Earlier this year, I posted about a training that I took by the Leadership Circle. In the post, I said I was going back and forth about making my profile public. Since that time, we had an opportunity to share our profiles at the Humanizing Work training and in a public Leadership course. When I was sharing my profile, I honestly didn’t think much about it in the moment. I thought of it as a more realistic example to understand what you can learn.
However, the responses afterwards were eye-opening. I know that being vulnerable is powerful. I know that sharing personal experiences is motivating. Yet, I wasn’t prepared for the reactions.
- For people who had worked for me (when I’m trying to create high performing teams not working groups): I received responses such as “yep, that’s extremely accurate”, “this nailed you”, etc
- For people who didn’t know me directly but have followed this blog or seen a conference session(s): I received responses like “this really aligns with what you share”, “this makes sense for my perception of you”, etc
- For people who didn’t know me at all: I received a wider range of responses “thank you for having the courage to share”, “that additional share helped me understand what I would gain from this tool”, “how long did you have to work on your skills as a leader to get this profile”, “I hope I get someone like you as a leader”, etc
I know that I have so much more room to grow – so I’m always caught off guard by reactions to the things I share. Yet, that’s also a purpose I’ve found so powerful – helping others on their journey by sharing mine. So here is my profile chart:
A few of my profile insights:
- What I found most comforting is that my base profile results (creative leadership strengths and reactive tendencies) were not surprising. For many years, I’ve actively been focused on my grow as a leader and consistently willing to be vulnerable about my challenges.
- Yet, this framework allowed me to uncover deeper aspects. For example, I remain super critical of myself especially when I dive into the details but when stepping back as a whole, I’m able to own my leadership results. There was one instance in my career where I didn’t go to bat for someone that was being fired. Honestly, it could be argued both ways and the decision was not mine; so I said a little and then went quiet. I regret that all these years later. So much that I can completely answer questions as if I have no integrity at all. Yet, when I think overall, I’m able to put it in perspective. This is a big step in me letting go of some assumptions/fears that are just not valid or as big as I like to make them
- I have a tendency to underestimate my abilities but am fairly accurate in my self-assessment in the reactive areas to improvement on.
- Another example of realizing something from this, that I am able to be the leader I want to be whether the environment is healthy or toxic (my results were consistent across a variety of environments). I just didn’t think about this dynamic until my profile helped me notice.
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