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Think of two influencing scenarios from your workplace that you are current dealing with. Keep the two scenarios handy with you for discussion in the session.

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Click on the link here to read this article. This has been assigned as advised reading material for this lab.

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Executive Summary

Great leaders demonstrate four elements to inspire action: They are confident in themselves, connected to others, committed to purpose, and emotionally courageous. Most of us are great at only one of the four. Maybe two. But to be a powerful presence, you need to excel at all four simultaneously. If you're confident in yourself but disconnected from others, everything will be about you and you'll alienate the people around you. If you're connected to others but lack confidence in yourself, you will betray your own needs and perspectives in order to please everyone else. If you're not committed to a purpose, something bigger than yourself and others, you'll flounder, losing the respect of those around you as you act aimlessly. And if you fail to act powerfully, decisively, and boldly - with emotional courage - your ideas will remain idle thoughts and your goals will remain unfulfilled fantasies.

Pat LaCroix/Getty Images

Brad was leading a difficult turnaround of his company and had decided to fire his head of sales, who was a nice guy but wasn't performing.

Three months later, he still hadn't fired him.

I asked him why. His answer? "I'm a wimp!"

Brad (not his real name - I've changed some details to protect people's privacy) is the CEO of a financial services firm and is most definitely not a wimp. He's a normal human, just like you and me. And he's struggling to follow through on an important, strategic decision. Just like, at times, you and I do.

No matter your age, your role, your position, your title, your profession, or your status, to get your most important work done, you have to have hard conversations, create accountability, and inspire action.

In order to do that, you need to show up powerfully and magnetically in a way that attracts people to trust you, follow you, and commit to putting 100% of their effort into a larger purpose, something bigger than all of you. You need to care about others and connect with them in such a way that they feel your care. You need to speak persuasively - in a way that's clear, direct, and honest and that reflects your care - while listening with openness, compassion, and love. Even when being challenged.

And, of course, you need to follow through quickly and effectively.

In 25 years of working with leaders to do all the above, I have found a pattern that I share in my new book, Leading with Emotional Courage, consisting of four essential elements that all great leaders rely on to rally people to accomplish what's important to them. To lead effectively - really, to live effectively - you must be confident in yourself, connected to others, committed to purpose, and emotionally courageous.

Most of us are great at only one of the four. Maybe two. But to be a powerful presence - to inspire action - you need to excel at all four simultaneously.

If you're confident in yourself but disconnected from others, everything will be about you and you'll alienate the people around you. If you're connected to others but lack confidence in yourself, you will betray your own needs and perspectives in order to please everyone else. If you're not committed to a purpose, something bigger than yourself and others, you'll flounder, losing the respect of those around you as you act aimlessly, failing to make an impact on what matters most. And if you fail to act powerfully, decisively, and boldly - with emotional courage - your ideas will remain idle thoughts and your goals will remain unfulfilled fantasies.

Let's apply this to Brad and identify precisely where and how he was getting stuck.

Confident in yourself. Brad struggled with this element, which might feel surprising since he was so successful in his career. But this is not uncommon. He worked tremendously hard, but it came from some degree of insecurity - he wanted to prove himself and please those around him. He became unnerved in the face of potential failure and was not particularly gentle or compassionate with himself when he did fail. He did have important strengths in this element: He saw the person he wanted to become and he worked toward that future, putting aside distractions and investing his energy wisely and strategically.

Connected to others. This was Brad's greatest strength. He was well-loved and always took great care of his team. People clearly knew and felt that he trusted them, even when he disagreed with them. They appreciated his curiosity - about people and problems - and were grateful that he did not draw quick conclusions about them. All that said, even in this element, he had room to grow: He was not always direct with people and tended to procrastinate on difficult conversations.

Committed to purpose. This was a mixed element for Brad. On the one hand, Brad was clear about what needed to get done to grow the firm, he engaged people in the early stages of work, and he was open and willing to ask for help. On the other hand, he was somewhat scattered. He wasn't clear enough about the small number of things that would move the needle, and he didn't have a reliable process for staying focused on the most important things, ensuring accountability and driving follow-through. Not firing his head of sales sent a mixed message to his team - was he really serious about the firm's success?

