Leading From Your Values

As an executive and leadership coach the topic of values is always discussed, whether they are in context to individual values, team values, and/or organizational values. Understanding your values and why they are important to you play a critical role in how effective your leadership presence is showing up (your behaviors and results). Values are part of one's spiritual dimension; the center that binds the other 3 dimensions of a leader (physical, intellectual and emotional). Because values are personal, and not always clearly defined, they remain an important but under-discussed and under-appreciated part of who you are as a person and as a leader.

It is very important to explore your values so you have a basis to understand what motivates you and makes you tick. How do your values play a part of who you are? What is at stake regarding your personal mission and purpose in life? There are two types of values: conscious based and fear based values. Conscious values allow you to take positive action. Think of these as "want to's." Values based on fear are one that cause you to take action to avoid something. They are "have to's." So, as you can see it is important for you to realize if you are choosing from passion or fear; or consciously or not. Understanding your values also has a huge impact on your level of energy and leading with positive or negative energy.

This post is meant to get you thinking about your values and understand why investing that time and thought will be of great benefit to you and to others. We all have values, and they become far more valuable when they are clearly understood and defined. Let me say that again. Your values are most valuable when they are clearly understood and defined.

In order to get the most benefit from what follows, your best first step would be to outline your values and write down the top five most important to you (if you need help, email me and I will send you a value assessment link). What do you see? What patterns, if any, are emerging? How does this make you feel? What are your intentions after this exercise?

Here are 5 reasons to define and clearly understand your values:

1. Values guide your decisions. As a leader you have many decisions to make - those that impact just you, and those that impact many others. Decisions, big or small, can be made faster, easier and with greater confidence when you start with your values. Run your decisions against your values. It is the best place to start. Companies have values too. Make sure your working for one that aligns with yours.

2. Values strengthen your ability to influence. When you communicate from your values you connect to your passions. When you speak with passion, people are drawn to you, are more likely to hear your message and you will be more successful in persuading and influencing. As a leader it should be self-evident why your values matter in this way.

3. Values create clarity. In so many ways when you are clearer your life becomes easier. Clarity helps you focus, be more productive and so much more. One of the quickest ways to gain clarity in your life is by first being clear about your values. When you work from this starting point, all the other benefits of clarity will follow. 

4. Values guide your actions. It is one thing to know and understand your values. It is another thing to behave in accordance with them. This fact impacts all of the ideas shared so far because it is when you understand and then act on your values that all the benefits are gained. This is the most important of these benefits. Your values guide your intentions and actions.

5. Values reduce stress. Most people I know would like less stress in their lives. As a leader it is doubly important because your stress is contagious - it infects those around you. When your decisions are clear, communication is easier and you will have less stress! You may not have thought about values in this way in the past; however, it is completely true that living from your values is a wonderful way to reduce stress.

What are your thoughts on these conclusions? How would you begin to break through your behaviors and intentions to find your leadership aligned with your values? We would love to hear from you with comments or questions. Send me a note via email at brad@aperiocoaching.net or on Twitter @bparcells.

In Latin, Aperio means to reveal, uncover, to make clear. Coaching is a powerful process that enables the client to reveal and illuminate their authentic style via a sharp focus on who they are at their core.

3 Essential Elements that Shape Great Leaders

We see in life three key elements that go into the making of a true leader: the right innate traits, the right life experiences, and the right character. In observing leadership and working with leaders let me show you what I mean.

The Right Innate Traits ~ There is an old debate about whether leaders are born or made. Some would argue for the belief that leaders are born with certain innate and natural gifts and that these gifts are woven into the leader from the beginning. There are certain features of a person's natural disposition that are critical foundations to their leadership ability. These are not characteristics that can be developed only by training ~ they are innate features or foundational elements in a leader's temperament, disposition from which a leader, a better leader can be made.

The first one is Inquisitiveness. When you are looking for a leader, you want someone who asks lots of questions. People who are no inquisitive simply do not make good leaders. Curiosity is crucial to leadership. People who are content with what they do not know, happy to remain ignorant about what they do not understand, complacent about what they have not analyzed, and comfortable living with problems they have not solved. Such people cannot lead. Leaders need to have an insatiable curiosity. They need to be people who are hungry for answers. Whoever has the information has the lead. Knowledge is power. If you want to be a leader, look for someone who is asking the right questions and genuinely looking for answers.

