Your Leadership Philosophy

Welcome to your worthy career. A podcast with me. Melissa. Lawrence. I’m a career and life coach with all the corporate credit and talent development and organizational psychology.

And I help women like you get extraordinary results by being more you, not less. I won’t just help you have a career experience worthy of you, but I will help you build your self-worth to shift what you think is possible and take the action that will create the career you’ve always wanted. Whether it’s more meaningful work you’re passionate about, making more money, getting to your next level, or being more effective as a leader. We are shattering the glass ceiling here, the one that exists for women at work and the one we put on ourselves with our doubt and inner critics. Each week you will get practical teachings grounded in neuroscience and effective career development strategies.

You’ll experience deep mindset shifts and the perfect amount of room so you can run your career with ease rather than your career running you. You were born for more, and I’m going to help you get there with maybe a few dance parties along the way. Your up-level begins now.

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of the podcast. Today we’re going to talk about a leadership development concept. You’re going to hear me talk even more about these concepts on the podcast because I believe you can be a leader at any level. I work with people that are directors or even vice presidents and individual contributors without direct reports. I work with people who are supervisors with ten direct reports.

I work with managers that do and do not have teams. But all of my clients are leaders. They lead themselves, their careers, and the impact they want to have. And this podcast is all about you being more effective and happy in your career and with yourself. You might be surprised to know that of all of the people that I’ve worked with, some with leadership titles don’t even consider themselves leaders.

They think of the executives or senior leadership team as the leaders. And this is a great disservice to you. Thinking that you are not a leader or that you need to be a super high level or something other than who you are is only hurting you. So I challenge you to listen to each episode of this podcast and look for what you can take from each episode that applies to you and your life. Most times I tell you exactly how to apply it in different situations.

But if I don’t take the leadership and the accountability to find those nuggets for myself, they will make a huge difference for you. This week we’re going to dig into an advanced concept of leadership, and that is your leadership philosophy. Now, I say it’s advanced, but it is also fundamental in order to be an effective leader. So why is it advanced if it’s so fundamental? Because most leaders don’t have one.

A lot of people think of a leadership philosophy as something that you create when you’re an executive. But I think that your leadership philosophy helps you advance your career and be a role model leader while feeling good about yourself at every level. In fact, even if you are not in a leadership position or don’t have direct reports, you can still have a personal leadership philosophy. So first, let’s talk about what a leadership philosophy is. Your leadership philosophy is like your true north.

It defines your standard for what others can expect of you and what you expect of others. It guides you in making decisions and allows you to stay true to yourself regardless of the environment you’re in or the people around you. It is so much bigger than your leadership style. You can think of it like your leadership philosophy is like a company mission and your leadership style is like company goals. The philosophy is big and all-encompassing.

How I use this with my clients is we define their leadership philosophy to help them showcase their unique contributions in the workplace, demonstrate their leadership skills, and to help them overcome confusion and make decisions. Think about it. If you have a leadership philosophy that connects you to your purpose and impact that you want to make as a leader and contributor, that outlines your values and how to connect the work you do every day, work becomes more enjoyable. You don’t get sucked into the drama or the negativity around you. You don’t feel like you’re sacrificing your values for your demanding boss or less-than-ideal work culture.

And that is your benefit. But let’s think about this as the benefit to the people around you because it’s so much bigger than your personal satisfaction, although that is a very big perk. Whether it’s your direct reports, your team, your boss, or your peers, the people you work with will know what to expect from you. When you are operating within your leadership philosophy, you will become reliable and consistent in your temperament and how you solve problems, and how you interact with people. Think of the comfort your team will have to have a leader who is consistent and reliable in their approach to work.

Think of what it might have been like for you to work for someone that seemed inconsistent. You never knew what to expect from them. Sometimes they included others in their decisions, sometimes they made decisions in the silo. Sometimes they were friendly and casual. Other times they were micro-managerial and irritable.

