Some of my clients have had some shocking feedback on their future prospects as a senior leader. And these are very capable leaders. But they've been told that they're too nice or smiley to be taken seriously as a senior leader, that they lack gravitas because they value kindness. Some of them have been told they're too collaborative and not decisive enough, or that they need to be more dynamic and less reflective. Other clients, and perhaps you too have had this experience, might not have had that feedback directly, but they've looked around the rooms their senior leaders sit in and haven't seen anyone. They relate to anyone who communicates the way that they do or who lives their values in the same way. And as a result, they have felt not enough as a leader. They've been discouraged from from going for more senior leadership roles because they have seen the fact that they are different as a weakness.

Well, today we're flipping the script on that because being a different sort of leader isn't your weakness, it's actually your underused strength. I'm Carla Miller and this is Influence and Impact for Leaders, the podcast that helps leaders like you increase your impact and build a happy and high performing team. Each episode delivers focused, actionable insights you can implement immediately to be better at your job without working harder. Ready to be more impactful? Let's get started. So this episode is entitled when you don't fit the leadership mold. So what is the leadership mould and who created it? It's not imaginary, it's systemic. And it's deeply embedded in how leadership has been defined for decades. And that version of leadership was defined many, many years ago and primarily by men.

For men, it has unspoken rules, such as leaders must be extroverted. Leaders need to speak with authority at all times or have all the answers. Leaders should always be decisive. Leaders should not be too emotional, too vulnerable or uncertain. Leaders need to command a room to earn respect. And even though it was designed by men, there are plenty of men that do not naturally lead that way either. And so there are a whole host of fantastic leaders out there being underrated and judging themselves negatively for bringing a different sort of of leadership. And the mold isn't even the standard, it's just one version of leadership.

It's a pretty outdated version of leadership, and I think it's one that very, very few people actually gravitate to naturally. There's also a hidden cost of trying to fit that mould, because when you spend your energy trying to be who you think you should be trying to fit rather than lead you can often find yourself silencing your instincts, holding back your ideas in meetings, adopting a tone or a language that just doesn't feel like you. You might find yourself over, preparing to prove your worth or avoiding visibility because it doesn't feel safe to be seen. When you do things differently, you might find you need to choose between being liked and being respected, or sticking to your own values and being respected. Trying to perform leadership rather than living it can lead to burnout. It can absolutely lead to self doubt, because you might well experience imposter feelings when you're trying to be someone that you're not. And that can also create resentment. So can you be successful when you're faking leadership and doing it how you think you should be doing it? Well, possibly.

But there isn't a version of success that involves feeling completely disconnected from yourself that I want to sign up to. So let's be clear. The problem is not you. The problem is the mould. You don't need to be more aggressive, louder or tougher to lead. You need to be more of you. I always say, be the best version of yourself, not a crappy version of someone else. And leadership has evolved.

Good leadership now requires emotional intelligence, being able to navigate heightened situations, huge amounts of change, and take teams with you. It involves curiosity because you don't always have the right answers. And actually getting curious about what the answers are and what questions you should even be asking really helps to develop you as a leader. Great leadership involves humility, knowing when you don't know the answers, knowing when you've got something wrong, and being able to put your hand up and say that you have. And it involves vision, but not necessarily you as an individual coming up with this incredible vision all on your own. It involves co creating vision with others and bringing everyone on the journey with you. And people can tell when you are being authentic. They will resonate with you and trust you a lot more when they get a sense that you are being yourself.

So if you're leading with empathy, with self awareness, you're not doing it wrong, you're just doing it differently from the old stereotype of a leader. Now, one of my favourite leaders who has openly embraced doing things differently and doing things her way is Jacinda Ardern. And she says to me, leadership is not necessarily about being the loudest in the room, but instead being the bridge and building a consensus from there. It takes courage and strength to be empathetic. And I'm very proudly an empathetic and compassionate leader. I love that. And she Also said, I made the decision very early on to just be myself. And I think there was a point in my leadership career where I also made that decision when I realized that for me, confidence wasn't going to come from more skills, more experience, more qualifications.

