Leadership is about influencing others to follow your guidance and direction to achieve certain outcomes. Leadership is not about force, it’s about inspiring other people to follow your lead.
If your goal is to become a more effective and influential leader, I will work with you to develop the key skills of leadership and to hone your ability to manage yourself in your leadership role.
Here’s what’s important to understand about leadership:
To lead others, you must first be in tune with yourself.
It is not unusual for a person in a leadership role to not be aware of themselves, their behavior or the unintended influence that behavior is having on others and on the results they are getting (or not getting).
If we were to reverse engineer leadership, it might look something like this:
We know that a good leader is one who communicates effectively and they model appropriate behaviors. To do this, the leader must make good decisions and be able to communicate those decisions while modeling behavior, which influences others.
Before a leader can do this, they must be able to manage their own behavior. They must be aware of their responses to situations, to conversations or statements, to other people. This awareness must be of their general pattern and also of their “in the moment” response style. In other words, good leaders don’t generally allow themselves to react. Instead, they respond.
Anyone who is able to do the above will have started from a base of self-awareness. In fact, self-awareness is required. You cannot manage your behavior if you are not aware of your behavior, of how you respond, of what’s important to you and of how you respond to things that impact what’s important to you. Self-awareness is the underlying component of leadership and for many, it’s the missing ingredient in their leadership.
If you want to influence others and inspire them to follow your lead, you must start by being aware of yourself and of “who” you are as a leader.
I work with business owners, executives, and those in a leadership role who want to elevate their leadership presence and improve their leadership effectiveness. Coaching and mentoring are powerful tools for helping you to understand where you are now, explore “who” you want to become as a leader, and to provide support, guidance and feedback on your journey to becoming the leader you were meant to be and to having the level of influence that will allow your business or organization to thrive.