Be Your Own Authentic Leader – Everyone Else is Taken

As you build and grow your leadership practice, you will be from time-to-time distracted by the thought of: “If only I could be more like [fill in the blank].  They seem to have it all together and never have the challenges that I do.”

Well, big news flash is…

EVERY leader has challenges!

Every leader has issues, and they all have moments when they think: “What the hell am I doing?!”

Being authentically you is, and has always been, your very best way to grow your leadership practice.  You can take all the psychometric personality profile assessments that you want.  Most of them are excellent.  And they will all most likely tell you the same thing about yourself.  They will point out your key strengths and your weaknesses as well.

Most every leader that I work with will get wrapped up in the weaknesses they have, and set to work to ‘fix’ themselves by trying to be like someone else they admire.

Wrong plan. It is your strengths that got you here, not your weaknesses.

Lean in to your strengths.

Here’s the big, look-in-the-mirror exercise that I have for you to work on…

1. Be you. Everyone else is already taken.  Other people (like your manager for example) will, if they have little or no emotional intelligence, attempt to change you to be more like them (mostly because they fear people that are different than themselves).
2. Deal with your weaknesses by surrounding yourself with teammates that are smarter than you are, and compliment your weaknesses. This does two things… One is that they will fill the gap created by any weakness you have.  The second is that it has been scientifically proven that when you hang out with people that are smarter than you, your intellectual intelligence (IQ) also grows.
3. Focus on leadership. There is a reason that people who are among the most successful in the world (You define success), have focused on leadership as a skill just like engineering, accounting, etc.  Be voracious in your drive to consume everything you can get your hands on to read, watch or listen to in order to develop your own leadership style – you will go further if you, in your own way, get good at creating, communicating and reinforcing clarity of values, purpose, vision and strategies.
4. Finally, be humble. Humility in leadership is the new superpower that most leaders that you have working so hard to emulate probably haven’t figured out yet.  Learning how to be vulnerable as a leader will only enhance your strengths and attract people to you because you are human.

Good luck becoming more of the you that you already are!

Robert Murray is a Vancouver, BC based Business Strategy Consultant, #1 Best Selling Author, International Keynote Speaker, and TEC Top Speaker of the Year for 2018. For further advice, insight and inspiration on how to unlock your inner leader, connect with Robert on LinkedIn.

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