 Hello, everyone. I think we should start already, because the first session was a little bit out of the time, but to keep the agenda in frame, we will start. So I welcome you in the session a manager or a leader how to define your leadership stand. But before we start, I wanted to thank the Drupal community and to each one of you for the opportunity to stay here and deliver a speech. One small part of me still doesn't believe that it's happening to me, standing here and speaking in an international event. So let's give a huge round of applause to Drupal community and each one of us. Thank you. So my name is Marina, and I come from Russia. I'm working as organizational development manager in the Drupal shop from Siberia. And it will matter a little in the further part of my presentation. But before we move to the content of the session, I wanted to introduce myself a little for you to have an idea why this topic matters to me and what relevant experience I have to speak about this topic. So during my professional life, I've been to many amazing teams and I was honored to lead some of them. And through each and every of those experiences, I somehow reinvented myself to understand what kind of leader is needed to fulfill the project's goal and to help to develop the skills of the team members. And I've come to a conclusion that the main difference between a manager and the leader is that a manager distributes tasks. And the members of the managers team usually are responsible for some functions realizations. And the other hand, a leader is someone who strives to unleash the potential of his or her team members in order to allow them to achieve their personal goals while achieving the project's goal. And therefore, it creates much stronger commitment towards the project. And it creates the bigger picture for the team members in each and every of their actions. And that kind of leadership I'm going to speak today, that kind of leadership that I really value. And I think it really matters to have such kind of leaders in the company and within each and every team. So I'm not that motivational speaker, so I'm not going to stay here and say, like, you cannot do this. You go for it and so on. Unfortunately, I'm not like this yet. Maybe one day it will become the inspirational speaker. But now I'm just the person who loves structuring things. And today I'm going to present to you my own approach of finding the leadership stand, of understanding who you are, of some kind of self-discovery path that will lead you to understanding what kind of leader you can be, what kind of leader you are now. So that is just my approach that I used myself. I hope it will be also relevant to you. So what we are going to talk today. First, we will define the leadership because that is a term we're going to be talking a lot today, but it's good to have an idea what is this because now many people consider it as different things. Then we will discuss a golden circle model which will help us to understand why we do what you do. And then we go even deeper on this to understand what values stand behind our will to do something. Further, we finalize those two parts with an influential leadership concept and we will finish our session with the leadership stand definition and creation. But you know, adults usually don't learn new skills before practicing it. So I prepared a couple of exercises to you to be even more engaged in the process. Those exercises are totally individual, so you won't need to interact with others. And also if you don't want to participate, it's also totally fine. So for me, both versions will work. If you want to participate, go for it. If you don't want more into listening, it's also fine. But I believe that in our nowadays life don't really have time to stop and think what we do, why we do it, who we are and what persons we want to be. But now I have one hour and I want to grant it to you. So use it as efficient as you can, take anything you want and you can out of this one hour. And I promise exercise won't be very difficult, but they will help you to live the session with the tangible result. And also the leadership topic is kind of sensitive one. And I believe that it will be more, the result will be more efficient from the session if you will demonstrate the gross mindset during it. So has anyone heard about the concept of a fixed and gross mindset, maybe? Okay, good. So the main difference between people with fixed and gross mindset is that people with fixed mindset perceive challenges as a threat and try to avoid it. And on the other hand, people with gross mindset perceive challenges as opportunity. Opportunity to meet new people, to get out of the comfort zone or to develop new skills or something like this. And the other difference is that people with fixed mindset usually behave in the way they know all they got to know. And people with gross mindset, they tend to learn from others. Maybe sometimes even not from books and some other sources, but from talking to people or sharing exchanging experience. And I believe that this gross mindset won't deprive you of possibly working solutions. It leaves you with a choice, whether first to try something new and then decide whether it fits you or not. And I believe that this kind of approach will be much more efficient during the talk about leadership and self-discovery. Well, so without further ado, let's go to the content of the session. So please raise your hand, those who can hold Hema herself a leader right now. Do we have leaders in the room? Great, thank you. You know, it's kind of weird, but I've never seen an audience when all the people rose hands on this question. And I believe that there might be two reasons for this. The first reason is that leadership became a little bit of a buzzword today. So leadership, leadership, leadership, leadership is everywhere. Everyone can be a leader, can call Hema herself a leader, but no one really knows who is the leader. And the other reason is different from the first one, but I believe even more relevant today. The reason is that people now sometimes perceive leadership as something bigger beyond ordinary people, as something that we need to deserve one day to be called leader and so on. And