In this Tent Talks session, Chicago Camps engages in a rich conversation with Donna Lichaw, discussing the essence of leadership impact and how leaders can assess and enhance their impact within their organizations. Donna shares insights from her new book and her experiences coaching leaders, emphasizing the importance of self-awareness, interpersonal dynamics, and creating an environment conducive for growth and productivity.

Assessing and Improving Leadership Impact:

• Leaders often face challenges when their teams expand rapidly, and issues arise that can lead to blaming others for performance gaps.
• It’s crucial to self-assess and gather feedback from team members to understand the leader’s impact on the organization.
• Engaging in conversations and assessments helps in discovering the good practices and amplifying them rather than focusing on the negatives.

Meaning and Importance of Leadership Impact:

• Leadership impact is about understanding the results and reactions that follow a leader’s actions or decisions.
• It’s vital to assess leadership impact to ensure that actions are leading towards desired outcomes and not causing unintended negative effects.
• Using metrics and feedback, leaders can connect the dots between their actions and organizational performance.

Essential Skills for Positive Leadership Impact:

• Self-awareness is paramount; understanding the impact one has on others and the organization as a whole is critical.
• Developing a sense of awareness requires a pause and notice approach, understanding the effects of one’s actions on others and the business.
• Appreciation and less judgment can lead to a better understanding and improvement in leadership impact.

Advice for Emerging Leaders:

• Developing awareness and curiosity early in one’s leadership journey is crucial.
• Building alliances and relationships across the organization can provide a supportive environment for growth.
• Being open to feedback and willing to help others can foster a culture of growth and continuous improvement.

Notable Quotes from Donna Lichaw:

• “One of the first things I do with anyone I work with is we go out and we find out, all right, how are you doing? And it’s as simple as talking to people.”
• “You want to find out what’s working, what could be better. There’s so much evidence behind this idea of first identifying and then amplifying your strengths versus trying to minimize them.”
• “Self-awareness, it’s everything… it requires you to do is if it’s skill, you pause, you notice, and you look at the impact.”
• “For emerging folks, I think showing up with people internally or externally who you admire and want to learn from and grow with showing up as a helpful human is key.”

Chicago Camps hosts irregularly scheduled Tent Talks with people from all across the User Experience Design community, and beyond. Who really likes limits, anyway--If it's a cool idea, we'd love to hear about it and share it!

What is a Tent Talk? That's a great question, we'd love to tell you.

Tent Talks are short-form in nature, generally lasting from 10-20 minutes (ish) in a recorded format--we like to think of them as "S'mores-sized content" because that's pretty on-brand. Tent Talks can be a presentation on a topic, a live Q&A session about the work we do, or the work around the work we do, or really just about anything--we don't want to limit ourselves, or you.

You should send along an idea or topic of your own so we can learn from you, as well! You don't have to be a published author or a professional speaker on a circuit to be good at your job, so please, put yourself forward, and let's have some fun, talk, and share your experience with others!