Guest blogger, Lindsay Stevenson, CPA, CGMA, shares her perspective on how to cultivate your own unique leadership style. Lindsay is the VP of Finance & Tax at 1st Financial Bank USA and a recent graduate of the AICPA’s Leadership Academy. 

If you Google “leadership,” you will get roughly 762,000,000 hits. This includes images, definitions, links to development programs and millions of articles. Talk about information overload! How do we know what to incorporate in our leadership development when there is so much out there?!

Developing your unique leadership approach is a lot like cooking up a batch of secret sauce. There are a number of common ingredients that everyone needs. But what happens when we all have the same ingredients? We lose the authentic, original taste of something special. Our leadership sauce needs something different.

Common sauce?

Take a moment to think about common leadership ingredients. Perhaps characteristics like proactive communication and active listening are on your list.

Now, think about less common ingredients…the characteristics you see in leaders you admire that set them apart. Have you ever tried to “borrow” ingredients from these other leaders to create your own sauce? How did this approach work for you?

A few years ago, I met a woman who inspired me with her “quiet leadership.” She was soft-spoken and calm. She had an air about her that inspired me to share all my personal experiences with her and follow her anywhere. It was an incredible feeling.

That feeling only grew when I attended her leadership training. I came home, excited to lead just like her. I would develop “quiet leadership.” I knew this would be a challenge…the word “quiet” has never been used to describe me!

I spent hours contemplating how I would mix this new leadership ingredient into my overall approach. I tried everything I could think of to integrate quiet calmness into all my interactions.

After a few weeks, my colleagues began asking me if everything was okay. They were wondering if something traumatic had happened in my life to drain my excitement and passion. My efforts to add “quiet leadership” to my secret sauce resulted in a mediocre recipe. In my misguided attempt to emulate this incredible woman, I lost sight of my own unique ingredients. The characteristics I developed through my own personal experiences. Instead of becoming a better leader, I became someone else.

Has something like this ever happened to you? Have you recognized a great ingredient in someone else’s leadership sauce and worked really hard to develop it, only to realize it didn’t taste right in your own sauce?!

I realized a very simple truth from this experience. By focusing on obtaining other people’s ingredients, I missed the opportunity to find my own. It was time to focus on creating my own leadership secret sauce.

Finding Your Ingredients

Take a moment to close your eyes. Visualize the situations in which you inspired those around you to accomplish something meaningful. Imagine assigning one characteristic that you developed or leveraged in handling each situation (e.g., strength, perseverance, trust, inspiration, excitement, etc.). These are the special ingredients to your leadership secret sauce.

Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde

Mixing Your Ingredients

Now that you’ve identified your unique ingredients, how can you mix them for the best possible sauce? The answer is one word – intention. Select one single ingredient you identified in your visualization. Then attach an intention to it. Here is an example to get you started.

Tom identified one of his secret ingredients as enthusiasm. He gets truly excited when he hears a new idea, even if he doesn’t love the idea itself. Innovation and creativity inspire him.

Tom decides the next time a new idea is presented by his team, he will set an intention to share his enthusiasm. He intends do this in three ways:

(1) He will tell his team how impressed he is with their innovative approach.

(2) He will show his team how inspired he is by actively listening to all aspects of their idea before giving feedback or asking questions.

(3) He will follow through with his team to develop the idea further or use it as a springboard to new ideas.

By creating and implementing an intention around his secret ingredients, Tom has successfully mixed them into his leadership secret sauce.

Cooking up your own leadership sauce can seem daunting, but just remember…find your own special leadership ingredients based on your unique experiences, mix them with intention, and your sauce is guaranteed to taste better than any sauce you could cook using someone else’s ingredients. And the best part…your secret sauce is authentic and real!

What will be the secret ingredients in your leadership secret sauce?

 

 

 

 

Lindsay Stevenson, CPA, CGMA, is a VP of Finance & Tax at 1st Financial Bank USA. She is a recent graduate of the AICPA’s Leadership Academy and loves to volunteer. In addition to her membership on the AICPA’s Young CPA Leadership Committee, she is actively involved with her local SCORE Chapter and multiple committees of both the Arizona and South Dakota Societies of CPAs. Her favorite activities include spending time with her three boys, cooking with her handsome husband, and encouraging those around her to leverage positivity in everyday life.