Mastery Sessions with Zipho

This is the final episode of the series and it aims to bring everything that has been discussed and shared over the entire series into the bigger picture. At the end of this episode the audience will see the big picture and understand what self-actualisation is and why it is the bigger picture once we have combined optimism, confidence and groundedness together as guiding principles to becoming an authentic and effective leader.

Role of creativity and mindfulness in expanding your grounding

Authentic leaders are aware of the importance of staying grounded. In doing so, they avoid getting too cocky during high points and forgetting who they are during low points. Spending time with family and close friends, getting physical exercise, having spiritual practices, doing community service, and returning to places where they grew up are all ways to stay grounded. This grounding is essential to their effectiveness as leaders because it enables them to preserve their authenticity. This episode will discusses the concept “Take time to refuel yourself because an empty vessel cannot pour into others”. By the end of this episode the audience will understand how living a balanced life and allowing yourself to be a wholesome being helps build confidence, impacts mood, mental health and general outlook on life which in turn impacts one ability to be optimistic.

This episode seeks to share practical tips and toolkits on how to build confidence if you feel that you are lacking it, it also will give guidance on how to actively make sure that you do not lose the confidence you already have as life’s challenges come and go but to keep building on it and reinforcing what you have developed.

It is rare to struggle with confidence in an area where you consider yourself an expert. Taking time to close the gaps in your knowledge or ability to perform a specific task usually improves how sure you are of your ability to produce the desired outcome. Confidence is also impactedhighly by fear, fear of failure and subsequent fear of judgement should one fail. Workplaces that apply agile principles allow for a safe for leaders and those that they lead to experiment and innovate without fearing failure. Failure is inherent to all human activity regardless of competence levels, it does not have to define us and if we invest in building our competence we will know this even when we fail. At the end of this episode the audience will understand the importance of continuously developing competence as a leader and how this offsets some of the big factors that affect confidence negatively.

“Confidence is your own reputation with yourself” – unknown. Confidence is linked to how much an individual trusts themselves, therefore this means that the more a person keeps the promises they have made to themselves, the more confident they become. This episode will discuss confidence as a state of mind and how that state of mind came into being. In this episode issues related to self-sabotage, imposter syndrome and perfectionism will be addressed as habits or coping mechanisms of a person who does not trust themselves sufficiently and as a result lacks confidence. By the end of this episode the audience will be able to identify their own self-limiting behaviour that have resulted in low rapport with self and how to begin unlearning these with the first step being self-awareness.

This episode is a conclusion on the first theme and will focus on detailing tangible ways in which optimism shows up and how it may be leveraged as a tool in business/professionally. This is where case studies may be used to identify how top business leaders globally have used optimism for success. At the end of this episode the you will be able to link the previous 2 episodes into a “how to toolkit”.

This episode is for breaking down optimism as a concept and how it affects cognition. The influences of optimism on one’s behaviour, brand, decision making abilities and leadership style. This episode will also tackle the importance of intentional optimism as a way to counter our natural human mind’s bias towards negativity. As human beings we are naturally inclined to expect the worst as a defence mechanism even in moments when we need not our guard to be up. It’s a survival mechanism, but to thrive, we need to learn when it is appropriate and when optimism should be the replacement guard.

This episode is for building the case for optimism as a key leadership quality. The episode will introduce optimism in a practical and tangible way. At the end of this episode the audience will understand what it means to be optimistic in a formal and professional context and understand why it is important to have optimism as a trait in a professional landscape.

In this podcast, Zipho will breakdown the importance of confidence and grounded optimism as building blocks for the kind of authentic leadership that will stand the test of time. While these words each have distinct meaning apart from each, if properly understood and applied to one’s mindset, they empower us to show up as our best selves. These 3 words as themes in this podcast will be tackled to show how interconnected and intrinsic they are to authenticity. They are the foundations, the building blocks and everything in between that one needs to successfully navigate the ever evolving era we find ourselves in today.