What is a leadership stretch?
I’ve been starting gatherings of women by focusing on what’s working. This small act goes against patriarchal messaging that you need fixing. That you have to meld into someone to belong in the male-dominated spaces where you work.
Success for women in my leadership program looks like embodying your entire leadership capacity, not just the parts of you external sources reward. When this happens, your leadership will deviate from conventional leadership models, become more you and less them. It's leadership your way.
There’s tension between those two ideas — divest from needing to change, and invest in a transformative process to change the way you lead.
My programs guide you to clarity about who you want to be as a leader and what you want to do. This requires identifying what's most important to you in how you lead.
By my definition, everyone is a leader. Leadership is something you choose to embody; it's not a designation someone grants you. Leadership happens at work, at home and in community.
Once your leadership vision is clear, you can compare how you show up now to your vision. The distance between the two becomes your unique leadership stretch.
In working with thousands of women, I see a variety of leadership stretches.
Most often a leadership stretch is a paradigm shift in:
How you view yourself.
What you value.
How you honor what you value.
Your idea of what creates value.
The impact you want to create.
Stretching requires commitment and practice. The results are transformative, and the rewards are bountiful. This kind of transformation is not about fixing something wrong with you. It's about stepping into an opportunity to apply the richness of who you are in all expressions of your leadership — work, home, community, anywhere you make an impact.
A program alumnus recently spoke to this. “What needed to change was not clear to most of us when we first enrolled in this program,” she said. “Yet we all shared a sense that things could look and feel different. Or something greater was possible than what society led us to believe."
That sense hits us at different points in our careers.
Some of you have a new role or initiative that requires you to do things you’ve never done. You're noticing what worked historically won't translate to where you are today.
Others are bored. You want something else to emerge from the investment of your time, heart and energy. Maybe you feel stuck. No matter what you do, nothing seems to move beyond the status quo. At least, not in any way that enlivens you.
The leadership stretch in front of you is like a thread that, once pulled, will change everything.
Call for reflection:
If you had to name the leadership stretch in front of you, what would you say it is?
Shine on,
Alicia