Psychological strength is key for any leader. Courage to face the storm is a skill that develops with experience.

Today’s guest post is by Oleg Konovalov, author of The Fisherman’s Path to Leadership: 224 Lessons from the Wisdom of Nature.

We are all perfect for today and we are comfortable in it. Yet, how strong we are for tomorrow’s challenges defines our leadership capacity. Thus, leaders must grow all the time to lead a vision that is greater than we are and greater than any organization.

You nurture and develop this competence through five critical elements – the courage to think differently and boldly; constant learning, as you must learn all the time to be able to give people more and manage more complicated tasks; growing your inner excellence as leading is not physical work but psychological; be confident and credible, which is about how you deliver promises to others as without credibility your vision wouldn’t have this magnitude; creating the knowledge bank or ensure a consistent engagement and contribution of all involved in terms of growing your vision strong.

A leader must be good at making him- or herself greater – this allows him or her to think and act in a greater way.

In simple words: I must be a storm myself that is stronger than forthcoming challenges.

Becoming the Storm

I spent some time on the Scottish fishing trawlers in the North Atlantic. We all know about seasickness. In fact, only a few people don’t have it. This is normal for all humans, to a greater or lesser extent, regardless if you are a beginner or an experienced seafarer. The only difference is that the experienced know how to adapt faster.

When we witness such incredible instability during a storm, our body and mind read conflicting signals which leads to reactions causing muscles to contract and nausea. Psychologically, if you are afraid that you will get seasick, you will feel sick. Therefore, take it easy, and keep doing your job.

First, I felt sick when facing a force-five storm. Soon, I adapted to a force-seven storm and felt okay. Then I faced something truly fierce and violent – a force-eleven storm. The small, 38-meter-long trawler fighting against 10-16-meter-high waves that could crush everything. My stomach was somewhere in my throat, my brain begged for a few seconds of stability and calmness, and my body wasn’t mine. I don’t remember feeling it somehow.

The distance from my cabin to the engine room, which usually was traversed in seconds, took about twenty minutes of clinging to every wall, handrail, and whatever I was able to get my hands on.

No one and nothing can help in such a 36-hour survival test. We were days away from the nearest safe harbor. The faces of all my crewmates were of a dollar-green color.

In these situations, everyone turns to God. Yet, before long, I realized something – I enjoyed the storms. After the force-eleven, I loved standing on the deck feeling like I was surfing. I realized that by growing through the storms I become the storm myself.

The main challenge is psychological. Growth is associated with enhanced psychological ability. You are either a leader who stands firm and does what must be done regardless of circumstances or you give up and let others fail.

Success is a port you can only reach through the storm. This rough passage demands two key elements – the ability to grow beyond our own fears and limitations and the ability to change and adapt to fast-changing realities. This is an absolutely essential ability to become a true leader.

Lessons learned:

The leader is responsible for leading people into the future. She defines a vision that is much greater than herself and the organization. No one can lead something so huge without the ability to grow and change.

If a leader fails to conduct his or her duty, the team will fail.

Change will be painful. The growth is rewarded.

No storm lasts forever.

Psychological strength is key for any leader.

If you can challenge yourself, you can withstand any storm.

Courage to face the storm is a skill that develops with experience. It doesn’t make you fearless but makes you experienced.

Dr. Oleg Konovalov is a global thought leader, author, business educator, consultant, and C-suite coach. Oleg is named among the top eight global experts in leadership and shortlisted for the Distinguished Award in Leadership by Thinkers50 and has been named one of the Global 100 Inspirational Leaders 2022, along with Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Oprah Winfrey. Having been named ‘the da Vinci of Visionary Leadership’ by many leading authorities of our time, Oleg is considered #1 in the world in the field of vision and visionary leadership. He is the author of The Fisherman’s Path to Leadership, The Vision Code, Leaderology, and other books.

For more information visit www.olegkonovalov.com.

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Breakthrough leadership is about seizing the WOO – Window of Opportunity. Leaders can only seize the WOO to build their team by being fully present.

Today’s guest post is by Brian Biro, author of Lessons from the Legends: New Applications from the Timeless Wisdom of John Wooden and Pat Summitt.

Is it possible that your life, relationships, health, and business can flourish as never before, despite even the most difficult circumstances? Is it possible for you to build supportive, high-performance teams, even with those people you’re pretty certain God put on the planet to “bug” you? Is it actually possible for you to have more fun, greater sense of purpose, and genuine peace of mind in a world accelerating so quickly that there is more computer technology in your children’s Christmas toys than in the Apollo that went to the moon in 1969? And is it even remotely possible that your family can actually flourish and connect, despite the seemingly endless distractions and disconnections of reality TV, social media, Madison Avenue, cell phones, and AI?

