Do you wish you had more courage to speak
up in meetings?
Do you want to contribute more than you currently
do?
Do you know you have more potential than is
being expressed?
Expressing Your
Leadership
Leadership
involves being visible, taking a stand, and mobilizing others into action. It
includes creating vision, making plans and decisions, managing conflict, caring
about and empowering others. It
requires self-esteem, plus the willingness to assert, take risks, demonstrate
courage, and most risky of all, to be ourselves.
Many of us, and
particularly women, have been taught to muffle our voices. While opportunities
to demonstrate leadership may present themselves, we let them pass us by if we
are inhibited from using our power.
Ultimately, leadership is about the best use
of our selves. In Walt Whitman's words, "we influence by our presence." The
route to using ourselves fully and embodying our power requires that we become
clear about our strengths, our gifts and talents. We need to keep our voices
strong and feel entitled to use them for self expression and making
contributions to the outside world.
What Inhibits
Us From Stepping Into Our Leadership Capacity
If we have a
strong inner voice that is critical, it may thwart use of our full leadership
capacity. A strong "Inner Critic" tells us that we are not good enough, that we
fall short in comparison to others, that we will not be taken seriously, that
someone else could do a better job, that we will never leave a mark and
need more training before we speak up. The Inner Critic dampens our
spontaneity, casts doubt on our instincts and holds us back.
Many of us hold
the myth that our Inner Critic is our best motivator, holds our interests at
heart and just wants us to improve. This
isn't so. In fact, self-criticism increases insecurity and self-consciousness
and ultimately gets in the way. It can keep us prisoners of perfectionism and
create immobilization.
Good Leaders
Have A Strong Inner Coach
Good leaders know
how to take an action and move forward. They have a strong Inner Coach that
gives them neutral feedback-- both positive and corrective-- and encourages
them to take on the next needed action. When something does not go well, an
Inner Coach says, "OK, what's to learn from this that I can use next time?" or
"What supports do I need to do this differently next time?" The Inner Coach encourages, supports, celebrates and stays
determined to keep us learning and feeling proud of our efforts.
Developing our
leadership skills and confidence requires challenging the belief that our Inner
Critic is a good guide. Below are 10 ways to strengthen the voice of an Inner
Coach and increase your leadership capacity.
Strengthening The
Voice of An Inner Coach
1)
Think
of a success in your life and identify your qualities that contributed to
making it a success.
2)
Name
these qualities as leadership skills.
3)
When
something doesn't go well, find a way to tell yourself what you can learn and
what you might do differently next time.
4)
When
something goes well, congratulate yourself and identify which of your skills
contributed to your success.
5)
Listen
to your self-talk-the automatic internal voices in your head. Hear what it says
to you. Is it a positive message, or a negative one?
6)
Interrupt
your self-talk when it is negative and find something more positive to say to
yourself.
7)
Create
an image of a positive Inner Coach (Think about the people in your life who
have played that role).
8)
Bring
this image to mind several times a day and practice hearing it say encouraging
messages to you.
9)
Challenge
yourself to take more risks and express your leadership self - deliberately take
a stand, speak up, choose to take the lead when an opportunity shows up.
10)Remind yourself that you are practicing new
skills and that we get stronger as we keep learning.
