The name of this blog comes from our mission at INFLUENCE: “To empower people with clarity and confidence.”
Our objective is to provide brief but meaningful topics (under 500 words) that inspire, educate and empower leaders through resources both inside and outside of INFLUENCE. This week’s edition is provided by David Salmons.
Clear, simple, and practical advice for personal growth is worth its weight in gold. Executive coach and Forbes Leadership Contributor, Tony Gambill, is acutely aware of this, in part because he’s served a number of organizations as an executive over the past 20 years, and also because he’s now the Founder and CEO of his own organization, ClearView Leadership.
As an introductory case in point, during an interview with Inspired, Tony relates how he’s still creating value from advice he received years ago when he worked for a CEO who said: “… any idiot can make something complicated. You’ve got to be smart in something to make it simple.”
Doing exactly that, Gambill – along with speaker, trainer, and author Scott Carbonara – published a book in 2021 that provides practical direction for developing what they call “self-leadership”. In this book, Getting It Right When It Matters Most: Self-Leadership for Work and Life, Gambill and Carbonara show how to apply self-awareness, learning agility, and emotional intelligence through the Self, Outlook, Action, and Reflection (SOAR) cycle.
If you’re looking for one book to read as a practical resource for personal and leadership growth, you might give this one a try. Described by reviewers as easy and engaging, it helps readers recognize their best and worst selves, then take intentional, goal-centered ownership particularly in moments that matter most.
Here’s a small sample of what Tony and Scott provide in their section on “Outlook”. Fundamentally, these are emotional intelligence touchstones that, when taken seriously as described and expanded upon in the book, can help anyone manage the biases and emotions that limit them.
For example:
- I try to understand others’ situations before making judgments.
- I am aware of how my perception biases can distort how I view situations and people.
- I am aware of my emotions and can accurately describe my feelings.
- I know what situations trigger my negative emotions.
- I understand how my negative feelings can affect my behaviors.
- When feeling negative emotions, I always pause to gain balance before taking action.
- I use my breathing to calm my emotions.
- I seek diverse perspectives when encountering complex situations.
- I stay true to my Best Self when engaging with difficult situations.
When might these touchstones (and many others) be used to increase your success? They can be used whenever you feel threatened, paralyzed, defeated, perplexed, or simply stalled.
In conclusion, as Tony and Scott note, the most successful people at work and in life share a pattern of self-awareness, learning agility, and emotional intelligence, as explained in the book.
Perhaps the best summary however is provided by an Amazon book reviewer who wrote: “It’s so easy to get it wrong – and have the same situations and conversations that end in the same way. This book is the best resource I’ve seen to address the things we can control in our most complex situations. Instead of describing how to manage one aspect of these situations – such as our outlook or how to have difficult conversations – this book offers a holistic, research-backed approach to getting it right.”