Nonprofit leaders: Learn 4 Fundamentals to Unleash Your Authentic Leadership Potential
The Inner Work of Leadership: Be Yourself and Lead with Authenticity
Women leading nonprofit organizations know that leading with authenticity is at the core of effective leadership, or maybe they don’t!
In a world where we often feel the need to armour up, put on masks, and present facades, embracing our true selves can be terrifying and also a transformative experience.
In my work, I teach four fundamentals of leadership. Let me cover them quickly here so you can create a plan to lead more effectively and feel good about yourself when you do!
Nonprofit Leaders Discover The Power of Being True to Yourself
1. Be Yourself
I spent many years armouring up, putting on a face or feeling like there was a right way to lead.
📒 Read more of my story in Mastering Confidence: Discover Your Leadership Potential by Awakening Your Inner Guidance System.
At times, I felt like I, figuratively and more often than not literally, suited up to go to work and then stripped away the layers when I got home. Sound familiar?
But it’s more than just the clothes we wear. It’s the style, approach and manner we bring to our leadership. True leadership begins with authenticity.
⭐️ To be our best selves, we need to do the inner work of unmasking ourselves, shedding the armour, and embracing our genuine selves. That starts with identifying your values, beliefs, strengths and quirks and learning to be comfortable with all of them.
👆🏻 That’s the work of Being Yourself
2. Develop Yourself
Continuous personal and professional development is the heartbeat of excellent leadership. Whether you’re battling a lack of confidence or, quite frankly, don’t know how to do 1–1 supervision, the journey of personal and professional development in leadership never truly ends.
Strong and authentic leaders commit to ongoing personal and professional development. They have a plan for how they are growing and developing themselves on the inside and how they tactically do their day-to-day work.
👆🏻 That’s the work of Developing Yourself.
3. Take Care of Yourself
Leadership isn’t just about guiding others; it’s about leading yourself first.
Self-care plays a critical role in maintaining your composure, being able to focus, and being decisive. After all, you can’t pour from an empty cup.
Strong leaders develop practical strategies for ensuring their minds and bodies are well-equipped to handle the demands of leadership.
👆🏻That’s the work of Taking Care of Yourself.
4. Teach Others to Do the Same
True leaders empower those around them to embrace authenticity, continuous growth, and self-care. It starts with you, though. You can only teach it effectively if you do it. But when you help others unmask, develop, and care for themselves, it creates an engaged culture of loyal team members.
Yes, we need to manage them, but inspiring leaders do more than that! Effective leaders learn to motivate, coach and mentor their team members.
👆🏻 That’s the work of Teaching Others to Do the Same.
Learning to lead with excellence
If you want to discover how to excel in leadership, explore how you can strengthen those fundamental strategies in how you lead.
You’ll learn more in the podcast series Invest in Your Leadership Excellence.
- The first episode in the series is here: Women leaders — Why you need to invest in your personal and professional development.
🎧 LISTEN NOW! 🎧
Remember to subscribe on whichever channel is your favourite so you don’t miss all 5 episodes in the series.
Leading with authenticity
Remember, leadership is not just a position, title or hat you put on when you show up at work each day.
Leadership is a journey of self-discovery and growth.
It is a personal growth journey!
Embrace your authenticity, invest in your development, prioritize self-care, and lead with excellence and in a way that feels good!
Do the inner work! It’s worth it!
p.s. If you want help doing the inner work so you can grow both personally and professionally, join The Training Library today!