The answer to these critical questions is WOO YES!!! Stop reading right now and yell out the word WOO. Isn’t that a FUN word? Now, if anyone asks you what you’ve been reading and thinking about, put a big grin on your face, look them right in the eye, and say… The WOO!

WOO stands for WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY, and I want you to know that we all share the most important, magical, and magnificent of all WOOs right now. Do you know what it is? It is EVERY PRECIOUS MOMENT! Every precious moment is a WOO. What do I mean?

You never know if the next person you meet today may become your lifetime friend, just as you didn’t know it when you met your lifetime friends. You never know if the next time you talk with your child, spouse, friend, or teammate, if something you say in that conversation may be the one crucial thing they could not see without your eyes, and a life that was on its way down rises again. You never know if the next idea that pops into your head may have the same impact on your own life.

I had a high school counselor named Mr. Anderson who pulled me into his office in the ninth grade, sat me down, and with an intensity that surprised me because he was usually so light-hearted said, “Brian, a student like you only comes along about once every ten or fifteen years.”

Now, at that time, it was pretty likely he meant it BAD more than he meant it good! You see, at that time all I really wanted was for everyone to like me. And so, I was playing the clown, not applying myself anywhere near my potential. But Mr. Anderson saw through all of that. What he was really saying to me in that WOO was, “Brian, don’t waste the gifts you’ve been given. Live FULLY. Put your heart into all that you do. When each day is done, know you’ve given all you had. That’s what really matters.”

And, you know, I GOT it. I would not be writing this article right now had Mr. Anderson not seized that WOO so long ago. I never would have elevated my academics and earned my way into Stanford University, never would have had my life move in the wonderful directions it’s flowed, and, most of all, never would have stepped onto the path that brought me to my wife and children. The question is not, “Is there a WOO?”

THERE IS!

The real questions we should be asking are, “How many of those WOOs have we MISSED?” And, why do we miss them?

There is only one way you can seize the WOO, and that is to be fully present.

When you get right down to it, our job as leaders is to seize those WOOs to help others know they are important. When people feel important and significant, they rise. When people feel taken for granted and unimportant, they fall. But, how do communicate to others unfakably and unshakably that they matter, that they ARE important. It all comes down to being fully present.

When you are fully present for others, 100% of your mind, body, and spirit are with the people you are with, where they are NOW. The result of this simple action has more impact than you can even imagine.

Many years ago, when I needed it most, my two daughters, Kelsey and Jenna, taught me a crucial lesson about the unmatched importance of being present.

At the time, I was so caught up in my work that I found myself incessantly on the phone or computer trying to iron out an endless barrage of challenges. One evening, when I could have been seizing one of life’s most precious and important WOOs by putting my precious daughters to bed and sending them off to their dreams with love and attention, I was instead once again sitting in my office and just about to get on that darn phone. But at that very moment I felt my daughters behind me. I didn’t see them or hear them. I simply felt their energy, and when I turned to look, there they were.

They gazed up at me and said, “Daddy, before we go to sleep, we wanted to ask you something.”

“Sure girls! You can ask anything.”

And in one question, one WOO, they changed my life.

“Daddy, we just wanted to know, do you love your phone more than you love us?”

These words shot through me, shaking me to my very soul. By seizing that WOO, my girls helped me see that only in our moments of being fully present can we live our priorities and help others build confidence, faith, and self-esteem. It is the only way we communicate to them that they are important.

I tucked my girls in that night and never missed another night except when I was on the road. They taught me that you can never seize the WOO unless you are fully present.

Live and lead with joy. Carpe WOO!

Brian Biro is known as America’s Breakthrough Speaker. The author of 16 books including his new Lessons from the Legends, Brian has delivered nearly 1,900 presentations on leadership and team-building around the world.

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Dr. Sam Adeyemi offers insight to business executives and C-suite professionals on the next generation of leadership development planning.

Today’s guest post is by Dr. Sam Adeyemi, author of Dear Leader: Your Flagship Guide to Successful Leadership.

How would you describe the up-and-coming leaders within your organization? Dynamic? Global? Inspiring? Unique? Now, here’s the big question: Do you think the same could be said about your organization’s leadership development?

By 2030, Gen Z will account for almost 30% of the workforce, and post-COVID globalization has erased many of the more conventional boundaries of an organization’s hiring criteria. It’s no wonder that most modern workplaces now draw on vast pools of professional talent, and their next wave of leaders will rise up from all corners of the world with a dizzying array of interests and motivations. As such, the most successful organizations will be those who can offer customized leadership development plans, or step-by-step strategies for achieving both short-term and long-term goals.