This sort of inquisitiveness normally comes out in childhood. Most of us have encountered children who ask question after question with non-stop gusto, often wearing out the listener. That is part of the fabric of leadership. The best problem-solvers are people who are driven by an unquenchable enthusiasm for knowing and understanding things. They want to know more and to understand better. And that sort of inquisitiveness is a foundational element of a true leader.

Another foundational trait is Initiative. If a person is wired for leadership, he/she will have drive, ambition and energy. A true leader must be the kind of person who make things happen. A self starter that exhibits the kind of boldness, decisiveness and fearlessness where others fear to tread. These are vital characteristics for all great leaders. Sometimes, they have had to take a step back, undo, retract, or be rebuked. But the fact that they are always willing to grab opportunity marks them as a natural leader. Better to work with a leader like that than to try to motivate someone who is always passive and hesitant. A leader always wants to move ahead. They want to know what they don't know; want to understand what they don't understand, they are first to ask questions and the first to try to answer questions. Taking the initiative, seizing the moment and charging ahead with purpose is the stuff of leadership.

There is a third innate element that makes a true leader is Involvement. True leaders are always in the action. They do not sit in the background telling everyone else what to do while they live away from the fray. A true leader goes through life with a trail of dust behind them That is way people follow them. People cannot follow someone who remains distant. The true leader must show the way. He goes before his followers into battle and is personally involved.

The foundational fabric of a leader is started with an insatiable inquisitiveness, a willingness to take the initiative, and a passion to be personally involved. Now it is up to that leader to recognize that these traits need constant shaping and refinement so that the leader is more aware, can pause and access the best way to respond and then adjust their behaviors in powerful and profound ways that lead to different and more effective outcomes and performances.

The Right Life Experiences ~ How do you take a person cut from rough fabric and refine them into a leader? For one thing, the kind of life experiences that forms the person into the kind of leader they want to be. It is in this sense that true leaders are made, not just born.

Experience can be a difficult and hard teacher. The ups and downs of one's experiences can be dramatic and often painful and full of ups and downs. These tests and difficulties are the kind of experiences every leader must endure and understand. How often crushing defeats and deep humiliation follow hard on the heels of our greatest victories. By understanding our tendencies, our weaknesses and behaviors, a leader is learning to access and better adjust to behave in more effective and productive ways.

All those things leaders learned by experiences helps sustain and preserve them. Sometimes the experiences are distressing, painful and bitter. Other times they are encouraging, uplifting and glorious. Either way, a leader makes the most of these experiences, gleaning from them lessons that help make them into great leaders.

The Right Character ~ Character is absolutely critical in leadership. It does matter in leadership. It matters a lot. In fact, character is what makes leadership possible. People simply cannot respect or trust those who lack character. And if they do not respect the person, they will not follow them. Time and truth go hand in hand. Leaders without character eventually disappoint their followers and lost their confidence. The only reason such people are often popular is that they make other people who have no character feel better about themselves. But they are not REAL leaders.

Lasting leadership is grounded in character. Character produces respect. Respect produces trust. And trust motivates followers. True leadership is properly associated with character qualities like, integrity, trustworthiness, respectability, unselfishness, humility, self-discipline, submission, restraint, self-control, courage, authenticity, story teller, decisive, to name a few.

What leaders come to mind that exhibit these qualities? I can name a few ordinary people who became extraordinary leaders through trail and error and a yearning to become the best version of themselves.

If you want to grow then you must change. Change involves the unknown. The unknown is risky and scary. Real personal growth takes time and it is hard, risky and scary work. You need to slow down and become more curious about yourself; more aware with purpose and intention that will lead to new outcomes and performance for you, your team and your organization. Are you ready for that journey? We would love to hear from you with comments or questions. Send me a note via email at brad@aperiocoaching.net or on Twitter @bparcells.

In Latin, Aperio means to reveal, uncover, to make clear. Coaching is a powerful process of coaching leaders through personal transformation that enables the leader to reveal and illuminate their authentic leadership style.

Why even the most successful Executives needs an effective Coach

Why would a highly successful executive need a coach? To Become a Better Leader. Why? Because they want to grow and are intentional about their development. In my experience coaching leaders, I find three situations that typically arise with leaders who want to grow.

• They are a leader who simply wants to grow. They are intentional about their growth and love the learning and actual application. All great leaders want to keep growing.
• They are a leader who has suffered a setback. Growing leaders learn the most during times of personal challenge. They learn more who they are and what's missing and are rocked out of their day to day leadership trance - they look within themselves to better understand how their thoughts, emotions and behaviors contributed to their situations instead of blaming others.
• They are a leader who wants to leave a legacy. They want to impact lives by being somebody else's leadership hero. If you want to touch or engage the hearts and souls of others, you must do so with your own heart and soul.