people think that leadership is kind of acts of bravery, changes the world entirely and every day working on yourself, doing some big feats and other things like this. But in his state talk, Drew Dudley said that, having in mind that leadership is something beyond us, we therefore create for us an excuse not to expect leadership behavior from ourselves and from people around us. So we say that no, leadership is too big, it's not for me. And therefore we don't demonstrate this kind of behavior. But on the other hand, there is a concept of everyday leadership, where leadership is perceived as small things we can do everyday to change other people's lives and do the better. And you know, I've also been kind of trapped in this situation and this perceiving of leadership until one story happened to me. It was a couple of years ago, I was the team leader of a project team organizing the educational event. And I need to mention that it was a volunteering event, so all we got from it was our self-development and experience. And that was two or three weeks before the project realization almost anything wasn't ready. And I felt like I need to push my team towards goals, achievements somehow. Of course I could have screamed at them, I could have punished them, but that would work, but that wasn't the result I wanted. I wanted them to remember about the great things they wanted to achieve. I wanted them to remember why they joined this project and re-inspire them again by this project realization. So I didn't say to them that I'm mad at them, I didn't say that I'm worried about the project because I wasn't, I did this project before and I knew how to fix it, but I want them to get this experience they could get out of this project. And I just said to them that I'm very sad and disappointed looking how they gave up on their dreams. And that was, you know, the key message of my one hour long speech. And as I've already told you, I'm not good at motivational speaking. So when I was going home, I was shaking, I was really nervous because I didn't know whether it helped or it even made it all worse. But by the time I got home, I received this big message of one of my girls, of my team, where she said that actually during many years, we know each other, she perceived me as a role model and professional area for her. And so when I said to her that I'm disappointed in her, she felt like she betrayed herself and she felt like she didn't become the better version for herself she wanted to become. And from that moment, she promised me that she would do anything it takes to contribute to the project, to make it really great. And she was the most efficient member of the team from that point of time. But you know what was the first time when I've read this message? I thought, a role model? Me? No. No. Role model is something big. Role model is a leader. Is something great? Is someone who other people want to be look like? But I'm not. I'm just an ordinary person. I cannot be someone else's role model. And then I started to think more about this. I thought it over and over again and I understood that each time we had conversation with this girl, each project we realized together, all the ordinary and trivial conversations that was to me, they were somehow special to her. And that came, led me to the conclusion that each time we talk to other people we might change someone else's life. But we even don't know about it sometimes. So maybe you also have people who influenced your life very much, who changed the way you perceive things. Do you have such people in your friends, family? Yeah, great, thank you. Who have you told them that they changed your life? See? Why not? And that's why we don't, because we don't pay enough attention to this kind of things, to this kind of leadership. We used to underestimate this. But actually we do change other people's lives all the time. And if we want to really become leaders we need to make it more consciously. Because I personally believe that we cannot lead anyone anywhere before knowing where we're going ourselves. And that is a goal of our session to understand what kind of leaders we are and to lead with fully transparent attitude towards other people. Yeah, and the first guy to help us with this self-discovery process is Simon Sinek. And he came up with the idea of Golden Circle model. Did you hear about it maybe? Oh, okay, good. So he said that there are three main questions you should answer before starting doing something. And these questions are why, how, and what. So in terms of doing something new, what do you think is the most important? Why are you doing things? How are you going to achieve it? Or what are you going to do actually? So who is for why? And who is for what? Who is for how? How? Yeah, good. And I'm sorry to say this, but you all are mistaken. Sorry. Actually, he said that to use this model, you need to apply to these two main principles. And the first principle is that you should answer all three of them. And you should have them in balance because if you know what you do, but you don't know why you do it, you don't have this connection between your personality and your activity and therefore people cannot understand who you are out of what you do. And on the other hand, if you know why you do things, but you don't do anything, anyway, you are somehow closed from the outside world and you close your personality from other people. So this is how this model look like because the second principle you should apply to this model is that you need to always start from why. And in this term, those who rose hands on the why part were partially right because that is the first touch point with this model. First you ask yourself why and then go further and further. And when you answer why you do what you do, the means of achieving this, your house will be much more easier to find and also what it should look like also will appear very easy. So you should always have the clarity of why first, where why is your set of fundamental beliefs is your core life values. And then you need to have the discipline of how, where how is the concrete actual steps to realize your why. And finally, you need to have the consistency of what, where what is concrete, tangible