Crafting your leadership!
A person’s leadership style is crafted through intentional focus and exposure. There are many things that influence the unfolding of our leadership style. Let’s look at a few:
- Our story. The various healthy or unhealthy experiences we had as children and the culture we grew up in can create foundational beliefs around leadership.
- Our exposure to other leaders. Every leader has been inspired by particular individuals he/she look up to. The values and behaviour we see from others are what draws us to also incorporate it in our own leadership journey.
- Our own potential. Our intrinsic talents, personality strengths, motivating environment and own personal leadership values all work together to create our leadership style.
- Company culture. The different companies you worked in, all had different cultures, and these all intentionally or unintentionally influence your leadership beliefs and practices.
These are just four areas that effect leaders’ beliefs and practices. Let me pose a question to you. Which of these areas has affected you the most? Was the impact, positive or negative? In my new book, “Presence – An Essential Leadership challenge”, I share about the fact that both good and bad experiences with the leaders will affect our perception around leadership. Bad experiences drive us to the opposite end. Good experiences draw us closer.
What can you do to discover your leadership style?
- Discover who has influenced your leadership beliefs until now. Discover which specific beliefs did they influence.
- Discover and develop your potential. It is good to learn from others. Yet we need to find a balance so we can still be true to authentic self.
- Challenge yourself to get exposure to leaders in more diverse settings. We can all learn from different cultures. There is beauty in all cultures, also connected to leadership.
- Get a mentor. Learn from “Master” Leaders. Do this to learn from them how they found their own flow.
Enjoy the journey of living your authentic leadership style.
This blog in the series was written by Cias Ferreira.
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