Peak Leadership Fitness: Elevating Your Leadership Game

ELEVATING your leadership game is a mindset. Your mindset drives your behavior and your influence on those you lead. You are in control of your mindset.

In Peak Leadership Fitness, author Timothy Tobin writes, “A leadership mindset is essentially the belief in yourself and your abilities as a leader. A negative leadership mindset is rooted in self-doubt, uncertainty, and lack of inquiry. A positive one, on the other hand, based on a realistic view of yourself, your potential, and how you view [the] potential of others.” This mindset can be developed with effort and curiosity.

Tobin has found that these four principles will help you on that journey:

Principle 1: You never know what you’re capable of until you take that first step. “Leadership is an extreme test of performance, stamina, and endurance. It requires sacrifice and training. It requires setting ambitious (stretch) goals for yourself. Progress—even when falling short of your goal—is a great way to calibrate your capabilities for your next effort.”

Principle 2: You must put in the effort. Nothing happens by chance. “When you put in the effort, your current strengths and expertise become a platform or you to build upon. As you build, you raise the bar for your capabilities, establishing a new standard for your performance.”

Principle 3: You learn more about yourself when times are tough. (In other words: Never give up.) “Adversity tends to be unpredictable, so you may not know when it will strike or what form it will take. The difference in whether you react or respond comes down to your preparation.”

Principle 4: What you consume matters. “Leaders won’t perform at their best if they do not focus on their development to development activities that advance their skills.”

Where to Begin?

Any leadership development journey begins with a baseline established through self-awareness. Tobin believes that a 360-degree assessment—a process through which feedback is solicited from peers, subordinates, superiors, and yourself—is the best place to begin. If enough people are included in the assessment, it can give you a good idea of those areas you need to begin focusing on and track your progress. Self-awareness is crucial to leadership success.

Begin by developing your leadership core, which encompasses four general areas:

Technical Skills: Knowledge about your domain, your business (including financial), and your industry.
Interpersonal Skills: Collaboration, conflict management, diversity and inclusion, and teaming.
Personal Skills: Executive presence, communication, and public speaking, project management, and time management.
Complex Process Skills: Strategic acumen, problem-solving, organizational change, decision making, and systems thinking.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:03 AM
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