What is My Leader Self™? It’s the unique, best version of you that allows your business as a whole to thrive and yield positive, tangible results.
According to our definition at Horizon37, leadership is the generation of positive results through other people. There comes a pivotal time in your journey as a CEO or founder where you will have to step away from your individual high performance to inspire others to drive positive business results with and for you.*
*SPOILER: It’s the Leadership Proliferation Threshold (defined in a recent research project by Horizon37 in partnership with Cranfield School of Management.
There isn’t one single way of doing things correctly. There is no single perfect leader. Instead, you must choose and create who you want to be as a leader, your My Leader Self.
For the step-by-step guide to how to create your My Leader Self, you can order Horizon37’s publication here and we can deliver a bespoke workshop to your team: book it here.
Strength-based Leadership
While most of the literature about leadership focuses on how to overcome weaknesses and close those gaps in your skillset to become a rounded leader, we at Horizon37, believe in strength-based leadership instead.
After all, if you think of your favourite leader, you will immediately be able to mention all of their positive qualities, yet you most probably struggle to list even one flaw. You should look at yourself in the same way; celebrate your assets, it’s no-one else’s job to do that
Whenever you don’t celebrate your strengths, you miss an opportunity to contribute what you have to offer as a leader to catalyse change and impact. If you do this everyday, imagine what gets missed over a lifetime.
Being a leader in the real world
Now that you are focusing on your strengths, you are ready to become your unique best version leader self. But the real world strikes. You already have a reputation. Maybe you spent years building a certain character for yourself, and the collective now perceives you in a defined way.
Reputation is how others see you, and it is generally created based on past observed behaviour.
Identity is how you see yourself and it is based on your history and understanding of the world.
Neither identity nor reputation is “the truth”, but both, together, affect your ability to be a leader. In the real world, you need to learn to strike the right balance between the two in order to be able drive positive results through others, and at the same time remain able to relate to yourself and for others to relate with you.
How can you make sense of your reputation?
We all have an opinion on every single person we have met. Every person you have met has an opinion about you. So how can you make sense of how others see you and enhance your reputation?
- Audit your reputation. What do others think of you? Don’t speculate or assume, ask your people.
- Identify the opportunities. In what circumstances are you already held in high esteem by others? Where do you empower? Embrace these occasions.
- Identify the challenges. Where are you disempowered? Notice these bad character traits, these situations where you have behaved badly, these gaps in your skills or knowledge.
There are instances in life when it becomes necessary to make the difficult decision to walk away. After exhaustively attempting every effort to change the perception of oneself, it becomes evident that sometimes, a disempowering reputation may be irreparably damaged and beyond redemption.
Most leaders, without exception, will encounter some form of disempowerment at some point in their careers. In such instances, it often proves most beneficial to get a fresh start elsewhere, treasuring the lessons garnered from these experiences as a safeguard against stumbling into similar pitfalls in the future.
Composition of My Leader Self
Your My Leader Self is composed of purpose and strengths.
PURPOSE
You could spend a lifetime finding your purpose, or you can take the matter in your hands and create your purpose, in a way that responds to your circumstances rather than being defined by them in a passive way.
As a leader, you achieve greater results by believing that you have the ability to create your future.
STRENGTHS
Once you set your purpose, you need to identify the strengths you have to achieve it.
Some strengths relate to technical knowledge, and what you are an expert in.
Others relate to doing, that is, your skills.
Some, finally, relate to simply your traits as a person, those things that people talk about when describing you: how you see potential in others, how you are emotionally intelligent, walk the talk etc.
Think about which of these you need to achieve your purpose.
What about your weaknesses? In our effort to focus on strength-based leadership, all we want to mention is that you should commit to actively disassociating from any unhelpful aspect of your current leadership only if this is limiting, if it prevents you from achieving positive business results. Instead, you can reframe them as “future strengths”, because your vulnerability can inspire trust in yourself and others.
Living My Leader Self
Get purposeful, express your strengths fully, and hold integrity in your habits.
You have now outlined your My Leader Self – that’s the theory. Don’t keep it secret from the world until it’s perfect, otherwise it won’t translate to any meaningful contribution.
Beyond you – Creating leaders
The purpose of the My Leader Self module is to identify and choose the best version of you as a leader that generates positive impact through others.
When you succeed in this mission, what’s next? Imagine the ripple effect of not just you generating positive results, but actually generating leaders beyond you.
You can do so by fostering a culture that celebrates strengths and instilling a sense of agency in those around you.
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Horizon37 designs and delivers leadership programmes for exec teams and individuals ready to step-up their leadership, enabling them to succeed in breaking new ground.
If you would like us to deliver the My Leader Self course to your team, you can book it here.
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