Emerging leaders often ask: What is my leadership identity? How do I create it? What does it mean to my leadership path and career? Meanwhile, senior leaders often ask: How do I further leverage my leadership brand? How do I continue to make an impact in my organization? How do I fill in gaps to ready myself for even greater leadership?
It is about consciously considering the version of you that you want to project, and projecting that as your leadership 'identity' throughout your organisation.
You may think that people will judge you by results, that the end justifies the means, but you would be mistaken. People will 'remember' you by results - but in terms of leadership, they will judge you by your character and credibility. People will judge you more than anything else on the quality of relationship they experience. Even in the most high-stakes environments 'being' is at least as important as 'doing'. And if you wish to engage a highly diverse community of scholars and professionals in a university context, then in terms of leadership identity, how you are with people, the trust you inspire and the respect you show will matter every bit as much as anything you achieve. Enabling the community is, perhaps, the primary goal.
Leadership identity is far more than a public relations exercise. Certainly, though, the more senior leaders become the more they may feel that they are having to manage some kind of leadership brand. Alarm bells should ring at the very notion! This is a recipe for remote leadership, driven by image and impression rather than by integrity. Minions start to carry messages, dry written monthly updates become the primary contact point, and 'my inbox is always open' becomes the proxy for approachability. There is something naturally inverse about great leadership. The higher you go the more humble you need to become.
People seek certainty and consistency. Uncertainty and surprise cause people to be on edge, or even defensive. By being consistent and providing people with certainty about who you are as a leader, the people you lead can be comfortable and reassured. This means that as you lead them, they don't need to spend time and effort attempting to 'guess' which version of you will show up, how you will behave, or how you will respond. They can simply get on with delivering high performance.
This presupposes that we have defined the 'identity' that we want to project as leader. Too often leaders are victims of their circumstances, their emotions and their fears, and have no clear identity that they project (except, perhaps, the identity of being unstable or unpredictable). Great leaders provide certainty, and provide predictable responses regardless of their emotions, fears or circumstances.
To develop your leadership identity, it is critical to:
- Be self-aware
- Have a definition of the leadership identity that would be valuable
- Be great at self-management to deliver this identity into the business
Self awareness is the first critical step. By understanding how we behave, how we respond, what our strengths are, what triggers us, what we are passionate about, what our weaknesses are and how we really see ourselves (our self-identity), we are able to make decisions about what serves us and what doesn't.
Like any new endeavor, working with a coach can be challenging and even a little scary. But if you're brave, committed and curious, you'll find your coaching relationship can be a powerful catalyst to becoming the person you most want to be.
Adan's executive coaches have decades of experience working at the executive level with leading organizations around the world. We have expertise in leadership, productivity, organizational change, team building, marketing, sales and motivation.
Our on-the-job experience coupled with extensive knowledge of the markets and functional areas enables us to deliver a variety of practical, high-impact presentations that engage, enlighten and entertain.
