Whether you’re in a formal leadership role or you’re leading from where you are, being authentic is a requirement for success. Learn to value your strengths and find your flow in order to cultivate successful relationships. Join us for a lively discussion to unlock your authentic leadership potential.
One of the greatest challenges we can face in life is learning to be our authentic selves. Societal pressures, workplace expectations, and limited opportunities to advance can leave us feeling like we need to wear a professional mask just to make it through each day. But when we are not our true selves, our ability to cultivate dynamic, trusting, and impactful relationships is stymied. If we cannot establish relationships with a high degree of trust, we cannot achieve anything. And yet relationships require us to be both professional and authentic. How does one balance these somewhat discordant qualities?
As with any type of personal growth or development, it starts from within. Learning about your strengths and how they can best serve you is paramount to your leadership journey. Unfortunately, we spend a lot of time comparing ourselves to others and feeling like we need to one-up each other just to feel like we’re good enough. This erodes our relationships, leads to trust issues, and ultimately, a breakdown in the ability to function effectively as collaborators or teams. Learning about your strengths and knowing how and when to apply them is the best way to ensure successful collaborations. But, what is the best way to identify your strengths? How can you really know your strengths from your perceived strengths? When should you hold back in order to let someone else who has similar strengths shine? How can you use your strengths to inspire your collaborators?
Once you know what your strengths are and how they can best serve you, discovering your state of flow should be the next step. Finding your flow as an authentic leader is critical. It allows you to speak, act, and work with confidence. When working in your flow state, your colleagues will be able to see your skills and will respect and value your contributions to the team. How do you find your flow state? How do you manage stressful or challenging situations to avoid disruptions to your state of flow? How do you recover from disruptions, while still being professional and authentic?
Being an authentic leader is more than just focusing on yourself and your own abilities. Authenticity is about being true to who you are while allowing others to do the same. It can be easy to think there is a winner and a loser, but with that mindset, everyone ends up losing. It creates an adversarial environment which ultimately leads to a complete breakdown in the ability to function as collaborators. When this happens, people become disengaged, conflicts arise more frequently, and overall productivity rapidly declines. Authentic leaders know that good relationships are the key to real success and they actively take steps to ensure everyone feels valued, inspired, and motivated. How do you handle situations in which a collaborator turns competitive? How do you handle situations in which a collaborator does not pull his or her own weight? How do you motivate a collaborator who does not contribute in a timely manner? How can you inspire and engage your colleagues to allow everyone to be successful both as individuals and as a team?
Level of Participation:
This gamified session begins with the contestants introducing their thoughts on authentic leadership. Following this brief introduction, attendees will use slido to either upvote the questions posed in the description above or add new questions. The panelists will then compete to provide the best answer to the questions in under two minutes. Attendees will award points for the best answer provided by the panelists. Prizes will be awarded at the end of the game.
Session Goals:
Individuals attending this panel discussion will be able to discuss several strategies for identifying their strengths and knowing how to apply them to ensure successful collaborations. They will be able to describe the best strategies for finding their flow state to inspire and motivate their collaborators. And lastly, they will be able to list ways authenticity can help foster collaborative environments in which everyone feels valued and engaged.