It’s all about being you, you, you.
When you are outnumbered as a woman, feeling pukey, or just not centered, you may watch yourself behaving in a way that is not really you. It’s like an out of body experience. And ya don’t like it.
We contend that it all flows from knowing your values, and keeping them in the forefront. Easier said than done (a perfect argument for why you should follow us and the tiny trainings to get big results. Get the hint?) This entire list of values that we use here at Skirt Strategies will help you start an assessment.
What you say. What you do. What you think. When they are all lined up and intentional, that’s authenticity. More in the video!
At Skirt Strategies we focus on a different leadership goal each month, providing a training tip via video and weekly training assignments for subscribed members.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Katie: Hi this is Katie Snapp, Skirt Strategies.
Carol: This is Carol.
Katie: And this is our new friend. I want to call him Beak because he kind of looks like he would be a Despicable Me.
Carol: He has little legs. He looks like he’s from Despicable Me.
Katie: Cute. This month we are giving you a new topic for your female leadership capabilities.
Carol: Skills, yes, everything.
Katie: Competencies. I mean I have a lot of words I can toss in there.
This one I love, authentic leadership.
Carol: Love it. How to keep yourself out of trouble by being yourself.
Katie: I think this is a great message for women because sometimes we compromise ourselves when we are in positions of being outnumbered or being in a male based workplace.
Carol: Yes we do. We compromise and we try to look like a man.
Katie: We could do that or we just become meek because we feel like there is so much testosterone around us, and even if you are not in that type of situation, just checking yourself.
As I was looking through what we have an authentic leadership I was reminding myself, how quickly could I articulate what I would say my authentic leadership is? There are some things about mine that I definitely know but I’m constantly working at bringing it to the forefront.
Do you feel like yours is there?
Carol: I feel like I’m kind of on auto-pilot as far as my leadership goes really doing all of the work that I do with you helps me be a better leader obviously. We hope it makes you a better leader as well just to keep these things top-of-mind.
But you are who you are. Be yourself. Become comfortable with it and I think obvious as I get older I am a little bit more comfortable with my leadership and my leadership style.
You know I started managing restaurants when I was 21.
Katie: That is amazing.
Carol: So coming up with a leadership style at 21 was not easy. I was dumped into it and people were looking to me for answers so you come up with it pretty quick.
Katie: Yeah you really do and it’s evolved since then I’m sure.
Carol: Absolutely.
Katie: What a great way to mature your leadership.
Carol: Well and yes to become more authentic is not easy but it’s part of my story. You heard that right?
So my story is that I started at 21. That’s part of my story so that changed the way I lead throughout and I think part of what we want to talk about this is your story is key.
Katie: That’s part of the message that we want to leave with you in the video this month, is what is authentic leadership and where does it come from? It comes from your story. There is no one trait that determines whether someone’s leadership is more authentic than anything else. We probably have for ourselves something that we know has hit the target.
For me when there’s humor involved, when people aren’t being stodgy and stuffy, I can be myself. If it’s a serious room, suddenly I lose my authenticity. I can’t deal with this. Sometimes I add that to the and sometimes it backfires but that’s okay.
Carol: It doesn’t often backfire. I think you manage it most of the time.
Katie: Well sometimes I’m the only one laughing. As I say to myself, “The rest of them are laughing on the inside, I can just tell.”
So no single one trait is determining of what makes authentic leadership. It’s really what it is for you. Where have you come from, not literally because I don’t want to hear my mom, their story is your key.
So for example, there was a story I was recently reading about, a guy named David Pottruck. He was a CEO of Charles Schwab. He came into Charles Schwab as the head of marketing. He moved from New York over to San Francisco and he had a very extreme work ethic. So he worked long hours he worked very hard. He was fierce. He was focused and he couldn’t understand why he was not making friends with those that he worked with.
Well can you imagine what’s happening?
Carol: Yeah.
Katie: He’s intimidating them.
Carol: Sure.
Katie: So here’s the new guy. He is intimidating. He’s thinking, “I have passion for this workplace. I want to make it successful.” There is the intent and the perception to the rest of the world is, “Can you lay off just a little bit buddy? You are making the rest of us look bad.”
