I learned a great phrase recently: “Walking in your own power.” And I've been learning how to take that advice, which I'll share below.
This came from my friend Ije-Enu Udeze Nwosu, head of impact spending at Kaiser Permanente. Ije is my guest on the Speaking to Influence podcast this week, and she shared some fantastic insights into what kind of influence you need to have both internally and externally in an organization. Tune in to hear her advice on this, and how to walk in your own power. If you don't have iTunes, you can always find it on speakingtoinfluence.com/podcast.
I've been learning to walk in my own power lately with my commentaries on morning talk-shows, where I've been using the presidential debates and town halls as live case studies in what is – and isn't – examples of effective leadership communication. It has taught me to thicken my skin a bit!
Last Friday, it was great to be back with the morning team at WPHL17 to look at examples of strong and weak leadership communication from the two town halls. And I'm looking forward to being back on the show this coming Friday after this week's final presidential debate!
As always, in addition to the brief TV interview, I will also do a more comprehensive analysis on LinkedIn with examples of where the candidates each provided lessons in “do's and don'ts” of leadership communication. Stay tuned!
As for that “thickened skin?” I've always maintained political objectivity in my posts and media interviews, but it's really interesting to see responses on Twitter and elsewhere – in which people immediately accuse me of political bias, simply because I criticized “their” candidate or gave the “other” candidate credit for something.
Some people don’t believe it’s possible to recognize (or at least acknowledge) strengths in someone you don't like, or weaknesses in someone you do, most likely because they aren’t able to do this themselves. To me, that's a crucial skill set we all need to work on, period, if there’s any hope of being able to come to the table and have civil discourse with those who think differently from us!
If they followed me regularly, they should pretty clearly see that – as broad example, I was as clear in my evaluation that the RNC was more effective in its messaging than the DNC, as I was in my assessment that Donald Trump's performance in debate #1 was less effective than Joe Biden's.
My mission is to look at these events from the perspective of, “what lessons can we each take from these experiences and apply to our own professional development as leaders in our respective roles and fields, whether or not we'd ever vote for that candidate or party?” I stand firm in my mission, and – as Ije put it in this week's podcast episode – I continue to walk in my own power.
So for this week I hope that you walk in your own power, enjoy the podcast episode, and check out my new online course Virtual Influence.
Here's to your success,
Laura
