Joelle K. Jay

leadership roles

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Beliefs of a Leader

Your beliefs are a powerful driving force that can work for you or against you. Some beliefs empower you, while others limit you. By becoming aware of your beliefs, you can keep the ones that serve you, weed out the ones that don’t, and choose the ones that will support who you want to be.

Here’s an example. A common belief of busy leaders is, “I have to work hard to get ahead.” Immediately the limitations of this belief are apparent. Working from this belief implies that you must sacrifice parts of your life (home life, health, and hobbies come to mind) to “get ahead.”

Now consider this belief instead: “I have to be my best to get ahead.” This belief is more empowering, because it opens up the possibilities. It still accepts the potential for working hard if that is what’s required, but it also allows for the fact that getting ahead sometimes means taking time for the rest and renewal that keeps you at your best.

An example can illustrate how to turn a limiting belief into an empowering belief. Andy was the president of a structural engineering firm who was raised to believe that if you compliment people too much, they become lazy. He was afraid to commend his team, because he believed that to do so would take away all motivation. His belief limited his ability to praise the people who worked for him, and they were becoming bitter and resentful.

To turn the situation around, Andy studied his limiting belief:

“If I praise people too much, they will become lazy.”

As long as he believed this, he would never be the supportive leader his firm needed. He could see that unless he tried something new, he was going to lose support. He tried this empowering belief instead:

“If I praise people more, they will become inspired.”

Andy rehearsed his new belief by trying it out 100 times. Every time he hesitated to praise someone, he stated his empowering belief to himself and gave them a sincere compliment. Before long, the results – a more agreeable, cooperative staff – convinced him to retain the new belief.

Beliefs are fundamental to the way your life plays out. The difference between a limiting and an empowering belief is quite literally the difference between a limited and a powerful life. Choose your beliefs carefully. They make you who you are.

Developing empowering beliefs is a three-step process.

  1. Become aware of your beliefs. You can go after them directly by asking yourself, “What do I believe,” or you can go after them directly by noticing your behavior and asking yourself, “What would I have to believe to behave this way?”
  2. Write down your beliefs. Take a look at them on paper with some objectivity. For each one, ask yourself, Is this belief limiting or empowering?
  3. Turn limiting beliefs into empowering beliefs. Just change the words, looking for the exact opposite of your limiting belief to find one that’s more empowering.

The process of distilling your beliefs takes time. Allow yourself time to try on different beliefs and see what fits and what doesn’t. Notice when you feel limited and deflated, and when you feel expansive and energized. Keep working with the wording of your beliefs until you’ve created the ones that you can claim with conviction—the beliefs that will help you be the leader you really want to be.

 

Exercise
Use the Your Beliefs worksheet in The Extension to identify a few beliefs that guide your thinking and actions. Assess them. Are they limiting or empowering? How could you develop new beliefs to help you achieve your vision?

The ideas in this article are drawn from The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership and the accompanying eBook called The Extension. The eBook is designed to give you simple, engaging personal leadership exercises and activities to help you be a better leader, and lead a better life. Get your copy today! Click here for a Preview and to Order.

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From Brilliance to the Best

In The Inner Edge, you learned the practice of tapping into your brilliance. You now know your distinct natural attributes, as well as how to leverage them for a more powerful effect. The more you practice applying your DNA strategically to achieve your vision and reach your goals, the more you can do and the better you can do it. Then you’re not just brilliant, you’re truly being your best.

Being Your Best
“Being your best” may sound like a cliché, but let’s think about it more deeply. Each of the three words in that phrase is important.

Being. When you are being your best, you are focusing on the way you are. “Who you be” in any given moment is about your character, your alignment with your vision and values, and your ability to integrate your life and your leadership. It’s not what you do. It’s not what you win. It’s not what you have. It’s who you be that helps you tap into your true unique value. Focusing on the being aspects of your attributes (being caring, being inspirational, being strategic) will tie you to your brilliance.