What was holding me back was feeling not enough when comparing myself to others or this fictional version of a perfect leader. And I realized that for me, confidence was about accepting and embracing myself, my strengths, my uniqueness, and also my flaws and weaknesses, because I have plenty of those. But instead of trying to hide those and hope that no one else would ever possibly discover them, I was quite open about them. Doesn't mean I wasn't working on them. I wasn't like, huh, I'm me, take it or leave it, flaws and all. But I was owning the fact that I did not have to be the perfectly evolved leader to be a really good leader to my team at that point in time. And I think if you want to be a good leader to your team, then you're already way ahead of quite a large number of leaders. So there are some practical shifts that you can take to start to embrace your own leadership style.

This is something that I work on very intensely with my one to one coaching clients, where we will define their leadership style and we'll dive deep into their values, what intuitively feels right to them, what their team and their organization need from them at this point in time, and really dial up their strengths. So if that's something that you would like to explore more, then we can talk about that in one to one coaching. But I'd like to give you three tangible shifts that you can make to help you to lead outside the mould without apology. The first is to identify and own your natural strengths. So you could ask yourself, what do people consistently thank me for? What do I get recognition for? What do I get noticed for? Another great question is when do I feel most effective? Not just most productive, but most effective. What is it that I do that really moves things forward and how do I zone in on that and do more of that? And you can ask yourself, what do I do differently that actually works, even if it's not how others would do it? Your answers to those questions are great clues to your authentic leadership style. The second thing you can do is to build your own feedback filter, because not all feedback is equal. Next time you get feedback that says you need to be more confident or you come across as too emotional, pause and ask, is that actually true or is that a reflection of bias? Women, for example, receive A lot more negative behavioural feedback than men do and really broad brush feedback like you need to be more confident or you're too emotional just isn't helpful.

We want specific, tangible feedback. We want to know what we need to do differently in that meeting and why that's important. So learn to separate useful feedback from feedback that's asking you to shrink or conform. You might want to ask yourself, does this feedback help me lead more effectively or just more like them? Does this align with how I want to feel as a leader? Would this advice expand me or shrink me? All too often I do hear stories of people being told by their line manager that they need to lead in a different way and effectively. What their line manager is saying is you need to be more like me. This is what leadership looks like. And it's so important to remember, however fantastic your line manager is, although I would question whether they're fantastic if that's what they're saying. But however fantastic your line manager is, you are not going to be a great fake version of them.

You need to do things your way in a way that makes sense to you. The third point, and I think this is a really important one, is get clear on your values and the culture you want to work in. So if you are a reflective thinker and you like time to think things through, but there's huge pressure within your organization to make decisions quickly without enough information, you may not be in the right organization for you. Equally, if your natural style is to be collaborative, to engage people, to listen more than you speak, you need to work in an organization that values that way of leading, not that everyone leads that way, but that people recognise that that is also a fantastic way to lead. If you are getting feedback within your organization that saying you're not ready to lead and it's personality based, it's things that you are never going to change about yourself or never really want to change about yourself. That feedback is probably not serving you, but it may be giving you an indication of what's important within that organisation and what they celebrate in their leaders. So just because your current organisation perhaps does not see you as a leader, doesn't mean you're not already leading, doesn't mean you can't be a more senior leader. It just might mean that it's not within that organisation.

And what's really frustrating is that an organization often welcomes and accommodates new people better than it accommodates its current staff. So you could go somewhere else with almost the same culture, but coming in new, you will be able to show up as more of yourself than perhaps in your existing organisation. So as you go into this week, if this episode resonated with with you, ask yourself, is there anywhere I am shrinking to fit someone else's idea of leadership? What would it look like to lead a little bit more my way? Showing up as me and who else around me needs permission to do the same? You might even need to have a conversation with people in your team and reassure them that it's okay for them to lead and manage in a different way from you. So I hope that what you are taking from this episode is firstly, there's nothing wrong with you if you feel like you don't fit the leadership mold. The leadership mold is pretty outdated and it's probably not doing you any favors trying so hard to fit it. And the problem is the leadership mold, not you. And more than that, I want you to take away that to lead. We want to bring your strengths, your unique way of doing things and that in itself will really help you to build your confidence.

If this episode resonated, please share it with a friend or a teammate that needs to hear it. Leave a review or reach out and let me know which bit really resonated with you. And if you want to support building your own leadership style and moving to that next level as a senior leader, get in touch to talk about one to one coaching with me. You don't have to fit the mould to make a powerful impact as a leader.