How to Be Yourself When Leading Your Team and Create Company Culture on Purpose

Unicorns are pretty, so here's a stock image of a unicorn float. Enjoy.

“But we’ve always done it this way!”

So you started a business and it’s been going well. You’ve even grown and now have a team of employees that need leadership.

How are you showing up to that role?

Are you modeling your leadership style after your first boss? Your parents? A past teacher?

Maybe you’re showing up as the boss SOCIETY tells you is effective?

Strict disciplinarian.

Or worse yet, dictator.

Something doesn’t feel right about it, but how else are you supposed to get the team to do what you want? How else are they going to respect you? (We need to be asking different questions, but that's another article.)

Not to mention the fact that we are knee deep into 2020, a year that has brought significant changes to how we work, how we feel, and who we are as people.

Think about where your ideas came from about what it means to “be the boss.”

Are those models effective?

Are they reflective of who you are?

You don’t need to be someone else (your past boss who ruled with fear) or something else (a dictator gets things done, right?) in order to lead your team.

So ask yourself, who ARE you? What do YOU value? What kind of world do YOU want to create within your business that inspires the team to work towards a common purpose?

Use your imagination.

The most damaging phrase in the language is “We’ve always done it this way!” — Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper

Examine how your brain says it “should” be done, and then ask yourself how you would want it to be if there were no limitations.

Do you want things to be more fun, but your brain tells you no work will get done? (That’s nonsense btw.)

Do you want to pay attention to things that seemingly have NOTHING to do with work, like the humanity of your team? (Spoiler alert: the humanity of your team has EVERYTHING to do with your business)

Creating a company culture that is like nothing you’ve ever experienced before that expresses your vision of what is possible, is, well, possible.

It's as simple as creating culture by DESIGN instead of by DEFAULT.

Simple, yes.

Easy, no.

There are plenty of examples of alternative ways to lead that you can look to for inspiration, (&pizza, also The Lotus Room and Clear SEM for my local peeps) but ultimately, you need to be who YOU are when leading.

Faking it and trying to be something you’re not is ineffective and unsustainable.

As RKA (Rachel K Albers), business comedian and my GIF teacher puts it: “To be yourself is to do the work of detangling your own thoughts from the ones you picked up from others. Then it’s learning to lean into your own genius.”

So untangle yourself from the "shoulds" and lean in to who you are, and let that be your guide for how you lead.

Need help?

Let’s schedule a consult conversation!