So, if any or all of the situations describe you, you need a new model and new tools to lead yourself more effectively, close the gaps, increase your influence and capacity to lead yourself and others. Will Rogers said, "Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."

Ex Google CEO, Eric Schmidt has said that the best advice he ever got was to hire an executive coach. When one of his board members suggested this, Schmidt resisted because he didn’t think he needed a coach. But in an interview with Fortune Magazine he said “everyone needs a coach.” Schmidt's initial reaction is not surprising. There are usually three roadblocks to getting better and leadership growth. These barriers keep leaders from seeing themselves as they really are. One or more of these is present in every leader I know.

1. Too much Autopilot ~ this is the trance where life is happening to you and your responses are automatic. You react and don't have time to think about it and it mostly works for you and helps you to accomplish, participate and lead. Autopilot is a useful shortcut for leaders to get a lot of things done. Autopilot is doing things the way we have always done them, reacting to people, situations the way we have always reacted - usually leading to getting the same results. Autopilot and growth do not go together. It must be disengaged and turned off. How do you do that? By becoming more AWARE and this is where we meet the second roadblock.
2. Using Less than 100% of Ourselves ~ Growing as a leader is more than raising your emotional intelligence or getting smarter at leadership competencies like communication, time management, delegation. Leadership growth does encompass all of these and more. If you want to be the best version of yourself, you must be AWARE of who shows up. Leading with 100% of yourself means recognizing that here are four distinct aspects or leadership dimensions of yourself that contribute to who you are as a leader: your physical body, your intellectual mind, your emotional heart and your spiritual essence. I tell leaders that they posses everything they need to be a better leader, they are just not using all of it.
3. Failing to See How One's greatest strengths are connected to their greatest weaknesses ~ Here is a simple example. Before the advent of power tools, the carpenter's best tool was his hammer and his greatest strength was hammering. He drove nails, built, achieved and got a lot of things done with his hammer. However, if the situation called for a different strength and behavior but the carpenter insisted that his greatest strength would carry the day and he kept hammering, how do you think the situation turned out? This silly example describes many leaders and offers a glimpse of how one's greatest strength and greatest weakness are related to one another.

So, if you want to grow, you must change. Change involves the unknown. The unknown is risky and scary. Real personal growth is risky and scary. If you are going to find real answers that lead to substantial change in yourself, you have to be willing to take on this risk with a trusted partner.

How would a successful executive benefit from a coach? Numerous studies provide ample data affirming the extraordinary results that can be achieved by utilizing a top executive coach. So, how will coaching help a leader get past these roadblocks? A leader needs to follow three steps to increase their impact and effectiveness.

• Become more AWARE ~ At the top of an organization you have a unique perspective, but that perspective is also limited by your position of power. A leader needs to slow down and be more aware of themselves as it help them lead mindfully instead of mindlessly. New ways of showing up and behaving lead to new and more effective outcomes. This is hard work but is the area where leaders generally grow the most.
• With more Awareness You Are Able To Better ASSESS ~ Now the leader is in a better position to assess. Assessing is all about measuring and evaluating, taking an accurate snapshot of oneself and one's capabilities in their present situation.
• Which Leads to ADJUST ~ Here adjust means change and is the real pay off step. Adjust means to behave differently. Real change shows up in your thoughts and emotions which lead to your actions.

To make these steps last, one will need to continue with two critical observations about oneself for lasting change. Both of these help us turn off the Autopilot, learn new things and accomplish real change in ourselves. First, you need to be more CURIOUS - ABOUT YOURSELF. Always evaluating, asking questions and getting honest feedback, just like when you were a child. Second, you need to BE PATIENT. Real change takes time. This is hard for leaders because everyone looks to you for answers. You are not going to change overnight, but you can begin to change overnight.

Coaching is a partnership in which you and your coach designs a plan based on your agenda – taking what’s inside and translating it into goals that you accomplish step-by-step. An executive coach is one of the few people you are able to honestly expose yourself without any judgement. Coaching is a place to test out ideas and strategy with someone you trust who has no vested interest or competing agenda. Your coach gives you objective and constructive feedback on your blind spots, and provides a very important outside perspective on the business and your team.

