Mandy Hickson on Being a Better Leader

Mandy Hickson knows a thing or two about leadership. As one of the first female pilots in the UK’s RAF, she has had to prove herself time and again. Hickson did so exceptionally, flying in the Tornado GR4, and patrolling no-fly zones over Iraq. In her three tours of duty, she was one of the only female pilots the entire time she served. During her time in the RAF she learned about leading with integrity, about overcoming challenges, and about how all of us have to first fail in order to succeed. She will be featured later this month at Chief Executive Magazine’s ongoing Masterclass series about Women in Leadership, so she recently sat down with them for an interview.

Hickson first discovered her love of flying at age 14, when the RAF still didn’t allow women to join. Despite this, Hickson had made up her mind. She finished school and enrolled at a university, all the while dreaming of a career that she wasn’t allowed into. Then, in the early 1990s, that finally changed. When she was 17 years old, she received a flight scholarship. After a successful career in the RAF she went on to volunteering with the cadets, a program to introduce flight programs to teens. It was there that she realized her ultimate calling; to become a business coach specializing in human performance factors. Hickson uses her history in high-pressure, high-performance situations and coaches leadership to minimize human error, minimize burnout, and minimize stress, all while maximizing communication, maximizing decision-making skills, and maximizing fulfillment. Which, coincidentally, also makes for a very safe flying environment.

Side note: If you want to learn more about Hickson and other women in leadership, check out Chief Executive Magazine’s Women in Leadership series. Their next event is coming up on September 27th (streaming live). Or check out her book, An Officer Not a Gentleman, the inspiring story of how her determination led to achieving a dream that almost never happened.

Leading With Empathy and Compassion

Empathy and compassion. Two traits that, while closely linked, each deserve their own moment in the spotlight. Empathy is defined as the ability to understand what motivates people; the thoughts and feelings behind their actions. To have compassion is then to take that empathy and apply it in order to help them overcome difficulty. These two traits, when combined, can help those in leadership become more trusted stewards in businesses, communities, or at home. While we all like to think that we demonstrate these traits implicitly, sometimes we can let the stresses of everyday life interfere with these. It’s common for leaders to be so wrapped up in the immediate challenge of the day, while brushing aside the issues their team members face. So how do we truly cultivate these abilities in order to more deeply connect with team members and thus become better, more trusted leaders? In a new article featured in Chief Executive Magazine, Doug Lennick and Chuck Wachendorfer have laid out easy some steps to follow.

The first is to become an active listener. In order to truly have empathy toward someone else, a leader has to understand the struggles that person is experiencing. Active listening is the practice of not just waiting for our turns to speak, it’s listening with only the motivation to understand. Not respond, not defend, not agree or disagree. Just listening for the sake of hearing someone else. Although it is perhaps the easiest thing to do, it’s not often a part of our conversations. The second step involves turning empathy into compassion by helping the team member with their issues. Setting aside time, even 10 minutes per day, to address struggles can keep everyone focused and on task. After these two steps are implemented, Lennick and Wachendorfer say, team members will begin to feel more heard and understood. In this way, leaders have effectively created what they call a “culture of belonging”. And lastly, with these new skills and new operating culture, leaders and their teams are able to move forward as a cohesive unit, with shared goals and a sense of community. Give the full article a read for a deeper dive on their steps, and see how you can become a more effective leader at work, at home, and in the world at large.

Silence is Golden

Those of us who watched Seinfeld on a regular basis will remember Elaine’s designer boyfriend Brett, who, anytime he heard the Eagles’ “Desperado”, would stop whatever he was doing as he stared into space, lost in the emotion of the song. At one point, with Elaine chatting away next to him, he desperately asks, “Elaine, will you just not talk for one minute??” For some of us, that silence can be an easy comfort. Not so for journalist and comedy writer Dan Lyons. He is convinced that his self-diagnosed “talkaholism” has lost him jobs and relationships over the years, and just generally annoyed people. Thus was the inspiration for his new book: STFU: The Power of Keeping Your Mouth Shut in a World that Won’t Stop Talking.

Lyons dubbs our current era of social media, multi-tasking, and being constantly plugged in an “age of agitation”, in which we have largely lost the ability to just sit quietly and listen. In speaking on the amount of meetings are held each year in America (over one billion), over half are said to have been a waste of time by the attendees. “So”, as Lyons puts it, “you have this phenomenon of people talking for the sake of talking and tweeting for the sake of tweeting.” In STFU, Lyons claims that what leaders should be doing is focusing on becoming quieter, and thus better listeners. In a new article from Chief Executive Magazine, Lyons share some tips on just how to do this.

First off, quantify your talking. He recommends having meetings recorded and transcribed. Once you can see how much you are talking, it’s easy to figure out if you need to be doing it less. Secondly, get quiet. Literally just take some time to not only be silent yourself, but to be in silence. Meditate, take a nature walk with no other purpose than to be away from screens and the influx of data we are constantly receiving. Third, grow your listening skills. There are some amazing exercises that coaches have to become better listeners. These include interviews and/or listening to others for extended periods of time without speaking, and then writing down what you remember at the end, among other things. Fourth; get offline. As Lyons states of the online and social media communities: “The noise will never go away, but we can.” Unplug from your accounts for a little each day, then a little more. Most of us can’t disconnect completely, but taking a break each day is necessary. And lastly, just literally say fewer words. Need to run a meeting? Use the art of the 25-Minute meeting (featured on this blog last Fall). Begin to condense what you need to say into fewer words, and free up everyone’s time. Check out the full article here and see how you can bask in the glory of some healthy silence.