This morning JCI Manchester hosted their first breakfast briefing of 2017. The title of the talk was ‘Unleashing Your Genius: An Essential Component to Personal Leadership’ and was delivered Sue Coyne, an authority and thought leader within the field of sustainably effective leadership.

The seminar first covered the topic of becoming master of your own life; moving you from a position where you feel like what you are doing is not right for you, or you feel like you have more to offer, to a place where you are thriving and excited about what you do day to day because it allows you to shine and be successful and at your best in a sustainable manner. Sue spoke to us about the importance of personal leadership and what that actually means in terms of your ability to lead an organisation or business. Much of personal leadership is about knowing your vision/purpose and what success means to you. It is then about developing strategy and translating it into steps to help you use your unique talents and realise your potential.

“Personal Leadership is the only leadership that is going to matter in the 21^st Century” – Peter Drucker  

At this point we were given the opportunity to discuss with other attendees about what success meant to us and how we would score ourselves in each of the 3 key areas of our life; Health, Happiness and High Performance. This generated some extremely interesting feedback. Some people didn’t know because it’s not something they think about (myself included) and some scored themselves very low which was almost an eye opener. The key point to consider here is that this method of self-reflection is something that you should look to do on a regular basis.

The talk then moved onto the importance of the stages of development and how much the wiring of our brain in our early years affects our mindset and our ability to perform in later life. Many attendees in the room will have been at the ‘individuating stage’ of development where the formation of our own identity is formed. This is where we begin to become accountable for every aspect of our life and learn to manage the fears we have and develop our emotional intelligence. It is in this stage that we should give focus to the wiring of our brain, because in many cases we didn’t take the time to re-wire our thought processes from that that we developed from the early years. So many of us haven’t yet finished that upgrade in ‘software.’ This is the stage where we are looking for opportunities to explore our gifts and talents and not be micro-managed. Without the freedom, autonomy and challenges at this stage of development, you will not experience true well-being.

We then moved onto the topic of genius and how the 20^th century definition of the word, essentially meaning something that is the preserve of the few such as Albert Einstein, or Mozart, is being re-conceptualised to a fit with the 21^st century mindset; That genius is created by 3 key variables – our genetic inheritance (49%), the environment around us and our mindset (51%). The last two of which we can influence directly ourselves. The 21^st century mindset states:

-          Genius is available to us all

-          Each person can develop a Unique Individual Genius

-          Each person can develop genius in any discipline, craft or skill

-          Moments of genius are available to us all

-          People can work together in a state of collective genius

We normally only express 40% of what we are capable of - the principal inner obstacle that stops it manifesting is FEAR!  Whether this is FEAR of failure, or fear of what other people will think of us. A lot of this is to do with our upbringing and the way that society gets us to conform in the classrooms of our schools and the institutions we inevitably end up in as a consequence:

“All children are born geniuses. 9999 out of every 10,000 are swiftly, inadvertedly degeniused by grown-ups…”   - Buckminster Fuller

The third topic of discussion was Motivation; what it is and how we increase it. Motivation is essentially our inner drives that determine how we feel and how we act.

Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly… Stephen R Covey.

Nurturing and growing our motivation comes from an ability to know ourselves and what our inner motivators are. In the world of work you will be motivated by a combination of factors relating to Relationships, Achievements and Growth. It is about knowing which of these motivate you and choosing to develop you genius based on your inner drives.

The talk finished with a number of opportunities to follow up on what was learned, these being:

-          Buy a copy of the bestselling book ‘Stop Doing, Start Leading’

-          Complete a Motivational Maps on-line Assessment with an optional 1-2-1 with Sue

-          Developing your own authentic leadership brand/confident leader online course

-          And the above course plus a 1-2-1 one hour coaching session with Sue

The details for all these will be criculated to attandees at some point in the near future! 

We are keen that all attendees have genuine follow-up activities that they can partake in if anything resonates with them during a breakfast briefing event this year with JCI. So if you want to get in touch with Sue to talk about any of the following or think she can help in your organisation please don’t hesitate to get in touch: sue@suecoyne.com.

Thanks once again go to Sue for giving up her time to deliver the talk to JCI this morning. The feedback we have received has been exceptional!

Our next breakfast event is an ‘Empowering Women’ panel discussion in celebration of International Women’s Day on the 8^th March. This will be held at Menagerie usual time. Link on Fatsoma soon!