What you believe shapes who you are.

What you believe shapes your future.

What you believe is the most powerful tool in that metaphorical toolbox of yours.

The joy of coaching is that I get to work with people who want to change the script for their lives.  They come to coaching with the desire to change something and the willingness to step into what can be the messiness of the process. 

I have defined my coaching around the concept of leadership.  I hold as irrefutable a few foundational principles of leadership:

1.            You are a leader.  It matters not to me whether you hold an exalted position of power.  Whether you accept it or not, whether you are aware of it or not, whether you want to acknowledge it or not, you are innately and inherently powerful.  Your power comes from your ability to think, feel, and act.  With these attributes flows the power of choice.  From the power of choice flows your ability to lead.   

A client, a senior executive, recently found himself eyeball-to-eyeball with a group of disgruntled union strikers.   My client remembered an email that I sent him which said simply:  “You can lose control.  You cannot lose choice.”  He stepped into his role as leader and did not, as he thought he might, ‘lose control.’  He, instead, exercised his power of choice … the power of leadership.

2.             You were born to lead.  You were born to lead.  You were not born to be a victim, helpless in the face of the external events that occur in your environment.  You were not born to whine and complain about the injustice and inequalities that exist.  You were not born to live one of Thoreau’s lives of ‘quiet desperation.’

What is it like when you can begin to take actions that take you into the realm of leadership?  I turn to a story about another client who found herself engaging in a lot of self-talk focused on justifying her lack of action regarding finding a rental space for her business.  Imagine her delight when she stopped the justifying game and acted on an inkling to approach the landlord of the space that she knew in her heart was right.  Imagine her delight when she was able to negotiate a price that was also right for her.

3.            Your life is a reflection of your leadership.  In many ways, we’ve been sold a bill of goods about how life works.  We’ve been taught by church, school, and state that we do not have much influence or power, that we are mostly insignificant and pretty impotent, and that greatness is a random event that only a select few can actually achieve. 

Poet and author David Whyte says something like, “It takes tremendous courage to live any life at all, even if it is just keeping a simple garden outside your kitchen window.”  Yes.  Just living life is an act of leadership.  Following your own drummer is a particular act of leadership.

Like the young woman whom I ran into recently.  She and I worked together many years ago and, as we shared what we were currently up to, she became apologetic as she explained that she had chosen to stay home with her children.  As I tried to reassure her about her choice, it was obvious that she felt somewhat guilty about her act of leadership. 

In my mind, this young woman was exercising true leadership.  However, she was unaware of it because of our cultural propensity for defining leadership in terms that are focused on power that is connected to job titles and/or money.

I recognize that these may seem like rather abstract and philosophical concepts.  To help anchor them in a tangible form, the next edition of this e-letter will focus on some tangible tips for leadership.