Top Takeaways Tuesday Review: How to Humanise Your Leadership
The Knowing Self Knowing Others Podcast, Ep. 54 with Gerardo Segat
Hello KSKOers
I enjoyed my conversation with Gerardo Segat in ep. 54 of The Knowing Self Knowing Others Podcast. We had a brilliant conversation about the ways authenticity, connection, self-awareness all combine to humanise the workplace. We also talked about the way creativity can help leadership to explore these topics and open up opportunities for vulnerability in safe spaces.
"My purpose and legacy is to humanize leadership."
Gerardo Segat
Take a read through my top takeaways and take a pause to consider each reflection question…
1. Authentic Leadership through Vulnerability: Gerardo talked to me about the transformative power of vulnerability in leadership, emphasising that people yearn for authentic emotional connections. He encourages leaders to embrace their vulnerability, seeing it as a pathway to fostering deeper and more meaningful relationships, both in work and outside of work.
"So if you lead by example and you are vulnerable, you are human, then people around you will be the same.”
Gerardo Segat
By demonstrating vulnerability, leaders can create an environment where their team members feel safe to open up, share their emotions, and build trust.
Reflection question: How willing are you to be vulnerable as a leader, and how might this impact your ability to connect with and inspire others within your colleagues?
2. The Impact of Digital Connections on Leadership: In this digital era, maintaining genuine human connections is really important. Gerardo talked to me about how digital connections can present both challenges and opportunities for leaders, highlighting the need for authenticity and empathy in communication to make it meaningful and reach that core of connection for which we all yearn.
Reflection question: How do you ensure that you maintain a human touch and contribute to meaningful connections with your colleagues through digital and virtual communication?
3. Self-Awareness as the Cornerstone of Leadership
For Gerardo self-awareness is a cornerstone skill for effective leadership. He likens self-awareness to watching your life on a movie screen in a cinema: think about that hyper focus, distance from the screen and observational aspect. He stresses the importance of nurturing self-awareness to cultivate a more authentic and humanised leadership style
Reflection question: If you were in a cinema watching your life unfold in a movie in front of you, what would you observe?
4. Humanizing Leadership
As an advocate for a more humanised approach to leadership, Gerardo urges leaders to bring their genuine human selves into their work. He says that infusing humanity into leadership means making decisions and interactions more sincere and compassionate.
"Using Business as a Force for Good"
Gerardo Segat
Gerardo talks about his own experience of achieving what he had perceived to be success, which actually just left him feeling unfulfilled and empty.
Reflection question: What professional and personal experiences make you feel most fulfilled?
5. The Interconnectedness of Fear and Inner Treasures: We explored the inner fears that drive harmful behaviours and how we can flip the narrative to set out the opposite of those fears, calling them ‘inner treasures’. He listed: inner love, inner freedom, inner meaning, and inner certainty. He emphasised the importance of understanding and addressing these fears to develop greater self-awareness.
Reflection question: What are your inner fears and their opposite ‘inner treasures’?
How can you use these top takeaways and reflection questions (TTRQ)?
Pick one of the TTRQs
Share it with you team
Ask for their thoughts and views
Reflect, discuss and debate
Get to know your own thoughts better. Help others to know their thoughts better. Get to know each other better.
Hope you enjoy the episode and find that these TTRQs generate interesting and awareness raising discussions!
Some other articles you might like to read…
Mindful Tools to Boost Your Emotional Intelligence by
Exploring the Unseen Self: A Journey to Connect with My Shadow by
Looking forward to having you on my learning journey!
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Nia is an expert leader who talks the talk and walks the walk. She is an academically awarded thought leader in self-aware leadership and practices self-aware leadership every single day in her role as a Director in a Children’s Charity.
Thanks so much for the shoutout, Nia!
Wow! I love the headline and all the sub-headlines because they also tell a story and are short stories: The impact of digital connections on leadership and so on.
Great job! I'm so glad the conversation with Derek sparked some ideas. Often we need to be reminded of things that seem "obvious".