The Leadership Leap is a Thing

I have been thinking a lot lately about the critical intersection point in our careers when our roles shift from being great deliverers of results to influencers of others to achieve those results. This is the time when we go from having a deep specialist knowledge (and confidence around our skills) to needing to build a whole new leadership skillset that is about inspiring and empowering others.

I remember this leap well back in my first career as I moved into a director role and, looking back, every time I have made a new leap in my career, I have had to double down on building my leadership capability.

But what happens if we don't invest in these skills at these crucial point in our careers?

Here are?3 things I have felt myself and hear regularly from clients when they first enter the coaching room:?

1. Lack of direction?– I’ve been promoted or stepping into a new role, amazing, but no one has sat me down and helped me clearly define what success now looks like in my new leadership role?
2. Lack of boundaries?– A?belief system that taking a step up requires sacrifice of my time and energy to make sure I’m available to others, it’s like the job I was doing before + new responsibilities = more hours to work. Over-working and burn out creep in (this was my personal favourite!)?
3. Lack of self-belief?– I knew how to get results before and I was killing it, now the goal posts have shifted, I feel way out of my depth, are people really going to listen to me, am I even making the right decisions?!?

When one or all these things kick in, I see crisis of confidence happen, energy drop and a lack of happiness in our circumstance creeping in and this ultimately undermines our ability to lead.?

If you are feeling any of this right now, I don’t want you to feel alone. I have been there. I often felt like I was throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something would stick. I knew I didn’t really know what I was doing at first and I didn’t have a clear blueprint to create the impact I wanted. It’s why I made it my mission to invest in myself and my skills as a leader and, in doing so I started to feel like I was creating more impact as a leader…people around me were growing and thriving in the work they were doing, I felt more confident in the direction I was taking the team in and the business was growing, I felt more confident saying ‘yes’ to the places I could add value and ‘no’ to the busy work that could eat into my personal time. My energy, momentum, and joy increased!?

Ultimately being coached and trained through these leadership skills and applying them made me realise I loved this process. I started to share what I was learning with others which gave me a deeper sense of purpose and opened up the pathway I’m ultimately on today to help others embrace this leadership leap with more grace, ease and energy.

So, if you find yourself at this intersection point making the leadership leap for the first time or, you are about to take on a new role or step up in your leadership that requires you to influence at a more senior (and complex) level then here are:

3 Key ideas to help you make a more Luminous Leadership leap:?

1. Develop clarity?on what success looks like in your role.?I spent some time talking about this with my line manager and I also worked with a Leadership Coach to get crystal clear on not just intellectually what I wanted to achieve for myself, my team, and the business, but also?how did I want to feel day to day in how I was leading. Hint: it was getting out of the grind and busyness to feeling connected to my team and purposeful in the impact I was creating.
2. Cultivate your energy?– Leadership is an internal game. It’s about deepening your self-awareness around your strengths, what’s important to you (values), what lights you up and gets you in flow and conversely, what drains your energy and pulls you down. It’s about realising that if you are not taking care of yourself then you are no good to anyone else. With this belief in place then it becomes easier to calibrate your life and role to be saying ‘yes’ to the right things that elevate and light you up and ‘no’ to the busy work or demands that won’t move the needle and get you to where you want to go.?
3. ?Build your confidence?– It’s about not being solely reliant on others feedback to know if you are doing a good job. It’s about developing an internal feedback loop by tuning into your emotional intelligence and noticing your impact on others. It’s about giving yourself high quality feedback when you have tried something new by reflecting on where you are winning and importantly acknowledging this. It’s about taking the learnings from what isn’t going as well to improve next time. It’s also about working with great coaches, trainers, and mentors to build your skill sets and have space to reflect and grow.?

What do you think about these 3 points above??

If you could get focused on just one of these which one could make the biggest difference to the leadership leap you need to make??

I know for me I’m a magnificent work in progress and I find life is always evolving so I’m often working on all 3 at different points across my year. Be that working with my coach every month to get clear on the impact I want to create and the strategies to get there, coming off a significant break (as I am now) to re-charge my energy every quarter or deepening my skills through courses like Brene Brown’s Dare to Lead experience that I did last year.

My invitation to you is to just start tuning into what you need…and take just one first step to get started. I’d love to hear how you go!