Start Your Leadership Journey Now with Debra Kasowski In this video, Debra Kasowski starts off with a profound quote by basketball star, LeBron James quote, “Leadership is not a sometimes thing it’s an everyday thing.” Leadership is about being a role model and providing mentorship, being flexible and adaptable, taking control of your own growth while fostering the development of others, and working toward a common goal. The right time to begin your leadership journey is NOW.
5 Ways to Live in Flow and Achieve Great Things
I know you might be saying to yourself, “Who, me? Live in flow and achieve great things! Have you seen my life?” I have coached many people who see their situations and say, “But, this is going on…” or “What if this happens? or “How can I do this, when this is going on…” YES, and great things can be and are being achieved by people in those situations every single day, even by you.
1. Be Intentional.
One of the most critical things about achieving success is being intentional with your choices and your actions. When you make decisions based on what’s most important to you – based on your values, you will align with who you say you are and want to be.
2. Be Open to Hidden Opportunities.
Please pay attention to the information or feedback that you receive through your interactions or situations that come up. You may find an interaction or situation uncomfortable because it gives you an opportunity to use your voice, share new ideas, or even take a stand for something you believe in. The opportunity may be letting go of a belief that you feel that you’re not enough in a certain area.
3. Feel All the Feels
You have a range of emotions. You may be choosing to avoid feeling those emotions because they make you uncomfortable or you feel out of control. Your feelings are giving you information which leads to better decision-making. If you want to understand your feelings, pay attention to what you were thinking before the feeling. Sky Nelson-Issacs said in his book, Living Flow: The Science of Synchronicity and How Your Choices Shape the World, “Our feelings drive the events in our lives.”
4. Trust the Process
Sometimes the more you want control over situations the less control you have. Having a sense of control gives you a sense of certainty and predictability and you know life doesn’t work that way. Focus on trusting that your intentional efforts and actions will lead you to the outcomes that you desire or better.
5. Do More of What You Love
Doing more of what you love allows you to feel more confident and competent in trusting in your abilities. You possess far more greatness than you give yourself credit for. Build a life that you love and do meaningful work that doesn’t feel like work and matters to you. Schedule your calendar with the intention and anticipating life’s greatest adventure on your terms.
The Importance of Self-Discovery and Being Yourself
Photo Credit: Cherise Arcand
Endless possibilities begin with self-discovery.
Self-discovery is a process of deepening your understanding of yourself through self-reflection, exploration, and learning and growth. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Insist on yourself; never imitate.” Each of us has unique gifts to share with the world.
Have you ever been in a cycle of comparing yourself to others? It is human nature to compare yourself to others as a barometer of how you are showing up in the world. In fact, you may have experienced it with your parents or a teacher expressing, “Why aren’t you more like…?” Why? Because you are not! You are on your own journey just as they are on theirs. What you are good at may not be what another person is good at. We were not all meant to be the same. If you attempt to imitate someone, you can lose your own identity. This is why you must insist on being your authentic self!
Research shows that social media can be problematic as it can lead to social comparison that can be linked to negative psychological outcomes such as low self-esteem and depression. Ralph Waldo Emerson stated, “envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide.” When you start comparing yourself to others, you lose sight of your own uniqueness, talents, and gifts that are part of your own greatness. Jealousy is a call for action as it suggests that you want for yourself what another has. Envy is not healthy as it can be an obsession over wanting to be, do, or have what another has. Every time you imitate another person. you lose a piece of yourself and eventually, you may no longer know yourself to be you. It is important to acknowledge when you see social media posts of others that you are observing moments of time and not someone’s entire life journey.
Self-Reflection In a world where individuals can be quick to offer their opinions, you need to be able to use discernment. If you attempt to navigate your path based on other’s opinions, you can get to a point where you feel you have lost your way. One day, one person offers you one opinion. The next day someone else may offer theirs, and it can feel like there is a moving target. You may feel that you are getting caught up in societal expectations versus what may be best for you.
Self-reflection is truly about learning about yourself – your wants and desires, your likes, and dislikes, your strengths and weaknesses. who you are as a person, and what you want to be, do, or have. Discover what is working for you and what is not working for you. You may need to change patterns, habits, or routines. Journalling is one tool I recommend to my clients to help them to reflect and understand themselves better.
Exploration Nobody knows what your gifts are until you share them. You only know what you currently know. The more you expose yourself to new situations and experiences, the more you learn about yourself. Exploration requires that you step out of your comfort zone to try new things. How do you know what you like or dislike if you have never tried it? You might take a solo trip or go for dinner by yourself. You might take a pottery or painting class or even learn a new language. You might take a singing lesson or take on a leadership position. How do you know what you are capable of until you put yourself in the position to find out? People often underestimate themselves more than they over-estimate themselves.
Learning and Growth As you explore your opportunities, you will make mistakes along the way. Some people will see it as a failure. Failure is necessary for success. There are no true failures when you learn and grow from your experiences and circle back to discovering more about yourself and what to do and not to do. There is a richness of knowledge you can take away.
You can support your learning and growth in many ways: volunteering, reading books and industry articles, listening to podcasts or audiobooks, taking courses or workshops, attending conferences, networking with others, or participating in fitness or other group activities.
Your path is your path. Take time to reflect on what you want for yourself. Listen to other people’s opinions with discernment, curiosity, and caution. Explore what you are capable of, you may surprise yourself! Commit to continuous learning and keep a growth mindset.
Above all, insist on yourself! It takes courage to be who you are! You are braver than you think! Discover the best version of you!
