Leadership Challenge #1 - Creating Your Leadership Voice
Happy Saturday for Leadership Anywhere readers - a weekly newsletter on the future of leadership.
Every week, there is a leadership challenge in which you can participate at your own pace. Every challenge defines the why, the what, and the how, providing context, possible wins, and replicable action steps.
This week marks the first challenge: crafting your leadership voice online.
Let's dive in.
Why does your voice matter?
Leadership is inherently different online than it is offline.
Your traditional signals for being a leader are out of the window online.
There is no corner office on Slack nor a dedicated parking space.
You don't need to dress up for a Zoom meeting.
You can't pat the shoulders of team members when you walk the floor.
Online, you have only your presence.
To be more philosophical, we are equally all just pixels on the screen.
So, how do you stand out as a leader?
How can you make your voice heard?
How can you describe your vision?
How can you transfer your mission?
We all know no one will follow you anymore because of your title.
It is impeccable to create your voice.
Share that voice.
Get people around you.
Unite them for the common cause.
This week's challenge helps you to do just that.
What can you win or lose?
Let's start with the bad news.
It is easier to disappear online. It is easier to be unseen.
In the office, everyone knew if you walked in.
On Slack? Or, even worse, on your internal company hub?
If your team does not see you, you are not there for your team.
Your vision won't be clear for everyone.
No one will implement your company's mission.
No one will know what to expect from you or what you expect from them.
It's hard to build a high-performing team online if the leader is not present for them with a clear mission.
The wins are the exact opposites.
Your sound voice will give your team more clarity and alignment.
Internally, you will have the opportunity to support, influence, and mentor your team.
But it won't stop there.
A leader who's active online with a solid presence will unlock an army of benefits:
Clients, customers, new hires, and investors will all find you more easily.
Other leaders will be more likely to network with you, leading to great learning experiences.
The wider audience will supply you with more PR and partnership opportunities.
Oh wait, it still won't stop there.
From my personal experience, I can tell you that spending time finding and articulating your voice will be the best self-reflection exercise you can do professionally.
Finding and sharing your voice will teach you a lot about yourself.
It's a nuke for personal development.
It is constant learning.
It is ever-evolving self-development.
The most confident leaders out there are publicly sharing their journey.
And confidence is contagious.
Before discussing how and actionable steps you can take to find your voice, let's address an important point.
Most leadership development professionals and coaches usually tell you this: just start publishing online.
It's because most of them never worked as leaders. I did.
While I agree that we need less thinking and more doing, I also believe that presence can be risky for leaders.
Exposure can lead to miscommunication and misalignment. It literally can hurt your business and goals.
So I always recommend this: spend some time figuring out your voice first, position yourself, and then do any action publicly. Work with that risk, don't ignore it.
Now that that's out of the way let's take the actual challenge and see what actionable steps you should take to find your voice.
How to find your voice? Five practical tasks you can do in a week.
We are all busy, so I created this challenge to fit your schedule.
It takes about 30-60 minutes every day to complete these tasks.
It works like the gym. You do small reps every day.
Total time investment is around 4-5hrs.
The tasks are not interchangeable. They are built upon each other.
Day 1
Audit your current online presence.
Start a document. Name it "Public Me."
First, pull in all the online platforms you control—your LinkedIn, etc.
Second, do a Google Search on yourself. Pull in the findings.
Third, score yourself on each platform & find from 1 to 5.
1 - This is not how I want to be seen by others.
5 - This is how I want to be seen by others.
Be honest and brutal with yourself. It's only you.
On those where you added less than 5 as a score, add a couple of bullet points in the document on how you would improve the image to get a 5.
This task gives you an immediate self-reflection on the current starting point of your journey.
Day 2
Define your leadership identity.
Start a document. Name it "Values."
Yes, almost all the tasks on all the challenges are writing tasks. I will explain why later, but as an online leader, you must become an amazingly clear writer. There are no workarounds—just practice.
