Manifestly Successful

Last week, in “Don’t Look Up,” I described a metaphoric image for a successful leader: the juggler of her own talents, skills, and strategies. I saw her as knowing her innate, natural talents; recognizing the skills she has honed through learning; and honestly assessing the strategies she uses to work a room…or a team meeting…or her life.

So how does any leader optimize her talents, skills, and strategies to become a leader who manifests success?

Manifesting success begins with honesty and, often, data. In my leadership experience, no single assessment of my personality or leadership style was The One that explained it all. Yet, each perspective provided significant insights into the puzzle of my leadership strengths and foibles. Each tool was like a specialized mirror to reflect a talent I held, or identify a skill that was emerging. Most helpful were those mirrors of feedback that revealed my not-so-successful strategies for “getting stuff done.”

Successful leaders consider with honest self-awareness data sources such as a 360? performance evaluation; a Myers-Briggs or DISC score; results from any number of personality inventories, a Saville Assessment, a Situational Leadership Assessment, or other respected tools… Successful leaders consider such input and use it to grow.?

Many decades ago, during a week at the Center for Creative Leadership, I found it truly painful to hear that I’d been universally labeled blunt and abrasive by my upline, direct reports, and peers. Despite the pain, I stared that message in the face and asked myself why. I looked within for the larger truth—and found the anxious triggers that lay beneath those unsuccessful and apparently intentional “strategies.” And I changed.?

A successful leader also manifests success as she works to amplify and diversify potential resources. She knows the data that describe the style, personality, and learning curves of her team members, too. She shares it with transparency, as a tool for developing their success. She knows which talents, skills, and strategies to call forth, call out, and commend in her associates. And she knows how to work well with those who complement, rather than replicate, what she brings to the work.?

For example, a successful leader can own her history or her current struggles with “not so effective” strategies she is shedding. She can also reduce interpersonal judgment and foster objectivity in any post-game analysis, transforming the conversation from “who is not working?” to “what is not working?”

Leadership success is almost entirely about resources and how well or ill they are used. A successful leader knows both the personal powers and fragile foibles of herself and her team.