Are you ready to become a more effective and conscious leader?
In this solo episode of the Happier at Work podcast, host Aoife O'Brien wraps up the Thriving Talent series by delving into the realities of leadership, what it really takes to lead both yourself and others. Drawing on research for her forthcoming book "Thriving Talent" and reflecting on personal experiences, Aoife O'Brien explores the crucial role of self-awareness, the challenges many first-time leaders encounter, and the traits that set great bosses apart from the rest.
In This Episode, You’ll Discover:
The critical importance of self-leadership and self-awareness as the foundation for leading others.
The impact of emotional triggers and how understanding your reactions can enhance your leadership.
Practical steps to become a more empowering, effective leader.
Related Topics Covered:
Bad Bosses, Emotional Awareness, Toxicity at Work
Connect with Aoife O’Brien | Host of Happier at Work®:
Happier at Work® is the podcast for business leaders who want to create meaningful, human-centric workplaces. Hosted by Aoife O’Brien, the show explores leadership, career clarity, imposter syndrome, workplace culture, and employee engagement — helping you and your team thrive.
If you enjoy podcasts like WorkLife with Adam Grant, The Happiness Lab, or Squiggly Careers, you’ll love Happier at Work®.
One of the biggest fears that leaders have is that they are an ineffective leader. And this is the issue I wanted to address in the final chapter of the Thriving Talent book, which is all about leadership. Now, I'll let you in on a little secret. The leadership chapter is probably the one that looks completely different from when I first started, when I first started laying out the chapter, when I first started thinking about what needed to be included. If you've been following along this Thriving Talent series for the last number weeks. I've talked about workplace culture and toxic workplace cultures. I've talked about our drivers or our motivators at work. I've talked about our capabilities at work and the kinds of things that stop us from doing our best work.
Aoife O'Brien [:
This is the final episode in that Thriving Talent series that relates very strongly to the book that is coming out called, also called Thriving Talent. This is the Happier at Work podcast. I'm your host Aoife O'Brien, and today I'm going to share some insights that I learned in my leadership journey, especially the research that I've done as part of this book. I would love to know what's one thing that you are going to do differently after listening to today's episode. You can get involved in the conversation by dropping me an email to podcast@happieratwork.ie or get involved in the conversation over on LinkedIn, which is where I am most active on social media. Before I dive into leadership, I want to talk about self-leadership first. And I think this was probably the thing that I left out as part of the leadership chapter. I didn't really explore what it means to lead ourselves first.
Aoife O'Brien [:
And so I listened back to some podcast episodes. I read some books about this topic, about the importance of being able to lead ourselves first, before we even think about leading other people. One of the things that really stood out for me is this idea of self-awareness and how most of us think that we are self-aware. Hello, guilty. But the number of people who are genuinely self-aware is actually so low compared to the number of people who think they are self-aware. So if you think this might be you, it probably is you. But growing in self-awareness is really, really important. And again, I've talked about this idea of self-awareness on the podcast previously, and one of the big things that I learned about it is you can't grow in self-awareness without seeking out feedback, not just about your behaviors but about the impact that your behaviors have, especially in a work context.
Aoife O'Brien [:
So really understanding how we are perceived. And I took some insights as well from Dr. Tasha Urich's fantastic book, Insight, no pun intended, but it's a really great book for understanding ourselves and understanding the importance of self-awareness as a foundational skill to build upon in order to grow our leadership muscle. So that was one area. I also talked about emotional connection and a really fantastic podcast episode that I recorded with Dr. Lola Gerschfeld That's a couple of years ago now at this stage. I will put a link below in the show notes to go and check that out. But really it's about the triggers that we have and the dances.
Aoife O'Brien [:
She uses this term dancing, you know, the dances that we do with other people because we may be triggered in some way. We may be feeling emotionally reactive. We're not really in control of our emotions, but we're being hijacked in some way. But it's so interesting because maybe you don't recognize that in yourself, or maybe you're behaving in a way that you really don't want to behave. And so it's about understanding a little bit more about what's going on there and how we relate to other people and how we relate to ourselves. Another aspect of this self-leadership is conscious leadership. So how to become a more conscious leader. And again, I've taken insights from another fantastic podcast episode that I recorded with Ian Hatton, I will put a link below in the show notes to go and check that out.
