Spark: How to Lead Yourself and Others to Greater Success

by Angie Morgan

By providing out-of-date incentives, failing to offer competitive wages, and not providing sufficient training and development, they’re effectively cultivating an antiquated workforce for their innovative product.

I was seeking a transformative experience that would help me grow and develop beyond the skills and abilities I was born with—to go beyond the knowledge I had gathered in college. This personal

The way to stop reacting and start responding like a Spark is to invoke higher-order cognitive processes to control your actions.

Cognitive flexibility is commonly described as the ability to switch your thinking in order to solve problems, which we all do really well with the non-people-related challenges we experience.

cognitive discipline: the ability to inhibit an instinctual or habitual reaction and substitute a more effective, less obvious response instead—a Spark response.

Stop and wind the clock.

example, if you know that your impatience is off-putting to others, you can take a few deep breaths during meetings to manage your angst or practice active listening to focus on others’ feelings and not your own.

developed in the 1950s by two psychologists, Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham. According to this model, there are four aspects of awareness:

The first aspect of self-awareness is “what you know and everyone knows” about you.

The next aspect of self-awareness is “what you know and no one knows” about you.

The next aspect is “what you don’t know and no one knows” about you. We consider this quadrant “untapped potential.”

As you make attempts to push yourself into new experiences and gain a greater appreciation for your strengths, weaknesses, and capabilities, you expand your self-awareness.

“what you don’t know and everyone else knows” about you.

the production floor talking with your team members. Without access to your blind spots, it’s difficult for you to improve upon them—and it may be precisely these blind spots that are holding you back from becoming an influential and inspirational leader to others.

Professor Carol Dweck of Stanford University backs me up. Her results strongly suggest that learning and development stop only when we adopt a fixed mindset rather than a growth-oriented mindset. So, yeah, you can teach an old dog new tricks—as long as the dog is willing to learn. Dweck’s research and subsequent book, entitled Mindset, shed some light on adult learning and how we unconsciously choose to stop seeking out challenges,

But on your Spark journey, don’t start by thinking about your organization’s values first—you can work on those later. Start by thinking about your own values.

Your values are the principles or qualities that are important to you—like fairness, family, humor, freedom, justice, humility, faith, or adventure. Your values are deeply personal, and whether you know it or not, you’ve been developing them your whole life.

before you lead others, you have to be able to lead yourself. Self-leadership requires that you give yourself direction. It’s creating a pathway where there’s no paved road.

The word “Enodia” refers to reinvention and development beyond challenges and crossroads.

In addition to the time factor, we’re also more likely to compromise our values—and even our ethics—when we’re tired and stressed. As our working day wears on and we become more physiologically depleted because we used up most of our focus and energy in the morning, we have less willpower in the afternoon to do the right thing. When we’re tired and stressed, not only are we less likely to enact our values, but we’re more tempted to lie, cheat, or steal.

consult your values frequently so that you have a ready reference for how you want to behave when tested. We’ve even met professionals who printed out their values and posted them near their computer so they would have a reminder—front and center—whenever they felt challenged and needed inspiration.

We grant followership to those people in our organizations we perceive as authentic—that is, the people who aren’t playing politics, who aren’t always trying to say the “right things” to whomever they’re talking to, who aren’t seeking popularity in exchange for their integrity.

Understanding and meeting the standards of others Having a very narrow “say-do gap” Communicating your intent and expectations to others Holding others accountable when they fail to meet standards

So while you might hate filing your expense report at the end of the week, or don’t want to wear your safety goggles while touring the plant, remember that your preferences don’t matter. To be a Spark, you must not only know what’s expected of you but always perform to the level of excellence that you would demand from yourself (and others) against all the standards that have been set for you. Understanding and meeting the standards of others is the first level of achieving high performance.

And your say-do gap is a great gauge for monitoring your performance because it keeps you honest about how well you’re living up to the expectations you have set.

Your commitments are critical, and not honoring them should be a true exception to the rule, not the norm.

results. So the next time you get frustrated by someone’s poor performance, take for a moment before you say to yourself, Ugh—he should have known what needs to be done! Guess what? He probably didn’t. This is when you stop yourself and ask, Did I share what success looks like here? Did I establish the right expectations? Chances are good that someone’s poor performance is a result of something you did not do versus something he or she did do.

After all, the reason you give feedback is to inspire someone to grow. If you’re doing it for any other reason—maybe because you need to be right or you’ve got an ego to feed—then you’re wrong and definitely not the person to offer constructive criticism.

I needed to accept responsibility for my own actions and their ramifications. That’s what Sparks do. They serve as role models for others by being accountable for everything they do, good and bad.

