3 Unexpected Things We Learned from 70 International Leaders

At Leadership Vision, we help leaders and teams achieve their goals through time-tested leadership wisdom and practical application. We do this through consulting team development, coaching custom content creation, and more. But sometimes our clients remind us about these leadership lessons in unexpected ways.

In this episode, Brian and Linda share three unexpected things they learned from their time working with 70 leaders at an international school in Europe. They discuss why the mission of an organization needs to be communicated early and often, how Strengths are not the end goal, but merely a tool, and how taking risks might be the thing you’re missing in your organization.

3 Unexpected Things We Learned from 70 International Leaders

This summer, Brian and Linda spent seven days learning from 70 leaders at an international school in Europe. Below are three unexpected things they learned during their time working with this group of inspiring leaders.

1. Communication needs to be repeated

Our first big takeaway was that repetition matters. During our time at the international school, the primal message being communicated and repeated to the group was that we belong together as a team. We belong together not just as an invitation to belonging, but the intentionality of belonging together. You’ve been brought here, you’ve been chosen, you’ve been hired, you’ve been placed on a team, and that message was emphasized over and over and over again.

But that wasn’t what we experienced as participants. We experienced the simplicity of the repetition of an important message. What we learned was don’t be afraid to say things over and over again, because we know that through repetition people will receive a message that’s important.

As we think about communication, and communicating regularly and often, we know that the more that we hear a message, the more it can be internalized. And that’s where some of the fine tuning happens.

2. Strengths is just a tool, not the goal

Our second unexpected takeaway is that Strengths is a tool, but not necessarily the goal. There are a lot of tools, processes, and systems that can help us get to where we’re going, but Strengths is not an answer. Strengths is not a belief system. Strengths is not the end towards which we’re all going. It’s just one of the tools.

We often begin with Strengths and then our process is informed by Strengths. We don’t always carry that Strengths language and orientation with us the entire time through. It is a tool that we use.

3. Take risks!

The third unexpected takeaway we learned was to take risks. One of the big risks we we took as we we leaned into high expectations that were changing over time was we created new strategies for how to engage the teams while we were there. We love that creative process, but when that risk needs to happen in a couple of hours prior to meeting with a team, that’s a whole different level of risk!

What we realized was that we know we have the capability to take risks, and we also know we don’t have to do all the work ourselves. When you allow the participants to do the work with you, then you share the responsibility of the risk that you’re taking. Sometimes we need to invite people into the risk with us to dissipate the risk so that we all share in something unique together. That’s when breakthroughs really happen, when we have the confidence of taking risks.

Something we actively do is practice trust emergence. This is when we step into an unknown situation, when we don’t exactly know all the questions, and we have to trust that the wisdom will emerge. The insight and the specific advice or feedback or sentiment will be shared. It feels very risky, but with with big risk, comes big reward.

Connect with Us

What about this resonates with you? We’d love to hear about your experience so please connect with us at connect@leadershipvisionconsulting.com.