So he had to step back and say, “Where am I really being authentic? Where is it coming across in the way that I want?”
So not only do you have to think about what your message is and where it has come from because you have experiences. I won’t say things happened to you – certain events – I will say they are experiences that have brought you into your story. Am I making any sense?
Carol: Well let me just say that we do a – in our workshop, an exercise where we ask women to think about the different chapters of their life, just something big in your life that made a difference. Good or bad, just put it down on this timeline. And then we go back and we teach them how those really hard times, maybe it was a divorce, maybe it was a death or something, that was really difficult, we teach them how that part of their story really shaped them into being the person they are.
And that’s powerful.
Katie: It’s very powerful and it’s a huge message in growth, success, being the leader that you want to be. There is not a leader I have ever met that has not had some sort of struggle and the best ones have learned from them.
It’s just another message for women when you see something that’s a struggle, look at it, embrace it, figure out how you’re going to grow from it and how you’re going to be a different person as a result of it.
Maybe it stinks when you have to go through it but really at some level it is what is making you. And it’s going to be what ends up molding those traits that make you that authentic leader that you are.
Carol: What doesn’t kill me?
Katie: Exactly.
Carol: Makes me stronger.
Katie: So ask yourself the strong questions. We are going to be working with those of you who are monthly members. You are going to get some assignments each week along the lines of these questions but I wanted to share these questions here in the monthly video.
1. Think about where your leadership spark comes from. Where does your leadership spark?
Carol: Where do you get purpose? Where do you feel passionate about what you do?
Katie: And that’s not just something you answer really quickly. Even if you do, I worked with a group of women recently that were – some were more experienced and some were relatively new – it was actually a mentoring group. And the mentees did not have those answers so quickly. The mentors did but even at the same time, the mentors that had been in industry for a little bit longer, may have had an answer to that but it had evolved. It had changed.
Carol: Got it.
Katie: Second question.
2. What are your most deeply held values? Do those change?
Carol: I’m not sure.
Katie: I don’t know. Well I’m not going to say I don’t know. Some of them do not like your religious values might not change. There’s nothing to say they can’t but they are more deeply held that you probably aren’t going to change other the course of a lifetime vs. others that may evolve is just the word that I use.
And then the third question.
3. What tools and people are around you that help make that whole system happen? You don’t do it alone.
Carol: True.
Katie: You are in – they say the five people that you spend the most time with are a reflection of what you are like. So you should choose who you are around.
Carol: Oh yeah, well I guess I do.
Katie: Rock star. No just good solid people. I have – it’s almost all girlfriends right now but I have colleagues and clients, definite clients that I learn so much from that are, talk about rock stars, just I aspire to. Love working them. Love being a resource to them.
So those are three great questions.
Carol: Those are three absolutely fabulous questions and we all like being around you and working with you too by the way.
Katie: Thank you. Was I digging for that?
Carol: I felt a little bit like that.
Katie: Those of you that are monthly members, you pay $8 a month but if you are not we would love to have you follow us at any point in time. If you would like to be held accountable, if you want an assignment we send out one every Monday morning, it’s called the Monday Morning Detox. Those of you that are in that tribe of paid subscribers will get an assignment each week during this month on this topic.
So we will task you with something around what we’ve just talked about. Give you a little something to do to think about it more.
Carol: How being yourself can keep you out of trouble.
Katie: How being yourself can keep you out of trouble. Did you have a book you wanted to share by the way?
Carol: I thinking of a book that I was reading right now and it is called First Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers do Differently. And what’s interesting about this book, it’s by Marcus Buckingham and I am so enjoying it because I really do a lot of these things and I am very proud of myself.
Katie: You’re breaking the rules.
Carol: I am. They’ve been broken.
Katie: Kudos for breaking those rules.
Carol: So it feels good. It’s quite a bit of an enhancement on what I’ve been doing.
Katie: Love it. Great. Thanks for sharing with us this month. We’ll see you again with more, stay tuned.
(Music plays)
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