Lead Like You (Not Like Them)

In the pursuit of becoming a leader, we often default to copying what we see around us and end up leading like someone else.

It’s very normal to compare ourselves to the leaders we admire, but comparison limits and restricts.

The truth is, there is no single right way to lead.

Some leaders make waves. Others calm storms. Some organize the details. Others dream into the future. All are valid. All are needed.

Leadership isn’t a specific personality, a specific style or a specific skill set. Leadership is as diverse as humans are.

Leadership is an honest expression of unique values, strengths, and presence offered in service of others.

You might be a gatherer, a guide, a supporter, a challenger, a protector, a creative, a stabiliser. You might lead with empathy. With insight. With joy. With strategy. With steadiness. With courage. None of those are greater and none of those are lesser.

When you show up as your true self, your leadership flows from there.

The tricky thing is, there are often cultural norms, organisational structures and leaders who create and maintain specific definitions of leadership. Those existing beliefs and norms can create barriers to diverse expressions of leaders. However, just because they exist doesn’t make them true.

In my own leadership journey, I had incredible support for me to be myself and lead in my own unique ways. Not without opposition, but I had support from leaders who believed in my unique contribution to the world.

When I hear the stories of people, mostly women, I hear heartbreaking amounts of discouragement and condemnation from their communities and leaders. This is why I started intentionally supporting people in discovering and living into their unique values, strengths and presence.

Leaders often cultivate other leaders who remind them of themselves. As there has been a cultural norm of dominant, vocal and male-energy leaders for so long, that is the style of leadership that is most often developed in others. But, by me leading like me and helping you learn how to lead like you, we will shift the norms of leadership and that will change our spheres of relationships, our communities and that will ripple out into the world.

In a lot of ways, exploring diverse expressions of leadership is pioneering. It’s about seeing what exists and dreaming of what doesn’t yet exist… and living into that dream.

If you’ve been self-disqualifying or experiencing limiting cultural norms, I want you to know that you having a desire to lead is not wrong, or bad or out of line. It might just be that people have never experienced a leader like you, and they don’t know how to respond.

You stepping into who you are and leading from your own values, strengths and presence is what will change the cultural norms and structures. Probably not quickly, but you being you will impact those around you. And that is leadership.

You get to determine what leadership means to you. And, you get to determine how you lead.

Please do! We need the unique contribution that is within you!

Stop trying to lead like others and start learning how to lead like you.

With you in the journey,
Justine

Reflection:

In light of your unique values, strengths and presence, what are some of the ways you already lead?