People-first leadership focuses on prioritizing people over vision and results. It involves serving people with care, creating trust, and making people feel valued to gain their commitment. Leaders should paint an exciting vision to engage people and focus on results third to fuel pride. People-first leadership is challenging as it requires empowering others and considering people in all decisions, but it makes the biggest difference by releasing others' greatness.

1. People-First Leadership
Drew Hartley | linkedin.com/in/drewhartley/
Adapted from a presentation I created and presented to an IT Leadership Team
How to get your team Committed, Engaged, and Proud

2. What We Will Discuss
• Why You Should People-First
• My People-First Mental Model to Create Commitment,
Engagement, and Pride
• How to People-First
• Warning: People-First is Hard

4. Spoiler: Because leadership requires it

6. Why People-First
1. Leadership is the influence of people
2. Leaders have people who choose to follow
3. You can’t get anything done without people
4. You are only as good as your team
5. People are your biggest asset

7. Get Your Team Committed, Engaged, and Proud

8. People
First
• The
Commitment
Step
Vision
Second
• The
Engagement
Step
Results
Third
• The Pride
Step

9. People-First
• You are a servant, shepherd, and steward of your people
▫ Servant leadership – put your people first with love and care
▫ Shepherd them safely – to a better place into the scary future
▫ Steward them well – you are responsible for the time you have them
• Make people feel valued and create trust
• Create, prioritize, and have fun
• This gets your people COMMITTED
Create a team culture where people want to work

10. Vision Second
• Your team must know “where” and “why”
▫ Vision: Where do we want to go?
▫ Purpose: Why are we doing what we are doing?
• Paint an exciting picture bigger than ourselves
• Connect the dots to the future
• This gets people ENGAGED
Get people excited about what they’re doing

11. Results Third
• Only after People and Vision do we focus on Results
• Results before People is unsustainable
• But People and Vision without Results is failure
• We need all 3 parts of the recipe to win
• People desire to be on a winning team
• This gets people PROUD
Winning creates momentum to fuel all 3 steps

12. People-First Perspective, Actions, and Decisions

13. People-First Perspective
• It all starts with your mindset
• You must truly believe it, it can’t be fake
• You are accountable for your style and approach
• Leadership is not about you, it is bigger
We get our meaning by moving beyond ourselves

14. People-First Actions
• Love and care; want the best for your people
• Show it in the small things
• Recognize often and meaningfully
• Have radical candor
• Give your people time and attention
• Be a champion for your people
• Hold yourself accountable
• Be humble
Your actions speak louder than words

15. People-First Decisions
• Empower others to make decisions (rather than you)
• Make decisions with people in mind
• Harder and takes longer
• Get input from your people
• Ask people what they want to work on
Make decisions with people as the primary factor

16. Don’t do it unless you really want it

17. People-First Leadership is Hard
• Leadership is the art of releasing the greatness in other people
▫ Releasing greatness is hard
▫ People are hard
• People-First can feel slower and messier
• If I offered you $10k to step down from leadership and you would
take it, you shouldn’t be a leader
• Leadership is too important to be a leader for any reason other
than you love leading people
Leadership is hard

18. But People-First Leadership is Worth It
• It is challenging and exciting
• It is needed - people yearn to follow great leaders
• It makes a real difference
“Those who devote themselves to themselves will ultimately have
nothing but themselves to show for themselves. If you devote
yourself to more than yourself you will ultimately have more than
yourself to show for yourself.” – Andy Stanley

19. Discussion
• How do you put this in to action?
• How can you put this in to action?
• What is hard about this?
• What is your #1 takeaway?