It is my hope you got one or two nuggets from this article so you have a little more clarity on your development and finding a coach to work with. What areas would you improve personally & professionally in helping you understand, assess and transform your behaviors for better outcomes and greater leadership effectiveness? We would love to hear from you with comments or questions. Send me a note via email at brad@aperiocoaching.net or on Twitter @bparcells.

In Latin, Aperio means to reveal, uncover, to make clear. Coaching is a powerful process of coaching leaders through personal transformation that enables the leader to reveal and illuminate their authentic leadership style.

Leaders do your emotions have the best of you....or do you have the best of your emotions?

Few leaders get to the top of their organizations and for those that do, the journey can be a very isolating experience. When it comes to some of their biggest decisions and challenges, the ones that go with their leadership roles, they have very few with whom they can talk and think things through. The more success a leader has, the more isolating they become. At the same time leaders are also being challenged to lead in new ways that they have probably not encountered before. Leaders are at the top because others believe only they know what needs to be done.

So, as you gain success and become more isolated what do you do if you are one of those leaders who want to get better at their leadership effectiveness? Were you do turn to be vulnerable about your weaknesses? To whom can you honestly and authentically admit that you do not have all the answers and need help? To grow, you must intentionally engage personal development on your own.

When leaders come to me who believe something is missing, I tell them they possess everything they need to be a better leader; they are just not using all of it. Maybe 60 - 80% of their potential, but not 100%. That's why they need a new leadership model to close that gap. Are you aware of your gap?

One of the concepts I use with leaders to become the best version of themselves focuses on four leadership dimensions: Physical, Emotional, Intellectual and Spiritual and how leaders are using these dimensions in all their situations and conversations. These all define how we are showing up and interacting with our life and our world and the resulting outcomes. This tool really helps the leader become much more aware of themselves in any and all situations, conversations and relationships. It really breaks up the Autopilot of racing through our day, our interactions and situations and pausing to look deeper at ourselves.

This article is going to only focus on a few elements of the Emotional dimension.

In the course of any given day, as I listen to leaders, I am highly aware of the variety of emotions that fill their rooms: Fear, Anger, Gladness, Sorrow, Guilt and Shame. What I know about emotions is that they play a key role on how we behave, how we react, how we are showing up as leaders. Emotions give us a way that helps explain things for us. How's that?

Here is a simple formula: EVENT + EMOTION = EXPLANATION. Every one of us makes meaning in this way. This is basic DNA on how we view and interact with life. What's important to our effectiveness as leaders is do are emotions have the best of us (reactive) or do we have the best of our emotions (creative)?

As for me, in a variety of past leadership roles I can honestly say that I was reacting to all situations. I was trying to stay above the water line in an angry sea. I reacted and responded quickly without much thought ~ just trying to survive with my head trash, constantly pissed off, wanting to punch the next sea wall that came my way. And it would not let up. Gulping down seawater while riding wave after wave. I wanted desperately to make the right choices, but not understanding my emotions blinded my clarity. As such, my reactions were negative and unproductive. And they were harming everyone involved. 

I was on edge and it was dark, cold and wet. Each time I was triggered, I behaved the same way and got the same results. Looking back I can tell you I was responding by being on Autopilot. Not having to think, just an automatic response.  Autopilot blinded my clarity. We have all been on Autopilot. The numbness of making decisions as life comes at you.  It is like being on a hamster wheel that brings us the same outcomes as before. 

Sure Autopilot can bring on successful results, until it doesn’t. Then what….. well for me I got focused and chose to get off Autopilot to better understand how to control my emotions instead of them controlling me. I started to define, feel and recognize (to be more aware) of my emotions, the triggers that set them off and being accountable and owning them ~ I found this as my only path to understanding my emotions and consciously choosing different responses that led to healthier outcomes. 

One of the many things I do in my line of profession is to work with leaders in helping them see and understand for themselves that they must get off autopilot for things to really change. Nothing changes until the autopilot is turned off and that’s when real and transformational change happens. 

Emotions are not good or bad. They are neutral but what is good or bad is whether or not they are in charge or if we are in charge. What I have learned about myself and working with leaders is our emotions impact what we are thinking and our thoughts lead to our actions that result in our outcomes. The key is to be always conscious and curious of emotions that are driving you. When we run on Autopilot that is often to our detriment, especially the more extreme the situation and the intensity of the emotion. The more we are on autopilot during an intense emotion we are more vulnerable to behaviors that are controlling and managing us as opposed to recognizing our emotions and adjusting our behaviors accordingly and more productively.

