Be the Leader you want to see

By Susie Ramroop

Ever heard that phrase “You can’t be what you can’t see”?  I did for the first time at a conference for women in 2018. I was there as the mindset specialist, to talk on a panel about winning your inner game (the one in your head), and I nearly fell off my chair when I heard it.

This statement was being made like it was a rule, and the 200 or so women in the audience seemed to be accepting it because someone admirable was making the statement. It struck me how willing we are, as women, to take on things like this, leaving them unchallenged.

What if that belief is the reason that there is a gender gap?  What if we could park our previous beliefs about pay and a lack of fairness and we considered that our career could be exactly what we wanted it to be if we knew how to step up and play a bigger game?

My experience shows that people don’t stop believing in what holds them back until they have something better to choose. I decided to outline these choices in my book – Be The Leader You Want To See.

I believe the simplest to understand and easiest way to start playing bigger is using my ABC model:

Awareness 

What do you stand for?  How do you represent this?  To what have you dedicated your time? What are you working towards and why?  Taking the time to consider the now will expose the areas where you are being limited and allowing your talents to be capped.  Unless this is made to look extremely unpalatable you will leave the back door open, and be tempted to settle into these patterns.  A true leader looks impartially at what is, asks themselves if that is a good enough standard to live by and then makes a decision to create a bigger vision and change what isn’t working.

Bravery 

Growth doesn’t require massive leaps of faith.  The magic doesn’t only happen outside of your comfort zone.  Instead, I believe that if you nudge the edges of that comfort zone consistently enough, that it expands.  The level of bravery that is required is aligned with nervous excitement, not terror.  Those acts of bravery are so small that others barely notice, nor judge.  You only need one win under your belt before you are curious enough to see what the next brave act will generate.

Contribution 

When you are consistently intentional about growing your self-awareness and bravery, you can make an unfathomable contribution to your own fulfilment as a leader, whether you think your current job is the one for you or not. This is about creating a new perspective for your personal and professional future before the circumstances show up. It is how you make an impact. All the time you fear you have wasted, and all the pigeonholes you believe you are in, they all count.  It’s time to be tactical about how to leverage all of your experience.

If you would like to be guided through this process in a way that feels like your personal cheerleader is talking only to you, then you will love Be The Leader You Want To See; a guide for how to play a much bigger game with what you already have.  It all starts with you –you’re the only factor in your career fully under your control. Show others how great they can be by being the best version of you.

Susie’s book Be The Leader You Want To See is available now on Amazon.