Emotionally courageous. Brad had room to grow here, and it turned out to be an important element for growing his strength in the other three elements. Risks, by definition, make us feel vulnerable, and Brad avoided that feeling. He resisted the unknown and intentionally avoided uncomfortable situations. This made it hard for him to tell people hard truths and make hard decisions quickly, which stalled his actions.

So Brad's strongest element was "connected to others," followed by "committed to purpose." He was weaker in "confident in yourself" and "emotionally courageous."

Which puts his challenge in perspective: His connection to his head of sales was at war with his commitment to the success of his team and company. Meanwhile, his confidence in himself and his emotional courage weren't strong enough to break the tie. That's a recipe for inaction and painful frustration.

Just knowing what was happening helped him immediately. We spent some time strengthening his emotional courage by taking small risks while feeling the emotions he had been trying to keep at bay. Each time he followed through, regardless of whether he succeeded, he obviously survived and also felt the accomplishment of addressing the risk itself. Which, of course, built his confidence. Which helped him take bigger risks.

In a short time, he felt prepared (even though he may never have felt "ready") to follow through on what he had known he needed to do for the past three months. With his natural care, compassion, and humanity, he fired his head of sales (who, by the way, and unsurprisingly, knew it was coming and said he felt "relieved").

Brad was extremely uncomfortable going into the conversation - that's almost always the feeling you'll have when you do anything that requires emotional courage.

But using emotional courage builds your emotional courage. Brad emerged from the conversation stronger in all four elements: He was more confident in himself, more connected to his team (and even, believe it or not, his head of sales), more committed to purpose, and more emotionally courageous.
Author's note: Curious about how you stack up? I've created an assessment on my website that will help you identify strengths and weaknesses in each of the four elements. Once you take it, you will have a good idea of where you have room to grow. It's free to take. You'll have to submit your email address, but we'll only include you on our mailing list if you ask us to.

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Great Leaders Are Confident, Connected, Committed, and Courageous

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Executive Summary Great leaders demonstrate four elements to inspire action: They are confident in themselves, connected to others, committed to purpose, and emotionally courageous. Most of us are great at only one of the four. Maybe two. But to be a powerful presence, you need to excel at all four simultaneously.

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Click on the link here to read this article. This has been assigned as advised reading material for this lab.

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What happens when you're faced with a decision that requires a leap of faith?

Most of us want to turn and run from these kinds of decisions. Leaps of faith make great scenes in a movie, but in real life they fill us with stress and uncertainty, two emotions that are not comfortable for the human brain. In fact, according to researchers, our brain actively strives to reduce uncertainty about future outcomes in order to escape those feelings of discomfort and stress.

The big, complex decisions we face are the ones most impactful on our lives and our future, and they're often the decisions we're most proud of. Recently, I taught a business school class in decision-making in Portugal, and I asked students to share the best decision they had ever made. Again and again, they pointed to those big, complex decisions such as "Buying my first house," "Saying yes to a job," "Getting a divorce," "Living alone," and "Traveling solo."

The students' responses mirrored what I've heard from corporate clients, who've shared that their best decisions include "Taking risks and following my passion," "Getting married," and "Deciding to have my son."

If uncertainty makes us so uneasy, why do so many of us look back fondly on bold decisions? And how can we become more comfortable making them?

To face down the discomfort of a leap-of-faith decision, we can take advantage of a revealing data set that we often ignore: our past decisions. Every choice we've made offers information that can inform our future decisions. Looking back at our decision-making history allows us to see patterns that we might not otherwise notice - thus providing a crucial perspective for understanding (and solving!) complex and unique current and future problems.

To help you mine your personal decision-making data set, I've developed a planning tool that I call the Bold Decision Barometer (BDB). It offers a series of steps to identify and examine variables from previous decisions so that you can reduce uncertainty and increase your comfort making the next big leap of faith.

1. Identify the decision you need to make.

When we're trying to solve a thorny problem, we often have to sort through a lot of conflicting information. So the first thing to do is to identify what decision you need to make.

Rhianna, the CEO of an international travel company, was facing a tough call: Should she update and reorganize her board of directors - the entity she reports to and the group that could fire her? She'd inherited the current board from her predecessor, and they had been a great team when she was just getting started and needed a supportive care-taker board. But in her first two years at the helm, Rhianna had expanded the company's international operations, and she now needed a team that could enhance a growing, dynamic organization, bringing skills and knowledge that the current board didn't have. On the other hand, she worried that proposing this to the current board could be a quick trip to a forced resignation.

