Dominik Szot, Founder/CEO of MIA. Leadership coach, global entrepreneur, agile leadership mentor, focused on leaders' legacy.
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As leaders get closer to achieving some difficult goal, another, even more demanding one appears right behind it. In such a situation, happiness often starts to link to results. The more difficult it is, the better. But it turns out that this is not what leaders and those around them are looking for.
In time, things other than another success on the horizon stop mattering. It can be more money, a better car or a larger house, a holiday in a more prestigious place or anything else.
A Leader's Happiness Equation
I am someone who was once like that and has luckily learned true happiness—like riding a motorcycle, taking a forest bath, cooking together with my family and friends, learning new competencies and coaching people, too. It took me more than a decade to find out what I really need to be happy and this is what I’d like to share.
Live Now
When you live in the now, you can easily enjoy all the little events that create moments of amusement and joy, like still-warm clothes fresh from the dryer or stargazing in a state of serenity. Enjoying all the small things that you make for yourself, thus creating moments of joy, is precisely the recipe for experiencing happiness—because you live here and in this moment.
Dream Big
Dreaming big gives you limitlessness. Imagine you plan a vacation in a beautiful place. What if, on top of that, you considered a healthier diet and more active activities you have never tried before? What if you made new friends who could inspire you? Or what if you started a new empowering or enriching habit like yoga or tai-chi or took up a new creative and calming hobby like playing music or dancing?
Forget The Past
Forgetting the past is about drawing conclusions from the lessons we've learned in life, mistakes we've made and failures we've encountered. All of them are great because they are our own history and something to be proud of—no matter what they were—and don’t exist anymore. Dwelling on the past can make you feel stuck. Instead, use the past to propel your current activities with well-known resources.
New Leadership Requirements
The ability to create psychological safety and empathy in leadership are probably the skills leaders most desire. Both require a certain distance and a unique attitude of mindfulness, compassion, mildness and curiosity. Only then can the people around you feel safe and secure. In such conditions, people can have a chance and space to speak without fear of being judged.
It's not a secret that a leader's best friends are humor and a healthy distance from everything happening around them. A leader’s perspective is completely different from anybody else's in the company because the scope, depth and length of observations and analyses are mega-multidimensional, long-lasting and strategy-based. So leaders see short-term effects and at the same time analyze what impact it can have on their long-term plans.
Lower-level employees focus attention on different matters that are still important for the company, just not on the same scale. From my perspective, this is what mostly causes tensions and difficulties; differences in perception of the same matters from completely opposite points of view.
Following my 30-year business experience as a leader, entrepreneur and CEO, I understand that the perspective of others is about the projects or tasks they are currently carrying out. A leader’s perspective is a collection of all those projects and tasks of all people, which generate cumulative results in a longer timeframe. It’s about everything that contributes to the final yearly result of the company or maybe even larger—two- or five-year business results. To be on the same page and get the same perspective, leaders can slow down for a moment.
With my coaching clients, I often hear that big decisions or investments don't make them feel bad, but little things, small mistakes or really tiny matters are the real source of their frustration. When leaders focus on big things, they don’t want to hear that something is hindering and stopping them. Those leaders’ little problems can be huge challenges for others, maybe even the biggest obstacles people have encountered in their entire lives. Business is a roller coaster, and when it accelerates, it also demands full commitment from all participants. Most of all it causes emotional tension, and this is what leaders are responsible for watching, softening and helping manage with joy and happiness.
I like the anecdote about children’s curiosity in dangerous situations. When there is a fire in the kitchen, little children run to see what it is and they are happy to see something completely new, while adults panic and shout for help. This is about the knowledge the grown-ups have and the consequences they foresee. Children don’t possess this information, so they can’t predict the future like their parents do.
Wrapping Up
When leaders are more focused on the current moment, with a child’s curiosity mixed with the happiness of learning something new, their attitude toward problems and new situations could be completely different. They only need distance and humor.
That’s why living in the now is so important. That’s why the smell of the local bakery, the structure of the paper you're writing on, the taste of your tea and the tone and pace of your colleagues matter so much. All these things can help leaders reflect, slow down and see others with compassion, interest and gratitude. Then leaders can express admiration and awe with amusement and pride for others and share their happiness.
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