Here is a quick primer on Emotions. There are a lot of words in our vocabulary to describe emotions; maybe 170 - 180 adjectives we use to describe our feelings and these adjectives can be broken down into 5 main emotions. Those five are broken down into 4 primary and 1 secondary emotion: Glad, Mad, Sad, Scared and Shame. The distinction being that our primary emotions are hard wired into us from birth. Emotions are really our first language we communicate with without using language. No one had to teach us any of these 4 emotions and that is why they are primary.

As we age, we continue to get certain messages about our emotions. We are either told to suppress or express our emotions. We are emotional beings and when we try to suppress or completely negate our emotions they will eventually show up in our behavior at the wrong time and place and we lose our ability to identify what is making us tick, what is setting us off, what we are thinking, why we are behaving the way we are? 

Each of the primary emotions can be defined as the relationship between me and what I want. A lot of times we are vague in defining what we want. Sometimes we don’t even feel entitled to what we want. As defined then……………………..

GLAD is an emotion that expresses “I have what I want”. I am GLAD that I have…
MAD is an emotion that expresses “There is a barrier between me and what I want.”
SAD is an emotion that expresses “What I want has been taken away from me.”
SCARED is an emotion that expresses “What I want could be taken away from me.”

Notice by the way that each of those takes place in a different reference of time. 

GLAD and MAD are generally experienced when something is happening in the moment. I have what I want or there is a barrier right now to what I want. It is very present.  SAD has to do with the past. It has happened in the past. SCARED or afraid is about the future. Being SCARED or afraid is an emotion of the head. Our intellect creates scenarios that cause us to feel scared, fearful or anxious. We are imagining what can happen.  We make stuff up even if we do not have good reasons to do so. It is about the future and it is all in our head emotionally.

The 5th emotion is SHAME. SHAME is the single secondary emotion because it is not hard wired into us and it generally comes from our exterior world. SHAME comes as a result of a painful experience, something we did or we were shamed by someone else, such as a teacher, a coach or other authority figure and in some cases our qualifier that we are not enough, that we do not measure up, not adequate enough, not worthy.

SHAME can be linked with GUILT, but they are different. The best way to define SHAME and differentiate it from GUILT is: SHAME is: “I am Wrong.” SHAME is within me………… while GUILT is “I have done something wrong.” 

You may not have SHAME but at least a third to half of the leaders I work with experience this emotion on a frequent basis on some degree. SHAME shows up when you feel embarrassed, lack self-confidence, I am not good enough; I don’t have what it takes. It is a notion of imperfection not adequate enough. This is how SHAME shows up.

Let’s conclude by asking what are the emotions are you feeling as you read this? Are you feeling or ignoring your emotions? Is there someone/something else outside of this article that is also impacts your emotions? What do you want to do with that? Are you letting your emotions show? Is this helpful? What emotions might others detect in me?

It is my hope you got one or two nuggets from this article so you have a little more clarity on emotions and how to modify and ultimately transform your behaviors for better outcomes and greater leadership effectiveness.  We would love to hear from you with comments or questions. Send me a note via email at brad@aperiocoaching.net or on Twitter @bparcells.

In Latin, Aperio means to reveal, uncover, to make clear. Coaching is a powerful process of coaching leaders through personal transformation that enables the leader to reveal and illuminate their authentic leadership style.

Leadership Development ~ A Business Imperative In Today's Complex VUCA World

In 2010, IBM interviewed over 1,500 CEO's worldwide to learn what their top challenges were and their strategies for addressing them (Capitalising on Complexity: Insights from the Global CEO). Two challenges emerged at the top of the list: 1) escalating complexity, and 2) building the creative capacity in leadership to deal with it. These same two themes remain in IBM's 2012 and 2014 studies as well.  Complexity will only continue to escalate, as well as the leadership challenge to deal with it.

Let's bring this closer to home. It is no surprise then, that the environments in which we work and live are becoming increasingly more complex. We are experiencing the mix of mounting challenges, multiple polarities and problems and complex situations with hidden points of leverage.

Within organizations these complexities require leaders to decide when and how they need to evolve and transform themselves to meet these challenges head on. It requires different ways of thinking, acting and being ~ a higher level of consciousness. Failure to adapt and evolve results in the ways of the Dinosaurs. Einstein said, "The solutions to our current problems can't be solved from the level of consciousness that created them." They can only be solved with a higher order of leadership consciousness, one that is more elaborate than the complexity we face.

The VUCA model identifies the internal and external conditions affecting organization's and their leaders today. VUCA stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. Briefly.....

