Category: Leadership

Anti-Conformity in Authentic Leadership

I have experienced feeling out of place and that made me who I am today.  Some tried to sand me down, and at times I thought conformity was the best way to get ahead, but once I got to college, and even more so when I started my own business, I realized I needed to be my authentic self to succeed and lead. Now that I’m even older and wiser I realize how conformity can creep into so many aspects of life. 

For instance, I’ve been working in the tech startup world for a while and it is easy to get caught in comparisons with Silicon Valley.  Silicon Valley is held up as the standard for disruptive anti-conformity and innovation.  However, most in Silicon Valley are conforming.  Leaders who draw comparisons between themselves and their communities and Silicon Valley are using conformist thinking that is limiting. Conformity in Silicon Valley looks like fitting into founder archetypes like being either highly technical or highly visionary.  Conformity gets you a startup executive coach that has his or her own conformity mindset on what coaching is.  Conformity gets you looking for examples to follow from the books you read.  Can we truly lead with fancy business school degrees and majority views of success?  I think it maybe the hardest way to lead.

Conformity creeps into everything and is the enemy of authentic and real leadership.  Conformity is what we are fighting inside ourselves and in the world.  We need the courage to think differently and take the most courageous path and not the well trodden pathway that has been portrayed as the road less traveled. 

To lead yourself and others on courageous pathways, you need to be true to yourself — not a sanded down, conformist version.  When you aren’t yourself or acting authentically, people detect that and then they try to find out why you are not acting authentically.  Trying to find out why you aren’t acting like your true self breeds distrust in you and your leadership.  When we are trying to lead others and move to the next levels, we must realize that people prefer leaders who are authentic and different because it makes leadership appear accessible to all in the care of our leadership and they in turn will strive for more too.  You thus inspire others to lead themselves. 

So my invitation to you is to have the courage to be yourself, get out of the comfort and conformity of life, and find your own path so that others will be inspired to find theirs too.  

Readers are Leaders

One of the Spots in My Home Where Books Reside

Books and reading are important and central to my work in building myself and others.  I only recommend what I have read and in the pandemic I picked up quite a few books whether it be by Audible, Kindle, or physical copy (I usually have 3-5 books going at a time).  Important books get shipped, sent by link, or handed directly to someone straight from my bookshelf.  Jim Rohn said that “Success leaves clues.”  John Maxwell said, “Readers are Leaders.” Others have said that instead of having the knowledge of one lifetime, you can garner the knowledge of a thousand lives through books.  

Here are the books that I can recommend to you that I read in the past 12 months.  Most of them were recommended to me and now I recommend them to other leaders.

  • The Great CEO Within by Matt Mochary, Alex MacCaw, Misha Talavera
  • 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
  • Machiavelli for Women by Stacy Vannick Smith
  • Levels of Energy by Frederick Dodson
  • Everybody Writes by Ann Handley
  • The Weekly Coaching Conversation by Brian Souza
  • The Trillion Dollar Coach by Alan Eagle, Eric Schmidt, and Jonathan Rosenberg
  • Humankind by Rutger Bregman
  • Daily Stoic Journal by Ryan Holiday
  • How to Measure Your Life by Clayton Christianson
  • Creative Confidence by Tom Kelley and David Kelley
  • Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harare
  • Culture Map by Erin Meyer
  • The Art of Community by Charles H. Vogel
  • People Powered by Jono Bacon
  • Range by David Epstein
  • Say What You Mean by Oren J Sofer
  • Trailblazer by Marc Benioff and Monica Langley 
  • Customer Success by Dan Steinman, Lincoln Murphy, and Nick Mehta
  • A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
  • How to Not be Wrong with Mathematical Thinking by Jordan Ellenberg
  • Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins
  • The Laws of Success by Paramahansa Yogananda
  • Golden Book by Dale Carnegie
  • Relentless by Tim Grover
  • Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke
  • The Startup Community Way by Brad Feld
  • The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley
  • Living with a Seal by Jesse Itzler
  • Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman 
  • Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin
  • The Little Book of Talent by Daniel Coyle
  • Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday
  • Turn the Ship Around by L David Marquet
  • Die with Zero by Bill Perkins
  • New Localism by Bruce Katz
  • Talking to Strangers by Malcom Gladwell
  • Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek
  • The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver

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These emails will come occasionally, not often. If you get too many of them or not enough good stuff, please let me know so I can adjust.

To Do More, Become More.

insights, articles, and other reflections that I send to friends and colleagues.

Experts, Leaders, & Mentors Are Not Coaches

It is important that we all understand the difference between Experts, Leaders, Mentors, and Coaches.

Experts: An expert is a person who has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of or skill in a particular area.  You usually call upon them when things aren’t going well and you need help solving a problem.  When you bring an expert they start tackling symptoms and technical faults.

Leaders: Certainly the best leaders coach but most guide and direct people without a coaching mindset.  There are leaders that earn the respect and esteem of those they serve (aka Servant Leaders). There are situational leaders who are called to step in to fill a gap and help in a time of need.  There are also the positional leaders who are placed in leadership roles – some, of course, try to earn the respect of those they lead once in those positions, but others may manage and abuse their power and authority, losing the respect of those they lead.  This is not coaching either. 

Mentors: Coaching is often confused with mentoring.  A mentor shares with a mentee (or protege) information about his or her own career path, as well as provides guidance, motivation, emotional support, and role modeling.  A mentor may help with exploring careers, setting goals, developing contacts, and identifying resources. They can take the form of teachers, sponsors, advisors, agents, role models, and confidantes.  Mentors can be more experienced in the arena in which the advice is sought.  

Coaches: A coach does not depend on being an expert or being more experienced – a coach is not passing down their knowledge and that is intentional.  If a coach is working to increase and sustain performance, then that knowledge must be earned by the coachee.  Mastery comes from self-belief.  Coaching requires expertise in only coaching and those coaches who are not formally trained may even have greater coaching skills as they are also built over time going beyond the limits of formal training.  Coaches do not need to be experts because they are awareness raisers for the coachee.  Every time expert input is provided it diminishes the responsibility of the coachee. Coaching is about believing in the potential of the individual and creating self responsibility. It is very hard for those with high expertise to withhold their knowledge sufficiently to coach well.  This is why you can point to many examples where the best players in the world of sports made horrible coaches. Experts tackle symptoms and technical faults, whereas a non-expert will raise self awareness of problems.  Being detached from expertise brings curiosity on the part of the coach to guide coachee into a state of self awareness. Coaching is about optimizing individuality and uniqueness and never to mold opinions and best practices.  Coaching has been defined by some as “partnering in a thought-provoking and creative process to maximize personal and professional potential.”  The best coaches should take a coachee beyond the knowledge and other limitations of the coach.

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