3 Powerful Strategies for Getting Accountability Right
Finger-pointing and the “blame game” are not attributes of an individual who is accountable. They fail to remember that as their finger is pointing outward there are three fingers pointing back at them. The waving finger is often loaded with excuses or reasons why something didn’t work. It is time to disarm the excuses and reasons and to help individuals step into their accountability.
According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, accountability is “the quality or state of being accountable. especially an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one’s actions.” You may find people use the words accountability and responsibility interchangeably. There is a difference: responsibility is task-oriented whereas accountability has more to do with answerability for one’s behavior or actions. For example, when individuals on a team are each given a task toward a project, each person is responsible for their task of contribution. Now at the deadline of a project, everyone is accountable for the task they were assigned to. They must answer whether they have completed their task.
There are also times when individuals misunderstand that they’re being held accountable versus being micromanaged. Accountability revolves around meeting expectations whereas micromanagement tends to be a hovering over or meddling in one’s role by taking over tasks. It is important to ensure that your team understands what accountability is and what taking ownership of their own behaviors and actions means. The best way to do this is to involve individuals or your team in creating a plan of accountability.
The late Stephen Covey said, “Accountability breeds response-ability.” You can respond to a situation instead of reacting to it. It starts with acknowledging what is and then owning or taking responsibility for the same. When someone takes responsibility for a situation, they have the ability course correct or come up with a solution.
“Accountability is the glue that ties commitment to the result.”
Bob Proctor
Get the Perspective of Others To make accountability right, you need to let go of the need to be right. The need to be right can prevent you from getting clarity about the situation. Each person looks at a situation from their own vantage point. This is why several individuals witnessing a car accident will all have a different narrative of what happened. Some people will zoom into a situation and see all the details whereas others will zoom out to see the bigger picture. All perspectives have value. By being curious and taking the time to listen to the perspective of others, you can establish a better understanding of the situation at hand. The other perspectives create a visual – setting the stage and helping you understand what is happening in the situation. When you take time to gather this information from others, you also demonstrate that you value and appreciate their insight.
Ask for Feedback from Others It can take courage for you to ask for the feedback that you need. Many people believe feedback is something that they receive when they need to correct a behavior or action because something went wrong. Asking for feedback from others can be a game changer in bringing a different perspective to how you do your work or how you are showing up. Is it aligned with who you want to be and how you want to show up? You receive feedback from the world around us all the time through our results, experiences, and how we feel about how situations went. It is important the test our reality and perceptions and to challenge our assumptions. Receiving feedback that is constructive is valuable in building your character and demonstrating that you are open to continuous growth.
Collaboration over Competition Success is not a one-man or woman show. When you collaborate with others you can often come up with more creative and innovative solutions. Sometimes people are afraid to collaborate because they’re focused on competing with one another versus leveraging the opportunity to pull the right skill sets and minds into the right space at the right time. Brainstorming and creative solution finding comes from tapping into the rich resource of the knowledgeable people around you.
When you engage others and create accountability, individuals get invested in seeing the results. People like to contribute by offering ideas and solutions and knowing that they’re contributing that makes a difference. Let’s get accountable and get it right! Fingers down!
What Leadership Legacy Do You Want to Leave?
Sometimes it takes a thought-provoking question to make us stop and reflect on what we want. One question I love and enjoy asking leaders of all stages of their leadership journey, whether they have been in a leadership role for a long time or are evolving in their leadership, is “What legacy do you want to leave as a leader?”
The leader often pauses and says, “That’s a great question. I do not think I have stopped to think about this.” I reassure them that this response is quite normal.
Leaders have been focused on achieving results, performance, and productivity. Achieving results is what many leaders get promoted for not usually the leaders they develop within the organization.
Imagine if leaders started their careers thinking about the legacy they would like to be remembered for. Leaders are acquired for their knowledge, talents, skills, and abilities with a history of achieving results. Do we think that future leaders are developed through osmosis or solely based on observation? No, not likely.
As leaders reflect on this question, I often see a concentrated look turn into a big white wide smile as they describe the difference they want to make in the lives of the people they serve and the mark they want to leave in the organization. They start speaking passionately about building capacity, innovation, and creativity in overcoming perceived, potential, and real barriers standing in their way on the road to success. They talk about a collective and collaborative approach to achieving results while leveraging each other’s strengths. I cannot help but smile back as I get caught up in their enthusiasm for their leadership legacy.
If you are reading this and thinking to yourself, “I don’t know what legacy I want to leave as a leader.”
Consider the following questions:
What values are most important to me?
What qualities and characteristics do I want to role model?
In what ways, would I prepare a future leader while leveraging their unique gifts?
What stories and lessons do I want to impart to others to save them time, money, or resources?
Using my gifts, what difference would I like to make in the world?
As a leader and a coach, I feel a sense of obligation to ensure that people not only share their unique gifts; I want to ensure they do not hold themselves back from stepping into their potential and making the difference they have been called to make. I believe it is a privilege to be a leader, I have the opportunity to walk in front and walk from behind. Most of the time, I am walking alongside the people I lead. We learn from each other. We learn by doing and reflecting. We create a safe space to open up conversations and brainstorm ideas. Together we achieve results.
The most important aspect of defining your leadership legacy is knowing that as a leader YOU matter. Your legacy matters. It will live on for generations to come in the leaders you lead and those who lead after them in the stories, lessons, and the impact you make.
Stop, pause, and take a moment to think about the leadership legacy you want to leave. Where is your focus, attention, and intention to achieve this outcome?