Personally, I’ve had the experience of reporting to someone like that. Sometimes in my one-on-one, they would show me YouTube videos that I found were not really relevant to our conversation or what I needed out of that meeting. And then other times they were very direct and somewhat micro managerial and it seemed to depend on what was going on with that person. And it didn’t seem as though they had a bigger mission for what they wanted to accomplish. And reporting to someone like that is not fun or effective.

It doesn’t allow you to do your best work. And that’s what people are experiencing if you’re not operating under a leadership philosophy, even when you have really good intentions. Now, as a listener, you are a leader. You can have the best intentions and be an excellent performer or doer of your job, but still fall prey to stress, organizational change, challenges, and issues at work or at home and find yourself being more reactive than proactive and into those isolated incidents outside looking in. Your colleagues are seeing someone who isn’t a leader rising above, who doesn’t know exactly what they’re doing, and who can’t be trusted.

Think of a captain guiding a ship. Imagine that the ship is riding the waves with ease. The captain knows how they will solve each problem as it comes up, stepping in and adapting to problems that give the passengers comfort that they are in control and that they are being led. This is what a leadership philosophy provides for the people around you. Now, if the captain is being more reactive is, say, really excellent at what they do, but let’s say they get a radio call and there is a problem ahead.

And so they start to go through scenarios of what to do, and the boat is kind of jerking around because they’re indecisive and they make a radio call to the passengers that there’s an issue up ahead. But rest assured that they’re dealing with it. Which boat would you rather be on? The one driven by the captain, who knows what to do, is consistent and reliable, who is confident in handling challenges without even letting you know that there ever was a challenge to deal with. Or the one that does well most of the time, but has some periods of unpredictability, or moments that you question your safety and betting it’s the first.

And so I really challenge you to take some time to think through your leadership philosophy. Having a leadership philosophy, defining it for yourself, and operating in alignment with it create a trust for those around you. Harvard Business Review reported that 58% of people would trust a stranger more than their boss. That is alarming, but that doesn’t have to be you. Trust is what helps you excel in your career and be the leader other people want to work with and work for.

It creates high-performing teams so that you look good, but you also work less. There is nothing more time-consuming than poor performers or team and employee relations issues. And if you’ve been through that, you know I’m telling you the truth. You can be the leader regardless of your level. That role models what good leadership can look like.

Just consider that doing this work to define your leadership philosophy as a foundation of your career will help you proactively solve so many problems and avoid traps that will hinder you and your team’s productivity. I’m going to give you the elements of a leadership philosophy so you can start to wrap your mind around what this might look like for you. Now, the areas that I suggest you consider when defining your leadership philosophy include your personal values, the desired outcomes that you want to create, the impact you want to have, what you want to be known for, how you approach conflict and problems, and how you view others and their relation to you and your work. Another way that you can think about this is to think back on the leaders that you really loved working for and the ones that you didn’t. This can be a clue to the type of leader that you want to be and what your values are.

All right, so this is your homework. Find a quiet space, go for a walk, or listen to some music and give some thought to the leader you want to be and what your leadership philosophy is, and how you might integrate it more into your everyday. This is the exact work we’re doing inside the Standout Leader Incubator. The Standout Leader Incubator is my leadership development coaching program for aspiring and current leaders. In the program, we’re diving into the leader you want to be and will create your unique leadership philosophy as the foundation of the work we will do together.

You will then build on it and practice integrating it until it is second nature. Throughout our time together, you will truly be the standout leader you want to be for yourself and those around you. Enrollment opens in February. Join the Waitlist at yourworthycareer.com Incubator. When you join the waitlist, I send you weekly leadership development tips and strategies so you can start being a more effective leader today.

You also get first access to apply for the Incubator before it is open to the public. Head there now. All right, leaders, my Cheetah family, I will talk to you next week.

Thank you for listening to this episode of your worthy career. Visit yourworthycareer.com for full show notes and additional resources to help you on your career journey. Speaking of resources, if you enjoy today’s show, you will love being an email VIP Insider where I share training tools and behind-the-scenes content exclusive to my VIP list. Become a VIP and join us at yourworthycareer.com. See you next week.