“I clearly remember the moment… I announced a new promotion at SAS and Vickie announced the launch of her coaching business. That was when I became Vickie's first client. Vickie led me through many of the exercises that she details in this book—discovering my strengths and values, learning to delegate and ask ‘what’ questions, using my personal brand, and building my leadership legacy. Vickie tells you it won't always be easy. And yes, it took time for these concepts to become a natural part of my leadership style and to reap the rewards of choosing roles that I love; while delighting my team by ‘treating them the way they want to be treated’. This book is a must read.
—Kristin Rahn, Analytics Industry Executive (former SAP Vice President, SAS JMP Business Unit leader, AAA Analytics leader)
“Unleashing Your Inner Leader is a standout in the plethora of “how to be a better leader” books. Coach Vickie shares her real life experiences coaching over 4,000 managers, directors and executives in becoming better leaders. The concepts and tools coupled with real life examples of success in this book provide an easy to follow roadmap that will make you a better leader.”
—Melissa Church, Vice President, Optum
“Clarity of communications in a cluttered world of competing messages is all-important. As a non-profit manager, you must know precisely the value you bring to the organization and the attributes your team contributes to communicating the message your organization seeks to impart to its constituency. This self-knowledge and organizational clarity takes analysis and refining. Coach Vickie offers a roadmap of how to get started and provides guideposts along the way to measure your progress. ‘Know yourself and know your brand’, she says. Hard to do, but she offers tools to support her good counsel.”
—Roy M. Henwood, CAE, Former Agribusiness Trade Association CEO and Government Relations Professional
Coach Vickie's approach is direct and simple. What's more important than uncovering your Inner Leader and using it to play your best game possible? Business professionals know where they want to go and this book shows them how to get there. The real-life examples and case studies in this resource are a must read.
—Sandy Carter, General Manager, Ecosystem Development
This book reflects the wisdom of an experienced, practical leadership coach whom I continue to use in my leadership programs because of her effectiveness with a wide variety of clients. Vickie Bevenour has encapsulated the lessons of her work with thousands of leaders in the form crisp insights, compelling case examples, and effective action exercises that can be used to enhance your own leadership development trajectory. She is someone worth listening to.
—Sim B Sitkin, Professor of Management and Founding Faculty Director of the Fuqua/Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics at Duke University
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Copyright © 2015 by Vickie Bevenour. All rights reserved.
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To my clients, the source of inspiration and the real business heroes of this book.
To my husband, my partner, my friend, who believes in my dreams and helped me see who I am. And, who for years nagged me to write this book!
To my parents, who always told me that I could be anything that I wanted to be and I could do anything that I wanted to do.
My greatest pleasure is being a partner and catalyst in the success of my clients.
—Coach Vickie
To encourage you to think about your leadership behaviors and how those behaviors are affecting (negatively or positively) your performance, your authenticity, and your brand legacy is why I wrote this book. Too many leaders are so busy pursuing results that they do not even notice the wake of dead bodies in their path…until it is way too late. Driving results is one aspect of leadership, and an important one, yet if you ignore the people side of driving results, your Inner Leader will never be able to emerge and thrive.
Each one of us has an Inner Leader that drives our performance, authenticity, and behaviors. My hope is that this book will help you open up the space to let the real leader in you show up. Once you become aware that your Inner Leader is yearning to escape, then you will be encouraged to take action.
Simply reading this book (thinking) without doing the exercises and trying on new behaviors (without action) makes your read only a cerebral experience. To maximize the results of your read; I encourage you to read the book, enjoy the case study stories, and commit to do the exercises, in whatever order or manner works for you.
The major concept in this book is that anyone can be a leader. Whatever the situation and with the proper tools, a leader can learn to recognize an opportunity and feel the confidence to let his or her authentic voice be heard. These lessons are useful for a variety of life's circumstances. The following people are all leaders: the most junior project manager who leads the company's global United Way campaign, the senior executive who coaches his son's Little League team, and the software developer who steps up in a program meeting with a suggestion that provides the needed focus to move forward. They are leaders because they have the confidence to let their voice be heard and are comfortable influencing others to convert an idea from an abstract to an action.
Unleashing your Inner Leader could mean anything. Analyzing everything that I have coached leaders on for the past 15 years was an interesting process. In all my joyful experiences with more than 4,000 coaching clients in 17 countries, there are some well-known concepts and techniques for leadership success that keep cropping up. My hardest task was organizing them into a meaningful book outline. This is because the coaching process is very dynamic. Time and time again, I would begin an engagement with a new client who would claim to want to be a better leader through improving his communication, and I would end up coaching him on personal branding. Or I would start with a stressed-out executive who got great results but whose family never saw her, and we ended up working on delegation. The book outline that finally emerged parallels the consistent themes that I have found to give the best return on investment (ROI) for my clients.
