Many women think they are not leading, and yet they are. Why? Because they are setting their intentions, achieving them and making the world better as a result. We’d like more women to know how to be bold at work. Not to get the credit (though, you should take credit that’s due you!) but because when you’re being bold, you’re living at your edge and developing greater capacity to make a difference. Read this inspirational post about bold leadership from Dana, and choose to lead boldly. – InPower Editors
We often give advice to leaders, “Be bold!”
Why?
Here are the typical reasons for being bold that I hear:
- You’ll get noticed
- You’ll move faster forward (failing and succeeding both)
- You’ll get outside the box
All good reasons!
But here’s why I want you to be bold: you’ll develop the habit of stretching yourself.
Being bold will help you be more intentional
Most of us move forward in our lives in a rather jerky fashion. We make a change (intentionally or otherwise) and then spend a lot of time dealing what just happened.
If you’re going to lead something, however, jerkiness will backfire on you – personally and with those who choose to follow you (and yes, it’s always a choice in the end.) Jerkiness leads to exhaustion, more miscommunications and more unintended consequences.
Yes, there is an ebb and flow that we need to create when we spawn new initiatives and then absorb the change and keep moving. However, when being bold is your habit; you are living on the edge of what is new and what is old; what you understand and what you don’t; what works and what-you-don’t know-if-it-works yet.
And to do these things successfully, you learn to think more precisely about what you want to create before moving forward to make it happen. Such intentionality is a core success factor for every leader. And better yet, being intentional can reduce your stress. How? You decide ahead of time what you can and can’t do, you commit to less in order to make more happen.
Being bold isn’t about being brash, it’s about thinking about what matters and moving with intention and focus to make it happen.
When you’re bold, you learn how to be comfortable with discomfort
When you learn how to be bold at work and live on the edge of your experience, you need to learn to master discomfort and fear. Why? Because being bold brings the bravest of us into our stretch zone, which is by definition out of out comfort zones.
Operating more often and more comfortably in your stretch zone, you learn to respect the warning bells without letting them stop you. You learn how they sound when they’re right to hold you back and when they’re baseless. We humans are never perfect interpreters of those clanging bells, either personally or organizationally, but as leaders we must be better than most at learning when to heed their guidance. And when not to.
When you’re living on the edge of bold, you’re stretching yourself and getting to know yourself better all the time. And most importantly, you’re expanding and moving closer to your highest potential.
Great leaders are expansive. Their leadership is a result, not necessarily of what they’ve experienced, but of what they learned from what they experienced.
- Are you learning everyday?
- Are you taking risks right on the edge of your comfort zone and watching what happens with a critical eye, determined to do it better next time?
- Are you constantly creating “next time” opportunities?
- Are you interpreting your experience so that others around you can learn as you learn?
If so, you might just be leading. Learn how to be bold at work and then keep it up!
Examples of being bold at work
Sometimes we imagine being bold to look a lot like bragging. Throwing ourselves out in front of everyone and saying “look at me!” It can, but it does’t have to. Being bold is just:
- doing something that is important
- something that will make a difference
- something that makes you uncomfortable because you’re learning something that will help you make an even bigger impact in the future.
This can look like:
- putting your ideas on the table earlier in the meeting, instead of at the end when most things have been decided
- choosing to accept people’s criticism when it’s well founded and making changes to your ideas or yourself
- putting a new idea no one has mentioned up for discussion
- going for a job that you feel you’re not ready for, but you’re excited about and willing to learn to do
- challenging people, respectfully, about their ideas that you believe you can make better
Being bold at work isn’t always what we think it is. Explore and expand yourself by trying new ways to be bold and teach others how to be bold at work, too.
Guide to Women in Leadership
Organizations with women in their executive suites regularly out-perform others. Yet rising female executives (and their mentors) are frustrated at how hard it is to break through the glass ceiling. In this extensive guide, Executive Coach Dana Theus shares her tried and true strategies to help women excel into higher levels of leadership and achieve their executive potential.
Updated: Originally posted March 2014
