Great Leaders Create Great Leaders

Will you accept this ultimate challenge?

What’s the worst that can happen? Seriously?

You must.

It’s your duty.

Well, to be fair it’s your choice. Choose wisely my friend. Creating leaders is the most important purpose of leadership.

Leadership is more than you. It’s more than the ego. You create ‘we’. ‘We’ creates ‘us’. By creating more leaders, you become a great leader. This is important because creating leaders is cyclical. The leaders you help create, in turn, become great leaders, and so on. These new leaders, in turn, creating more great leaders. It’s exponential. Be exponential.

Did you know that ‘contrary to the opinion of many people, leaders are not born’?

‘Leaders are made, and they are made by effort and hard work’ (Vince Lombardi).

Once I made a firm decision to be a leader, I learnt, mainly through reading and learning by listening to others, that the most important purpose of being a leader and practising leadership is to create more leaders. By leading by example, you set the precedence for the next generation of leaders. That fateful day, on a beautiful spring morning in Brisbane, Australia, 2017, I committed to being a leader and to focusing on creating more leaders. I did not make this promise to anyone else, not my father, my mother, my sister, or my brother. I made this decision to me, myself, and I. I said, ‘I am Adam Bowcutt, and I am a leader.’ That day, my life changed – forever.

Say three times in the mirror ‘I am [your name], and I am a leader’.

Go on. I’ll wait. I’m not going to sugar-coat it. Doing this is extremely difficult for some people because it means getting out of your comfort zone. You may feel silly or weird. You may feel embarrassed. None of this matters, because the result is more important than the method. You will literally see yourself saying to yourself that you’re a leader. It’s a powerful thing.

Okay, did you do it? If you did, congratulations! If you didn’t, that’s fine too. I’m not here to judge. However, think about why you didn’t do it.

Reach out to three people in your immediate network. They could be family members, friends, colleagues – anyone you know. Now say something completely honest that you see in them, like a positive strength. Pick one thing and simply share it with them. You can call them by phone, text them, or use social media messaging. The important thing is to share your message with them authentically.

For example, I love sending messages to friends that simply say ‘You are awesome’. Imagine receiving a message like that from someone you know and believing it because you know deep down that the message is true.

By creating leaders, you enter the next level of leadership. Call it what you will – excellence, greatness, or radness. You end up making a positive impact on this world. How awesome is that?

PS. You are awesome.

Thank you for your valuable attention. Adam Bowcutt

Adapted from Confide: The New Psychology of Confidence. How to Power Up after Experiencing Depression

Why Leveraging Language is Powerful

Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate, and to humble

- Yehuda Berg

Leveraging language is powerful because it improves meaning in your life and in your interactions with others; increasing focus on what’s most important to you. By leveraging language, you increase your level of awareness of other people and of yourself. By understanding what language is and how it represents meaning by using words you will develop refined communication skills. You will better understand, and be understood by others.

You will better understand, and be understood by others

Psychologically, it is beneficial to have an acute awareness of what your environment means to you and what it means to others. You increase your knowledge and understanding of yourself, of others, and of your environment, so your psychology emphasises and increases in knowledge by learning new things specifically related to how you understand language and the system of language; helping you begin to increase your understanding of other people and their behaviours; why they do what they do, and the meaning surrounding it, with respect to language, by increasing knowledge. Therefore, beginning to understand and increasing understanding leads to wisdom.

Your mind will be sharper, quicker and with more agility. Your mind will be more effective, and your thinking skills will improve. You can start to utilise the system of language. For example, Chomsky’s L.A.D (Language Acquisition Device) How do we absorb language and knowledge?

A language is not just words. It’s a culture, a tradition, a unification of acommunity, a whole history that creates what a community is. It’s all embodied in a language.

- Noam Chomsky

5 Ways to leverage language

1. Look up words you don’t know. If you see a word in a sentence, simply google it. Look it up. Read the definitions and then google the synonyms of it.

2. Look up at least three similar words because you’ll increase your understanding of words and how they’re a part of language. It will improve how you understand meaning.

3. Focus on body language. Did you know 80 percent of communication is non-verbal? So focusing on body language will improve your skills, with respect to leveraging language psychologically.

4. Focus on what people are doing with their arms. Are their arms crossed Are their arms open? People talk with their bodies. Really start to listen to what other people’s body language is saying.

5. Practise mirroring. When you mirror somebody, you gently copy what they’re doing. So if they’re crossing their arms, gently cross your arms too. If they’re leaning against the wall, gently lean against the wall too. It creates a sense of unity and similarity, which will improve your connection with them and your understanding of others.

By increasing your awareness of the ubiquity of language you’ll begin to become stronger at leveraging its power. With practice you’ll better understand and be understood by others. How much of an impact would this have to our world?

Thank you for reading,

Adam Bowcutt

Adapted from:

Confide: The New Psychology of Confidence. How to Power Up after Experiencing Depression (2019)

For updates on: Work Is Mental: Rethinking Future Workplace Mental Health (Out May 2021)