Becoming who you are
“Fake it ‘til you make it”. That’s what I was told by a well-meaning mentor when we were discussing my reluctance to ‘put myself out there’ on social media. But this did not sit well with me. If what we want is to lead authentically, we cannot pretend to the outside world to be someone we’re not. We need to become who we are.
Leader on the outside
We can complete the coveted MBA, acquire leadership credentials, and accede to senior leadership teams without having the leadership skills required to lead people and businesses. This is partly due to the predilection we have for promoting incompetent male leaders (https://hbr.org/2013/08/why-do-so-many-incompetent-men). But it is also largely due to our mistaken belief that we only need to work on how we are perceived on the outside, and neglect the reality of who we actually are on the inside.
Take, for example, the stream of LinkedIn posts we commonly share with the world. We wax lyrical about winning an award, recognition in a market leader listing and the latest invitation to speak at an industry event. We do this to portray to the world that we are working on being a better version of ourselves and we are succeeding in doing so. But leadership brands are not created through forced attempts to be someone else.
The leader inside of us
The paradoxical theory of change states that change occurs when we become what we are. It starts from within. Change happens when we take the time and effort to be who we are, to be fully invested in our current being and notice all parts of ourselves – even those that are contrary to what we may like – and learn from that.
By forcing ourselves to see the parts of us that make our entire self, we force ourselves to consider all of our parts – even the wounds and the dark shadows we may not want to see. We turn towards these parts and actively seek to feel, nurture and heal them.
What we can do
By evolving our own selves – the difficult parts, in particular - we create a stronger sense of who we are inside. We cannot reject or supress the parts of us we do not like. Resistance makes those parts even stronger. We must let go; embrace them, show compassion for them and tend to them to help them grow and learn. These parts may be our inner critical voices, betrayals from our past, or traumas we have endured. Each must be observed, fully felt and given a new persona and voice. One that better serves us from the inside out.
We cannot become who we want to be until we first become who we are. As the paradoxical theory of change says, when we work steadfastly from the inside out, we make meaningful and orderly change possible.
If you want to Connect to the leader in you, reach out to find out more about C-Success Coaching at https://www.kiranscarr.com/coaching.
References
Chamorro-Premuzic, T., Why do so many incompetent men become leaders? (And how to fix it) (2019) Harvard Business Review Press.