From my perspective, a good leader is someone who listens. It can be easy to tell people what to do, but to listen to what someone needs, and help them find a way to achieve that is true leadership.
As a master coach trainer and learning facilitator for the National Coaching Certification Program for decades here in Canada, I encouraged coaches to learn how to listen. Every person they would teach would need different things, and while it might not be possible give what is needed to each one, it’s important that people feel heard. The more people feel heard, the easier it becomes for people to work together because there is less resistance to communicating.
It’s difficult to be a good listener if you don’t know how to listen to yourself. When you lose patience with another, it could be that you’ve been triggered to feel as if no one wants to listen to you. Often we want to be heard and think that being a good leader is getting people to listen to you. The more you feel comfortable with hearing yourself and what you need, you create space for you to be able to hear what others need. When you give compassion to yourself first, you are then able to give that compassion to others.
As an internal alchemist for over twenty-five years now studying clinical hypnotherapy, I understand that not every technique works for each person. Every person lives in their own version of reality, so it becomes necessary as a therapist to hear how an individual feels and find a technique that will work for them that will shift them into a new reality.
Listening without judgment creates an environment where people feel comfortable to communicate. When we feel comfortable to be vulnerable, it becomes easier lead in a direction that benefits everyone.
Those are my thoughts on what makes a good leader. What do you think?
~Kellie
Kellective Creations 