manifestation of your why in the real world. And you know, when you will ask this question why to yourself at the first time, it may be a little bit difficult to answer it very easy. But if you will make it a habit, so each time you do something new, you will ask yourself this question. It will, next time it will come to your mind automatically and the answer will come easier and easier from time to time because your whole life will be transformed to a more conscious one. So anytime you will do something new, you will know exactly why you do this. And having this in mind, your personality will be more shaped and solid. But sometimes people struggle answering this question or even they understand that they don't know why they do what they do and they don't actually want to do this anymore after asking this question. And for this kind of situation, I've also prepared to you two more questions that can provide you with some insights about what you can be passionate about. And so the first question is, what would you do if you have unlimited amount of money? So if you don't know what you want to do, ask yourself this question. So imagine that money are not relevant in this world anymore. So you're free to do anything you want. And so make up the list of things. And during this day or during another day to refresh your mind a little, ask yourself a second question is, what would you do even if you're not paid for it? What you're so passionate about that you would do it even for free? And so after coming up with the list of things of answers onto those question, imagine yourself doing this activities and ask yourself a questions, what it makes you feel? What is the similar in all these activities you mentioned? And why is it so important for you to do this? Of course, it may be not the direct answer to the question, what you should do. But it will be at least some tips, some clues to you to understand your further career step or further professional development step. Well, as I said, your why is a set of a fundamental beliefs is a set of your life values. So let's go a little bit deeper on this and understand what stand behind your why, what life values drive your why and make you do what you do. What actually a life value is? It is, you know, you're like guiding compass, your, how to say, value is your fundamental belief that drive behavior, that drives behavior. And this is a very important notice. So values drive your behavior. And therefore having understood what your value in this life, your behavioral characteristics will be much more clear even to you. You will understand why you got angry on one particular situation and why another situation made you happy because you will know what the reasons that lay behind this. You hide any emotions, any decision you take. And here comes the first exercise I prepared to you. And for all you will need is like maybe notebook and the pen or your like mobile device when you can draw or read or write. And the first task is very easy, is to draw a circle. Very easy exercise. And those who want to participate, just draw a circle, it can be not that round but whatever it is. Yeah, so the next one is also very easy one. Is to divide the circle into six sectors. So just three lines will help you with this step. And when you are done, just look up and I will see that we can move further. Okay, the next part will be a little bit more difficult. And this is, you should put your life values into the section. So one value at a section. For example, section one, freedom, section two, love, section three, something else, you value in this life. And while you'll do this, try to be as specific as you can because a life value is something indivisible, is something solid and it should be very understandable and clear. For example, if you at first sight think that your life value is money, then think more about what you need this money for. Maybe you need money to travel and therefore your true life value will be not the money itself but the freedom this money can buy. Or for example, you need money to help your grandparents and think why it's so important for you to help your grandparents. Maybe your true life value will be the quality time with your family or the sense of belonging to community or something like this. And you should put this in the way you will understand what you mean by this truly. So it should be really something indivisible. So when you ask yourself a further question on it, it should be like at the very, very bottom. And yeah, we have a couple of minutes for this exercise. I forgot to mention. If you have more values than six, it is also fine just divide the circle into more sections and just put your values there. Or if you have less, it's also fine. Just leave the blank sectors, it's fine. But to me personally, if having too many values, it's very hard to remember and very hard to follow. Therefore, if you have less at some point, it's better. But if you by now have more than six, fine. Put it as it feels right to you. It's also fine. Are you sure that you went as deep as you could? In discovering what stands behind this value. Yeah, that's great. Who needs more time? So okay. Good. So the final part of the exercise will be to think about your everyday life and understand to which extent you leave your life values in your everyday life. So go sector by sector and color the part of the sector to which extent you think you leave this value and put a percentage that feels correctly. So for example, if you put your life values freedom, but you have a mortgage, two kids and fixed schedule job, that maybe you're not that free as you wished to be. And then you should put some smaller percentage for example, like 10 or 20%. Or you put your value as spending quality time with your family and you do spend each Sunday having dinner with your family. It's amazing time of sharing experiences and so on. Then you put a bigger percentage like 80, 90, even 100. Or for example, you spend a lot of time with your family, but you cannot honestly say that time is quality. So put the smaller percentage like 50, 60, like whatever it is. And try to go one sector by one, not all at once. And so once you finished with one value, move to another one. And then color the part of the sector to which extent you leave this value in your everyday life. And when you finish, just look up to it. And we will move further. Okay, I see some people still painting. So do you have people who leave all the life values to more than 80%? Great! You're doing great, it's amazing. Do you have people who leave all the values to less than 50%? Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'm totally with you guys because when I first did this exercise, I also draw the circle and I put my values and I looked at it and I said, well, I have really cool values. My values looked so inspiring and so great to me. I felt so empowered by the values I put on the list. And then we needed also to color the parts of the section and I was really doing this one by one. And then finally, I looked at the whole picture I drew and I understood that I don't really leave any of my cool values. And that was, you know, I was in panic. It was like a thunder in my head. I couldn't do anything, I felt paralyzed. I felt like I really messed up. I felt like I screwed my life or I lived someone else's life. I didn't know what to do, it was so scary. And in this kind of agony, my brain started to function and I understood that there are maybe two reasons for this kind of situation. And the first reason is that maybe I put the wrong values. Maybe it's actually not the values I have in my life. But then I looked again at this and understood that no, these are the things I care a lot and I want to leave them 100% in my everyday life. So the other reason that was left is that I do something wrong in my life and I need to change it somehow or I need to change the perception of it. But back then, when I was looking at my drawing, it seemed impossible. It seemed impossible to include my life values into my life because one of my values, I put the time, it was freedom. As I said, but I was living in Moscow the time working on very important projects so I couldn't just quit. I was working 24 seven and it wasn't impossible even to have like a short break. And it felt like when I knew that my life value is freedom but I don't really leave this. From that moment, I felt like trapped in the situation and I didn't see the way out of it. But then I got to myself together and went to my boss at that time and I said, you know, this kind of situation I have, I'm struggling with this, can we make something up to solve it? And surprisingly, she was very open and she helped me to create a plan of how I can have some rest and feel more free in my job responsibilities at time. And that was a very important moment for me to understand that I actually can change my life according to my values. And from that moment, step by step, I rethink, I was rethinking all my life to fit my values and now I can say that it's possible. So those people who put a smaller percentage of values don't get upset as I did that time. It's great that you know it now. It is just starting point from there. You can go just up and better. So it is really possible by small steps, changing your life and make it fit your life values. And that will make you really happy and fulfilled personality. So let's move further to some more positive things and it's influential leadership. So as I promised to you, we will finalize those two parts, the Simons in a golden circle and the values assessment with the influential leadership part. And again, as Simon Sinek says that what makes you influential leader? It's connecting your why with your what. And why it is so? Because your why is your personal values. It's actually who you are and what drives your behavior. And if you will be able to connect your why with your what and your what is your activity and anything you do, you will be able to surround yourself as like-minded people. So people will understand who you are out of what you do. It is very easy for them to understand who you are and whether they want to join you or not. And having such people around you will help you to create much stronger team, much more committed teams. Because again, as Simon says, people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And if you will be able to translate, transmit this why to external world, you will shape this community around you with people who have shared values and if you will have such people in your team or your company, you will do much more extraordinary things in comparison if you will just unite people by some material things like salary or something like this. People who are driven by their core life values are more committed and more bonded in these terms. So try to base all of your activities, your jobs, your hobbies on your life value. Life values and that will help you to do first steps towards influential leadership. But hi, I was looking for my wife. You know, before presenting all this exercises to you, I've did them myself. And it used to be very easy for me to answer my self question, why I do what I do. But a couple of years ago, I was lost a little in my professional life and I asked myself why I do what I do, why am I here? And the answer didn't appear. And I was like, what? You know, what's going on? It's usually was very easy for me to understand why I do what I do, but that time it wasn't. So I wasn't sure whether to quit my job or no, but I understood that just quitting is an easy way. And I was struggling for several months to understand why I should stay, why am I here, what should I do further and so on. And that was kind of tough months for me, but that was good because that was the first time that I thought of creating this kind of system of understanding yourself. So it was good in this terms. So what I did, I was analyzing all the activities I had that I enjoyed doing. It was my, part of my job that I loved doing, it was my weird hobbies, and you know, I have weird hobbies. I started with baking muffins. And you know, it sounds pretty fine like a girl bakes muffins, what's wrong with this? But I was baking like 400 of them at a time. And not just once, you know? Then I moved to knitting, and I was knitting hats, and I still have this big bag of hats in my place. I don't know why I need so many hats. And then it was gardening. I'm sorry for sharing all this random stuff. But