Leadership Challenge Round-Up - How to build an online presence
Happy Saturday,
This edition is the last of the challenges for remote leaders on Leadership Anywhere.
From it, you will get a summary of the entire series, putting all the LEGO blocks together. I also intended this edition to reveal some behind-the-scenes info on why I did this series and what is coming up next.
Thanks for staying in the loop.
The ultimate goal for remote leaders is presence
More importantly, online presence. That was the entire goal of the challenges series here: increasing your online presence so you could command your vision and influence without the limits of location or time.
Your presence is obvious in the office. In a remote environment, it has to be intentional and online. Without your presence, you can’t influence others to share your vision; without influence, you are not a leader.
So, I shared my tried-and-tested practices in the last weeks.
I wanted to give you the context (the why) and the how. Unlike most mentors and coaches, I wanted to give you very practical to-dos that you can do at your own pace to achieve the outlined goals.
First, we started with finding your voice. It was a practice of self-reflection, which, according to most people I have talked with, is the most common thing missing from leaders.
Second, we practiced empathy, in a practical way. I could give you all the prep talk on why being nice to each other is important and understanding your team’s needs. In this challenge, you’ve had 5 DIY practices to develop deeper empathy. Without empathy, you can’t connect with others - so no point talking about presence.
Unlike others, who immediately jump into “OK, you need to start developing content if you want to be seen as a leader,” I shared my take on daily publishing only on the third challenge. This challenge helps you beat impostor syndrome and start daily content production.
On the fourth challenge, you need a trusting team to transfer your vision as a leader, so we focused on creating trust on this challenge. In a remote setting, trust comes from transparency. The more transparent your company is, the more trust you can cultivate. I shared 5 DIY practices on how to adapt to more transparent operations.
On the fifth challenge, we discussed mindset, mindfulness, and hitting a strategic pause. I fundamentally believe that leadership presence comes from stability and not from fast-paced adaptability. If you are stable and solid on the ground, you can adapt to anything faster. Fixing your focus helps with stability—mindfulness is a key to unlocking better focus.
On the sixth challenge, armed with a trusting team, daily content publishing, empathy, self-reflection, and high focus, we leaped a big forward. Without all the rest before, it didn’t make sense to talk about thought leadership, which is the most important part of the challenges series.
On the last challenge, I wanted to share some tactical tips on storytelling. It is like a spice, the cherry on top of everything we discussed. Storytelling is not an ability but a tool that you can master. It helps you to transfer your vision and influence your team directly on internal matters or indirectly through your public thought leadership program.
All the previous challenges are available on my site here.
Behind the scenes
Mentoring others is still new to me.
I’ve spent 2 decades of my career leading teams (10 years remotely, 10 in the office), mainly in the creative industry & B2B tech. I mentored everyone whom I knew personally. But mentoring those who don’t know me personally is still new.
Still, I wanted to give all-in in terms of value.
Many of you replied to this email flow with, “this is great, you should create a course from it.” Some of you scheduled calls with me to go deeper. Thank you to all who felt that this series resonated with you.
I have zero intention of doing a course or giving free workshops. Unlike most self-proclaimed consultants, my billable work is still plain and simple consulting. I do enjoy it as it gives me the creative edge and flexibility.
As you probably know, writing is self-paced learning. I wrote this series not just for my subscribers but also for myself to sum up what I believe in a condensed version.
What’s next
I’m going to do two things: I want to share my knowledge for free with anyone.
I’ll hit a strategic pause for a couple of weeks. I have some family drama to take care of anyway (my dog is very old), plus I have to do some heavy lifting with a client.
I’ll come back on Beehiiv with refined, shorter weekly content for remote leaders. I will focus only on four principles:
Growth: sharing growth tactics I’ve learned through my career as a CMO.
Mindset: sharing mindfulness & health tips that boost your professional journey. It’s a new “addiction” of mine. :)
Leadership: continue sharing leadership practices that work exclusively for remote leaders.
Resources: tools, books, and practices that I loved and helped my professional journey and can help yours.
FYI: all current subscribers (around 1,5K) will be added to my Beehiiv account. You can unsubscribe at any time.
My goal is to treat my newsletter as my sole vehicle for sharing my knowledge. All my daily content on LinkedIn will be geared towards that, too.
After all my experiments with content in the last year, it turned out that most experts are right. Writing works, but only if you commit to it and focus your content on one single audience.
Hope you will tag along on this journey. Meanwhile, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me at any time.
Wishing you the best,
Peter
