Leadership from essence is not an event nor is it a one-time thing you do to make you and your team feel good. In today’s business environment, paying attention to market dynamics, competitors, your customers’ needs, and your internal team takes lots of brain power.  How you choose to lead  impacts your team’s performance, culture, and customer experience.

Does your leadership style promote a healthy team culture?  Are you creating an environment that empowers your team, rewards and values their contributions, does not penalize for failing/taking risks, encourages and supports professional development?  Think about it, an environment where employees thrive, translates into positive customer experiences with your company.

What is Your Essence?

Essence is pealing away the layers to reveal a core. The core is what drives your intensions and purpose with regards to what you do.  Your essence helps to present you to your team and customers. It can be a source of inspiration, what makes you authentic, and supports your integrity.

3 Ways to Bridge Your Leadership & Your Essence

Leadership from essence, from the core, is 1) connection, 2) trust, and  3) ownership.

  1. Creating a connection to yourself and your team is dynamic and rigorous.  It supports you in taking a pulse of your team’s changes and demands and creating solutions together for ways to improve. 
  2. Developing trust in yourself and team can take time. As a leader, it is getting out in front regardless of the outcome, knowing your stuff, and communicating the expectations for positive results. It is being OK with the unknown and being comfortable to take your team in that space of uncertainty.
  3. Ownership is essential. As you make decisions, as a leader, owning the good and bad of those decisions shows your grit. Being responsible for your actions, giving acknowledgements when due, and creating opportunities for others to grow shows elements of your leadership style for others to emulate.

As leaders, think about your core, and what inspires you and your team? Consider where you will you choose from as leader, head, heart, or both, to inspire your team to create unexpected breakthroughs in your business. Be authentic and have integrity.  How you manage your team or run your business is a reflection of who you are. At the end of the day, people buy your “why.”