And especially as we get older, we also underestimate how much change we have left to experience. Harvard social psychologist Dan Gilbert calls this the End of History Illusion, which he describes in one of his TED talks. Gilbert shares that we can appreciate how much we’ve grown over the years, but that we also assume the person we are today is the person we’ll be in the future. While we may not change as much as we did between the ages of ten and twenty, there’s still a lot of growth left between the ages of forty and sixty.

you don’t know anything until you’ve had a chance to write about it.

“If you’re going to work twenty hours one day, then mean to do it, and if you’re going to take the day off, be off. If you live on purpose, you will be your best and you won’t look back on your life with personal or professional regrets.”

“One sick ship would sink the fleet.” There’s only one remedy for these environments: service-based leadership.

To demonstrate service-based leadership: Consistently be focused on understanding the needs of others and working hard to meet them. Service-based leadership isn’t a onetime event. Seek to serve first. Don’t make people have to ask you for support and assistance. Sometimes the simplest actions are all it takes to be of service to others. Don’t just think about serving others—do it. We often have good intentions that fall to the wayside because we can’t find time to serve others. Even five minutes a day is enough to have a positive impact on others.

Confidence, like any Spark behavior, can be developed and managed. It starts with employing the right strategies on your Spark journey, which include: Experiencing success Developing positive self-appraisals Surrounding yourself with positive role models Managing confidence-killing emotions When you build and develop your confidence, over time you start to see yourself differently—as strong and

Referencing your successes in critical times is a surefire way to reclaim your confidence.

Up until this point, we’ve presented three conscious and deliberate actions you can take to help build your confidence: experiencing your success, developing positive self-appraisals, and surrounding yourself with positive role models.

One important conclusion I’ve drawn is that no one is immune to fear, worry, and insecurity. These strong emotions often emerge when we feel we don’t have a choice in our circumstances and we’re incredibly uncertain about how we’re ever going to come out on top again. Each of

When we have these fear responses, we need to tune in to them. Just by paying attention to our emotions, we can identify when we’re feeling anxious, and when we do, we can’t ignore that emotion. We have to confront it. Sometimes asking ourselves a simple question (What can I do about this right now?) is enough to propel us toward action.

To combat worry, another confidence-killing emotion that is often induced by stress, it’s important to determine whether your concerns are real or manufactured.

When you find yourself in a worried state, ask yourself, Is this real? If so, can I solve it? The answers to these questions should help you figure out what actions—if any—you can take to manage your worries. And if you can’t affect the situation you’re in, tell yourself, I’m not worried. I’m just concerned.

Consistency is your ability to always adhere to your values and intentions regardless of your circumstances. It determines whether you’re a “sometimes person” or an “always person.” Sometimes people are those whose behavior you just can’t anticipate. Will he show up on time? Will he meet this project milestone? Always people are those whose behavior you can count on. I know she’ll meet the deadline. I have no doubt that she’ll impress me with her presentation.

Sparks need to be able to trust themselves. Sparks do what they say they’re going to do when they say they’ll do it. This is especially critical when you’re developing your Spark behaviors.

To begin on your pathway to developing consistency, think about the disciplines you have in place and consider what additional ones you need to develop. What often stands between you and the better future you envision for yourself is simply a lack of routine or habit, which can easily be addressed by planning and execution.

“The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.”

Rather than tell people they’re too busy, Sparks get to the heart of the matter by having a conversation with themselves about what’s really going on: I’m late for the call because I didn’t plan appropriately. I have no boundaries in life. I’m rescheduling on you (again) because this isn’t a priority for me. I want you to feel sorry for me because I have so much to do. I don’t know how to manage my time. This is the best excuse I’ve got for why I can’t keep my commitments.

One of the most important time management skills we promote is maintaining white space in your calendar: setting aside a series of two- to three-hour blocks of time every week. Treat these open blocks as you would any other meeting or appointment. During these time blocks, think strategically, develop yourself professionally,

We advocate responding to emails twice a day—at midmorning and in the late afternoon—so you can stay on top of your inbox and your emails don’t overwhelm you.

Direct your own time—don’t have others direct it for you. Certainly, there are going to be days when you need to be more attentive and responsive to emails than others. But assess each email coming through for whether it needs a response right now—most emails are not emergencies.

Another key time management tip is to plan a realistic to-do list at the end of each business day. That’s when you have the best perspective on what has to happen the next day to keep your success going. Make a realistic list of the two or three tasks that must get done the next day to keep moving forward on the initiatives you’re undertaking.