Your. The biggest difference in being brilliant versus being just good lies in the operative word your. The goal is not to be the best. The goal is to be your best. Being the best is about ego. Being your best is about commitment. Can you be both? Sure. You probably will. But your attention must be on what you can do to succeed – not on beating everyone else. That’s a much more powerful position.

Best. “Best” is a moving target. Have you ever done what you thought was your best, only to surprise yourself by doing even a little bit more? The idea behind being your best is to push past the limits of what you thought your “best” would be. Find the edge – that spot where you really feel you cannot do one iota better. That is your best…for the moment, until next time where you find out yes, you can do even better.

Being your best instead of being the best is the opposite of the “nose to the grindstone” mentality that drives our culture…and drives many leaders to destruction. Being your best is being so yourself that you naturally excel.

And if you’re really ready to Be Your Best, use the worksheet, Your Best, in The Inner Edge: The Extension. Click here to see a preview or to purchase The Extension at https://www.joellekjay.comthe-inner-edge/.

Please join us for The Inner Edge Book Club! This month we will be discussing what it means for your to Be Your Best – and how to get there. For more information, click here or email info@TheInnerEdge.com.

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Don’t Throw the Oars out of the Lifeboat

Adapting to a new reality is hard work. It involves loss and risking incompetence and disorientation and discomfort. People need support to do that.

Those words come from one of the principals of Cambridge Leadership Associates, Marty Linsky, and he should know. He’s an expert in Adaptive Leadership.

During the economic crisis of 2009, Marty noticed that many leaders in failing companies were just trying to survive. Trying to bail themselves out, they frantically threw things overboard. They cut overhead. They fired employees. They cancelled travel. In some cases the things they threw out were the very things they needed to survive.

I’ve noticed the same trend among individual leaders and executives. Frantically trying to do (or keep) their jobs in a tough time, they neglected the support systems that could help them succeed.

Marty was talking with a senior administrator in a large foundation one day. The administrator reported, “The first thing that was cut was professional development for the senior people in the foundation.” In his view, it was “crazy.”

This is the time they really need coaching. Those folks need a structured opportunity to step back from what they’re doing and adjust their skills and adapt their orientation. They need the learning and the strategy. But when people are looking at where to save money, that kind of coaching feels like a frivolous expense.

Sometimes in our haste to manage change, we change the wrong things. We throw the oars out of the lifeboat. That doesn’t lighten the load, it makes you sink.

What do you need to be your best? What keeps you strong? What helps you think? What are the elements of your life that buoy you up?

No matter how busy you are, no matter how crazy life gets, hold onto those oars. That way even if it’s hard you can keep rowing in the direction you want to go.

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Leadership is for Everyone: You Are a Leader

Leadership does not live solely in the corner office anymore, and it’s not just for business executives either. Everyone is a leader in some way. You are a leader.

When I began to speak about leadership, I met some people who truly believed that leadership was not relevant to their lives. They didn’t manage an office, didn’t lead a construction crew, and didn’t have children. How could leadership be applicable to them?

My intuitive answer then is the same as my well-studied answer now: leadership is relevant to each and every one of us. Think of all the ways you interact in life, whether some of those are in a business role or not. I’ll wager that you’ll find that you are a leader in some of your roles.

Here’s something from The Inner Edge that I’d like to share with you: Beyond business leaders, professionals, teachers, and other obvious leadership roles, you’ll find leadership in many aspects of life. Look for it in community activities, families, amongst friends, and in categories such as inspirational and thought leaders.

Look around you, and think of how you are spending your day. You’ve been a leader for others at some point today, and beyond that, you’ve been a leader of your own life all day.

No matter who you are or what you do, you get to take the lead in your life. No one else will do that for you. No one else can. You may or may not have a fancy suit, a nameplate on the door, and an assistant just outside. But every single one of us is leading a life, which may be the most exciting kind of leadership of all.
Excerpt from The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership by Joelle K Jay

Lead your life well: lead it from your Inner Edge.