Write down your answers to these questions:
What values are important to me personally and professionally?
What is my goal with my work? What is my mission as a leader?
What are the ideal qualities of a person I work with (regardless of position, title, or work)?
How do I work as a leader? What are my routines, habits, and practices? What is my style?
What excites me in business? Can any industries, creative endeavors, innovations, or even other leaders give me a spark?
What is my legacy? How do I want others to remember me professionally?
Don't overthink it. Just write it down.
The faster you do it, the better.
The more organic you do it, the better.
If you can, do this task in the morning or before bed.
This task gives you the first clear opportunity for self-reflection.
Day 3
Build up your confidence.
Surprise, but start a document. Name it "Confidence."
Write down things in two categories.
a) Things that you are good at.
Some people enjoy finding errors in data sets.
Others love working with people.
I personally love to inspire through writing.
What are the workflows that you enjoy most?
What are your strengths?
b) Things that you want to be good at.
Aspirations drive us forward.
Write down things that you want to excel in.
I want to become a better speaker and be better on video.
What are the workflows that you have yet to master?
It has to be personally important to you.
Write down only those that you want to improve.
Not because others want you to improve or expect you to.
But because YOU want it.
This task gives you the mental boost to focus on your strengths and aspirations.
Day 4
Reflect on yourself.
Pick the documents from days 2 and 3.
Highlight keywords from the text you wrote.
You will probably find pieces like these: "direct communication," "creating X experience for customers," or "providing X for my team."
Collect these keywords.
Now, pick the document from day 1.
Do you have those keywords mentioned on the platforms and findings about yourself?
If not, think about how you can put those in.
This task acts as a mirror for you. What you think you are is not always presented to others publicly.
Day 5
Time to get some feedback.
It's meeting time. Schedule 3 meetings.
Meet with a leader who works with you on the same level (at the same company). The person can be a co-founder or a team leader. If you don't have one on this level, pick someone closest to it. If you work alone, find someone you have worked with on this level.
Meet with a team member who reports to you. The ideal candidate is someone who is far from the leadership position but not an entry-level junior. Ideally, it is someone who has experienced how you lead.
Meet with someone whom you trust but you have never worked with directly. It can be a close friend, someone from your industry, or an expert you know. Family and significant others are a no-go.
Be honest and open. Tell them you are trying to improve your leadership practice and want their feedback.
Ask them how they see you as a leader. How good is your job? Where do they see room for improvement? Where should you focus more? What do they love when they work with you? What do they think about the kind of leader you are and the kind of leader you can be?
There are no right or wrong answers.
These will be hard conversations, I know.
None of them will be fully honest, I know.
Everyone knows limited information and/or has skin in the game.
That's fine. The goal is to gather feedback.
During the week, you've spent much time reflecting on yourself and finding your voice.
If, during this personal feedback, others describe you in a different picture, you might have a problem. Time to adjust and amend those documents you wrote about yourself.
Here are some small tips on how to make these conversations easier, but bear in mind that everyone and every situation is different:
Don't schedule dedicated meetings on these. Just have some questions at the end of a regular meeting with others.
Don't ask them to provide feedback on you. Ask them to tell what they think good leadership means.
The more open and transparent you are, the better. Vulnerability kickstarts empathy, which leads to more honesty.
Tell others you are thinking about starting a newsletter or blog on leadership practices within your company (which is true, see later challenges). Ask them what they would write about. What do they think you should write about?
It is probably the hardest of the tasks within this challenge.
If you did all five tasks, you have a solid understanding of your voice.
You are more confident and ready to step out to the public.
But before you go all-in, there's one more challenge you need to take.
And that is the challenge of empathy.
You can't understand others without understanding yourself.
But as a leader, you work FOR others, for your team.
So empathy is the most important "skill" you need to master.
That will be the focus of next week's challenge.
If you enjoyed this week's tasks, share it with others.
If you have any questions, reply to this email, and I'll be happy to help.
Until next week,
Peter