I wanted to reach a broader audience so that more leaders like you could find your authentic selves and begin to build your Leadership Legacies. In other words, I want to maximize a global group of leaders' potential. If this book gives readers at least one aha moment, or if they deploy one new behavior that changes the way that they lead, or they achieve a success that they never thought possible, then my mission will be realized.
One of my strengths is that I am a maximizer. This means that both in my corporate career in a high-impact industry and as an entrepreneurial executive coach, I like to take the good projects and make them great.
This discovery was a huge aha moment for me because it allowed me to target the projects that I wanted to work on—especially in my coaching practice. I learned that I only wanted to work with already successful people who want to get to the next level. Imagine how gratifying it is for me when I can honestly and authentically say to the person with whom I am working: You are my ideal client; you are smart and successful, and you want to be even more successful. Although it took me some time to figure this out, my return on investment (ROI) was huge. I now have no doubt about what I love to do and what I am good at. My Inner Leader is smiling.
My only measure of success is the success of my clients.
I am often asked who my business heroes are. My answer without hesitation is…my clients. Each of them was already successful, and because of some external or internal force, each needed to make a change. Together we worked tirelessly to bring that change to the forefront and make it happen. Changing human behavior is one of the most difficult tasks to accomplish. The personal changes that my clients have successfully made were hard to accomplish and yet they persevered. Their success has been unlimited and they are happy. This is why my only measure of success is the success of my clients because I know the hard work and dedication involved to get to their next step. Because of that hard work and dedication, they will forever be my business heroes.
Are you excited to see what comes next? Are you ready to take on the challenges that await you in the following pages to make some very big changes in your leadership life? A cautionary question: What is going to be the biggest barrier to you making some of the changes suggested in the book? The answer is simple; change is hard. You might hear my suggested actions and think to yourself, “Oh yeah, I know that I need to do this, but (you fill in the blank) gets in my way of fully committing to take action.” Remember that you did not get to this place of leadership by taking the easy road. These exercises will require the hardest thing for anyone to do, to change your behavior from the inside out.
Just as in my coaching practice, I am not going to let you off the hook so easily. I encourage you to act. Just as in a coaching engagement, doing the exercises in this book is critical. I have set them apart and made them easy to spot and understand. The exercises are designed to result in some learning and profound change for you.
While reading this book, I request that you take it a step further. For that special thing that you want to do this year, figure out what is holding you back and address it…head-on. Pull on your Inner Leader and understand your values, strengths, skills, and past accomplishments to build a platform for future success. Drag all those positive attributes that you have kicking and screaming to center stage; let the world see what you can really accomplish. Who knows; you might even surprise yourself.
To all my clients, who have given me the joy of sharing in their personal journeys to unleash their Inner Leader. Your successes are my successes.
To my longtime friend Kelly Loy Morf, who believed in the book and found the opportunity for me to make it happen.
To Mary Charles Blakebrough, who painstakingly read and commented on almost every word.
To Alice Osborn, who helped me edit the original proposal for the book.
To Abby Weaver, for turning my ideas into great illustrations.
To all the people who read and commented on sections of the book, including Marguerite Lawn, Melissa Bennett, and Cheryl Pendergrass.
To the team at John Wiley & Sons and SAS for their editing, producing, and distribution support and for introducing me to the world of book publishing.
To all the individuals who shared their inspirational stories with me and in turn, with you, the reader.
To all the special people in my life who encouraged me during the writing process and constantly asked how it was going. Your support meant the world to me.
Coaching business professionals in high-impact industries to maximize their leadership performance is my expertise. This book is the culmination of the real-life experiences that my clients have faced: how they have unleashed their Inner Leader to live their legacies and develop into world-class leaders. The pages that follow are filled with real-life case studies, exercises, and personal stories that can help leaders like you to:
Each chapter starts with a scenario (case study) based on a real client with whom I have worked (note that names have been changed to protect client anonymity). Each coaching session demonstrates an issue, challenge, or situation that the client has encountered. Based on this conversation, the pertinent parts of the situation are discussed and matched to a leadership concept. You are then engaged with powerful questioning that will prompt new thinking. The chapter continues with other examples of coaching sessions on related topics and with more discussion. Each chapter concludes with exercises that will help you incorporate this concept into your life. I highly recommend doing each of the exercises. It has been my experience that reading about a concept and thinking about it is the first step, and you will never make the desired change unless you take action and actually go through the steps to effect your own personal change. This is the recipe for lasting change that leads to success.
