271: 6 Key Components of a Successful L.E.A.D.E.R. : A Fan Favorite Replay

Hi there. You’re listening to the Leading Lady podcast. I’m your host, AliceAnne Loftus, and I’m a certified professional coach specializing in leadership and work-life balance. I work with clients to shift their limiting beliefs, insecurities, and self-doubt. This podcast will be filled with tools and strategies to help high-achieving women like you feel connected, empowered, and in the lead of your life, both personally and professionally. Let’s transform your life starting now. Lead yourself, the rest will follow.

Hi there, leading ladies, and welcome to today’s episode.

In this episode, I’m going to be breaking down the word LEADER and how I use that word in many areas of my coaching. Specifically, in my business and leadership masterclass, the word LEADER is broken down into six modules, and I will go through that with you here on this episode. But also my book, which just came out in March of 2022, follows the LEADER acronym.

So I wanted to take some time to really break down what the letters in the word LEADER represent to me and to my coaching business. And to give you some tidbits to really be thinking about how you are showing up as a leader in your life, how you’re leading yourself, how you’re leading others, how you’re leading your organization, your small business, and even your family.

L: The Learner’s Mindset

So the first letter, L, stands for the learner’s mindset. I truly believe that leaders are learners. When you are coming from a learner’s perspective, when you are looking at what’s happening around you, situations, circumstances, and rather than judging them, you are gleaning a lesson that you can apply to your next steps or to how you’re showing up as a leader, that’s really stepping out of that judgment mindset and into a learner’s mindset.

I believe that as leaders, we are constantly learning. We are taking opportunities, and we don’t see shortcomings or failings as shortcomings or failings. We see them as opportunities to learn, opportunities to reevaluate, re-strategize, and then take those lessons to come back stronger than ever.

And so oftentimes, when I’m working with clients and we’re talking about a learner’s mindset, we will take a situation and really just break it apart and say, “What are the lessons learned here? What new skills am I gaining? What perspective can I shift into to maybe see this in a different way and move forward with something that is going to help me be better in all areas of my life, or specifically in this area that I’m working on?”

An example I always use is creating handbooks for your business, whether it’s a customer handbook or an employee handbook. I call those living, breathing documents, because they’re always changing. They’re never going to be finished, because there’s no way you would have thought of everything to put in them.

And so over the years, specifically in my child care business, something would happen and we would be like, “Oh my gosh, we didn’t think of that at all. How could this happen? This is terrible.” And we’d start to judge it, like, “How did we not know to put that in? How did we miss this? How did they find that loophole in this policy?”

And I say, “Okay, we can beat ourselves up over that. Or we can say, ‘Okay, I’m learning. I’m learning something new, something that I need to cover. I didn’t know I needed to put that in there.’” But that’s why this is a living, breathing document. Because you’re going to constantly learn new things in your business. You’re going to see things that you hadn’t thought of. You’re going to be figuring things out as you go along.

With a learner’s mindset, you understand that change is inevitable, that you don’t know everything, that you are constantly learning, and that you have to keep things fluid in your business. Because when you know better, you do better.

E: Engagement

So starting with the learner’s mindset, the first E in LEADER, we talk about engagement: engagement in what we’re doing and who we’re with. So what is engagement? Engagement is how are you showing up, or how am I showing up? How am I engaging with who I’m with and what I’m doing? Am I showing up? Am I engaged, meaning am I being an active participant? Am I practicing good listening skills? Am I showing up as I want to show up, or am I falling into default tendencies?

And so we talk about engagement and how we have the power, how we have the control. I’ve said this a million times: the only thing we ever have control of is our attitude and our effort. When we recognize that we are only in control of our attitude and our effort, it actually empowers us to choose our attitude and choose the effort that we put towards something.

So as we go through coaching about engagement, I ask my clients about this. I know that we’ve all been there, where something happens and we’re like, “Oh my gosh, I did not show up as my best self. That is not how I wanted to respond. That is not how I wanted to be in that situation.”

And so understanding that we have control over that, that that’s really the only thing we have control over, like I said, empowers you to take that pause and say, “Okay, I choose how I engage in this.” And you begin to really define who you are and how you want to show up.

A: Authenticity

The letter A is for authenticity. Authenticity is often a buzzword. Everyone talks about what it means to be authentic, and, “You do you, boo. I’m living my best life. Take it or leave it, this is who I am.” But authenticity is so much more than that. Authenticity is not just being the raw version of yourself. Authenticity is being the best version of yourself.

It’s about understanding your strengths, understanding your core values, understanding your mission and your vision, and choosing to really define yourself and put that version of yourself out there. It’s holding yourself accountable to your mission, vision, and values. It is having integrity and recognizing your strengths, and just because they might be different strengths from someone else’s, you don’t minimize them.

So a lot of times when I’m working with clients on authenticity, they come to me and they say, “Oh, I wish I was better at this. And I wish I was better at that. And I’m horrible at this. And this is what makes me not a good leader.”

And I’m like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. First, why are you talking about my friend that way? Why are you self-deprecating yourself? Not everybody is good at everything. So let’s focus on your strengths and the things that you are good at, so that we can build your authentic leadership.” We can help you tap into those strengths and really use them to build who you are as an authentic leader.

D: Staying Dedicated to Your Mission, Vision, and Values

The letter D stands for staying dedicated to the authenticity, staying dedicated to your mission, vision, and values. Because in a world that loves the buzzword authenticity, we also live in a society that tells us, “Don’t be this, don’t be that, don’t be too much.” Or, “This is the norm,” or, “You have to do this in order to be successful.”

