How do significant life events impact leadership perspectives?

I have always believed in fully experiencing what’s happening around me and not letting it pass. I feel particularly attracted by the concept of ‘moments’ of leadership. 

My earliest moment of leadership was when my boss had an unexpected family emergency and I was put in charge by default. While fully aware of the details of the project, I had never worked with the other folks from a “decision- making” perspective. I was apprehensive, to say the least. I used all the information that I had at my disposal, engaged in dialogue and came to a decision that would impacted quite a few people. When I left the meeting, I remember thinking “Fortunately I knew what all of that was about.” That has remained one of the tenets of my leadership code – knowledge and expertise. With experience, my dependence on it has lessened, but it continues to guide me. 

Another leadership moment was when I had to take a call as an HR Business partner. It brought into focus how tenaciously I hold onto my own values and the repercussions this has in an organisational context. I wanted to be competent HR leader, I wanted to do right by both the manager and the employee. Sometimes that’s at loggerheads with doing right for the business. I reached out to more experienced colleagues to discuss my dilemma. That brings me to another moment - always having the courage to reach out and ask for support. 

Looking back today, I realise that these moments have continued to define me and have been refined over the years. 

Doesn’t mean I haven’t failed. But I have never stopped trying, just to avoid failure. In the long run trying to avoid failure by out-thinking it, ironically, dooms one to fail. Through experience I know that failure is painful, and my feelings about this pain can overshadow the understanding of its worth. But I have seen the value of experimenting and I have truly come to believe ‘There is nothing such as failure, only feedback’. That has cascaded to the way I teach too, I don’t offer solutions, I make people cull out solutions from their own crucial conversations. 

This puts me in touch with two themes that have come into my life and of other leaders that I have observed time and again - Self leadership and Purpose. 

How can you ensure that your ‘moments of leadership’ contribute to your vision of self-leadership and purpose? 

Match the response to the context- As a leader you have sometimes got to be a decision maker, sometimes a listener, sometimes a coach, other times a task master. Being a leader means appreciating the entire spectrum of what others bring to the table. The analogy I am often reminded is ‘Playing the Piano’. If we limit ourselves to a few keys, we can only play some specific tunes. We need to experiment and learn, create some bad music - and yet the more practice and use the entire keyboard we can create our own beautiful music. 

Leadership, as most of us will experience, is not a systematic, manageable set of actions but a long and tentative exploration, full of false starts and small triumphs.

Build an experiential sense of purpose- As Herminia Ibarra beautifully articulates in ‘Working Identity’ – we need to act our way into thinking and being. We are made up of hundreds of possible ‘selves’, we need to decide which of those we want to test and learn more about. Reflection has its place, but probing whether we really want what we think we want is a more useful way to identify our purpose and what truly energizes us, and hence maximises the value we can bring to our context. 

Though I imagined facilitating learning for groups and one-on-one coaching to be equal contributors to my Leadership Practice, only by engaging in both over a period of time, I have discovered that my energy replenishment process works quite differently for both of these skill sets I am well versed with. So I now make a conscious choice of accepting only a chosen number of Executive Coaching assignments. 

Who are you? 

What do you care about? 

What do you do? 

These are three questions that a lived leadership journey will help you answer. They are significant in your journey of Leadership Branding. Only with a deep awareness of your identity, values and experimenting with various versions of your ‘self’ can you define your Leadership Brand.