What do all great leaders have in common | Matt Beeton | TEDxOxbridge

According to recent research, 80% of today's

leaders

fail to impress in the first two years of their

leaders

hip roles. 70% admit to being incredibly stressed. More than 70% admit to not enjoying work and gone are the days when we used to

have

a job. Nowadays people stay in a job for four years and among Millennials it is only three years. When I saw those statistics I was terrified. I'm halfway through my career, but that doesn't mean there isn't

great

leadership around us. It's all around us, so I've been writing a book on leadership and emotional intelligence trying to find

what

the

common

denominator is, the X factor of

great

leadership, and I did.

I started this a couple years ago and started where everyone starts researching. on Google and I typed great leadership and these are some of the faces that appeared on the first page of Google. A couple of observations, firstly, you'll probably know them all, secondly, if I had given an intelligent audience the opportunity to Think of a category or title in which you could sandwich Captain Kirk between Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King. I bet you couldn't

have

done it, but there it is, so excuse me, these are all the people we know and love. I have nine-year-old twins and the other week I asked them in the kitchen who do you think is a great leader and we all had Barack Obama, he is nine years old and he chose probably one of the most influential leaders in history. our time William chose me 50 pages searched on Google I couldn't find a single photo of me anywhere but I take comfort in the fact that they are twins, you know they are quite similar and follow us so right?

William can't. I may be very wrong, but great leadership is not reserved for those famous people we see here. You know that you will all meet great leaders. I have had the privilege of working for a couple of great leaders. I have friends, colleagues and some. Of those are great leaders, I have had a great leader whose work for me, so

what

is the x factor of great leadership? Well, based on the research I've done, I'll tell you what doesn't go against popular belief. t IQ is an entry point, it certainly helps, but it is not IQ.

I know some really smart people have failed in various leadership positions. It is not a privilege. Some of those people were not born with monetary privileges. They were not born with educational privileges. Not as nice a job title as having a CEO or president next year, named job titles actually rank as one of the top ten reasons why leaders fail because they rely on that title to get respect, so In my research I have been looking for the

common

. denominator and how we categorize that emotional intelligence and it's frustrating because it's been stigmatized for so long it's confusing it's a black art it's gentle handling you can't measure it well maybe you can't measure it and just because it's emotion no I mean it's not important that some of the most important events on earth happen because of emotion, so what I would like to do today is pick three of those common denominators, just three, and offer them to you as an audience of suggestions, three suggestions for great leadership and I'll begin with people, now people cover a whole spectrum of things, but what I would like to do is focus on connection.

Every leader needs a connection with people, but if you need a connection with people, you must have a connection with yourself. you have to know yourself fully self-reflection is one of the cornerstones of great leadership understanding yourself knowing what makes you happy what makes you sad what motivates you what gives you those negative feelings that sometimes have a negative result self-reflections nothing without self-reflection Regulation, if you cannot regulate your response when your emotions tell you something else, then we have a problem, which is why self-regulation is essential. We all have an ego. The great leaders you saw there have pretty small egos, with the exception of Captain Kirk, who has a shoot, ironically, the size of a planet, actually, but they all have an ego.

I have an ego. Everyone in this room has an ego, and sometimes taking a tactical blow to the ego is essential to improving an organization. so that's self-reflection, self-regulation and then we have to look at self-perception. Your perception of yourself has to be as close as possible to other people's reality if you think you are cool, open and honest and your team doesn't, or then you have a disconnect and have a problem if you think you are very shy and you really don't. you say what you want to say but your team thinks you're pretty blunt, you have a disconnect in your problem your perception of yourself has to be as close as possible to other people's reality, so we're working on those three things and it's a endless journey, you will never master it, you know it is something you will continue to do and so you have to create a safe environment and I am not talking about safety in the traditional helmet and boots sense.

