Your Worth Over Your Presence
Tiffany Houser
Executive Coach | Founder Coach | Leadership Development Facilitator, Speaker, & Content Creator | Founder of EVOLVE, Creator of Self Worth Advantage? | LinkedIn Top Voice
There are many founders and leaders in enterprise companies who are thriving, positioned to advance in their careers and impact, and enjoy great success along the way. Perhaps that means taking on a bigger role in a new company, receiving an internal promotion, or receiving an incredible round of funding.?
However, what often happens to a lot of these leaders and founders is that they are plagued by challenging moments of self-doubt. Despite their success and advancement, they find themselves shrinking from these moments and generally feel like an imposter.
What these leaders are told [or believe] is that leaders should know what they’re doing – that they should have all the answers, and that this inherent knowledge empowers them to command the room and their team. They think of the many commanding executives and founders they’ve seen, heard of, or even directly reported to themselves, and they draw a haunting conclusion: the most successful executives all have a certain kind of presence, and they don’t have that presence themselves.
This belief comes at a great cost.?
By operating day-to-day with the belief that they’re an imposter they’ll conduct themselves from a place of tension, anxiety, and stress. They will then make decisions from a place of fear or uncertainty, which during times of change will compel them to play small and compromise on the vision and talent that got them there in the first place. This then prevents them from ensuring that their company thrives.
But what has them carry this burden??
Ultimately, it comes down to what they believe a leader must be.
They believe they don’t have this elusive executive or founder presence because to have such a thing is to possess a certain set of behaviors and qualities that defines a successful leader – that a leader is made by those who demonstrate those qualities, by one who conducts themselves a certain way. If they don’t see themselves as exhibiting those same qualities, they conclude that they are not worthy of the role or can be considered a leader or executive. And so they chase after this executive or founder presence as something outside or beyond themselves and always out of reach.
They believe the treasure exists outside of them.
This may be surprising for others to learn about the experience of these founders and leaders. This is especially so given how they have attracted the momentum they have by the time they step into the role that causes them so much tension.
And yet their struggle follows a classic journey of the exceptional being: when they were younger the people most influential to them likely attempted to control, stymie, and even shame their most exceptional and authentic qualities. As they struggled to achieve what they wanted to achieve, they were told to [wo]man up, deal with it, power through the nerves, overcome the doubt, and simply handle the change. They were told to ignore their feelings in favor of getting results. But to deny their feelings was to deny their truth, and to deny their feelings was to deny their trust in themselves. As such, their beliefs required them to reject their own truth in favor of all that was external to them.
Still, these leaders have gotten where they are because there is something profound and quintessentially them that lives inside.
When they try to fit themselves into someone else’s notion of what they’re meant to be they perpetuate their sense of feeling like an imposter. While they may think that an executive or founder presence is X and X only, there’s so many versions of what it means to be a leader.
These leaders may have been called out and shamed when their exceptional qualities made it hard for them to toe the line, but the inverse of this is that it’s what makes them a compelling and powerful leader. They might also have judged these qualities themselves.
领英推荐
There is only one version of any given leader.
And true ‘presence’ comes from your own version.
To create massive impact with both their results and their relationships, leaders get to understand and accept who they are and then express this truth. They no longer get to hide who they are, what they think, and most importantly what they feel out of fear of how they’ll look or what people think.
They get to see themselves as worthy of the role they’re meant to play, and want to play.
There isn’t one version of executive or founder presence, in fact, there are countless.
And each leader’s version is one of them. Their version is whatever – whoever – they are.
We achieve an executive presence not when we chase after certain qualities yet rather from a greater understanding of our most treasured aspects of ourselves.
This is a fundamental advantage available to the most impassioned, transformational leaders – to define their leadership based on their worth rather than other people’s opinions or societal expectations. This shift – what we can call the Self Worth Advantage? – will move leaders from feeling like an imposter and wondering what others feel about them to trusting themselves to be and handle whatever comes their way.
This work can be as simple as taking a moment to listen to themselves to understand what has them feeling like an imposter in any given moment instead of ignoring it or beating themselves up for feeling this way. They can take it a step further by understanding where the feeling is coming from so they can reconcile it, regulate and coach themselves where they trust themselves again.
You can experience the Self Worth Advantage? for founders and leaders through our
Your team and organization can also experience the Self Worth Advantage? through:
Self Worth Advantage? is for leaders and founders who are ready to amplify their authenticity, self-awareness, self-regulation, and create trust, confidence, and impact. Leaders who are ready to define their presence from the most treasured and authentic aspects of who they are because they are ready to cause massive impact and value for themselves, their team, their organization, and the world around them.