Braver Leadership: Mental Fitness for Age of AI

Welcome to episode 13 of season 3 we're still working on developing our connective energy. In this episode I look at the top down command and control leadership style questioning how effective it is in a world where we want to grasp information, insight and connection through porous borders. By contrast I'll be looking at leading as a Neighbourhood Mayor, mastering multiple constituencies of opinion and bringing them together to leverage connective energy.

One more episode to go on LinkedIn and then we're on to season 4 Catalytic Energy

So far in this season we’ve looked at Connective energy and the value to be gained in terms of energy from forging alliances with others. Just making the ask are you curious, are you willing to explore further will immediately bring your connections and energy you didn’t have before.

Despite your awesome connective energy skills there comes a time when things just don’t seem to gel, you’re making the ask but somehow people are not getting what you’re saying and the connection is not happening.

So in this episode we explore archetypes - advocates,  evangelists, passives and detractors to figure out how to adapt your technique to make the best from all of them.

And we discuss how in business because many people feel outright rejection is a bit harsh how many people instead practice a technique called fawning - which is avoiding saying no.  Since this is really common and a major source of frustration we look at how to spot fawn behaviour and how to deal with it

When you’re seeking to leverage connective energy the number one rule is to be yourself. There are two (at least) good reasons for this.

Firstly that trying to be someone else or trying to emulate someone else’s character or behaviour is endlessly exhausting and takes and huge amount of energy that should be focussed on building the relationship not holding a constant mask.

The second is that if you’re out there genuinely seeking to develop relationships on the basis of trust then there can be no greater breach of trust than to try to pretend to be someone that you are not from the outset and you will be found out.

Why do people engage in this form of emulation? Because they think it is expected of them or because the old rules of being great at networking and forging connections told them this is so.

15% of the population are extroverts, the rest of us are on a sliding scale towards true introvert state.  The rules of networking were not built for us, but with some techniques discussed in this podcast, we can rewrite the rules to network and collaborate on our own terms

If we head back to the 70s, 80s even 90s, the art of connecting was something still done in clubs, largely men-only as best as they could get away with it, or the golf course, again at the time a male bastion. Everything behind closed doors.

Zip forwards at least thirty years and it’s true that some things have not changed but as Judy Rabinett points out; women have stepped into greater leadership roles so the art of connecting has changed and evolved.  Men wrote the rules of networking and held the rule book for centuries.  As female leadership has grown, networking has shifted and evolved and this episode explores old style networking and evolved networking to help you find inspiration and a style that works for you

We’re all wired to draw on our connective energy differently and exploring these changes and evolution in style may hopefully give you confidence that whilst being a member of the gentleman’s club isn’t going to be right for you, there are still positive and effective ways to connect.

Introverts have a well-established “too much” radar which needs to balance taking on information with processing and digesting.  Whereas extroverts tend to think through talking, introverts need peace to be able to really think.  And therefore when it comes to stepping into one of those big hotel rooms (you know the ones with the weird carpet designs than seem reserved only for big hotels and conference centres), introverts can feel they are like Christians being thrown into a roman gladiatorial arena, filled with sabre toothed tigers and danger at every turn.

As over 50% of us are introvert or centroverts - a bit twixt and between - traditional networking techniques serve us poorly yet we still have a need to connect so this episode is all about helping the majority of us with those introvert tendencies to make the most of networking, in our own style.

Honesty’s a tough cookie to crack in relationships. There are some who believe you should always be honest no matter what the consequence. Yet extreme honesty uninvited can wreck and ruin relationships.

Few people set out to be dishonest in their connections and yet they withhold things they’re less happy with, pull punches on feedback and through this mislead their connections into believing things that aren’t exactly true. That’s not a good recipe for success either.

When we don’t know our connections terribly well we don’t know their appetite or sensitivity to honest feedback and it’s really hard to even ask this and get an honest answer ironically as people will tend to say yes I love honesty even when they don’t really want completely open direct feedback.

So how do we wrestle with this contradiction? We need to negotiate honesty as we build our connections - connecting at a human level and that's what this episode is all about.

I'm Ian, I help introverts and quieter folk thrive in a world built by extroverts and have their own quietly successful career, filled with ambition with less of the noise.  You can find full transcript, back episodes and resources you can use for free - and how to reach out if you want me to help you personally at www.ianbrowne.com

No matter how flat you make a pancake, it’s still got two sides.

Dr Phil

Whenever we’re trying to forge a connection, it’s easy for us to go out imagining our pancake has only one side, the one we are interested in, and interested in promoting. That’ll get us so far in forging connections, but only so far.

When we incorporate different points of view, those differences can be mild alternative perspectives or radically alternate perspectives. It’s often easy for to think, I’ll accept the mild ones because these folk are really similar to me or they’re close to be converted to my point of view. It’s even easier to set to one side those you don’t really understand and dismiss them as “unconnectable” with no prospect of connective energy.

Yet sometimes these are exactly the people you need to go for in order to gain the different perspectives you need.  What they bring is a different perspective. Wherever we stand we have a landscape set out in front of us. When we shift our position, we see the landscape with another perspective.

I'm Ian, I help introverts and quieter folk thrive in a world built by extroverts and have their own quietly successful career, filled with ambition with less of the noise.  You can find full transcript, back episodes and resources you can use for free - and how to reach out if you want me to help you personally at www.ianbrowne.com

I do not take well to the word fail. Recently someone introduced me to another way of looking at the word instead seeing FAIL as “First attempt in learning”. That works better for me. We all make mistakes. What matters is what we do with the experience.

When it comes to building connective energy people tend to make surprisingly similar steps that don’t exactly help the process. So in this podcast I thought I look at each of these even if it’s just to remind you that occasionally this is something you do and if you do less of then you’ll get and generate more connective energy.

I'm Ian and I help introverts and quieter folk thrive in a world of extroverts and develop their own quietly successful career.  Find the full transcript, all back episodes to listen to our read at your leisure for free - and if you wish, how to work with me at www.ianbrowne.com

“Let your hook be always cast, in the pool where you least expect it there will be fish”, Ovid

In this episode we look at fostering links and connections.   You may think the strategy is to harvest more connections endlessly or boost up the strong ones and kick out the weaker links.  But I'm going to challenge that directly.  In this episode we look at all the advantages some of the weaker links in your network can bring to you in contrast and further connections.

You can find the whole transcript plus other articles and podcasts on my website www.ianbrowne.com and this is also where you can find details of my work in helping introverts develop Quietly Successful Careers.  Enjoy and best wishes.  Ian

“As a leader of a growing team or company, the single most important thing you can do is ensure your success is to invest in building a culture of givers” Adam Grant, Give and Take.

Networking is one of those words that brings a sense of horror and dread for some and yet for others it appears to come easy. There is some truth in networking being easier as you get a little older, not necessarily because you have more practice but in general because the older you get the more established existing networks and knowledge you have.

In this episode we look at most folk's hang ups about networking and some of the reasons why and some hints on how to calm nerves and approach the room with curiosity in mind.

You can find the full transcript plus more articles and podcasts on my website www.ianbrowne.com   it's also where you can find details how i help more introverted folk developed Quietly Successful Careers - all of the ambition, just less of the noise.