Self as Leader Pillar Activation Guide

Your pillar activation guide keeps you connected beyond your Groops sessions with key group connection concepts to review, discussion questions to continue to reflect on or talk about, and takeaways or things to try to apply new skills and knowledge together.

Groop 1: Self as Leader: Unpacking Your Why

Group Connection Concept

Leadership is the ability to influence others.

“Self as leader” refers to the introspective process leaders use to reflect and understand what they bring to their unique leadership style.

Personal and professional experiences shape how we show up as leaders with both positive and negative impact.

There are two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.

Manipulation can be promises, fear, pressure or social alliances. This might work, but only in the short term. 

Loyalty creates longevity. This is when someone is willing to turn down a better option on price/salary, product/job to continue working with you because their purpose is aligned with your purpose.  

Group Discussion Questions

Continue the Conversation

  • What makes you come alive in your work? Or elsewhere?

  • What are your innate strengths?

  • Where do you add the greatest value at work?

  • When you look back, what does a successful life look like to you?

  • Fill in the blank: “I ______ because I believe _____.”

    An example: “I lead Groops because I believe when people are more connected at work they are not only more productive, they live better, healthier lives. This is how I can change the world for the better.”

  • How can you communicate this to your team to inspire?

Takeaways or Things to Try

Take Action Together

  • Articulate your why. Refine your why into a short sentence.

  • Share your why with your team.

  • Ask your team to reflect on their why and share as a work group.

  • Practice saying what you are feeling in the group—with radical candor, not brutal honesty. Notice the impact.

Groop 2: Values Based Leadership

Group Connection Concept

Values of the leader have impact. 

This refers to our underlying beliefs that shape our feelings, behaviors, and decisions.

Different people have different values; therefore, leadership takes many forms.

Values are present and often seen and felt by the team, but often not articulated. Talking about values helps us build clarity and examine whether our values support the goals of the team.

Group Discussion Questions

Continue the Conversation

  • What are your top 3 values? If you are stuck, ask yourself how you lived your values in the past day or week. If you have not, they are probably not your values but rather values you think you should have.

  • How do you define these values?

  • Why did you choose them?

  • How do they support you as a leader?

  • How do they support the shared goals of your team?

  • How might they interfere with your role as a leader?

  • How might they interfere with the shared goals on your team?

Takeaways or Things to Try

Take Action Together

  • Articulate your values and why they are important to you.

  • Share your values with your team.

  • Ask your team to reflect on their values and share as a work group.

  • Practice noticing and naming communication styles in the moment by using “I notice ___ and wonder ___.” Make a list of all the values on the team and notice where there is overlap. These values drive team behavior.

  • Share your values with your team. Discuss the values on the team and how they support/interfere with your shared goals.

Groop 3: Personality and Leadership

Group Connection Concept

The personality of the leader impacts the team.   

Personality refers to your unique pattern of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are mostly consistent over time. 

There are different schools of thought around personality and how different factors shape it, including temperament, psychodynamic, humanist, behavioral, etc. The types of temperament are:

Type A: Perfectionist, impatient, competitive, work-obsessed, achievement-oriented, aggressive, stressed

Type B: Low stress, even-tempered, flexible, creative, adaptable to change, patient, tendency to procrastinate

Type C: Highly conscientious, perfectionist, struggles to reveal emotions (positive and negative)

Type D: Worrying, sad, irritable, pessimistic, negative self-talk, avoidance of social situations, lack of self-confidence, fear of rejection, appearing gloomy, hopeless

Group Discussion Questions

Continue the Conversation

  • What is your personality type? Take a quick quiz (like this one)

  • How does your personality type shape your leadership style?

  • How does your personality support your leadership?

  • How might your personality hinder your leadership?

Takeaways or Things to Try

Take Action Together

  • Share your personality with the team and get feedback about how it helps and/or hinders the goals of the team. 

  • Ask your team to reflect on their personality and share together. 

  • Map out the personality styles on the team and discuss what you see.

  • When a new person joins the team, ask about their personality.

Groop 4: Default Leadership Map

Group Connection Concept

We all have default ways of leading.

We spend our lives reacting to or reenacting our early experiences. How we were treated by authority figures informs how we lead.

This is our default leadership map. 

These experiences can interfere with successful leadership when they go unexplored. Some of us had great experiences with leaders or authority figures in the past, and some of us did not. 

Research shows that it is not what happened to you that matters most, it is how you have come to understand it that has the most impact on being a successful leader. 

