Page 149 - Fearless Leadership

136 FEARLESS LEADERSHIP

and skills for expanding their capacity. People enthusiastically engage
when they discover that they have the power to make a difference. When
you provide people with the tools to learn how to work effectively
together and quickly eliminate barriers, they will surprise you with their
results.
To gain a fuller understanding of what it means to take a bold stand,
let’s break down the elements for uniting and aligning people to take pro-
ductive action. The primary elements are these.

• Be open and talk about your blind spots. One of the reasons
we provide leaders with a list of common blind spots, and
encourage them to use it is that it provides them with a way to
easily communicate. It starts them on the path of self-disclosing
their struggles, sharing what they have learned, and taking
accountability for their impact on others. When all members
of a group share a common understanding of blind spots, they
have a way to powerfully communicate and make course correc-
tions to get back on track quickly.
• Call for committed partnerships first and engage people
emotionally and intellectually. This may sound backward, but
you must talk about “how” people are expected to work together
before you delve into the details of “what” they are to do. There
is a reason for this. Understanding the strategy of a game is use-
ful only after you have a team that is aligned, knows how to play
as a team, and shares a stable set of rules. When you engage
people as committed partners, you establish a uniform set of
agreements, expand their personal context, and emotionally
connect them to the larger organizational context. (In Chapter
6, we cover the five agreements of committed partners.)
• Focus the committed partnerships on your mission-critical
objectives. The point of forming committed partnerships is to
focus them on your business needs. It is a wake-up call to the
organization that moves people into action. What makes this dif-
ferent is how you are asking people to relate to one another and
the organization. You are calling on their emotional commitment
to accomplish a major business objective or tackle a challenge.