Leading from Your Genuine Self

Leadership gives the populace direction and helps them find meaning in their lives. Social development and adaptation needs strong leaders to be successful. Faced with challenges leaders will need to find solutions and motivate people. Developing leadership skills doesn't have any pre-defined rules and can be drawn from one's core strengths.

We must not put leadership into a pre-defined bottle where only a small sliver of actions are considered leadership. We are limited by our social perspectives and cultures. Leadership is about finding your core strengths and using those core strengths to help people get over challenges.

Misleading Perceptions of Leadership

Society has their own perceptions of leadership, gender and culture that often get in the way of how people express leadership. We are bombarded with the idea that leadership looks like Caesar and his conquering army. Although this is one type of leadership there are many more that have made profound changes on society that include types such as servant and knowledge based leadership styles.

Leadership is occurs when new solutions to problems are created and people are motivated to achieve new heights. Caesar's style might work in a military situation but could be disastrous in other situations that require more tact. True leadership can emerge in nearly any field and situation whereby a person stands to create positive change that benefits a greater good.

Not Tapping Your Full Potential

Perceiving leadership through a narrow lens means that the world is cutting itself from potential leaders. Consider how spiritual leaders like Gandhi changed a country or how scientific leaders like Einstein inspired generations of intellectuals. Each person has unique potential to lead in their own way once they get through the layers of socialized misconceptions and tap into their true potential.

People are not the same and their leadership style might be different as well. Some are more analytical while others are more intuitive in their approaches. Giving up preconceived notions of leadership might open you up to accepting your own personal style and maximizing your leadership potential. 

Knowing Yourself

True leaders have insight into themselves and others. They learn from their experiences and use that knowledge to enhance their environment. Sometimes that knowledge comes from themselves while at other times it comes from watching others.

Taking time to understand what motivates you, the skills you have already developed and the abilities that come naturally to you will make a difference in  how you approach issues. Instead trying to tackle problems and lead others from a disadvantage you can use your true abilities to lead from a position of power.

Lead from Your Core

Genuine leadership rests on leading from your truth strengths and abilities. You become a natural leader and leadership becomes easier when you tap into your inner sole and intuitively know your strengths. When leading from your core there is no need to envision what other leaders would do or compare yourself to other people because you are natural.

Sustainable leadership must come for you true self if it is going to be fully effective. When you need to perform at your maximum it is better to have automatic responses from your true self versus having to think through how leaders are supposed to act. The more your tap your inner, abilities the stronger you will become.

Fell free to share with appropriate attribution. Dr. Murad Abel http://www.academic-capital.net