A leader with vitality can take the steps to realise vitality
Good leadership begins with awareness of your own behaviour. And knowing how this affects others. But a person who leads will sometimes also need to overcome certain things by adopting the other person's communication style for the sake of effective contact. A leader with vitality can go along with the other person's preference for a communication style.
Realise vitality in three phases
If you see a team of motivated employees, then most likely they have a good manager. Someone who can bring vitality to the staff with whom he or she works. This demands a hop-skip-jump approach from self-awareness to alignment with the employee.
1. Hop: self-awareness
To deploy an employee as best as possible, as a manager you will have to tune in well to this person. This starts with your own personal insight. "Where do I stand? What is the effect of my behaviour? How do I function under pressure? From what perspective do I see? And which pitfalls and reactions should I watch out for?" Lumina Spark will help you here: a proven tool that gives you insight into behaviour and characteristics.
Lumina Spark works with four basic colours that show the preferred style of a person: yellow, red, blue and green. For example, someone with a green style promotes harmony and is people-oriented. All in-between colours can emerge from the basic colours and therefore, there is no narrow-mindness.
2. Skip: insight into the other person
"How is the employee doing? What makes this person enthusiastic?" An insight into the employee makes the manager more sensitive and understanding. It helps the manager provide proper attention to this person in order to motivate him or her.
The Lumina tool expands the vocabulary with which the manager can assess the preferable behaviour of the employee in order to respond to this. For example, an employee with lots of red in the profile can be dealt with more immediately than an employee with lots of green in the profile.
3. Jump: realising vitality
How can you align the insight into yourself with the insight into another person? "Speak the other person's language” is the advice for a manager who wants to get the agreement of the other person or to motivate him or her. This is not easy, because based on our own preferred behaviour, we tend to communicate in our own style.
Here is an example. Suppose that you are rather resolute, especially when you are under pressure. Your preferred style is quite red. But the employee in question is considerably more cautious: blue. For the best result, as a manager, you should tune your behaviour and communication style towards the colour blue. Quietly convince the employee using facts and practical arguments. A challenge!
Behaving in a way that is of no great concern to you is very difficult.
Summary: take steps to realise vitality
Good leadership starts with awareness of your own behaviour. A manager, who knows himself and the employee and can switch to the preferred style of the other, achieves the best collaboration and inspired employees. That's what leadership with vitality is all about.
