People-Centric Leadership: The Key to Building Stronger Teams

In this episode, we discuss the multifaceted nature of knowing your people and how it can transform your leadership dynamics. Brian shares a powerful example of an executive leader who demonstrates people-centric leadership with a remarkable depth of knowledge about the personal and professional life of her team. She uses this knowledge to motivate, inspire, develop, and build trust among her people. We discuss this example and then explore the correlation between a leader’s self-awareness and ability to truly know and connect with others. We also cover how one can gauge their own self-awareness levels and how individuals often possess valuable life lessons and strategies within themselves. Enjoy!

This episode was recorded live as part of our What Leaders Do series where we share bite-sized leadership lessons designed to challenge your thinking and provide practical insights. Join our community for free to participate in our next live session.

The Importance of People-Centric Leadership

A leader’s greatest asset is their knowledge of their people. Good leadership understands not only who people are, but their expertise and unique contributions that they bring to their teams.

Knowledge about your team can inform how you can motivate people, inspire them, and develop their skills. This knowledge can also be used to align your team on new initiatives. Most importantly, knowledge about your team builds trust.

Know Your People

Leaders who know their people have an entirely different awareness of who the members of their team are. They know what truly motivates and initiates them, what creative contributions they can bring, as well as how each person can be engaged no matter what the pressure points are.

Many people know their leaders in a very tactical and strategic way which is built on people’s capacities or skill sets. Challenge yourself to know your team, not just tactically and strategically, but know them relationally and emotionally.

Know Yourself

The key to leaders knowing their people starts with a leader’s capacity to know themselves. As a leader, how well you know yourself? How well do you know yourself professionally, in relationship with others, emotionally, and socially?

Leaders who are open to knowing themselves tend to be more open in knowing others. Leaders who practice emotional vulnerability themselves are more adept to being emotionally aware and emotionally attentive to the people that are around them.

How to Know Your People

Connection

Understand how you know the members of your team and get to know them around their interests and yours. Create a common connection with them that may not be work related, and talk about topics that would connect you as people before you connect as professionals.

Growth

Do you have practices where you are growing? There are many ways that people know themselves and I one of the most easily accessible ways is to find the areas of their life where you are growing.

Intention

Knowing the members on your team takes intentionality, time, and adaptability. It’s an intentional process that takes place over time, and often requires adaptation. As a leader, how can you intentionally form relationships with individuals that are meaningful and genuine?

Context

Leaders who know their people on a personal, emotional, and relational level understand the need for context. Not simply the organizational context you’re currently in, but the context they grew up in, the context of their education, or some of their early informative jobs. Each context contributes to how people are known and how they expect to be known.

Your People-Centric Leadership

How can you grow in the knowledge of yourself and your team? Are there certain members on your teams that you know better than others? And why is that? We’d love to hear from you! Connect with me at nathan@leadershipvisionconsulting.com.

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