Are You A Leader & A Magician?

What if I told you that leaders in some sense can be magicians with powers beyond imagination?

What if I told you that Leaders are pathways for the unseen to become a reality?

What if…alright, it’s getting a little too mythical, I got it.

But hear me out on this one.

Cultures create walls.

Inherently, a culture has walls that are created by the behaviors of the group that resides in it.

For example, did you know that people in Malaysia use their thumbs to point?

And Nigerians kneel or prostrate themselves when greeting?

Did you know that the Japanese enjoy slurping?

When I lived in Japan I learned that slurping while enjoying a delicious bowl of ramen was a compliment to the chef!

So how do leaders also become magicians.?

When we build cultures we accept and promote behaviors that create the norm-what we accept.

And much like cultures around the world, the cultures we create with our teams are no exception to the rule that we build an environment that becomes what we know to be true.

If you shut down innovative ideas over and over on your team, eventually the lack of ideas will be the norm.

If you criticize people when they speak up, eventually they won’t speak up and never speaking up will be the norm.

However, if you praise new ideas and find ways to promote them, an innovative environment is what you create.

If you create a space of psychological safety where people feel safe to challenge ideas, share perspectives, and take chances, then your norm will be empowerment.

Your people will feel it.

The lines you can cross and the lines you can’t cross will be easy to spot even though they’ll be invisible.

Because…like a magician, you’ve made it that way.