Be yourself… everyone else is already taken. So said Oscar Wilde and yet, how many leaders out there are walking around with corporate armor on… being everyone BUT themselves? How many of us feel like we have no choice BUT to create some type of corporate persona? In this edition of Fast Friday, VP of HR for Ford Canada, Stacey Allerton Firth, shared one of her favourite pieces of leadership advice at a recent PowerRoundtable…
“You can choose who you want to be as a leader.”
That’s a powerful one. It speaks to leading with authenticity and also implies that you need to have a good degree of self-awareness to know how to shape your own leadership style.
And, all this awareness and authenticity may lead you to the question… if this is the type of leader I want to be, is it the type of leader that my company wants to see? And if not, then what? Do you compromise yourself to fit the corporate expectation or find a culture that fits your leadership? Can you ever really choose who you want to be as a leader or is the very design of organizations there to make people fit certain leadership moulds? Talk amongst yourselves….and let me know what you think.
Happy leading!
