Have you wished you were more powerful to CHANGE the things that matter to you so much? You see the world going nuts around you and while you have ideas, hope and see possibility… You have felt resigned in the face of the shit that is going down. What you don’t have is a position of *real* power… This is your guide to shift the mountain of this belief between “you now” and “you with the leadership skills” needed to make your legacy happen, change the world for the better.
Leadership is absolutely everywhere and this is why it concerns you, too.
Leadership isn’t this out there thing that only the politicians and company guys do. You might even lead people and still think it’s something that “happens” or you have to “make do” instead of facing it head on as a way of life – not just a position you happened to end up in with some minor-to-medium influence on others you now have to deal with.
Leadership starts with leading YOURSELF: How do you talk to yourself when shit happens? How do you treat you when your patterns come out? When you feel despair, fear, loneliness?
It’s in how we raise our children – ALL the humans that come after us, generations down. And other, weaker member of societies. The elderly, people with disabilities, people who are weaker and needier in some way or another. Animals, nature.
You can be a leader for your single child and change the world more than an up there CEO pretending to be perfect but actually harming their people. You can also be said CEO, change, do the work and create real leverage. It’s WAY more about your personal choice and way less about what you do in life than you might think.
Why we need YOU, yes YOU! to have leadership skills.
Well. You read this because you. Have. The. Dreams. This is super easy to get wrong: Doesn’t everyone have these ideas? Aren’t we a huge bunch of dreamers ending up utterly helpless in the face of the wrong people in power? No, actually no! It’s the other way around: You have bigger thoughts and dreams because you have a bigger potential, a bigger wish. You have the curiosity capacity and space to think about different things and make different connections. You ask questions others don’t even know to ask. You care!
We absolutely, desperately need your vision, your empathy, your mindfulness, your ability to put others before yourself. And we need YOU to acquire the leadership skills, so you can be all of these without burning out and losing heart.
You, too, can lead – it’s a skillset, not a gift.
This is really important: Leadership skills are something that you can acquire, learn, train – get bloody good at. And they’re not necessarily the skills you think you should have. I mean let’s just say you look at a lot of the leaders we have now… Wouldn’t and you think you need to be assertive, loud, male and slightly to extremely delusional? Yeah, that might be hard to achieve. But here’s the misconception: You don’t need these things to be an amazing leader. It’s the opposite more often than not.
No, listen up: You being things like empathic and loving, mindful, thinking a lot, wanting to do the right thing, being able to look within yourself… and just NOT being willing to be an a**hole leader are strengths. They’re a great starting point to generate unshakeable power and leadership from within, and here’s how:
- Do the inner work, so you don’t get stuck in being triggered and react – whether you get angry, feel hopeless, try to please people, beat yourself up… Instead learn to extract yourself from your own automatic patterns and take a step back.
- Embrace and love your full humanity: You will forever have patterns and reactions and you won’t always be able to step back immediately. Learn to forgive yourself (and others) again and again, instead of spiralling into justification or self-flagellation.
- Learn to set boundaries and say no in a way that is both kind and crystal clear. Let love lead the process!
- Learn to go first = literally lead, with vulnerability and responsibility. Become a model who shows others what is possible.
- Become comfortable with paradox and nuance: Someone might “misbehave”, but their reasons might have been incredibly valid. What if you all could learn a LOT from picking apart what happened instead of interpreting and guessing and/or drawing conclusions based on assumptions rather than facts.
Those skills aren’t easy and they require work, dedication and a good mentor, coach or teacher. However, can you see that they are skills you need to learn? A good leader doesn’t “happen to grow up” with a set of beliefs like that they are inherently more powerful and worthy than others and then they just follow through on that. No, they have learnt to deal with their own and others’ humanity, keep deepening their knowledge, and never lose sight of in the face of all the difficulties.
Why do we even entertain such a skewed version of leadership? Why do we put people into positions of power who actually have detrimental ideas of what leadership is?
How society warps what you believe about leadership
First and foremost: Humans are group animals and we automatically put more emphasis on what a) many/most people believe around us b) the beliefs we grew up with (because we’re super super impressionable as kids). And in the case of leadership, this happens to be views that are informed by patriarchy. We as a society believe that men and masculine values and a very male understanding of leadership are more powerful, because we all gravitate towards it.
As a simple example – I have done different work for many years, but by default, I still gravitate towards a deep masculine voice as more trustworthy. Now imagine this on a much larger scale with people who don’t reflect on choices like these. And not just that – many of them cannot reflect the same way you or I do it. In turn, the masses influence YOU.
There is no way around it. You have countless invisible biases. The most messed up part is that they get you more because you see SOME biases. Like you consciously elect women into positions of power, but maybe you choose one with “masculine” qualities without realising it (someone who shows up with a lot of dominance and “better than” energy for example). I’m saying this not to make you wrong, but for you to see that it is easy, almost inevitable, to believe you have less power than you actually do once you decide to stand up, do the work and work on the change you want to.
When you decide to lead, you will run up against adversity because you go against the current within yourself and around you. There is no easy way, and once people discover this, many forgo their dreams and legacy, not quite willing to face the discomfort and uncertainty coming from going against this really strong force of the programming in (and around) you.
One of the most heartbreaking things here: Society plants it deeply into us that we need to be able to walk alone, function at all times and we may not fail, seem weak, or say the wrong things. Can you see the catch-22 here? It’s an invisible bias we “love” to give in to. Don’t stop here. Break it. Go and seek out community of likeminded people. Get support from a mentor or coach. Arm yourself to make your legacy and change happen, tiny bit by tiny bit – we really do need you.
Possible next steps after this:
Are you done feeling (slightly) resigned and ready to take a couragous step into leadership? I recommend you look at the free leader genius call, where we look at your leadership strengths and how you can leverage them. The coolest part about it is that we don’t just hype you, but we look at both: Light and shadows. You just read why that is: If you know your shadows instead of them being invisible biases, you can actually trust your light / strengths way more. Take bigger steps. Create what means so much to you. See you there!