Your past leaders/caregivers were…

Authoritarian: They conveyed, “I am in charge. It is my way or the highway. People should do as I say and on my time.”

Authoritative: They put a lot of time in building relationships with people on their team/family and understanding their unique needs and style. They explain why. They set the plan and structure but took your team’s characteristics into account.

Permissive: They set a plan but never followed through. They were not critical but they were very hands off. You and others had a hard time pinning them down. They thought people will do their best with little input from them as a leader.

Uninvolved: They did not know what was going on with their team/people. They did not spend time building relationships. They did not ask what people are working on.

Group Discussion Questions

Continue the Conversation

  • How did your early authority figures lead?

  • How does your history with authority show up in your leadership?

  • How does your history support your leadership in a positive way? 

  • How might your history hinder your leadership? 

  • What word best describes your leadership style now?

Takeaways or Things to Try

Take Action Together

  • Get feedback from your team. 

  • Notice what is working and what is not and ask yourself how your history with leadership impacts this. 

  • Get coaching / therapy to understand more about yourself. 

Groop 5: Qualities of a People-Focused Leader

Group Connection Concept

People-Focused Leaders are skilled in the same areas.

Empathy: The ability to understand another’s experience and feelings, despite not experiencing it yourself.

Social Skills: The ability to comfortably interact (verbally and non-verbally) with others.

Self-Awareness: The ability to perceive the perspective of others and apply that understanding to interactions with them.

Self-Regulation: The ability to understand and manage your behaviors in response to your thoughts, feelings, and things happening around you.

Self-Motivation: The ability to focus efforts in a goal-directed way and maintain persistence despite barriers.

Group Discussion Questions

Continue the Conversation

Your Leadership Style:

  • Empathy: From 0-10, how able are you to understand and/or feel another’s experience and feeling, despite not experiencing it yourself?

  • Social Skills: From 0-10, how able are you to comfortably interact (verbally and non-verbally) with others?

  • Self-Awareness: From 0-10, how able are you to perceive the perspective of others and apply that understanding to interactions with them?

  • Self-Regulation: From 0-10, how able are you to understand and/or manage your behaviors in response to your thoughts, feelings, and things happening around you?

  • Self-Motivation: From 0-10, how able are you to focus your efforts in a goal-directed way and maintain persistence despite barriers?

  • Overall: Among these, what areas do you want to develop the most and why? Without overthinking or judging, what words best describe how we communicate in our work group?

Takeaways or Things to Try

Take Action Together

  • Get feedback from your team.

  • Notice what is working and what is not and ask yourself how your history with leadership impacts this.

  • Get coaching / therapy to understand more about yourself.

Groop 6: Building the Action Plan

Group Connection Concept

Plan = Action.  

Most leaders know what needs to be done and want to do it, but it does not get done because there is not a plan. 

Leadership skills are the most important assets that often get overlooked. 

In this series, we spent time building leadership skills and focused on unpacking your why, values, personality, default leadership map, and qualities of a people-focused leader.

Your plan is for you to hold onto as you go forward.

SWOT of Your Leadership:

  • Strengths

    • Your attributes

    • Helpful to accomplish your goals

  • Weaknesses

    • Your attributes

    • Barriers to accomplishing your goals

  • Opportunities

    • Attributes of the organization

    • Helpful to accomplish your goals

  • Threats

    • Attributes of the organization

    • Barriers to accomplishing your goals

Group Discussion Questions

Continue the Conversation

  • Goals:  What are your 3 goals in terms of being a people-focused leader?

  • Your Attributes that Help: What positive attributes (personality, experience, skill) do you have that support these people-focused leadership goals? Write at least 3. 

  • Your Attributes that Hinder: What attributes (personality, experience, skill) do you have that might hinder accomplishing these goals?

  • Environmental Attributes that Help: What attributes of the environment you are in can be used / taken advantage of to accomplish your people-focused leadership goals?

  • Environmental Attributes that Hinder: What attributes of the environment you are in might hinder you from accomplishing your people-focused leadership goals?

  • Measurable Outcomes: How are you going to measure these goals? 

  • Review: When and how will you review these goals?

  • Support: How can we support you in accomplishing your goals?

Takeaways or Things to Try

Take Action Together

  • Post your SWOT somewhere you see it every day. 

  • Share your SWOT with your team and the people around you to keep yourself accountable. 

  • Be flexible and edit your SWOT as you go.