Inside Out Leadership
How CEOs can achieve the best results for themselves and their organisation
You aspired to be top dog in the organisation, you have achieved that success and yet somehow you do not feel…. well, successful. Irrespective of whether you have a great quarter or a mediocre one, there’s something missing…. your mojo is not there like it was and you want it back.
When you have some space, which is not very often, and you reflect on yourself and your role, you know there is a significant gap between who you are, and who you are being as CEO. You are not always being true to yourself, to your values, your principles and your beliefs. Bridging that gap is critical on two levels:
1. To ensure your leadership is credible and effective enough to deliver significant results.
2. To provide you with the fulfilment, health and wellbeing required to sustain your leadership.
I know what it’s like to be running a successful business and yet to wake up feeling totally unfulfilled. To know the stress and anxiety was less to do with business situations and more to do with the lack of honesty between who I was and how I was operating. To know that the holiday I am hanging out for is going to provide a short term reprieve rather than a long term fix.
There is no one leadership model for all leaders, irrespective of the business and the phase that business is in. Leadership must be tailored and central to that tailoring is you, the CEO. True and sustainable leadership. leadership that inspires you and those around you, can only occur from the inside out.
More often leadership development is thought of as being outside in. We need to build new capability in order to achieve certain objectives. The more powerful approach is to uncover and realise more fully the capability that is already there. Being an authentic leader requires you to be more of who you are, and to empower those around you to do the same.
Leaders who continually strive for personal mastery are essential to business growth and to our wider business community. Each significant step in this journey begins with renewed or updated self awareness so that strengths can be leveraged and weaknesses or preferences can be covered or balanced. Knowing yourself provides the platform to know your team and when this is combined with your business strategy you have created the best environment for delivering both strong business results and recapturing your mojo.
