pages to make some very big changes in your leadership life? A cautionary question: What is going to be the biggest barrier to you making some of the changes suggested in the book? The answer is simple; change is hard. You might hear my suggested actions and think to yourself, “Oh yeah, I know that I need to do this, but (you fill in the blank) gets in my way of fully committing to take action.” Remember that you did not get to this place of leadership by taking the easy road. These exercises will require the hardest thing for anyone to do, to change your behavior from the inside out.
Just as in my coaching practice, I am not going to let you off the hook so easily. I encourage you to act. Just as in a coaching engagement, doing the exercises in this book is critical. I have set them apart and made them easy to spot and understand. The exercises are designed to result in some learning and profound change for you.
While reading this book, I request that you take it a step further. For that special thing that you want to do this year, figure out what is holding you back and address it…head-on. Pull on your Inner Leader and understand your values, strengths, skills, and past accomplishments to build a platform for future success. Drag all those positive attributes that you have kicking and screaming to center stage; let the world see what you can really accomplish. Who knows; you might even surprise yourself.
Acknowledgments
To all my clients, who have given me the joy of sharing in their personal journeys to unleash their Inner Leader. Your successes are my successes.
To my longtime friend Kelly Loy Morf, who believed in the book and found the opportunity for me to make it happen.
To Mary Charles Blakebrough, who painstakingly read and commented on almost every word.
To Alice Osborn, who helped me edit the original proposal for the book.
To Abby Weaver, for turning my ideas into great illustrations.
To all the people who read and commented on sections of the book, including Marguerite Lawn, Melissa Bennett, and Cheryl Pendergrass.
To the team at John Wiley & Sons and SAS for their editing, producing, and distribution support and for introducing me to the world of book publishing.
To all the individuals who shared their inspirational stories with me and in turn, with you, the reader.
To all the special people in my life who encouraged me during the writing process and constantly asked how it was going. Your support meant the world to me.
Chapter 1
You and Your Inner Leader
Coaching business professionals in high-impact industries to maximize their leadership performance is my expertise. This book is the culmination of the real-life experiences that my clients have faced: how they have unleashed their Inner Leader to live their legacies and develop into world-class leaders. The pages that follow are filled with real-life case studies, exercises, and personal stories that can help leaders like you to:
● Identify and leverage individual and team strengths to maximize performance
● Discover and understand how personal values drive your decisions and behavior
● Recognize and promote your career currency
● Take successful risks by discovering personal vision and purpose
● Build a personal brand and maximize both yours and the company's brand to make customers want to work with you
● Learn how to be more productive and how to delegate and empower your team
● Become a better mentor or mentee
● Communicate powerfully by improving your personal language
● Realize the power of networking to successfully evolve your career
● Understand how to better use the interview process to build a world-class team
● Determine and live your Leadership Legacy
Each chapter starts with a scenario (case study) based on a real client with whom I have worked (note that names have been changed to protect client anonymity). Each coaching session demonstrates an issue, challenge, or situation that the client has encountered. Based on this conversation, the pertinent parts of the situation are discussed and matched to a leadership concept. You are then engaged with powerful questioning that will prompt new thinking. The chapter continues with other examples of coaching sessions on related topics and with more discussion. Each chapter concludes with exercises that will help you incorporate this concept into your life. I highly recommend doing each of the exercises. It has been my experience that reading about a concept and thinking about it is the first step, and you will never make the desired change unless you take action and actually go through the steps to effect your own personal change. This is the recipe for lasting change that leads to success.
Part One of the Book
The book is organized into three parts. The first is dedicated to getting to know yourself. The concept being that leaders who are totally in touch with themselves and know what they are good at, what their vision is, and what impact they can make in their world; can begin to lead others and help others make their own impact.
In Chapter 2 you will meet Alexandra, who identified and leveraged her strengths to find her own voice. This then propelled her to negotiate a new position and then lead her new team from a position of strength. A strength is doing what you love to do and what you are good at. Once identified, you can leverage this to be happy in your career.
Understanding that your personal values are the rock that you stand on is one of the first tenets of leadership introduced in Chapter 3. When your environment is in sync with your values, you can produce your best work. When your values are being compromised, you are not on firm footing and your Inner Leader cannot shine through.
Chapter 4 will teach you how to recognize the impact that you have made in your organization. This is your career currency. Most people do not realize how much currency they truly have or how to spend it wisely within their organizations. When you learn how to promote the impact that you and your team have made, then others will understand your value to them and your career will evolve.
Building and maximizing your personal brand is the subject of Chapter 5. It is only once your vision, purpose, and goals become clear that you can begin to take successful risks with your career and your team. Your Inner Leader will have a guiding beacon for knowing what risks are right for you.
The exercises in Part One will be exercises for you to get to know yourself, which can sometimes be the hardest. Do not get discouraged; self-knowledge is an exciting self-discovery journey and essential to unleashing your Inner Leader. The case studies and the additional coaching stories are meant to illustrate the chapter concepts and give you real-world examples.
Part Two of the Book
Part Two of this book is dedicated to the major topics that my clients have requested coaching on. Being more productive or doing more with less is always at the top of the list. Part of being more productive is learning how to delegate. Most leaders got to their current position by executing results. Once they find themselves in a position of leadership (whether formal or informal), letting go of the job and allowing others to do it is a very difficult thing. There are certain skills and techniques presented in Chapter 6, in the form of exercises to help you with being a successful delegator and improving productivity.
The next chapter is on mentoring. Mentoring is the most underrated key to leveraging your success. Mentoring is the relationship between two people in which there is mutual learning and sharing. Developing yourself and your team into a world-class group of experts is what leadership is all about. This is the shortest chapter and in some ways the most powerful.
Communication is a leader's best friend, and the concept of examining your personal language is vital. As you will see in Chapter 8, many successful leaders sabotage themselves by using personal language that diminishes their success. You will learn to recognize powerful phrases and questioning techniques to communicate more powerfully.
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