When are you ready to be a Leader?

Have you not considered yourself to be a leader?

 All of us at some point have been called to step up and lead. Question is “did we?”

For reasons only you will know, it wasn’t the right time, you were too busy with your family, you didn’t think it appropriate or you didn’t think you had the skills.

For some reason, you mistakenly thought leading was the same as managing. And until you became a Manager, that it wasn’t your place to lead.

Or for some reason you are in a support role and didn’t think that it was your job to lead on things? More like you get told what to do and you do them, right?

 But deep down in your heart, you felt like perhaps you could have become the leader. Maybe you could see that your skills you have were well suited to it, but you held yourself back?

And inside that feeling grew about how the job you currently have isn’t fulfilling but you didn’t quite know how and when to make the transition into a leadership role.

Becoming a Leader

If you are dabbling with leadership, I strongly urge you to focus on your skill set you have right now, to help define your leadership style. If you aren’t sure what are or aren’t leadership qualities or transferable into leadership, then sit with it a bit longer.

What are, when you felt safe to do so, some of things you are already doing as a leader in your life? Like are you involved in a community project, or sports club, family event or something like that? When have people looked up to you, for guidance or support?

All of this will help you figure out your natural leadership abilities. If you would like to find out more about becoming a leader, get my FREE guide here.

Frustrations with Ego

We all know people in our lives who lead and do it well, but we also know others who don’t lead that well either.

I became frustrated by that a lot and then I realised that I was frustrated because I was meant to be in the leadership roles myself. It was time to “walk to talk” instead of sitting in blame and inaction.

If this resonates, I can assure you that it’s time to stop denying that part of you that knows you are a born leader. Too often, women step aside for their husbands or bosses etc to do the leading. They worry they will cause issues with the man’s identity.

I have realised that in that case, women need to understand they are not being their authentic self if they are depriving those around them the gift of their leadership. Their leadership is different to a male stereotypical leadership. You can learn more about that in my Her Path to Leadership Membership here.

Sometimes, it's not that easy

I have found that the men who are annoyed by my leadership, are not very secure in themselves. In fact, their type of leadership relies on stereotypical submissive behaviour by women to pump up their egos.

If you believe you need to be a leader like a stereotypical male leadership style, it will be inauthentic and at some level as a female and it will have a personal and professional cost to you. So, it can be challenging learning to navigate as a female leader with male leader aggression if you happen to experience it.

That being said, female leaders still do come against very harsh judgement even if they are heart centred and good leaders inclusive of everyone. What I hope for the future is the more heart centred leaders there are, the more teams will benefit from that, and it will soften the male stereotypical leaders as they can begin to let their guard down and not feel weak in the process. It’s a bit of an unlearning that would have to take place.

This doesn’t suggest that many awesome things great male leaders do, couldn’t happen. But more a refinement so that the collective in teams you are leading feels safer. History is filled with stories of stereotypical male leadership aggression and this can sometime stifle teams filled with people who aren’t male.

It's not all that bad

I have however, been treated amazingly well by male leaders who are comfortable in themselves and do appreciate strong woman. And by enlarge, this is the majority of my experiences thankfully. I am highlighting the not so great things too because often our perceptions of what might go wrong can be the thing that stop us from taking that next step as a leader.  Please avoid letting that be your excuse. We can all be leaders if we want to in our own way and be celebrated for it.

And that is why as a heart centred leader, I love the idea of a distinctly different approach. You can definitely be a heart centred leader, no matter your gender, how you identify and what your pronouns you use. I just choose to focus on being a female leadership mentor because it’s what I know more intuitively, and I feel I can best serve my audience from this perspective with my experience.

I also have learnt to not let my feelings of disappointment I get, when some leaders have in the past tried to shut me down consume my thoughts. It’s their loss, if they can’t work with me or embrace my gifts and talents that will help them too, I can’t control that. I fear they will be left behind.  Women no longer live in the 1950’s, thank god!

 As Brene Brown said in her book, Dare to Lead:

“Leaders must either invest a reasonable amount of time attending to fears and feelings or squander an unreasonable amount of time trying to manage ineffective and unproductive behaviour.”

 

Exactly, stop running away from your feelings. Face them, be curious about them, go deeper!

And it is my hope that leaders who are struggling, ask for help, seek out new learnings and admit that they don’t know everything it takes.

It's your time to shine

It is by owning our vulnerabilities that we can uncover so much more about ourselves and our teams. It will take time, but the ideas are infusing into all of us and leadership will become such a better experience for leaders and their teams now and in the future. We all deserve that.

And if you’re calling includes being a heart centre leader, it’s your time!

Be amazing!

Leighanne