This article continues to uncover the 21 qualities showcased in Healing Leadership: How to Lead, Love, and Thrive in Business and Life. Today, we cover the 18th quality: taking risks.
During the interviews with 41 diverse industry leaders and experts, we uncovered these qualities, which support you to increase your confidence, remove self-doubt, and develop a growth mindset to advance as a leader and help your team deliver on critical objectives.
In case you missed previous articles (available in our blog), we discussed the first seventeen leadership qualities healing and empowering leaders must possess to not only survive but thrive in these times of high uncertainty:
Communicate powerfully, including listening
Show empathy and high emotional intelligence
Value and empower their team
Set the vision
Are flexible
Are Transparent
Manage and lead through change
Build trust and solve problems
Lead with authenticity
Value Inclusion & Diversity
Harness the power of positivity
Are resilient
Build relationships
Are creative & resourceful
Gives quality feedback
Prioritize self-care
Are vulnerable
A healing and empowering leader takes risks.
We know from experience that it's only in a limited number of scenarios when we have almost 100% certainty of what will happen and how a situation will play out.
Visionary leaders leverage confidence, purpose, and a compelling vision to take calculated risks.
For example, we anchor in our strengths and abilities to gain confidence. And we lean on our compelling vision of the future to take calculated risks with the intent of ultimately benefiting our people, the business, the marketplace, our clients, our investors, the economy, our families.
Taking risks begins at home.
One of my mentors, Fabienne Fredrickson, says, " How you do one thing is how you do everything." If you're not taking risks at home, in your personal life, you may also notice that you're not doing it in your career and professional life.
Personally, since 1983, when I was a 14-year-old immigrant, new to the U.S., I've been taking risks, putting myself in situations without knowing what the outcome would be. For example, I joined the high school swimming team without knowing how to swim and said "yes" to programs my guidance counselor proposed, i.e., Upward Bound and summer school.
I took scuba diving lessons in my college pool, joined intramural volleyball and softball teams with co-workers, said yes to new experiences with friends, i.e., skiing, playing ping-pong with fellow students. I also joined Toastmasters at work, chaired the Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations, volunteered to speak on panels at work, and much more.
My purpose and goal were to immerse myself in the American culture to learn as much as possible, become fluent in English, and ultimately enjoy my life and thrive in a new culture, new world, and new way of life.
Professionally, I pursued new roles within my current company and externally to align my work with my growing skillset. While working full-time, I pursued graduate degrees, expanding my field knowledge and gaining new skills to move toward my professional ambitions to grow as a leader. I built a support network of mentors and sponsors, reaching out to people I had interacted with and genuinely wanting to learn more about them and the company. Taking those risks led to a fulfilling and lucrative corporate career lasting over 25 years.
More recently, at the start of 2017, I transitioned from the only career I had ever known in technology and financial services to lead and run ExecutiveBound as a transformational speaker, leadership coach, career strategist, and #1 bestselling author.
I leveraged the qualities mentioned above to take risks and fulfill my potential: confidence in my ability to learn, my purpose of becoming an independent woman who could stand on her own, and a compelling life vision, including enjoying financial and emotional well-being and having a positive impact on others, including my 14-year-old son.
As leaders, we can be successful, impactful, and deliver while taking care of the people we serve.
We can be empathetic and help our team feel seen, understood, and appreciated. We have a responsibility to articulate our vision, what we're doing, why it's meaningful, and how it matters to the business, the clients, and the organization.
By sharing our vision, our talent can connect the dots between the role they perform and that vision, enabling them to find more meaning and purpose in their work and contributions.
Taking risks pays off.
As a leader, it always starts with us.
The calculated risks we take can have a significant impact. It starts with me. Suppose I take risks and role model it and coach team members and other leaders. In turn, they influence others, creating a trickle effect that positively impacts their teams, colleagues, the organization, and their personal life.
In taking these risks, I believe we can improve upon existing conditions to eradicate the mental fatigue and environmentally driven mental illnesses plaguing so many of us. We can do our part to improve the overall mental health of our employees.
How can we improve the mental health of our employees?
I recommend we consider these four strategies. Our Fearless Leadership Mastermind training can support you to achieve precisely these goals:
Develop your Self-leadership (what you believe, say, and do).
Increase your emotional intelligence (self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship building).
Become more self-aware of how you show up and build trust and safety for your team.
Assess how your attitude, words, and behaviors impact the people around you.
Our ability to build relationships is crucial and part of emotional intelligence. Suppose we show up as emotionally intelligent leaders who demonstrate self-leadership and show up to our roles from this centered place. In that case, I believe that our workplaces will be very different and our employees' experience would be too.
We're going to create more purpose. People will show up and give us their best because they feel a sense of belonging at work.
