Lead with integrity and your team will trust you!

What if I told you that your ability to lead with integrity is only as good as the management of your stress? It's true! 

Consider these questions:

• If you are tense and agitated, how quickly are you making decisions? 
  
  • And, are they the decisions you would have made if you'd taken a few minutes to breathe and reflect with more focus?
• If you have a mountain of deadlines, meetings and emails weighing you down, will you take time to reflect on what's deeply important to you?
• If you are numbing out with painkillers, prescriptions, alcohol, social media or Netflix, can you think clearly about how to stand up for what you morally believe in?

I'm guessing you'd say no to those questions.
However, if you are like most leaders self-care, wellness and your health are often put on the side while you put out fires, juggle crisis and focus on just surviving this meeting, just getting through today, or coping with this busy time.

Keep reading to learn how you can gain the trust of your team and have them judge you as being a leader with integrity.

Leading with Integrity
Remember, the #1 thing people are looking for from their leaders is integrity. They want to know that they can trust their leaders. They want to be able to TRUST YOU!

Your followers want to be able to TRUST you...
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✅Trust you to do the right thing.

✅Trust you to take care of them.

✅Trust you to be upright, moral, conscientious, honest, caring, compassionate, fair, open, inspiring AND help them to be all of those things too.

Stress and Integrity
When our bodies are under incredible stress, which is pretty much every leader, our bodies shut down many of their functions. Things like empathy, compassion and strategic thinking go out the window. Stress causes us to have tunnel vision, focusing only on the tiger in front of us and not the tribe around us. Stress causes us to be nearsighted. 
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• When you are stressed, are you likely to say the right thing, or take the easy way out?
• When you are stressed, do you focus only on surviving yourself, or do you ensure your team is well taken care of?
• When you are stressed, is it easier to let things slide, focus on just getting things down rather than building relationships.
• Can you be emotionally intelligent, noticing your frustration, anger, embarrassment and irritation and manage it?
• Can you be inspiring, motivating and encouraging when you've got nothing left in your tank?

Nope. It's not possible.
What you will be, instead, is what I was when I was overwhelmed with the responsibilities of leadership and not taking care of myself; Bitchy, grumpy, exhausted and anything but motivating, inspiring and in integrity!

Do this:
Take care of yourself, my dear. You must! 
To be a great leader, who leads with integrity, you need to get solid sleep, eat healthily, move your body, restore your spirit and learn to use your breath to calm your body, mind and soul.

It's when you practice self-care, not just at the end of the day, but throughout your work day, that you'll find you can lead with integrity

Living and leading with integrity takes some time and effort on your part. You need to get clear on what you believe, what your values are, and what hill's you'll die on. You'll never do that work to get that clarity when you are just barely getting through your days!

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