you know, I'm kind of obsessed person in this term. So I'm really engaged in activity I'm doing to like 100%. So I also analyzed my previous project and jobs. So this conference that I was sharing with you in the beginning, I created the idea of this event. And then realized it event, and I was really, how to say, excited when 200 people came to this conference. And it was really a moment when I felt, I did something really great that I felt special. So I analyzed these moments that make me really happy and tried to find out what is similar in all of these. What they have in common in order to find out what is really important to me. And the conclusion I had sounds really simple now, but the time it was just mind blowing. I understood that I'm really driven by the moment of creation. So when I do something out of nothing, or I structure things that were in chaos before, that really makes me inspired. And this small realization about myself, this why I had, helped me to understand how I can change my work, my responsibilities to make them fit my inspiration. Because I knew that if I do this, I will be much more efficient in my job and in my life. Because if people do what they really love doing, they are much better in this. And from that time, I tried to change my career path. I tried to change what I did and my responsibilities towards the things that I love doing. And as I told you in the beginning, so I'm in charge of organizational development, which literally means that I create business processes that never existed before, or I structure business processes that are not working properly. So this small thought I had a couple of years ago led me towards doing what I really love. And you can do as well. And that's why you will also link why you do with what you do. And so it's very, very possible. Well, so now we have all the necessary information to try to come up with our leadership stand. But what is leadership stand as the first place? It is a statement that describes you as a person and as a leader and shows what you stand for in this life. So a leadership stand is just a phrase that will explain everything about you, actually. So you can put it in any words you can, but if you're struggling, just start with the words I stand for and then put what you stand for, very easy. It's also kind of an exercise and if you want you can just try to come up with some words right now. But what is very important about leadership stand is that it should be very clear and very easy to understand for your team members because people actually don't get inspired by something they don't understand. So this phrase should be, you can make it really beautiful later, but now the goal is to put it in the very clear words, very easy to understand once. So you can do this now or you can do this later. And this exercise actually contains the second part which is not individual anymore, but I promised you not to include any not individual exercises so it may be your homework if you want and what it looks like. So you come up with your leadership stand and you present it to the other person and the role of the other person is to challenge your leadership stand to ask you clarifying questions, awkward questions and any other questions for you to have a deeper understanding of what you mean by this leadership stand. For example, when I first did this exercise, I put my leadership stand something like I stand for harmony inside and outside, the balance of it, like blah, blah, blah. I don't really remember how it stated at the time and I presented it to the other guy and he said, you know Marina, your leadership stand sounds quite inspiring but could you please clarify what is the harmony? And I was like, okay. And then he asked how we will ensure that you already achieved harmony, how we will understand that the harmony inside and outside is even possible and other questions like this that make me really think harder on this, think more about what I wanted to say by my leadership stand and so on. So this exercise is the fastest feedback you can receive on your leadership stand from other people and the feedback to you as a person with this leadership stand. So how people perceive a person who has this kind of leadership stand. Yeah, and now I can say that, oh, yes, sure. Sure. I was just about to share my leadership stand right now. Yeah, I have one just answering the question. So I can say now that my leadership stand is not maybe the perfect one it should have. You may also ask question to challenge my leadership stand but for now I stand for happiness. I stand for that happiness that allows you to live and choose because you're happy now not to become happy one day because I bet any of you heard some phrases like when I get this job, I'll get happy. When I lose weight, I'll get happy or when I get married and other things like this but when you hear and when you say something, some phrase like this, you automatically put yourself in a situation of unhappiness in current moment and I believe that knowing yourself deeply answering all these questions that I was asking you today you will be able to find something that really makes you happy now and enable you to live your life because of the state of happiness and I'm really sure that it will be more fulfilling, more efficient in any part of your life, in your professional life, in your personal life because if you choose this job because you are happy you will be much more performing employee or if you choose these relationships because you are happy it will bring you even more happiness in the end and so this is what I truly stand for right now and that is pretty the same situation with leadership so leadership is not something that you need to work hard to live to deserve to be one one day it is something you can do already today to change other people's lives because one of the features of a leader is responsibility, is courage to take responsibility for something bigger than yourself for the project, for the company, for the team and once you know yourself very well you are able to lead others with full transparency so I wish you to start being a leader today and see what impact you can create tomorrow so thank you very much and I'm ready for questions