iGNLP™ Certificate in Advanced NLP Leadership & Management

Becoming a leader isn’t something other people give you permission to do. It is a realisation you have yourself so you have the commitment to fulfil the role. You want to move forward so that will allow you to progress.

Leaders can vary widely and there isn’t one set way to be a good leader. There are some connecting qualities though. One of those is the influence leaders have on their followers.

We all have ideas about what we want to achieve. This is our vision. Leaders work towards turning that idea into a reality and inspire others to join them on their mission.

Your idea of what you want to do is just the first step. There are other things you need to do to turn that idea into a reality. Working out a plan for achieving your vision is essential.

Once you have thought out your vision, you need to get other people on board to make it happen. There are various ways you can explain your vision and make it seem attractive to others.

Due to perspective, the further away something is, the harder it is to motivate yourself to achieve it. But by using a mental exercise you can bring your goals closer which should help motivate you to keep going.

Perspective is important when it comes to how followers view their leader. If they feel like their leader is too distant from them, they won’t feel understood which is important for maintaining motivation.

These two exercises will help you understand your mindset towards leaders and about being a leader yourself. Visualisation can be really insightful and gives you a chance to experiment.

Not all leaders are the same. There is room for individualism but there are some qualities that all good leaders should have. They ensure the leader is benefiting the group and not just themselves.

You might assume that authority is the most important part of leadership but that is not the case. It is only effective if used in combination with other qualities so followers are inspired and not forced to follow.

You need to understand what influences your business beyond your own company. Your reaction to these outside factors matters to your success so don’t underestimate the business network.

Knowledge is necessary to lead your business in the right direction and to overcome problems. Leading by example sends a stronger message than what you say so you need to be authentic.

The qualities of a good leader can combine in different ways to create leadership styles. What element is most dominant depends on the leader and what they are trying to achieve.

The qualities we have discussed do have a dark side to them and the styles of leadership we looked at can be taken too far. Sometimes the status of leadership distracts leaders from the shared vision of the group.

If a leader’s priorities are wrong, they can damage the progress of the group. By putting their needs first, the vision of the group will be more difficult to achieve and followers will have to function under tighter restrictions.

Cults might seem like an extreme type of group but it is a good example of leadership being really destructive. The leader is put first to the detriment of their followers and challenges are pretty much impossible.

It's important to understand the current experience of your followers before you go about changing anything. Businesses need both maintenance and change to survive which you can find in the roles of management and leadership.

You can use the concept of pacing to check on your own leadership journey and push yourself further. There is a particularly helpful framework to do this in called ‘neurological levels’.

Complete the neurological levels framework to understand your current situation fully. These questions are in depth and might reveal something you hadn’t realised yet.

It's time to think about what your values actually are. Breaking them down into the area of life they relate to can help you pinpoint what matters to you. Explore your personal values before your organisation’s values.

Once you have worked out what your values are, you need to work out how you measure them. This will show you when your values are being met and when they are being disregarded.

Your values inform your goals as you will want to work towards what matters to you. Consider what capabilities you need to achieve these goals and how they translate into tasks.

Your personal vision is something you need as a leader but this should be distinct from the vision of your organisation. They each have different requirements so develop them separately.

How you go about creating and implementing your vision is up to you. There are some varying methods to consider but each have pros and cons so there is no right answer.

You can manage a team in different ways depending on how much influence you let other people have. In any situation you need to be ready to be flexible because your circumstances can change quickly so your initial idea might not work.

Here is an example of a company creating their shared vision. It is not only new companies that need to do this but existing companies who are struggling to move forward.

We know motivation as the reason we do things but in this lesson we will really consider what it is and the different forms it takes. We can be motivated in different ways.

Motivation works in different ways. We can be energised to work towards a goal, against it or not do anything about a goal because it isn’t worth the effort. Unfortunately, bad motivation is easier to produce than the good type.

Motivation is important to any business but how you go about motivating people does matter. Some methods are better than others in terms of the amount and quality of work produced.

Providing rewards is a popular way of trying to get people to work harder but it is not the most effective way to motivate people. Your workforce will respond to what is important to them.

As a leader you need integrity or you just won’t be able to build trust in your organisation. Trust is what people need to do their best because they know all their effort will be worth it.

You need to be motivated yourself but that can be hard when you are faced with change. Reluctance is normal and can be dealt with so you are able to progress in the way you want to.

Change is a fact of life so it is something we need to be prepared to deal with. Our sensitivity to change is important. We need to be tolerant to it to a certain extent but not so much we lose control of our lives.

We don’t want to make the same mistakes again and that is something we can avoid using visualisation. It's a technique that allows us to think through events and learn from them.

Being a leader doesn’t give you superhuman powers so you need to keep things realistic. This includes the expectations of others, your own expectations and planning for the possibility that things don’t go to plan.

You are not alone on your journey to become a better leader. There are loads of resources you can use along the way. The first one we are looking at is mentors who inspire and support us.

Mentors are important so you need to choose them wisely. Think about the different ways you might need help so you are covered for a variety of possible problem situations.

Mentors are not the only resources you should be using. Keep in mind all your other options. We learn in lots of different ways whether from role models, books or our own skills.

You have more skills than you realise. You just need to transfer them from one situation to another. There is an exercise you can do to spot your hidden skills and fix problems you are struggling with.

As a leader you have an influence which you need to use in the right way. Your vision and values should be guiding everything you do. You also need determination to get anywhere.

Your mindset can determine your success so it is something you need to work on. If you think you can’t do something, you probably won't be able to. Believing in yourself does work.