The book is organized into three parts. The first is dedicated to getting to know yourself. The concept being that leaders who are totally in touch with themselves and know what they are good at, what their vision is, and what impact they can make in their world; can begin to lead others and help others make their own impact.
In Chapter 2 you will meet Alexandra, who identified and leveraged her strengths to find her own voice. This then propelled her to negotiate a new position and then lead her new team from a position of strength. A strength is doing what you love to do and what you are good at. Once identified, you can leverage this to be happy in your career.
Understanding that your personal values are the rock that you stand on is one of the first tenets of leadership introduced in Chapter 3. When your environment is in sync with your values, you can produce your best work. When your values are being compromised, you are not on firm footing and your Inner Leader cannot shine through.
Chapter 4 will teach you how to recognize the impact that you have made in your organization. This is your career currency. Most people do not realize how much currency they truly have or how to spend it wisely within their organizations. When you learn how to promote the impact that you and your team have made, then others will understand your value to them and your career will evolve.
Building and maximizing your personal brand is the subject of Chapter 5. It is only once your vision, purpose, and goals become clear that you can begin to take successful risks with your career and your team. Your Inner Leader will have a guiding beacon for knowing what risks are right for you.
The exercises in Part One will be exercises for you to get to know yourself, which can sometimes be the hardest. Do not get discouraged; self-knowledge is an exciting self-discovery journey and essential to unleashing your Inner Leader. The case studies and the additional coaching stories are meant to illustrate the chapter concepts and give you real-world examples.
Part Two of this book is dedicated to the major topics that my clients have requested coaching on. Being more productive or doing more with less is always at the top of the list. Part of being more productive is learning how to delegate. Most leaders got to their current position by executing results. Once they find themselves in a position of leadership (whether formal or informal), letting go of the job and allowing others to do it is a very difficult thing. There are certain skills and techniques presented in Chapter 6, in the form of exercises to help you with being a successful delegator and improving productivity.
The next chapter is on mentoring. Mentoring is the most underrated key to leveraging your success. Mentoring is the relationship between two people in which there is mutual learning and sharing. Developing yourself and your team into a world-class group of experts is what leadership is all about. This is the shortest chapter and in some ways the most powerful.
Communication is a leader's best friend, and the concept of examining your personal language is vital. As you will see in Chapter 8, many successful leaders sabotage themselves by using personal language that diminishes their success. You will learn to recognize powerful phrases and questioning techniques to communicate more powerfully.
Most leaders are so busy influencing results that they have little time for evolving their career. The only person whose job it is to evolve your career is you. In Chapter 9, you will learn about networking and interviewing. After driving results, when leaders come up for air, they realize that they do not have the appropriate skills to network effectively. Networking is the single biggest key to building your career because it is people who help you get promotions and new positions.
There is also a section on interviewing in Chapter 9. This might seem out of place in a leadership book, but being able to cut through the clutter and interview someone effectively (whether you are the interviewer or the interviewee) can ensure that you have the best people matched to the most important jobs in your organization.
Sustainability of strong leadership is the end goal to unleashing your Inner Leader. I call this determining and living your Leadership Legacy. Many of my successful clients came to me after a long (20-plus years) career, wanting more. . .wanting to follow their personal values and brand to still drive results, but in a more compassionate way. This is the time in their career that they want to build and live their Leadership Legacy. Chapter 10 will take the individuals from the case study in each chapter, which you will come to know, and extend their story to how they are currently living their Leadership Legacy.
The book's Part Three is a huge departure from the first two, in that it is a grouping of inspirational and motivating stories. There is nothing like hearing how “someone else did it” to help motivate and move us forward. While writing this book, I asked my community to share what inspires them. I received a large number of responses, which told me that inspiration was important to all. The inspirational stories are divided into the following categories:
In each of these categories the individual provides his or her inspiration and then tells the story of what makes this inspiration so important to them. It is amazing to feel all the changes that others have gone through and see the results of how they have handled their specific circumstances. In all these inspirational stories, having a clear goal for your behavior and your work gives clarity to living your Leadership Legacy.
The way that you choose to read this book is, of course, up to you. If you want to read the whole book to get an overview and then go back and do the exercises, that is great. If you want to read it in spurts with the outcome of you immediately completing the exercises in each chapter, that is also a good strategy. The exercises will help you deploy the concepts and change your behavior within your leadership role. This is noted because the principles described in this book are about gaining unmistakable clarity about yourself to become a highly effective leader. I urge you not to gloss over the exercises but to truly commit to take the time to invest in yourself.