By taking the risk to adopt these strategies, this is the type of workplace you risk creating and the leader that you risk becoming.
Learning is taking a risk--and the payoff is exponential.
Self-development requires that we take a risk.
As leaders who have been around for a while, if we think that we have it all figured out and have nothing else to learn, here's the sober truth.
We're always learning and evolving. There's always a "next level," but not from a place of scarcity, from a place of abundance.
There's always so much more to learn. I'm not alone when I say that the more I learn, the more I realize how much more there is to know.
When I speak to colleagues, clients, and friends, our level of expertise in a particular area is usually significantly different. Each of us brings a unique value proposition to the table and an intricate set of superpowers--abilities and strengths that we've garnered over decades.
Each of us also faces weaknesses, areas we need to improve. When we accept that we have specific weaknesses and focus our efforts on amplifying our strengths and superpowers, we are more likely to increase our confidence. From this standpoint, various areas of our life can also improve.
I'm going to invite you to take the risk to explore:
What are my superpowers, my strengths?
How can I leverage those to take more risks?
How can I leverage my purpose, vision, and confidence to take more risks?
How can you use what you have been learning to create that compelling vision for yourself, your team, and your firm?
Easier said than done? Getting clear on your superpowers, purpose, and compelling vision in a vacuum, solo, can be challenging and draining. If you need support from a leadership coach like me, who can help you expedite the process and make it more engaging, interactive, and fun, reach out at www.callwithginny.com to set up a complimentary strategy session.
Live with purpose, live with joy!
Coach Ginny 💕
Whenever you're ready, we want to serve you with what you need support the most! Here are some ways in which we can do this together: #1 - Increase your confidence and leadership skills to overcome the limitations holding you back and magnify your superpowers: Learn the #1 success secret to becoming the highly impactful, influential leader you are meant to be without sacrificing your well-being. We start soon and only a few spots remain. Get the details here. Email info@executivebound.com with any questions: www.flmprogram.com. #2 - Learn how to prepare to get the job you want with our Personal Branding Masterclass: Our virtual course will show you how to stand out in the job market, confidently. Create a magnetic resume and LinkedIn profile, grow your professional network, and articulate your value, especially during interviews. Get the details here: www.personalbrandingmasterclass.com. #3 - Get out of survival mode and advance your career when you create your 12-month action map in our Visionary Leaders Circle monthly program: Acquire the tools, strategies, and structure to navigate the challenges of a corporate environment, advance steadily, and develop leadership competencies, virtually, with other leaders on the same journey and your own leadership coach. Find out more and register here: www.visionaryleaderscircle.com #4 - Coach with us, virtually, privately, one-on-one: Join one of our private coaching programs, designed to address your specific challenges and goals, flexible to your busy schedule. Our clients earn promotions, higher pay, transition into new roles they love, and enjoy a higher level of financial, physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. They "do the work" and see the results! 100% virtual, get started with a complimentary session here: www.executivebound.com/get-started #5 - Read our new book: Healing Leadership: How to Lead, Love, and Thrive in Business and Life. Healing Leadership will transform the way you view your role as a leader, how you lead yourself and contribute to others. It includes 41 industry experts who also share their years of experience and insights with you. Visit www.healigleadership.com to order to order your copy today. #6 - Read our book, Fearless Women at Work: Five Powerful Strategies to Thrive in Your Career and Life! This book’s sole purpose is to ignite your personal power to pursue the life of your dreams by applying five practical strategies in a unique process named C.A.R.E.S. Get your copy and BONUS Book Club Guide companion today at www.executivebound.com/book. #7 - Subscribe to our Podcast, the Visionary Leaders Circle! Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and others. Develop your edge to become an impactful leader. Learn from distinguished guests, leadership experts, and your host, Dr. Ginny A. Baro. Leave us a five-star review so others can find us. And to be our guest, email us at info@executivebound.com. Enjoy: www.executivebound.com/podcast. #8 - Read our blog & share it! Keep your mind fresh with ideas. Retool with strategies to navigate challenges at work and in life. And take action that will propel you forward. Knowledge and execution are power. Visit our blog, and if you enjoy the articles, please share them with your friends and colleagues.
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Dr. Ginny A. Baro is an award-winning transformational speaker & leadership coach, career strategist, and #1 best-selling author of Healing Leadership and Fearless Women at Work. Ginny specializes in partnering with organizations and ERGs to develop leadership dream teams. And she supports individuals navigating a corporate hierarchy or transitioning into an entirely new phase of their career. She has successfully facilitated live and virtual leadership training and coaching programs for individuals and Fortune 500 companies with over 140,000 employees, and delivered keynotes impacting global audiences larger than 7,000. To learn more, visit ExecutiveBound.
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