I'm talking about creating a climate where people can say and do what they need to say and do, but leaders are scary because it means feedback now we all know that feedback is a gift but if we are honest with ourselves it also hurts but it is essential in a great leadership it is also necessary to create this climate to share ideas no leader should think that there is no exhaustive list of ideas because no one creates this climate this open climate if you can focus on those three things you have an open climate then you have all the possibilities of connection with connection comes creativity and nothing amazing happens on this earth without creativity so that's the second vision of people Nelson band Nelson Mandela said action without vision is passing time vision without actions daydreaming but vision and action can change the world and that's Mandela changed the world if you want your company to drive if you want your sports team to drive if you want your performing arts center to drive you have to give them a destination because driving without a destination means you just get lost so give a vision, make it compelling, make it public, make it exciting, make it challenging, it can't be easy if it were easy, chances are people have done it.

I've already done it, I've spread the word, I've designed some stops and celebrations along the way because it's hard to stay motivated for what could be three, four or five years, what's not a vision is meeting the year-end results. , its revenue and EBIT, cash flow, it's not Everton on a Wednesday night, it's not Dancy at a matinee on a Saturday, they may be all the essential things you need to achieve your vision, but that's not a vision, your vision needs to be compelling and when you have a vision I always tell companies to draw it, it's no secret why on a company Christmas questionnaire you'll always get that question about your vision and mission and everyone goes on I wish Bill was here It's revised that for three years it's probably just about having made it, no one remembers strings of words, so write it down, draw it, draw where you are today, draw where you want to be tomorrow, draw the path of how to get there, frame it, put it on the wall from the office, at the sports center or in your dance studio, all of them.

They will know what the vision is, they may verbalize it differently, but they will know what it is. I forget my birthday every year, but I can draw you a picture that I saw ten years ago, so that's the people's vision, the last one, a passion, a leader without passion or enthusiasm. They lack credibility, you don't believe them, and we've all seen them, they stand there in front of the board and say, I'm very passionate about this, do you think, don't feel like it feels like you're lying to me, give people that passion, and that's where the passion is, and enthusiasm is an emotion like any other emotion when you see someone laughing on tv you want to laugh with them when you watch titanic and see that guy sing can he drown? you want to cry those movies are designed to play with your emotions, give emotion to people Martin Luther King didn't say we have the people who will take us to the promised land, you didn't say it like that, he sang it at the top of his lungs and talked about movies designed to He unleashed the Braveheart emotion, he didn't say you can take a grand but they won't take liberty, he shouted it and everyone shouted with him and when you were watching it you felt obligated, even Kylie Minogue sang along.

I should be very lucky. luck, luck, we all feel lucky and one last thought about passion and it comes from a mindset of these leaders that you know the leaders up there do strategic mental rehearsals, they've all mentally imagined reaching the goal, they've probably done it 10 or 20 times have imagined the steps on the path they tried it, they felt that research suggests that people who do SM are more likely to achieve their goals. You see athletes do it. I was talking to Duncan Good. You, he did it before him. gold medal. I flew to an airfield about six months ago with my uncle and I was sitting there having a cup of tea like you do when you're British and there was an air show and there was a guy who was probably sixty years old. pilot experience one piece flight suit and he closed his eyes he didn't know what we were looking at he spread his arms he closed his eyes he started moving he started doing this with his hands altering the throttle moving the yoke he was rehearsing it was Honestly, it was fascinating to watch and I got closer to him and I said, you know, we are doing the exhibition, a reflection, crazy to ask a guy with a juanzi who pretended to be an airplane with his arms outstretched, but when we arrived he said yes and I said: do you do that often?

He said: I can't fly. I can't do a show unless I rehearse it in my mind. You've probably done those moves 20 times before in the air, but you can't do it. an exhibition unless you've rehearsed it and that's where you get your drive and passion from strategic mental rehearsal, so there are my three things, the people, the vision, the passion, the great leaders that you know, the great Leaders who are up there are bold enough to be the people they are not. people who think they should take one last piece of reflection is great leadership, they sat at a turning point so when you start your leadership role you are developing and you need to be developing and then there is a turning point where you start developing others and you are happy developing others and you are happy giving people the glory of success and that is where you start to motivate yourself and that is when you start getting high performing teams and getting high performing teams is a great leadership thank you very much