Audacious Leadership

Leadership. Everyone has a definition of what it means. Yet, we make such a mess of it.

Let me remind you that the most effective leadership model is the role model. And that the most important leader in your life is you.?Acknowledging this truth gives you power and freedom.

We cannot hide from adversity in our lives. This is an inherent aspect of being human. However, practicing appreciation and gratitude allows us to turn adversity into achievement and sets us up as a leader to our children, our employees, our friends, or our peers.

As we elevate ourselves, we become a role model to others.?That’s what everyone did during our last Audacious Leaders Retreat in Transylvania.

For every person alive, we have a gift. And more often than not, the gifts that we have come from our wounds.?As Leonard Cohen said:

One of the early moments there was a crack in my ?world, was in the boarding nursery, when I decided that I would be responsible for my little sister. ?There was a scary moment when she was seriously hurt on purpose by one of the teachers. And in that moment, something inside of me shifted. ?In that moment, at the young age of 5, I decided I was going to be a soldier and save my 2-year-old little sister. And I was not only going to save my sister, but I was going to save the world. And here is us today, at our retreat.

Over time, the energy of all that caring and daring to stand up for what was right and stand up for what I needed to do to protect my sister, extended out to everyone else. And since that moment, the shift has been extreme, translating in the extra work, the extra compassion, the extra education, and the extra positivity in my life along the way. And while that has made me in many ways an extreme person, it is this extreme connection with being a protector of the underdog, being a protector of people who are doing their best to find their way, and me wanting to be the wind in their sails in any way that I can. And my definition of Audacious Leadership??It starts with the extra daring and extra caring for others. And for self.

One of the big themes in my life is that I have lived in interesting ways, almost a parallel life.?Starting with having the communist school system refuse to call me by my parents’ chosen name.?I grew up being called not by my first name, but by my middle name Dana. ?I had to accept that I was called one name at home and another name at school.?Until I decided to claim my own name back at university. ?The theme of having a parallel life showed up in different ways in my relationships, in being a hard-edged investment banker, whilst hiding my human, soft and loving side and having a son, who was completely on the opposite side of the EQ spectrum than me.

This forced me to be able to hold the enormousness of all these spectrums. Simultaneously. I ?grew up having to hold the spectrum of “this is not who I am, this is who I am”. How do I do both? ?I had to learn to be with both at the same time. It has given me a superpower in being able to hold an enormous spectrum of life experience.

When working with clients, I take them from being lost to being found, from being cynical to being positive and from being trapped to being completely free. Because I can hold all of that for people.?I know what it's like to be lost. ?I know what it's like to be cynical. I know what it's like to be trapped.

And you know what the opposite side of that is? Holding people in a place where they can start to see. Most people think that getting some tools, getting a solution or a formula is what's going to solve the problem. And then they will be fine. But what's really true is that it's not the tools that will help you. It's the introspection, asking the right questions, identifying the real pain, naming it, and opening up to it.

Because it's about learning to be human that could meet those challenges in a completely different way. What I know in my heart, is that the change hinge that anyone wants, actually starts within you. Adapting to the situation. And raising yourself to a new level of awareness and understanding is the difference that makes the difference.

Because it's all about the way you respond and not react, that creates the world around you.

When I was young, I wanted to be a dancer. ?When there was no one at home, I’d be dancing. Well, no one was watching. ?I found so much joyfulness and playfulness and creativity in that. And yet, many years later, I became a hard-edged investment banker. There's this duality. Today, I still love dancing. That’s what I love to create for our community because I see many of my clients having none of that in their lives.?Having no joyfulness, no playfulness, no creativity, because it's not allowed inside of their current corporate systems.

These days, together with my audacious partners at Adaptaa, we help our clients move from feeling trapped to feeling lighter, from being cynical to dreaming big and appreciating their lives that little bit more. We help them find joyfulness, playfulness, and creativity in their lives and become the true audacious leaders they were meant to be.?

And this is me audaciously converting a recent article I wrote for my close community, into a newsletter here for the first time. Live audaciously, until we meet again!