know what you're leading towards. So back to the vision, back to self-awareness and back to empathy. You absolutely have to know those things very clearly about yourself and how you're showing up in order to lead by example, and I think that's such a critical piece of being a great leader. So we don't want to be hypocritical. Of course we want to be aligned with our words and our actions, but again, I think that self-awareness is key to doing this most effectively.
Cyndi:And then the last for me in leadership mindset and again I'm focusing on some of the key things today that are most essential. So this isn't necessarily all inclusive of everything you need to show up thinking leaderfully. But the last one is the ability to let go of control and give others power, and this sounds like uh duh, of course I'm gonna empower others, but what we don't always realize is the courage and the risk and the discomfort associated with giving up power or control, and I think that's why so many people have a hard time delegating is they'd rather do it themselves, because then they have that sense of control and the ability to manage the outcome in a way that feels good, or that we know that we're gonna get a good outcome. And, trust me, I get it because I feel all those things. Delegating for me has always been a big challenge. But if we don't delegate, we're not giving power to others, and making sure that others have ownership and can contribute and grow at that level is essential to leadership. So, even if you're not a manager per se, empowering people around you and having a sense of encouraging autonomy and initiative and growth and development and even creativity, I think is important and it probably just think about this for someone who is an aspiring leader and an individual contributor the tendency might be to want to do things ourselves so we can show our competence, but that can also work against us as aspiring leaders, because we aren't demonstrating the trust in others and the creativity in how others might approach it differently from ourselves. So I think that ownership, that commitment and really unleashing the potential of people around us comes from the ability to let go of control.
Cyndi:Leadership practices are important. Leadership skills are important, but the reality is our mindset plays a critical role in our behaviors each and every day, absolutely 100%. We don't always think about the mindset we're in and are we thinking in a leaderful way? If you want to show up stronger every day, more resilient, more influential, then think number one, about the vision you have. What is it? Get really clear on what that is for you, not just, again, the organizational vision, but your leadership vision and values. Number two focus on self-awareness, and we're going to dive below surface and superficial self-awareness in the next episode. Also, creating empathy for others, really connecting and fostering that sense of compassion and deep understanding of others, is going to help us to inspire trust and to get in touch with our humanity and the humanity of those around us.
Cyndi:Lead by example, however. See bullet point number two, which is tied to self-awareness. So, absolutely, align your words, align your behaviors and understand yourself, so other people will be inspired and trust you. And then, last, be willing to let go of power. Empowerment is, by definition, giving others control, and sometimes that's a little scary, sometimes it's a little awkward, but absolutely it is 100% connected to our leadership journey.
Cyndi:This week, my challenge for you is focus on each of those things or just one area that you think. I want to lean into this and just observe your thoughts, whether you do anything differently or not. Just observe your thoughts and how you're thinking about any of these areas around leadership, because once you start listening to your mindset, listening to the voices in your head, it allows you to observe them, examine them and choose on purpose who you want to be. I know you want to continue on creating your leadership legacy, or you wouldn't be listening to this podcast. Check out on our website the new corporate training offerings we have, including our professional development series, new manager series, mid-level and executive leaders series.