Lead with your heart

I was speaking at Leadercast last week on the topic of authentic leadership and building trusting teams. Leading up to the talk, I thought a lot about my views on those topics, and I kept coming back to the same theme:

LEAD WITH YOUR HEART

Leading with your heart means telling the truth. It means treating people the way you want to be treated. It means thinking first of how to help your team members succeed, before you think about your own personal success.

Leaders can be successful in other ways, sure. But how do you define success? If it’s 100% financial results, then yes, you can be the leader that doesn’t really care about your team members, doesn’t try to lift them up along the way, and doesn’t speak truth. You can do that and achieve financial and business results. For a time.

I believe you can do both. You can be a thoughtful, nice, and giving leader, and also lead your team to great financial success. You can build trusting, collaborative teams that love their jobs and respect you, and know that you’ll be there for them.

That’s part of my mission, to show that companies can both experience fast, healthy growth, while also being a force for good in the world. And it starts with leading with your heart.