Discovering your Leadership Identity and Style through Curiosity and Experimentation
Photo by Josh Mills on Unsplash
In today’s dynamic landscape, where the terrain is ever-shifting, discovering your authentic leadership style can feel like navigating a maze. Why does it seem so elusive? Perhaps because the path to authenticity is often obscured by societal expectations, corporate norms, and the relentless pursuit of success. In a world drowning with leadership models, and best practices, the pressure to conform can drown out your voice of individuality. You often feel that there is only a handful of leadership styles that will bring you success, so you try to emulate, often unsuccessfully, or in way that is unsustainable. True leadership emerges not from conformity but from curiosity and experimentation – exploring what is within yourself to unearth your unique leadership DNA.
Finding your true voice as a leader requires a journey of self-discovery, rooted in curiosity and experimentation. It requires a willingness to look inwards first, an openness to explore new ideas, challenge assumptions, and step outside of your comfort zone. It is through this process of exploration that you can uncover hidden talents, find ways to shine a light on your strengths and forge your unique leadership style.
Here are a few steps to start on this journey:
1. Self-reflection: Begin by taking time for introspection. Reflect on your values, strengths, and areas for growth. Journaling or creating quiet space can help clarify your thoughts and emotions, providing insights into your authentic self.
2. Embrace Curiosity: Cultivate a mindset of curiosity by asking questions, seeking new experiences, and challenging assumptions. Explore diverse perspectives and ideas, both within and outside your industry, to widen your perspectives.
3. Set Experimentation Goals: Define specific goals for experimentation in your leadership journey. Identify areas where you’d like to grow or innovate and outline experiments to test new approaches or ideas. Start small and gradually expand your experiments as you gain confidence.
4. Seek Feedback: Actively seek feedback from peers, mentors and team members. Create a safe space for honest dialogue and constructive criticism. Embrace feedback as an opportunity for growth and learning, rather than as criticism. Use feedback as an opportunity to understand what works and doesn’t work for you, so you can really lean into your strengths in developing your authentic leader self.
5. Step Outside your Comfort Zone: Challenge yourself to step outside your comfort zone and embrace discomfort as a catalyst for growth. Take on new challenges, volunteer for leadership opportunities, and push yourself to try new things.
6. Learn from Setbacks: Embrace failure as a natural part of the experimentation process. Instead of viewing failure as a setback, see it as an opportunity to learn and iterate. Analyze what went wrong, extract valuable insights, and apply them to future experiments.
Ultimately, finding your true leadership style is about more than just mastering the skills and techniques of effective leadership – it’s about understanding who you are at your core, what values you hold dear, and where your strengths lie. Only then can you truly harness the confidence and power within yourdelf to lead authentically and inspire others.
AI Assistant’s Note: For full transparency we have used our trusted AI sidekick to polish the language, grammar and organisation of the content, but the ideas expressed are original and all human.