Volatility ~ the nature, speed, volume, and magnitude of change that is not in a predictable pattern. Think of turbulence with increasing intensity and persisting for longer periods than in the past.

Uncertainty ~ the lack of predictability in issues and events. These volatile times make it difficult for leaders to use past issues and events as predictors of future outcomes, making forecasting extremely difficult and challenging.

Complexity ~ there are often numerous and difficult to understand causes and mitigating factors (both inside and outside the organization) involved in a problem. This layer of complexity, added to the turbulence of change and the absence of past predictors, adds to the difficulty of decision making. It also leads to confusion, which can cause ambiguity.

Ambiguity ~ the lack of clarity about the meaning of an event or the causes which leads to an increasing challenge of accurately conceptualizing threats and opportunities. It can be the ‘who, what, where, how, and why’ behind the things that are happening that are unclear and hard to ascertain.

Clearly VUCA puts the effectiveness of leadership at a premium. How are leaders individually and collectively evolving to meet these challenges? Does the organizational culture match and reward this premium?

Within the executive and senior leadership team ranks there is much dialogue around the level of leaders individual and collective development, that must, at a minimum, keep pace with the rate of change and increasing complexity. Not to keep pace is to become less effective and relevant. Let me again ask, "how are you and your leaders evolving to meet these challenges? What are your organizational and leadership development strategies and tactics in developing more agile and conscious leaders? How are you fostering a culture that rewards behaviors and retains agile leaders in a VUCA environment?

Mastering leadership is not easily developed. In fact, it is uncommon and rare. Why is that? Here are three possible reasons:

• Bookstores, social media, conferences and workshops are full of the latest secrets to leadership success. Much of it reduces the development of leaders to a set of quick-fix skills and steps. We're busy people and we are accustomed to getting things right away. We'll use those new skills and steps for a couple of weeks, but we'll always revert back to our old behaviors, thoughts and actions. There is no sustainable growth or development. 
• Developing leadership effectiveness often gets sidelined because we resist the vulnerability of learning and changing. Additionally, we carefully guard our credibility and want to be seen as a highly capable and strong leader. To be viewed as effective others turn to and expect us to get things done and we do. Mostly, we respond automatically reacting to people and situations. So what's wrong with that? It is a leadership blind spot we call Too Much Autopilot! Autopilot helps leaders get things done. It is about doing things the way we've always done them and getting the same outcomes. However, autopilot and growth don't go together. If we want new outcomes we have to disengage the Autopilot. It takes courage to face the truth about ourselves.
• Most of the development of leadership effectiveness is driven towards skill and competency development. That's good and needed, but growing as a leader is more than dressing the part or raising your EQ or getting smarter at a leadership competency like delegation, time management, communications. Leadership growth encompasses all of these and more. It requires transformation. To be the best version of yourself, you need to understand that the development of your leadership effectiveness into mastery is a profound process and requires a restructuring and transforming of oneself into a higher form. Then you will begin to understand why it is not for the faint of heart. Why it is rare and uncommon and a journey with no shortcuts.

The VUCA inherent in today’s business world is the “new normal”, and it is profoundly changing not only how organizations do business, but how leaders lead. The skills and abilities leaders once needed to help their organizations thrive are no longer sufficient. Today, much more is required of our leaders. 

Executive and leadership coaches and other talent management professionals can help leaders succeed in today’s VUCA environment by providing a confidential and partnering relationship that helps the leader understand "autopilot", turn it off and see the possibilities of change. It is this new awareness and consciousness and the partnering relationship that takes leaders through personal transformation. The commitment to develop effective leadership as a strategic priority, in this VUCA world, must be made because of its dramatic impact on leaders and organizational performance. What is your destiny? Are you ready, willing and able?

I hope this article has been helpful. What are your thoughts? How would you begin to break through and begin shifting your focus and behaviors in achieving new and different outcomes? We would love to hear from you with comments or questions. Send me a note via email at brad@aperiocoaching.net or on Twitter @bparcells. 

In Latin, Aperio means to reveal, uncover, to make clear. Coaching is a powerful process of coaching leaders through personal transformation that enables the leader to reveal and illuminate their authentic leadership style.

8 Qualities Of Truly Confident Leaders

Confidence is an important attribute in any situation, especially when leading yourself and leading others.  Confidence can be understated as a natural expression of ability, expertise and self-regard. Humility is a word that comes to mind. It can also be bold and at times brash and cocky ~ to the point of being over confident. We all have a choice on how we want to exhibit our strengths, our confidence. The important thing is how and why we are making those choices.