Aoife O'Brien [:
It's well worth checking that episode out, and it talks about some specific behaviors and making a towards move versus an away move. So there are specific behaviors that are associated with conscious leadership, things like working in your zone of genius rather than just merely working in your zone of excellence or your zone of competence. Is one example. You know, gossiping, that will be moving away from being candid with people. So that's a below the line, I think they call it, a below the line move versus an above the line move. And we want to focus on living and our behaviors being above the line. It's really interesting. I go into a bit more detail in the book, but it's an interesting way to look at it and to look at our behaviors.
Aoife O'Brien [:
And it's not saying that one way is wrong, it's just a framework. It's just a way of seeing how am I behaving and is it in line with how I want to be perceived, with how I want to behave. So it gives us a way and a frame of reference of thinking about these things. So definitely go and check out that full podcast episode. And like I say, I go into a bit more detail about this in the book. And then I go on and talk about leading other people. And I think one of the big struggles that a lot of people have is we don't know what it's like to lead people. And when, when you first start leading people, and this is, you know, if I'm thinking back to my own time as a leader, and when I first became a leader, I wasn't aware of all of the intricacies of this stuff that you have to deal with on behalf of other people.
Aoife O'Brien [:
So there's their personal things that are going on. There's all of the admin associated with being a leader as well. So there's all of this stuff and there's a lot of things that can get in the way. And I think if we address some of those emotional things, the things, you know, when we're under pressure especially, and we get, we become very reactive. We're not necessarily managing our emotions, but we're becoming reactive rather than responding in a mature way, in a non-emotional way. I share some examples, some personal examples of a really fantastic boss that I had. I pick out some core insights from Liz Wiseman's book Multipliers, which is a really great book for understanding the impact that managers have. So you're either a multiplier or a diminisher.
Aoife O'Brien [:
And one of the manager examples that I shared was Caroline, who was my best boss I think I've ever had. And she used a coaching approach with me. She asked me questions to help me solve a problem, which had a double effect. It made me feel really empowered and it also made me feel like I could solve my own problem. But at the same time, it showed me that she can help me to solve my problem as well. So it kind of had that, that double effect, which is really positive. I also share some examples from 3 terrible bosses that I had, but also lots of examples from other people and their terrible bosses and their experiences of having a terrible boss. I talk about, you know, some of the characteristics of a good boss versus a bad boss.
Aoife O'Brien [:
A good boss being someone who empowers others, someone who delegates, who gives other people opportunity to grow and expand versus a bad boss who maybe hoards information, who maybe is micromanaging. And I'm trying to think of some examples. In my situation, I think it was, there was a lot of micromanagement. That's what I didn't really like, or things like saying one thing and behaving in a very different way. So those were things that really frustrated me at work. The thing to say about bad bosses is I think when I did some research, there was maybe one person across all social media channels when I was doing research on this, one person who said that they had never experienced a bad boss. So if you have ever experienced a bad boss, you are definitely in the majority of people. So I, as I mentioned, have experienced 3 terrible bosses.
Aoife O'Brien [:
There were some, you know, probably other ones that have been average as well. The other really important thing to say when it comes to bosses is, and bad bosses especially, it's not that they are intentionally behaving in that way, that they don't necessarily want to be a bad boss. I don't think people wake up in the morning and think, whose life am I going to make miserable today? But it's more that they are under pressure, they haven't been trained, there's all of these reasons. So if we can put ourselves in the mind of a bad boss and try and, you know, see things from their perspective, it might help to alleviate. The other thing that might really help is some training and some growth around self-awareness as well. That's all I have to say about leadership. If you want to know more about leadership, about any of the other topics that I've talked about in this series, then definitely go and check out the book. You'll find it at thrivingtalentbook.com.
Aoife O'Brien [:
And I would love to know what's one thing you're going to do differently after listening to today's episode.
