Strengthening Leaders’ Confidence and Effectiveness
Anchors Empower Leaders
As a leader, your relationships are both a lifeline and a moral compass. They simultaneously provide support and create an accountability framework that shapes your character and choices.
An Anchor Relationship™ is a connection that inherently makes you both better people. These special people reinforce your best qualities and counterbalance external pressures to conform. Through mutual influence, Anchors help you live authentically while you support their growth. Aristotle articulated that true happiness emerges through friendship, where virtuous people inspire each other toward excellence. Join our workshop to identify your Anchors - those who elevate you toward your highest self.
This program helps you identify the people who both support and challenge you to be your best self. You'll learn to recognize your Anchors, commit to growing through these positive influences, and reduce the impact of non-supportive relationships on your choices and perspective.
THE ANCHOR RELATIONSHIPS WORKSHOP
While available one-on-one, Anchor Relationships for Leaders is typically delivered as a workshop. Part 1 explores how others influence our choices, confidence, and wellbeing. Part 2 illuminates how other leaders have relied on Anchors to overcome difficult situations. Part 3 guides participants through a relationship audit to identify their Anchors, and Part 4 focuses on creating personal action plans for building and nurturing these special relationships.
WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
Your approach to forming and maintaining your relationships—whether driven by self-interest or mutual care—influences your moral and ethical choices, particularly in your motivation to cooperate with and show fairness to others (Clark & Mills, 1993).
What your relationships say about you -- and how to learn about yourself by analyzing your relationships.
How relationships influence how you respond to challenges and remain confident under pressure.
How to draw strength, confidence, and perseverance from key relationships--while being a source of strength, confidence, and perseverance for someone else.
How to identify the Anchors in your life--the people (friends, family members, co-workers) who reflect--and reinforce--the best parts of yourself.
WHY YOU’LL WANT TO LEARN IT
When you're leading a challenging project or initiative--you need to know how to connect with the people in your life who provide stability and confidence because they know who you are at your best. Don't wait until moments of challenge arise. Learn how to put the right people in your life now.
Leaders contend with a variety of different pressures and expectations to conform. Staying true to yourself in these situations is easier when you feel supported and extremely clear about your own virtues. The more your virtues resonate and reverberate within you, the easier it is to do what you know is right.
Relationships are also central to your lifelong well-being. In fact, research shows that people who are physically and mentally healthiest at age 80 have the most positive and supportive relationships at age 50 (Waldinger, 2015).
HOW IT HELPS YOU
Once you understand the role of relationships in living your best life, you rely less on willpower and more on friend-power to catalyze your own dreams.
Energy. It's a resource that is easily depleted but essential for leaders. Connecting with your Anchors--the people who share your desire to flourish--is inherently energizing. Knowing how to refill your cup as a leader is a resource you'll need to stay at your most vibrant self.
Your choices shape who you become. By learning how relationships influence your choices, you gain power over who you choose to influence you.
This is true in school and home settings as well as in the workplace.
As a leader, your relationships are both a lifeline and a moral compass. They simultaneously provide support and create an accountability framework that shapes your character and choices.
ALIGNMENT WITH THE
CENTER FOR POSITIVE LEADERSHIP
The Center for Positive Leadership at University of Louisville provided support for the development of the Anchor Relationships framework. According to the Center for Positive Leadership, positive leadership occurs when individuals inspire others through the exemplary display of virtues relevant to a given situation. This form of leadership is not confined to people who hold a formal role of authority over others; rather, it emerges from anyone who exhibits excellence in virtues such as courage, compassion, honesty, and humility, and motivates others to follow their lead.
In this diagram, the Center for Positive Leadership demonstrates how positive leadership occurs. Anchor Relationships are connections that provide moral insight for each other. Anchors expect each other to live up to their virtues, providing mental cues and relational influences to help each other do the right thing—regardless of convention.