For example, how aware and conscious are you when you make your choices? Are you on automatic pilot? How committed are you to your choices? How are those choices impacting how you show up in all situations and conversations and how others see you?  What are your results? For instance, one can choose to under utilize confidence by being more compliant and protecting or overused in the form of controlling.


It is critical for a leader to fully understand how and why they do the things they do. To be consciously aware to turn off the autopilot. As a leadership and executive coach, I find in myself and those I work with that our key strengths can also be our greatest weakness. I am also fortunate to know a number of truly confident people, who have turned off the autopilot and really developed their ability to mindfully use new behaviors that lead to new outcomes. It comes as no surprise they all share a number of qualities and these 8 are what I have observed.


1. They take a stand not because they think they are always right… but because they are not afraid to be wrong.


Cocky and conceited people tend to take a position and then proclaim, bluster, and totally disregard differing opinions or points of view. They know they’re right – and they want (actually they need) you to know it too (see controlling). Their behavior isn’t a sign of confidence, though; it’s the hallmark of an intellectual bully.


Truly confident people don’t mind being proven wrong. They feel finding out what is right is a lot more important than being right. And when they’re wrong, they’re secure enough to back down graciously. Truly confident people often admit they’re wrong or don’t have all the answers; intellectual bullies never do.


2. They freely ask for help.


The more success you have moving up and through the leadership ladder can be an increasingly isolating experience. Where then do you turn for help? Who can you be vulnerable with about your weaknesses? To whom can you admit that you do not possess all the answers? Many people feel asking for help is a sign of weakness; implicit in the request is a lack of knowledge, skill, or experience.


I have found well developed and confident leaders are secure enough to admit a weakness and seek others for help. Not only because they are secure enough to admit they need help but also because they know that when they seek help they pay the person they ask a huge compliment. Saying, “Can you help me?” shows tremendous respect for that individual’s expertise and judgment. Otherwise you wouldn't ask.


3. They listen way more than they speak.


Bragging is a mask for insecurity. Truly confident people are quiet and unassuming. They already know what they think; they want to know what you think.


So they ask open-ended questions that give other people the freedom to be thoughtful and introspective: They ask what you do, how you do it, what you like about it, what you learned from it… and what they should do if they find themselves in a similar situation.


Truly confident people realize they know a lot, but they wish they knew more… and they know the only way to learn more is to listen more and develop as a leader.


4. They shine the spotlight on others.


Maybe they did most of the work. And maybe they turned a bunch of individuals into a high performance team. Here’s the difference, truly confident people don’t need the glory; they know what they’ve achieved. They don’t need the validation of others, because true validation comes from within.


So they stand back and celebrate their accomplishments through others. They stand back and let others shine – a confidence boost that helps those people become truly confident, too.

5. They don't put down other people.


Generally speaking, the people who like to gossip, who like to speak badly of others, do so because they hope by comparison to make themselves look better.


The only comparison a truly confident person makes is to the person she was yesterday – and to the person she hopes to someday become.


6. They own their mistakes.


Insecurity tends to breed artificiality; confidence breeds sincerity and honesty.


That’s why truly confident people admit their mistakes. They dine out on their screw-ups. They don’t mind serving as a cautionary tale. They don’t mind being a source of a learning lesson for others and for themselves.


7. They think, “Why not me?”


Many people feel they have to wait to be promoted, to be discovered, to be selected, to be chosen.


Truly confident people know that access is almost universal. They can connect with almost anyone through social media. (Everyone you know knows someone you should know.) They know they can create their own products, build their own relationships and networks, choose their own path – they can choose to follow whatever course they wish. And very quietly, without calling attention to themselves, they go out and do it.


8. They constantly work on their personal development.


They understand that to make leadership growth last they need to remain curious and be patient. They realize that over time to find substantive growth that leads to substantive change in them they must be highly curious. This is hard for leaders because everyone looks to them for answers.  Confident leaders are very curious about themselves.  


They also realize that change does not happen overnight. Real change takes time and patience. They have a mantra that says, “I am not going to change overnight, but I can begin to change overnight.”


As a leader, maybe you share all of these qualities of confident leaders or maybe a few. If it is the later are you asking yourself “how can I develop more of these qualities and how do I start?” Will Rogers said it best when he said, “Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” If you want to grow and be more confident, you must change. Change involves the unknown. The unknown is risky. Real personal growth is risky, but the rewards are profound.