We can’t let bad experiences define us which is why it is helpful to use an optimistic way of thinking. This sees bad experiences as lessons and isolated incidents instead of personal failures.

You can probably tell by now that being a leader isn’t just telling people what to do. You need to complete tasks but you also need to keep your team motivated to work to their best ability.

Part of your relationship with the group is the boundaries set for them to work in. There are two main ways of setting rules but one allows for more trust and freedom than the other.

Your current rules are easy to get used to and changing them could seem risky but you do need to be open to that possibility. You need to be able to change with the world around you to keep progressing.

You also need to consider the way you learn because that can be restrictive just like the way you set boundaries. Our assumptions can really limit the possibilities of our progress so we need to question them too.

Solving problems isn’t as simple as it sounds. Some problems have easy answers but complex problems have so many possible solutions it's hard to decide what to do.

You shouldn’t just focus on learning as an individual but your whole organisation needs to learn together. This involves collecting relevant information and turning it into knowledge.

Organisational learning is a process. You never stop gaining new information to consider. The best way for your organisation to develop is using generative learning because that breaks down assumptions.

Rules are there for a reason. They stop everything descending into chaos. But at times they need to be questioned. You can’t cover everything within your set of rules so there will be times when they no longer work.

Trust is a big part of your role as a leader. There are times when you know you can trust someone and times when you have to try trusting new people. Either way it is how you function as a group.

What we need to trust someone varies. Everyone needs a decent threshold that protects them but also allows them to connect with other people. Trust can be misplaced. It can also be really powerful.

Without trust you won’t be able to lead your group very well. You can help build trust by working on your relationships with your group. Rapport will strengthen your bond and trusting yourself will indicate to others that they can trust you.

To really understand trust, you need to question your own assumptions about it. Creating a mental image of trust can bring up underlying thoughts and feelings that will give you insight into your own process when it comes to trusting others.

Sometimes you have to align with people you don’t usually work with. It's not unheard of for competitors to work together. But being able to trust each other in this situation is hard as the prisoner’s dilemma shows.

Going on the offensive does not always mean you get the results you want. Sometimes you have to work with and trust others. This can be a risk but it can also really pay off.

Our mindset has a big impact on how we live our lives in general and specifically whether we trust others. Constant competition isn’t healthy. Sometimes we need to let ourselves work with others.

Beliefs are the basis of all our actions. As we rely on them so much, we need to remember to check their accuracy. You don’t want your own beliefs to be the obstacle that is preventing you from progressing.

Before you go ahead with a decision based on your assumptions, you should check your assumptions. By ranking how confident you are about assumptions and how important they are to your situation you’ll have a clearer idea of what you are working with.

When you just can’t get things to work out, try to think about the situation differently. Our assumptions can get in the way of us finding successful solutions so we need to step outside of them.

How we judge others compared to how we judge ourselves can cause problems. When we do things, even if it doesn’t work out as planned, we take into account our intentions. That is not the case when we judge others.

No one likes having to deal with misunderstandings but there are some things you can do to avoid them. By having a clear idea of how things go wrong, you can clarify the situation when needed.

Change is inevitable but the form it takes can vary. It could happen within the business or impact the nature of the whole business. It can be widespread, narrow, deep or shallow. The speed of change differs too.

Businesses are complicated. To understand them better you need to use systems thinking. This allows you to take into account the different parts of a system and the connections between them.

To fully understand a complex system, you need to look at it from multiple perspectives. You cannot get all the necessary information from your viewpoint alone.

To find a solution to a problem you need to work out how you can get what you want and how the other person can get what they want. This is why multiple perspectives are so important. They give you this extra information.

Business can get into bad habits that cause problems and prevent them from being able to solve the problems properly. Holding onto the past probably won’t help you progress in the future.

Cause and effect is more complicated than you initially think. Change creates more change so a decision you make to achieve one outcome could have other side effects that you don’t want.

We are used to thinking in lists which isn’t always the most effective way to approach a problem. You need to think about the connections between all the factors in your problem and allow that to influence your plan of action.

Systems thinking allows us to understand how systems actually work so we know how to function within them and get the result we want. It is not as simple as a cause being followed by an effect.

When a problem happens, often our first response is to look for someone to blame. However, this doesn’t accurately explain what went wrong and how you can prevent it from happening in the future.

To make lasting change you need to find out what is actually causing problems. Changing surface level things will make a difference in the short term but eventually the problem will return.

Blame doesn’t move you forward but taking responsibility can. It is your responsibility to make the best of the system you are in and change it where possible. You can make a difference.

Change is not something you can avoid. You’ll just get left behind otherwise. But not everything needs to change at once. Having points of stability and innovation at the same time keeps the business moving in the right direction.

Change is a continual process so you need to get in a good pattern. This will allow new ideas to be discussed, identified and developed so talk can be turned into real change.

So flexibility and structure have value. You should aim to have a balance of both in your business. This is called being on the edge of chaos. While it might sound scary, it will really boost your development.

Welcoming change and maintaining structure is a balance we have been navigating. The power law describes how much change an organisation should be taking on to stay on the edge of chaos.

Welcoming change and maintaining structure is a balance we have been navigating. The power law describes how much change an organisation should be taking on to stay on the edge of chaos.

There are lots of skills you use as a leader but there are three that I want to remind you of. These are trust, generative learning and balancing change and order.

Your values are the key to everything you do which is why it is so important to check they are still useful. These shared values will allow you to align as a team and work together.