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Crafting Your Unique Leadership Style: Moving Beyond Mimicking your Boss

Crafting Your Unique Leadership Style: Moving Beyond Mimicking your Boss
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Emerging leaders often kickstart their leadership journey by mirroring the practices of inspirational mentors.

It makes a lot of sense because that's how we learn.

Our brains are wired to emulate others through "mirror neurons", which swiftly replicate emotions and behaviours, serving as a rapid learning shortcut.

Looking to existing leaders in your company for guidance and modelling their behaviours may seem beneficial, but it hinders your personal development long-term. Patching together a hodge-podge of traits that you strive to emulate is limiting. Over time, you become someone you are not. You also risk picking up bad habits from leaders who may not even align with your leadership ideals. 

As Chris Lawton, a change leader at Telstra told me "In the early years, we were heavily coached as leaders to walk and talk a certain way. About ten years into my people leadership journey, I remember thinking to myself, who am I? Because I feel like I'm so heavily coached that I've lost my true way of being. So it's been trying to learn how to become authentic again and have that transparency and connection with people. That's been something for me, which has been a huge opportunity. Learning to come back to be my true self. And the more that I've been able to do that, the better the results have been from the team around culture and engagement."

We can exhaust ourselves, when we try to live up to behaviours and habits that don't even suit our personality. 

Here's the truth: **Leadership isn't about imitation. It's about being the leader you want to be, not who you believe you should be.**

We need to develop our leadership in a more sustainable way. Leading others requires:

CRAFTING YOUR UNIQUE LEADERSHIP STYLE MOVING BEYOND MIMICKING YOUR BOSS-1

1. Knowing who you are 

Improving our self-awareness is key. It means understanding, and embracing our strengths and even weaknesses. It also means knowing how we can best interact with others in a way that works with how we operate, not against it.

Yet, as leaders we often fall into the trap of taking advice and trying to make it fit even though, it doesn't work with our style.

Take the well-meaning advice, Dara Khosrowshahi, the CEO of Uber, received when he first came to Uber. The advice was to "walk the halls' to find out what was really going on in the company.

Despite his best efforts, he found he was so awkward that conversations with his new colleagues went nowhere. Some people even told him to go away. Despite the good intentions behind the advice to help him build authentic connections with his team, it ended up making him feel disingenuous and disheartened.

2. Be intentional in developing your leadership brand

Rather than trying to conform to a specific mould, it's best to seek out a variety of leadership approaches and apply them in the way that suits you. This requires leading intentionally, rather than just going with the flow.

One of my students. Emilie, in my Leadership Mastermind realised that she was a "doer". She prioritised letting her team see all the hard work she was doing to help them and the business. It meant she put enormous pressure on herself to perform.

This leadership approach felt comfortable to Emilie because it was a pattern she observed in her previous bosses. However, as she delved into understanding various leadership styles and the importance of adapting them to suit her own style and the specific circumstances, Emilie recognised the need to challenge herself to explore new ways of leading.

She then set to work on developing her own leadership brand that allowed her to bring more of herself into her leadership. By embracing and experimenting with new frameworks, she transformed into a more effective role model for fellow leaders. She honed her ability to listen attentively, navigate difficult conversations with ease, and create a safe space for individuals to express their negative emotions - aspects she had previously grappled with but had not fully recognised could be optimised.

Emilie made the change through exploring who she really is - her values, her strengths, her attributes, her leadership brand and how she wants to show up on a day-to-day basis.

3. Test and apply new leadership styles

Before introducing a new method or routine to your team, consider how you, as a leader, would approach achieving that goal - not how someone else would.

It's common to fall into the trap of trying to emulate the manager before you or even avoid being like the CEO. Instead, focus on being the leader you have evolved into through your life experiences. Be the leader you want to be, not who you believe you should be.

If you naturally lean towards introversion, it's time to embrace your introspective and contemplative nature instead of trying to engage in superficial conversations while walking the halls, like Khosrowshahi discovered. Embracing who you really are, and working with yourself, not against, not only makes you a better leader, but protects your mental and physical well-being.

It is also liberating. When we try to live up to the perceived standards of others, it can be debilitating. We second-guess ourselves, we feel guilt and shame. But when we lead from the perspective of what we believe is right for our people and right for us, then we are authentic and magnetic.

In the end, no matter the path you choose or the advice you decide to follow, authenticity is key. Only by staying true to yourself, leading through one's own identity and values rather than external influences, can you truly drive change within an organisation.

If you want help to discover who you really are as a leader, and receive leadership tools to adapt to your style, then come and join my Leadership Mastermind program. Enrolments are now open for an October start.

 

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