Anne Phey, Founder of Leadership Coaching School. Empowers by High Performance Leadership Programs & ICF Coach Certification Training.
getty
Here are five things I have learned about becoming an authentic leader through observing leaders and, most of all, through my own journey from being a boss from hell to being a boss from heaven, as a teammate described it.
1. Find your leadership as you overcome challenges.
As I reflect on the long list of accolades, there are milestones of the growth of my teams and me. Those of you who have worked in the corporate world will know what it is like to rally siloed teams scattered in diverse directions to run through mud toward a common goal with passion and grit. In that process, many of us fall on the spectrum of lousy to great leaders, and that’s how we learn to become better.
2. Be a leader who makes others better with a lasting impact.
Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, said, “Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.”
Leadership is focused on others instead of the self. If leadership has such an impact, I want to be that kind of leader. Or even better still, I want to work with leaders who can have that ripple effect on their organization and society.
3. Develop leadership by coaching and being coached.
Driven by that passion, I started coaching emerging leaders and executives across the world. I saw how my coachees gained awareness of themselves, discovered their blind spots, opened up their perspectives and shifted their paradigms. As a result, they began to have an appreciation for, a sensitivity to and an understanding of their team, which fostered greater openness to collaboration and empowerment.
The more I coached, the more I yearned for the fulfillment to see the coachee’s inner transformation and outer manifestation of true leadership. I started to immerse myself more into coaching — being a coachee, coaching one-on-one and teams, training leaders to coach, training individuals to be professional coaches, volunteering for coaching organizations and getting certified with the International Coaching Federation from Associate to Professional Certified Coach. I have also become a REISS Motivation Profile (RMP) Master and Embodied Leadership Strengths Profiling (ELSP) practitioner with Leadership Coefficient and become a Top Global #2 Engage and Grow Coach.
4. Dare to live a bigger dream.
This takes personal leadership. As leaders, we need to take bold steps to live a bigger dream. I decided to bring about the full presence and impact of coaching, focusing on empowering change-makers.
Having lived, breathed and thrived as a leader and executive in the corporate world in sales, marketing and development, I followed my passion to train coaches and drive leadership programs.
5. Be a leader in what inspires you.
For myself, I live from the heart. The beauty of touching lives and unleashing the highest potential of leaders through coaching is what I love. This is my gift to the world. I embrace this as what I do on my journey to be an authentic leader, to hold space for inner transformation.
As Rumi wrote, “Let the beauty of what you love be what you do."
What inspires you as a leader?
Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?