Of course, Rhianna had the option to keep the board as is, but not acting would be its own decision, with consequences. By assessing the implications of being cautious, rather than bold, you may assist your willingness to be bold.

2. Examine your past bold decisions.

Think about a previous choice you made where you were excited by the outcome. What decisions were before you? What actions did you take related to those decisions?

Rhianna reviewed her tenure and identified two bold changes that she had made to the organization: She had removed someone on her senior leadership team, and she had converted a for-profit part of the organization into a nonprofit.

Looking back, Rhianna reviewed the steps she had taken prior to making each decision. In the case of the senior team manager, she had heard hints of problems and suspected they stemmed from this person's leadership. But she knew she needed to test her assumptions against evidence, so she conducted a financial review of the manager's unit and spoke with key lieutenants about their oversight. When it came to making a decision about the business unit conversion, Rhianna recognized that she didn't have the experience she needed with nonprofits. So she met with fundraisers, lawyers, and other experts to get herself up to speed.

3. Ask yourself what attributes or similarities are shared between the bold decision you are considering and your prior decisions.

Looking for similarities allows us to spot patterns that provide a sense of order in what might otherwise appear unique or chaotic. In addition, by identifying and understanding recurring commonalities, we can better make educated guesses or assumptions that allow us to formulate hypotheses. This helps us not only develop our critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, it also provides a familiarity that bolsters our confidence to do something new or bold.

Rhianna noticed that in making the prior two decisions, she reached out to people with specialized knowledge. She also realized that she had spent time imagining the possibilities of what the organization would look like after her bold decisions were made. For example, she envisioned how making the change on her senior leadership team might introduce some short-term volatility, but in the long term, it would demonstrate her commitment to improving the organization's culture. Finally, she recognized that in both of her prior decisions, she was willing to incur some short-term personal and professional instability in exchange for a long-term benefit for everyone.

4. Consider whether there are attributes of your past bold decisions that might impede your ability to get to a good outcome for your current decision.

When we're happy with a bold decision we made, we can often look back on the process with rose-colored glasses. But it's worth revisiting the missteps or unintended consequences you might have glossed over to help you understand what could go wrong and prevent those risks from surfacing.

In revisiting her prior decisions, Rhianna realized that while she had consulted with other senior leaders, there were lower-level team members who would have had an easier time adapting to the big changes she made if she had consulted with or informed them sooner. For example, when she fired the senior manager, she assumed that the three managers working under him could easily step into his role. But they didn't have the experience or the comfort with his responsibilities to make a smooth transition. Rhianna recognized that while she could see the outcome of her bold decisions, others might have felt - or even been - left in the dark.

5. Apply the lessons from your past data to your current decision.

By identifying what worked well in prior bold decisions and what didn't, you can "learn as you go," putting your past to work for you. Of course, examining the past can't guarantee success, but it can remind you about when, why, and how you've made courageous choices - and prevent you from repeating mistakes.

Examining her prior decisions, Rhianna realized that she needed to spend some time imagining what the organization would look like if she was able to reorganize the board and what steps she would need to take to guide the board through the process in a collaborative way. She reminded herself that she was comfortable absorbing some short-term instability for a longer-term change, but she knew she needed to carefully and thoroughly consider who else she should consult or inform about the potential change, and how the interim instability would affect others within the organization.

Rhianna made the bold decision to make the case that the existing board needed to change to better meet the current needs of the organization. She shared that she wanted to hire an outside consulting firm to review the board and make recommendations for members' professional development. While the board understood that the organization was growing and that Rhianna had made some big staffing changes, her presentation emphasized the need for a different kind of leadership from the board. Operations had become more complex, and crucial specialized knowledge and experience from board members would better complement the organization moving forward. After Rhianna made her case, the board enthusiastically signed off on her plans.

. . .

For most of us, making a big, bold decision can be scary, but it can also be exciting. We all want to be the captains of our own ships, and facing big decisions with confidence allows us to do this. Using the Bold Decision Barometer, we can learn from the data in our past decisions. While this can't guarantee that we make a good decision, it can give us reflection questions that can mitigate some of the risk and the uncertainty we feel about making leap-of-faith decisions so we can make them anyway.