Another suggestion is to do the exercises with a friend, mentor, coach, or professional development group. A friend or mentor could be helpful while completing the self-knowledge exercises in Part One, because they know you well and could give you confirmation as you make self-discoveries. A coach or a professional development group could be helpful in discussing any of the techniques in Part Two with specific emphasis on changes in “process-oriented” personal interactions.
Human behavior is one of the hardest things to change. Therefore, some of the exercises might be hard for you, because they are going to ask you to change. I tell the story of remodeling my kitchen. The trash container was moved five feet to the right of where it was previously. For more than a month, every time my husband and I went to throw something out, we literally went to the old spot. How ridiculous! My husband got furious with himself that he could not break such a simple habit. Yet, the research shows that you must consciously do something consistently for at least 30 days to build a new habit. Then, four months later, when I was especially stressed and went to throw something out, what did I do? You guessed it; I went to the “old” spot. The bottom line is that change is hard, and it takes a long time consistently implementing the new behavior for the change to become a constant.
I say this to encourage you to heartily embrace the changes discussed in the book and to understand that change is hard. Over the years I have built the following Change Model that I use for coaching, and it can also be used for any individual or organizational change (see Figure 1.1).
Figure 1.1 Change Model: Unleashing Your Inner Leader
The first step is Awareness. Although the place where the awareness happens in each case study and chapter may be subtle, it will be found in every chapter of the book. As you read the case studies and concepts, begin thinking about your own life, and try to note how applicable this idea of awareness is for you. The exercises are designed to make this process easier and to ensure that you are very aware of the applicability of the leadership concept in your life. You might not be aware at first, and the exercises and case studies are designed to make you mindful of it.
The second step of Acceptance is much bigger than initially meets the eye. Say, for example, that you become aware that one of your underlying strengths is that you are extremely competitive. This is a great strength and should be used when right for the situation. You might have known this at some level before, but after doing the strengths exercises, you might find that this could actually be holding you back in certain instances. Accepting this fact may be difficult, and it is essential to you making a change to truly use your leadership powers and accept what you discover in the exercises.
The third step, Choice, might also be challenging for you. Earlier steps will show your awareness and personal commitment, which will in turn ensure your acceptance, but will you make the choice to change your competiveness? Are you truly ready to change that behavior by accepting that only by changing you will get to the next level of leadership? Congratulations to you when you make that choice. Then and only after you have gone through these first three steps will you be able to successfully make a lasting change in your leadership behavior.
The last step, Change, is the final goal. Once you have gone through the first three steps, you might think that change is easy, yet remember the moving of the trash can. Change takes lots of effort over time to really make it a part of you. By going through these first three steps, you can be clear that you have chosen the right change for you, and your change efforts will be highly rewarded.
As you absorb case and client studies in the pages that follow, the exercises in the book will challenge you to recognize the opportunities to lead that you may have not recognized in the past. To that end, have you ever asked yourself something similar to one of these questions?
If any of these situations resonate with you, then I would ask you the following questions: What made you hesitate? What got in your way?
As my years of coaching more than 4,000 business professionals in 17 countries shows, the answers have been as varied as the individuals and the industries that they work in. However, the resulting concept is always similar; everyone has a leader within him or her, and with some help, everyone can unleash that leader to become powerful and impactful. That is what this book will show you how to do—unleash your Inner Leader.
In Chapter 2, you will meet Alexandra. As you absorb her story, look for parallels from her experience to apply to yourself. Make the commitment to know yourself, understand your strengths and weaknesses completely, and find clarity about yourself and the value that you have to offer. Peeling back these layers will reveal for you that when you truly know yourself and you have unmistakable clarity on who you are and what your value is, then you become a highly effective business professional, and your Inner Leader will be unleashed.
Self-discovery is the key to unleashing your Inner Leader to the world. As shown in Figure 2.1, the first part of unleashing your Inner Leader is to know yourself…authentically. It is amazing that in all of the thousands of business professionals whom I have coached, they do not have clear answers to simple questions, such as:
You can expect to discover the answers to these questions in Part One. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of completing the exercises in this part; they will give you the answers to catapult you to higher performance in Part Two. You can do them in any order, and the point is to do them all.
Go ahead; take the plunge into the pool of self-discovery. You will be one of the few leaders who really know themselves and then will be ready to unleash your leadership to the world!