I hope this article has been helpful. What are your thoughts on this topic? How would you begin to break through and begin shifting your focus on becoming a more self aware and confident leader? We would love to hear from you with comments or questions. Send me a note via email at brad@aperiocoaching.net or on Twitter @bparcells.


In Latin, Aperio means to reveal, uncover, to make clear. Coaching is a powerful process of coaching leaders through personal transformation that enables the leader to reveal and illuminate their authentic leadership style.

Self-Awareness is Critical for Effective Leadership

As a leadership coach, we work with clients who want to make real changes in their professional and personal lives. In order for that partnership to flourish, the coach must have a high degree of self-awareness and the leader must be willing to take a serious and sometimes difficult review of their self-awareness before the deeper work begins.

Self-awareness is one of the least discussed leadership competencies and might be one of the most valuable. Self-awareness is about knowing your strengths and areas where you are not strong and honestly admitting where the learning gaps are and what needs to be developed. This includes admitting when you don't know the answer. That can be counter intuitive and a scary proposition for leaders operating in highly competitive environments. Many of us operate on the belief that we must appear to know everything or else others will question our abilities. We hide our deficiencies and are taught at an early age to not expose our vulnerabilities. This leads to diminishing our effectiveness as leaders and only compounds our fears, guilt and shame. That's not a prescription for courage and to daring greatly.


Here’s a little secret, whether you acknowledge your weaknesses or not, everyone still sees them. The leader who tries to hide weaknesses actually exposes them, creating the perception of a lack of integrity and authenticity. Clearly, not where a leader wants to be. Why, because it diminishes trust and leads to disengagement. No organization can thrive in the absence of creativity, innovation and learning and the greatest threat to all three of these is disengagement. So rather than conceal them, get some feedback or better yet find a coach to help you with this process. Clearly, organizations benefit more from leaders who take responsibility for what they don't know than from leaders who pretend to know it all.


Acknowledging the need to become better at anything is only the beginning, and it's often the most difficult step.  Understanding how to change into something that works for you is what makes the path to self-awareness so challenging. It will be very important to solicit honest feedback about your performance from others and here are three ideas: 

• You can get it through 360 assessments where peers, superiors and reports provide feedback on all aspects of your behavior. 
• You can also take time in your day to reflect on your interactions and events with others by asking yourself three questions: what went right? What did not go well? What will I do differently the next time? 
• Or you can take it a step further and do regular post consults with others by asking effective questions and then listening without justifying or defending your actions. You will need a high degree of emotional intelligence (EI) to do this well. EI is defined as awareness of your own and others' emotions, and how they are impacted by situations. EI is a skill that can be cultivated in everyone.

Let’s examine this last option a little deeper. The skill of asking effective questions can be invaluable to you and your organization. However, when the question is about your own performance it can be harder to be objective about negative feedback. When you show that you are equally open to all types of feedback, you demonstrate self-awareness and the willingness to learn. Asking questions is a transparent approach to problem solving and decision-making and helps lead to a more self-aware organization. An organization that is self-aware is open to learning and better equipped to anticipate and/or to adjust quickly to changes in the marketplace. These are solid reasons why leaders at all levels should include self-awareness in their development goals.


As you are receiving feedback it's extremely important that you listen without judgment and not defend your actions. By effectively listening on what is said and what is not being said, accepting the feedback without defending yourself, you are more likely to hear what you really need to hear and increase your credibility and authenticity with the person giving the feedback. 


On an interpersonal level, self-awareness of your strengths and weaknesses can enhance trusting relationships and increase your credibility and improve your emotional intelligence -- both of which will increase your leadership effectiveness. On an organizational level, the benefits are greater. When you acknowledge what you have yet to learn, you're modeling in your organization that it's okay to admit you don't have all the answers, to make mistakes and most importantly, to ask for help. These are all characteristics of an organization that is constantly learning and learning from vulnerability and further facilitates more innovation, engagement and agility.


To begin to increase your self-awareness, seek feedback on your performance from others by asking good questions and listening without justifying or defending your actions. Remember, organizations benefit far more from leaders who take responsibility for what they don't know than from leaders who pretend to know it all.


What are your thoughts on this topic? How would you begin to break through your filters to begin shifting your focus on becoming a self aware leader? We would love to hear from you with comments or questions. Send me a note via email at brad@aperiocoaching.net or on Twitter @bparcells.


In Latin, Aperio means to reveal, uncover, to make clear. Coaching is a powerful process that enables the client to reveal and illuminate their authentic leadership style via a sharp focus on who they are at the core.