Let's talk Transformation : The business leaders podcast #128 Let's play transformation with Tracy Clark
"Great leadership is about extracting the potential from others"
A brilliant dive into playfuness and leadership and how they can together help us to grow scalable and impactful businesses. Tracy and I have fun exploring how leaders can unlock untapped potential within themselves and their teams. A general lack of understanding of the impact leadership has influences performance - multipliers in the ecosystem and (accidental) diminishers in the ‘egosystem’, with huge blind spots. After all, leadership is about leading yourself first.
Discovering the power of playfulness, self-awareness, and challenging limiting beliefs to drive growth can create a multiplier effect in leadership. Tracy and I go through actionable insights for founders and leaders seeking to transform their approach and scale their businesses effectively.
Tracy shares her experience, insights and stories from working with founders and leaders across the world.
The main insights you'll get from this episode are :
- After successfully scaling an international business – involving enormous highs and lows and major challenges – the realisation that insufficient attention had been paid to the people was a pivotal moment.
- Subsequent ‘treasure hunt’ in the world of coaching was based on asking: what helps people move to the next level and unlock latent potential? Settled on the field of leadership after reading about Liz Wiseman’s multipliers and diminishers.
- General lack of understanding of the impact leadership has - multipliers in the ecosystem and (accidental) diminishers in the ‘egosystem’, with huge blind spots. After all, leadership is about leading yourself first.
- Leadership of self is crucial, and at different levels, e.g. self-awareness of what we do and think. Like a tree: the trunk is the strategy and actions; the invisible roots are the mindset and thinking, giving rise to the concept you hold of yourself (that influences your actions).
- The multiplier mindset is about extracting, expanding and leaning into possibility. Tracy has distilled six indicators of success:
· deep-rooted clarity
· conviction as the rocket fuel for challenges
· commitment to deepen resourcefulness
· trust as the invisible ingredient for belonging, productivity and momentum
· courage to look inwards
· playfulness (intense curiosity, radical open-mindedness, proactive experimentation) to dissolve fear and amplify the multiplier mindset.
- While developing the leadership scorecard, it was vital to intuitively include playfulness and get others to lean into it; to foster courage to overcome negative stories and a fear of failure; to look for alignment with vision and values (i.e. authenticity).
- The scorecard process is a continuum as opposed to a journey and the model works at different levels, starting with looking in the leadership mirror and understanding the feedback, also from others.
- Leaders must take ownership of the type of leader they want to be (as opposed to the vision) and also seek to bring out the best in others, often by staying quiet, asking questions and listening to the answers.
- Effective leaders give people space to reveal their (hidden) treasures and create psychological safety to permit playfulness. The ‘zone of genius’ is not static and is about more than just what we like to do and do well.
- So-called ‘weaknesses’ tend to be simply areas that have not been focused on; infinite potential requires curiosity to unlock – we must dismantle old beliefs, move forward and expand our zone of genius where we can add the most impact, e.g. by helping others expand theirs.
- ‘Let’s Play’ will be the title of Tracy’s book, two words that instantly relieve stress, shift energy, and challenge beliefs. We are taught to be logical, but logic can be detrimental to pushing boundaries and exploring, thereby limiting the power of imagination and possibility.
Find out more about Tracy here :