And we get shiny object syndrome of, “Who am I supposed to be? What am I supposed to be doing in my business? If I want to build a successful business, do I have to be learning all of the Lizzo dance routines and crazy TikTok reels?” It just gets so overwhelming.

And I have clients that come to me and they say, “I really want to build my business, but I don’t think I’m going to be successful, because I really don’t want to show up on social media the way that I see everyone showing up on social media.”

And I say, “Okay, so let’s go back to your values. What do you value? How do you want to show up? What is authentic to you?” And let’s drown out the background noise. Let’s tune it out, turn it off, whatever. Let’s turn off all of the outside influences that are telling you who you should be, how you should be, what people value.

And I just say, “Okay, let’s take it back. Let’s take it back to who you are, how you want to show up, what’s authentic to you. And how can we be dedicated to that? How can you ground yourself back in your values?”

E: Emotional Intelligence

The second E, we talk about emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is about understanding your emotions, how your emotions are coming out, how you’re displaying them. It’s about being able to read the emotions of others.

But it’s not just being aware of your emotions and being able to recognize the emotions of others. It’s understanding how our emotions come together in our relationships, and how if my trigger is talking to your trigger, that’s just two hot buttons talking to each other. It’s not our best selves talking to each other.

So it’s recognizing how emotions play into relationships, and how those relationships can either strengthen your emotional intelligence or can become saboteurs of really understanding how you feel and how to communicate how you feel.

So in that module of emotional intelligence, we also talk about communication, and really understanding relationships and toxic relationships, and boundaries of what you do allow in your space emotionally. It’s such a powerful module. It’s such a powerful letter of the acronym. And a lot of people don’t understand that emotional intelligence is such an integral part of being a leader.

R: Resilience

And finally, we wrap up with the letter R, resilience. Through the resilience module, I often say that this really should be the first module, because it’s, “Put your oxygen mask on before the person next to you.” Because it really is where it all starts. You have to take care of yourself in order to really show up in any other aspect of your life. If you’re not taking care of yourself, then when the punches of life come, you’re not going to be able to bounce back.

And I really break down how resilience is a process. There’s no time frame on grief. There’s no step 1, 2, 3 of how to get back up. It really is just honoring your emotions, sitting in the dirt a little bit, tapping into that learner’s mindset and saying, “Okay, what do I need to learn here while I’m down in the dirt?” And then healing and making a plan for how you’re going to get up.

How the Six Pillars Work Together

So for me, really understanding the LEADER acronym, it’s not that you master each part of the word. They’re not isolated from one another, and they don’t come in any specific order. Even though I do think that I should start with resilience, it isn’t as pretty in the little acronym to start with the letter R.

But I think that it’s important to understand that they’re all part of it. They’re all equally important parts of the LEADER acronym, and they don’t come in any specific order. They work together. They blend together.

In order to be resilient, you have to have a learner’s mindset. To have a learner’s mindset, you have to be dedicated to your authenticity. To be emotionally intelligent, you have to understand how you’re showing up, how you’re engaging with others, and who you’re with and what you’re doing. So they’re all connected, and they all have equal value. And they all play such an important part in understanding who you are as a leader.

So if one of these topics really interests you, I would love to hear back from you. Or if you feel that there needs to be another component or another key pillar to being a leader. Obviously, we do talk about things like communication skills and organizational skills as part of being a leader.

But I really felt that these six categories, or I guess pillars, are the learner’s mindset, engagement, authenticity, dedication to authenticity and mission, vision, and values, emotional intelligence, and finally, resilience. I felt like everything that we talk about in the leadership masterclass, and everything that I shared in my book, Take the Lead, really fell into one of these categories.

But I would love to hear if you have anything that you’d be interested in learning more about, or if you felt that there’s a topic that you really wanted me to take a deeper dive into and share with you all. I’m absolutely open to that. I read every email message, and I’m always looking for feedback, always looking for topics to discuss and ways to make the content deeper and richer.

It All Starts With Self-Leadership

So understand that if you have air in your lungs, you are a leader, because leadership starts with how we lead ourselves. I have always said, “Lead yourself, and the rest will follow.” And that means lead yourself, and everything else will fall into place.

If you understand true self-leadership, having a learner’s mindset for yourself, choosing how you engage in the world, being authentic, staying dedicated to who you are in a world that tells you to be something else, understanding your emotions through emotional intelligence and how your emotions impact your relationships, and finally, understanding the process of resilience. If you can go through that for yourself through self-leadership, I guarantee you will be a more powerful and more effective leader in your home, in your organization, in your small business, in your community. It all starts with how we choose to show up as leaders for ourselves.

So I know that was a lot of information, so I’ll drop what LEADER stands for in the show notes. If you haven’t checked out my book, Take the Lead, it’s available on Amazon and in local bookstores here in Annapolis. If you have a place where you would love to see my book, that would be fantastic. Reach out to me and I will try and see if I can get my book into a local store near you. Or you can contact me directly. You can buy the book straight from me. Message me, let me know, and I’ll even send you a signed copy.

But thank you so much for tuning in today. I hope that this was helpful. I hope that it highlights, like I said, some key pillars of what it means to be a leader, and I look forward to hearing what you think and if there’s something that you think I should add.

Until next time, take the lead.

Thanks for tuning in for another episode of the Leading Lady podcast. You can find all of the links and information mentioned in this episode at www.leadinglady-coaching.com. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to follow the show so you don’t miss any future episodes. And while you’re there, it would mean the world to me if you would take a few seconds and leave me an honest review. This will allow me to help other high-achieving women find inspiration, connection, and develop strategies to live and lead with purpose and intention. See you here next week.