The Unexpected Leader

8Finessing Your Style

I'll let the cat out of the bag right away so you don't get derailed by the word “finesse.” Finessing your style is nothing more than being you. It's actually being more of you. In a world that is constantly directing us to be more of something else, instead of what and who we actually are, it's often hard to settle on what it means to actually embrace you and understand how you approach things. In this chapter, I'm encouraging you to do more of that throughout your leadership journey.

Let me share more about my journey in finessing my style.

For employees at an organization, getting performance reviews with some form of regularity is pretty typical. It's commonplace for your immediate leader to write and deliver your past year's performance results to you. In contrast, in the world of entrepreneurship (where I live), gathering feedback and insight about my work with an individual or an organization is critical, but it isn't going to happen unless I solicit it. In my pursuit of feedback, I gather it after almost every training or coaching engagement and I do this even if it is a client or organization that I've worked with time and time again. The feedback that I get pretty consistently is around my style of delivery. There are four phrases that continually come up over and over again:

• Engaging
• Relatable
• Inspires action
• Unique delivery

I have to take a moment and highlight one of the phrases: unique delivery. While I am proud and grateful that clients ...