February Connections Video: Heart Forward Leadership

Maybe it’s because Valentine’s Day is this month, but hearts are on my mind.

The heart is a powerful organ that pumps blood to all our other organs — we can’t live if our heart isn’t doing its job. Yet our heart relies on other organs to keep us alive and functioning too.

As leaders and CXOs, we’re relied upon to be the beating hearts of our organizations — but that doesn’t mean we’re the only ones who can keep the organization alive and well.

In today’s Connections Video, I’m exploring how we can both lead and lean into our people for healthier organizational bodies.

Watch the 4-minute video.

Video Transcription

Happy February to you, Erin Koss here from Site Consulting Group.  It’s the month of Valentine’s Day! It’s also the second month of 2021. We are probably like you out of the gates fast and busy and I have a couple of things that are coming to mind this month. One is this idea that we have a heart in our body that pumps all of the blood to our organs and all of the blood comes back and sounds a little strange

The thing that I think about is how often how much work that heart does, how much work that heart does to keep us alive and functioning and yet, how reliant is it in reality on all the other organs in our body. Our lungs, our liver, the gallbladder… all of these places, you know, the veins and the the arteries going back and forth. And it made me think of a couple of other things and that is that as leaders and CEOs and executives helping to lead and guide businesses that we care about, how often do we are we relied upon. Sometimes do we think we’re the only person with the answer or that needs to solve the problem? And as a consulting group that’s just not how we think. And sometimes we need to remind ourselves as well.

We talk a lot about the three C’s. You hear me talking about them and a lot of the posts that we do, because they are the kind of guiding principles of how we show up in the world and how we work with each other and our clients and those three C’s. Our connection, collaboration and communication and those three things in in our opinion is really are really the critical success factors to getting anything done, whether that’s an internal project, a client project. Frankly, even when we’re working with our spouses and partners and kids at home. But we’re I think about that as leaders is where are their opportunities this month where you can, being heart forward and taking some good care of yourself and also your team by using those three C’s for for the benefit of both.

So for you thinking about where can you ask for help, where can you lean in, where do you need support from the other people in your organization to be better, stronger, more focused on the places where you really need to be? I know as a CEO myself and trying to grow and scale Syte Consulting Group that sometimes it feels like I’m doing all all the roles. And it’s not because I don’t have help, it’s not because I don’t have a great team that is willing to step in and partner with me in some of these ways when I need them to, or if I would ask them to.

Some encouragement to you is lean into the connecting with your team, connect with people on your team, connect with people outside your organization. Peers can be particularly helpful. I think outside consulting firms we can help. Certainly, this is an area where we partner with with our clients as well. But consider reaching out for help. So Connect, who can you connect with that might just be able to to add some value, help even just be a listening ear, the others collaborating, working.

Sometimes I know when I can smack my head against somebody else in a collaborative way going back and forth, it’s so often just brings a better, faster, and clearer result and then finally communicating. What are your intentions? What’s the problem you’re trying to solve? How can people on your team or outside your team, how can we help you and how can we help make you better, faster and more efficient and focused on the things that really matter as we move into and continue through it?

It’s been a really busy first quarter of 2021. So I know things look different right now and I know things continue to stay busy and maybe in some of the same ways and maybe differently. My encouragement is that you think about while you might in many ways be kind of the heart and center of your organization as you lead that organization, where can you lean into others on your team, outside your team in a way that would really serve both? And think about the three C’s as you go, right?

Connection, collaboration and communication. And you’ll have a winning formula for really being able to stay focused on the places where you can add so much value. So with that, I wish you a happy Valentine’s Day and a really excellent first quarter and let me know how it goes. I’d love to hear from you as well. How is your first quarter going? What are the stumbling blocks you’re running into and what are your wins? I would love to hear.

Have a great day!