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Become More Comfortable Making Bold Decisions

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Leaps of faith make great scenes in a movie, but in real life they fill us with stress and uncertainty, two emotions that are not comfortable for the human brain. To face down our discomfort, we can take advantage of a revealing data set that we often ignore: our past decisions.

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Click on the link here to read this article. This has been assigned as advised reading material for this lab.

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Is your image important to you? Are you aware of how your image can impact you and others? In the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, it is more important than ever before that individuals - and especially leaders - know what their image and leadership brand are doing for them.
What is personal brand leadership?
A leadership brand creates awareness about what you stand for as a leader and what makes you someone who can make a positive difference. As Norm Smallwood put it in the Harvard Business Review, " A leadership brand conveys your identity and distinctiveness as a leader. It communicates the value you offer."

Your leadership brand is made up of a complex dynamic, like how you behave, react and interact with different groups or individuals in diverse situations, and how you as a leader interact with others to produce outstanding results.
How does it work?
Creating a strong personal brand in order to stand out from the rest is courageous. It's critical for leaders to be aware that their presence matters in all aspects and will play a leading role in their quest to make an impact. A holistic personal branding system could be the answer to how you can build an influential personal leadership brand. This will not only help you get to the next level but also help your team as well. It must be a systematic approach and not ad-hoc.

Research shows that traits like humility and inclusiveness are some of the most favored traits for a leader in a professional environment. But what if those things don't come naturally to you? Is there a way you can influence people so they perceive you as someone with those traits? The answer is yes, as long as you're willing to be vulnerable.

Other important questions to ask yourself include: Are there ways you can add credibility and "attractiveness" to your personal brand leadership? Have you thought about what you do and why, and what others around you think of your leadership brand? Your answers to these questions will give you a better understanding of what kind of a leader you are and what can be done to improve your leadership skills so you can truly make yourself and your personal brand stand out.
Why is it critical?
There are many people with good leadership skills and the potential to be powerful leaders. However, most of them do not realize the importance of creating a personal brand for their leadership, and hence, they become invisible. Leaders that are invisible are not able to gain the trust of others to make a positive difference because they are not "seen." When you're not seen, most people don't know that you exist.

It is critical for someone in a leadership role to model a brand of leadership that attracts people to you. Your authenticity helps to gain their trust. A strong personal brand of leadership is exactly what separates strong leaders who end up making a difference from weak leaders with no impact.

In this day and age with all the unnecessary noise, distractions and confusion, modeling or even creating a strong leadership brand allows leaders to cut through the clutter and focus all their energy on things that actually matter. This is how an authentic, powerful and strong leadership brand allows leaders to truly make a difference.

For example, the current health and economic crisis has forced many corporations to ask their employees and teams to work from home. This situation makes it even more important to have proactive and strong leaders who show initiative and take on added responsibilities to ensure their teams working from home are still contributing positively to the organization and are seizing opportunities to help. Having a strong, authentic and personal leadership brand makes it easier for your team members to trust you and will likely inspire them to work beyond the call of duty during a crisis.

It's also critical to understand that leadership does not just mean being a leader in the workplace. It means being a strong leader who truly makes a difference regardless of the space he or she is in - that includes your community, your family and friends, everyone and everything.

You could be a leader with tremendous potential and a real passion to make a sustainable difference. However, it's going to be much harder for you to successfully make a difference if others around you are not clear on who you are or do not see your leadership qualities. In order to maximize your leadership potential, you need to create awareness either consciously or unconsciously. As mentioned earlier, you must be willing to be vulnerable to build trust, make people look up to you and inspire confidence so that they can depend on you to follow your path.

The world as it stands now is in chaos, with many people panicking. If there was ever a time for strong leaders to take initiative and gain the trust of their team members through a courageous and authentic leadership brand in order to make a difference, it's right now!

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Council Post: How Does Personal Brand Leadership Work And Why Is It Critical?

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Is your image important to you? Are you aware of how your image can impact you and others? In the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, it is more important than ever before that individuals - and especially leaders - know what their image and leadership brand are doing for them.

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Complete the self-reflection section at the end of the IDP template. The same template has been shared via email. Alternatively, can be downloaded here.