From the course: Developing Your Leadership Philosophy

Developing authenticity

From the course: Developing Your Leadership Philosophy

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Developing authenticity

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- In terms of building trust with the members of your team, the Leadership Maxims Method gives you a way to be consistent as well as help your team understand who you really are. Because authenticity at its core is just sharing what you're about, what your beliefs are, and then behaving in a manner that's consistent with that. A maxim is nothing more than a pithy statement that's going to serve as a trigger to remind you of something that's emotionally resonant. A story or a situation that you were in that has great meaning for you. And it can either be a great situation that you were really excited by, or it can be a painful situation that you say I really don't wanna go through that again. So that trigger reminds you of that memory and gets you down in your gut and out of your head. This isn't about logic, this is about emotion. And by reminding yourself of that situation, what you're then able to do is act and act accordingly based on what that situation tells you is the correct behavior. Now, the beautiful thing about the method is by having articulated those maxims and having those regular triggers that take you back to those emotionally resonant situations, no matter what situation you're in, you're able to then apply your maxim. And that maxim will lead you to be more consistent in your behaviors, and that consistency will enable the members of your team to predict what your next behavior is going to be. That predictability is really the foundation of trust. So imagine your leader becomes very predictable to you. You know how they're going to behave in a certain situation. You're more likely to trust the outcome of that interaction. Your team is going to act the same way with you. They're going to hear your maxims and you're going to tell them this is what's important to me, this is how I lead, this is what I'm passionate about, these are my rules, these are my standards, and then they're going to watch and make sure that your behaviors are consistent with the maxims that you're articulating. And if you're consistent with your behaviors every single time, they're going to start trusting you and trusting the behaviors that result. So articulating those maxims, coming up with those triggers, and these emotionally resonant stories are going to enable you to become more consistent as a leader and strengthen those bonds and trust with the members of your team.

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