How Are You Wired As A Leader?

How are you wired as a leader? What does that even mean?

Some people will ask, “Isn’t leadership really innate? Isn’t the best leader among us? Aren’t they really born to be among us?” And they will give you evidence as to why some people are born to be leaders. You look at someone’s life and you say, “You know back when they were little kids on the playground they were always the one leading the exercises, changing the game or maybe as kids they were always the first ones chosen in sports or club activities. Or when they were in school they were the ones the teacher always picked on.”

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers” there is a great study where he talks about professional hockey players. The reason why this is an unusual book and why it is so awesome in how it looks at success is the biggest correlated criteria that he could find was their birth dates. Because for hockey players in Canada, when you are born on January 1st you are in that year group. So if you’re born in January 1st and you’re playing against a kid in that year group or that was born on December 31^st, you’re a year older than him. That doesn’t matter when you are 33 and he is 32. When you’re 5 and he is 4, you’re 20% bigger and faster. So 80% of professional hockey players have their birthdays fall in the first quarter.

What happens is this becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. That this person is a leader a lot of the times, but not every time. But looking at this notion of, are leaders really born? The answer is some are, but a lot are not.

There are other factors at play. What you’re going to learn throughout The Inevitable You® coaching system is we can teach you every skill. You have every skill, and you have to unlearn some things you learned in grade school.

We’re going to reinstall what I call “neural software” to create new beliefs about what it means to be a leader. But we are all born to be leaders. It’s innate in all of us. Now some a little sharper than others but the vast majority of people have far more leadership skills. So we’re going to look really hard at this wiring.

So I want you to do a little, tiny exercise. We’re going to pull what’s called an identity exercise and what I want you to do is get your pen and paper out, and I want you to write down five adjectives, two nouns and two verbs that best describe you as a leader. Five adjectives, two nouns, and two verbs that best describe your identity as a leader, and I want you to use your words. You’re sitting in the privacy of your computer or smartphone here, don’t B. S. yourself. I’m not going to put any of this on display. You can ask me questions about it, but you are not going to be forced to go anywhere with this.

So use your words. Use your normal self-talk. When you’re driving to work, when you think about how you are going to solve a problem, or how you are going to get promoted and you say things like, “Well they should promote me because I’m methodical and dependable.” You’ve lived your life in this body, in this journey and in this life. You know how this works.

An example of this might be:

“I am a kind, caring, dependable, smart, and methodical.”

Those are your five adjectives you might pick. And the nouns might be:

“I’m really a good diplomat and a negotiator. That’s why I’m a good leader because I am sensitive as a diplomat to everybody’s point of view and I negotiate and I compromise.”

Maybe those are the nouns that you pick for yourself and you create a great environment and you encourage personal empowerment. So this becomes a great working sentence for you.

“I am kind, caring, dependable, smart, methodical diplomat, and negotiator that creates a safe environment and encourages personal empowerment.”

So go ahead, write it down now, your sentence with your five adjectives, your two nouns, and your two verbs. Go.

What did you discover? How powerful is your identity command as a leader? Can it be improved?

What you’re going to do as you interact and understand that coaching system is redesign and upgrade it. You’re going to change this sentence. You’re going to keep some of the words, not that what you’re doing today is dumb or bad, it’s just might not be as powerful, exciting and outrageous as it possibly could be if you got really excited and thought about it.

When you now begin to do that as your identity statement, even if we look at these five adjectives, two nouns and two verbs that you did and the new one does the content processing versus the old one, you’re going to have a different experience. Because I’m going to appeal to the new leader today already as we’re going to continue to create and understand this content.