These plans are not one-size-fits-all, and executing them ineffectively can actually create a more counterproductive environment for the aspiring leader. So how do you create leadership development plans that both elevate your executives and produce tangible results? Start with three simple guidelines.

3 Tips for Next-Gen Leadership Planning

1. Acknowledge What’s Bad, but Promote What’s Good

When we are looking to support the next cohort of successful leaders, it is tempting to focus on what needs to be fixed — what isn’t being done well and needs to be done better. Unfortunately, this overly critical stance not only creates a sense of negativity from the very beginning, but it can also breed insecurity in the aspiring leader and serve to erode their confidence going forward. This is why the most helpful leadership development plans focus on a person’s talents and strengths, choosing to quickly neutralize individual weaknesses and redirect all developmental energy to the leader’s strongest gifts and most inspiring attributes.

You might be tempted to call this sort of thinking overly optimistic, or perhaps too fixated on the silver lining of what could be a cloudy situation. But did you know that not a single cloud in the sky actually has a silver lining? The silver lining our eyes see when looking toward the sky actually comes from the sun, who sits just above the clouds shining a bright light that frames every outline in positivity. The clouds are the same hardworking wonders of nature they always were, simply framed in a different light — by a more uplifting leader and a more positive development plan.

Over 85% of executives believe fear prevents progress and innovation at their organization. So why allow it to infect your planning process?

2. Ask a Lot, but Also Listen

There was once a farmer who lost all his crops to disease at the start of the planting season. To try and recover some of his income for the year, the farmer used the last of his money to buy a few sheep from his neighbor — and so, he became a shepherd. Unfortunately, these sheep proved much louder than the farmer anticipated — bleating at high volume into all hours of the night. After offering better food and better bedding to no avail, the farmer-turned-shepherd was at his wit’s end. In his desperation, he strapped a giant fake ear to his wooden cart and rolled it out into the field. The sheep immediately gathered around the ear and bleated their BAHs until they had nothing left to say. That night, everyone slept soundly.

When it comes to their own professional development, every aspiring leader has a lot to say, whether about their unique interests or underlying motivations. That said, those conversations can be virtually meaningless when one-sided — if the mentor isn’t practicing deep listening and using these moments of honesty to make meaningful discoveries about the individual. Leadership development plans are driven by these types of discoveries, but they are ultimately a collective effort, including the individual’s managers, immediate supervisor, and fellow team members. This is why it is important to ASK, but it is even more important to LISTEN.

3. Plan for Forever, but Lead in the Moment

The intention behind every leadership development plan should be to uplift the leader in question. Though these plans do indirectly support the organization in that they afford one of its leaders greater success, that organizational support should never be the focus. If you help an employee plan a career strategy that results in enormous success, then that plan was inspiring and well-constructed. If that employee then chooses to leave your organization, this does not diminish the success or importance of the planning process. In fact, when professionals are able to leave an organization and continue to prosper, it is often a sign of confident career planning at the source.

There’s simply no getting around the new reality taking shape in almost every industry: occupational mobility is at an all-time high. In 2022, it’s estimated that over 49% of working professionals switched jobs or made a larger career transition. Permanence is a thing of the past, and if you’re building all your leadership development processes around the presumption that no one is leaving, then you’re already a few steps behind. Leadership planning can be a powerful tool for your organization, but it’s important to remember these plans are primarily a tool to serve the individual and humankind at large. In this way, everyone wins.

Ready to Evolve Your Leadership Planning?

Your aspiring leaders are some of the greatest assets to your organization. Consequently, your plans for nurturing those leaders should be actively and routinely evaluated for their efficacy. Are they focusing on the strengths and positives of the professional in question? Do they begin with two-sided conversations and deep, active listening? Are you planning for forever, yet ready for change? The next generation of leaders is already working at your organization, which means it’s time to evolve your career planning processes and elevate your executives to their greatest potential.

Atlanta-based Dr. Sam Adeyemi (SAY: Ah Day yeh me) is CEO of Sam Adeyemi, GLC, Inc. and founder and executive director of Daystar Leadership Academy (DLA). More than 45,000 alumni have graduated from DLA programs, and more than 3 million CEOs and high performing individuals follow him on top social media sites. Dr. Sam’s new book is “Dear Leader: Your Flagship Guide to Successful Leadership.” He holds a Doctorate in Strategic Leadership from Virginia’s Regent University, and is a member of the International Leadership Association. He and his wife, Nike (say Nee keh) have three children. Learn more at SamAdeyemi.com.

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