How Being Different Strengthens Your Leadership Style

Today’s post is by Ron West, author of Corporate Caterpillars: How to Grow Wings (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

Have you mastered awareness? Have you developed associations and rituals to help you quickly restore and maintain a state of awareness? Have you used that state to get real about yourself? Did you, perhaps, discover that you were not quite functional in the world and had to make essential changes? Later, you found your purpose in life and started setting goals to help live your purpose, maybe? You recruited help and then came the obstacles to your success. Since then you have been diligently working through your limiting beliefs to get where you are going. Congratulations. You have mastered half of what you need to master.

What so often happens, especially with managers in a business, is that they focus on doing what they believe needs to be done. They are typically very results-focused and sometimes short on what we might label the ‘soft’ skills. Leadership is much more about how you show up; how you are being. We are taught that we take actions to have results. Leaders do not control so much as influence to co-create outcomes. How can they do that?

An example might help.  There is much great, published work on trust. There are certainly techniques offered that could help restore or establish trust. But a leader that learns and applies a series of techniques is quickly discounted. It does not feel genuine to anyone else. Being trustworthy and being trusting are a complete mindset; not a few techniques added later. So instead of worrying about what we want to have (our vision) or even how we will achieve our vision by deciding what we must do (our mission), what we focus on instead is first how we will be (our values). What we value will define how we are going to be.

So how can a leader more consistently live from his or her values? How can a leader be confident, trusting, or courageous? States of being are more easily modeled for us by others. Instead of attempting to do the many things that we might do to be courageous, for example, it is easier to think about someone you know well who epitomizes that value. That is how we learn as children. Reading a biography of a hero will help you create an impression of what a particular value looks like in action. Then, in any given situation, you can put yourself in the mind of your hero and ask a simple question. What would my hero chose in this moment? What would they be thinking? How would they show up? What series of actions might they take and with what underlying attitude and beliefs?

In any given moment you can certainly think about how your hero might act. However, it is unlikely to bring about a lasting shift in your way of being on its own. Effectively, what you are doing is developing neural pathways in your brain as a resource. In this way you would be able to call up a particular way of being on demand. One of the very best ways to develop a more consistent way of being so you have it available to you, is to mentally rehearse it. Through regular meditations you can mentally rehearse how your hero would show up in a range of situations that are typical in your life.

If it sounds like a little bit of a stretch but you are still reading this, try it. You might be surprised that you can put yourself in the mind of another and quickly shift a way of being.  If the results make you curious, then practice it. You will eventually develop it as a resource. So, maybe you are wondering if there is a short cut. I am going to say, there is not. Willpower alone will not get you a new way of being. At least not one that lasts. Only diligent practice can do that.

– Ron J. West is a corporate transformation consultant, executive coach, speaker & author of Corporate Caterpillars: How to Grow Wings.

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Photo: Wrong way by Crystal