Why You Are A Leader & Learning From Mistakes

In this session we explore what it really means to be a leader. Going beyond titles, confidence or corporate roles. Through reflection and meditation, Katie invites you to rethink leadership as presence, responsibility and influence, showing that every one of us has the capacity to lead with awareness, care, and courage.

Transcript

Welcome back to Notes from Within,

A space for clarity,

Presence and expansion.

A place for a slower rhythm where listening inward becomes a way to navigate outward.

Part meditation,

Part musing.

Designed for thoughtful leaders,

Seekers,

Creatives and everyone in between.

I'm Katie,

A guide and deep listener and today we're exploring the perception of who and what a leader is.

Challenging who gets to be a leader and what leadership really means.

But first let's move inwards for a moment with some breath awareness.

So finding a comfortable seated position or if you're walking slow down your pace.

And gently bring your awareness to any sounds you can hear in the room that you're in or in the space that you're in outside.

Listening to any sounds that surround you.

Not judging them but simply being aware of them.

And bringing your awareness to your breath.

Noticing that as you breathe in your belly and your chest rise.

And as you breathe out your belly and your chest fall.

Feeling a deep sense of relaxation washing over you.

Feeling yourself being a part of your body and your being.

Relaxing into this session and into this moment.

And from this place of rest and awareness let's ask ourselves a question.

Have you ever thought to yourself I am not a leader?

I definitely have thought this at times throughout my career and throughout my life.

And if your answer was also yes then you are definitely not alone.

I've thought it.

I've believed it.

Many people who we would stereotypically think of as leaders have also thought this too.

It's easy to tell ourselves that leadership is for people with big corporate titles or who are naturally confident or maybe even outspoken.

But if you run any team,

If you're even a parent of any children or of any adults,

If you are a mentor or you literally inspire one neighbour or any one human being,

You are essentially leading.

Whether you're aware of it or not your visibility is apparent and that means that you have influence and that makes you a leader.

Having influence is what leadership really is.

I had my first leadership role at around 24 years old and if you asked me then I would not have called it that.

I would not have seen myself as a leader.

I knew that I had responsibility.

I had a few direct reports.

In fact actually they were indirect reports.

I had hundreds of graduates looking up to me but yet I would never have called myself a leader and of course within the organisations that I've worked in historically I would not have been called a leader yet either.

That was really reserved for roles with more tenure for example but essentially I was leading people and projects already and thank goodness that unknowingly I acted quite a lot like a leader despite not knowing it and that was to my advantage.

I was figuring things out as I went and I had some trusted guidance from people along the way but essentially I was finding the answers with each step that I took.

Which brings me I suppose to another point that I'm thinking of right now which is that you don't need to know everything to be a leader and you will always make mistakes but it's about how we deal with those mistakes when they come.

Not if they come but when they come and we will learn how to be a leader along the way and we are surrounded by people who can support us with the knowledge that we need to be able to lead effectively.

So we don't have to know everything and we don't have to worry about never making mistakes.

It's more about self-awareness and I would call it insightful reflection and also remaining calm throughout your leadership time.

Listening and facing the challenges and knowing when to ask for support that's also helpful too.

And knowing when to let go of a mistake that you've made you know maybe humbly apologising,

Sharing a solution to that mistake,

Executing on that solution and then doing things differently next time.

That's what leadership is really about.

It's about what I said earlier which is learning as you go and building your experience.

Remembering that some of our best ideas come from some of our biggest mistakes so when we fail we don't forget.

We are alert in those failures or those mistakes and you have an opportunity to change how we do things.

I remember once making a mistake in one of my roles.

I've made a few obviously but I remember this occasion where I sent an email to a candidate that I had meant to send to my manager and this was in the early days of my career and the email was not positive.

The candidate did not take it well but when I look back on it I think you know thank goodness that happened then and not 10 years later in my career because the repercussions would have been even worse.

So sometimes making those mistakes early in your journey can actually help you to do things better for the rest of your career.

They're things that we just don't forget.

They have emotional value and we learn the repercussions of them.

So of course I never did that again.

I learned.

I checked more carefully for the rest of my career and as a leader I understand that giving my team space to make mistakes and even to trust me well enough to tell me when they make mistakes.

I've been in situations where we have saved millions of dollars on a particular contract format that had been incorrectly worded for years before I even joined the organisation but because I built that trust within the team for individuals to spot the mistakes and come to me with them and work together on a solution we're therefore able to solve them and we're also able to take responsibility,

Full responsibility even if as a leader you may not have been responsible for the mistake you are leading the team who may have done this and it's only natural.

So obviously in this scenario we learned from it and we came back with a contract that was even better than we could have dreamed of,

A contract that we wouldn't have created unless this mistake had happened.

So leadership means taking responsibility especially especially when it's messy and things will fall apart sometimes and people will let you down but it's about the community coming together and understanding that we're all playing some leadership role within this group and if you allow your team to feel this sense of autonomy and this minor level of leadership that may seem minor at the time but is actually quite major when you think about the repercussions then everybody feels they have a role to play and they feel that what they do actually makes a difference and that is because it genuinely really does.

And so when mistakes happen try to avoid comments such as maybe they should have known better or maybe you might say it wasn't my fault and try to say things differently and you could maybe go along the lines of what could I have done differently as a leader,

How could I have supported you more or what did I miss and this is not about putting the blame on yourself it's about you being a community in how you solve that problem and how you lead going forwards because we're in this together and good leaders know this.

Those looking in can tell when a leader is shifting the blame or not not joining the team in terms of taking responsibility it's very very very obvious and all of this can either erode trust or build trust and we're all looking for trust building and the good news is that you can choose again tomorrow you can change something tomorrow you can do things differently so every day is a fresh chance to lead with a little more information a little more care and a little or a lot more courage.

So remember that you are a leader you may not be perfect but you are enough and you will and do learn.

So let's close off with a few deep breaths allowing you to feel my words sinking into your body allowing you to remember some of them.

So take a few deep breaths breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth.

Thank you for being here thank you for your attention your presence and your leadership until next time may you find stillness amidst the noise and may you trust yourself and lead with heart.

I'm Katie and this has been Notes From Within.