Express Yourself

I was coaching a leader who believed that leadership was all about his credibility and seriousness. As if credible and serious people don’t smile.  They don’t laugh.  They aren’t excited about what they do. 

The problem was, in all seriousness, he wasn’t being heard, wasn’t engaging his team, and most important, wasn’t matching his incredible expertise with his passion for his work.

The end result – he was sucking the energy out of every room.

During our work together I learned how much he loved his team, their mission, and the work they did for those they served. He told me moving stories about how they changed lives. And that seeing his customers thrive brought him back to his own childhood.  His work helped him fulfill his personal mission to help other kids have access to the opportunities that had brought him to this role.

As he shared his stories, he’d smile with the memory of success, or wipe a tear remembering the challenges.  I was moved and so was he.

Convincing him he could share these stories out loud – that was another thing.  He thought sharing his emotions and expressiveness diminished his leadership.  He said it felt inauthentic. 

I got creative. I told him to go home and pay attention to his kids. Pay attention to how you read them books at night or the laughter at the dinner table. 

Their un-self-conscious authenticity connected him to his own expressiveness. It was within him all the time, but we wasn’t sharing it at the place where he spent so much time – work.

But it wasn’t enough to have him notice that he could be expressive – we had to make the leap to making his expressiveness work for his audiences.

I came armed with the research that suggests that competence alone does not make a leader successful – it is competence combined with warmth.

Then we did a deep dive into who were the audiences for his leadership and figuring out where and when he could expand his expressiveness to engage and ignite them.

He started sharing stories from the past that were connected to the mission.  He shared his gratitude and recognition for his team.  He articulated and lived his own values through his behavior. 

His transformation allowed him to make deeper connections to his team, to share stories on larger stages about the work they do, and ultimately to show up more fully as himself  - in his expertise and his expressiveness.

Often the biggest leap for leaders is a willingness to be expressive in their roles. And today in the virtual world being expressive in your presence is even more important.

As you reach through the little boxes on your screen to connect with those you work with go ahead and light up the screen with your own expressiveness.  It’s not about smiling more – it’s about deepening emotional connections to the humans we work with, serve, and lead.   

Outlaw Leaders express their warmth, their passion, and their energy to engage, inspire and ignite their audiences.

#exploredreamgrowandexcite #outlawleadership #expressyourself