Becoming the Best Version of You: Welcome To Great Leader Great Life

Driven to succeed. Naturally attracted to leadership positions. Stepping up to solve problems even when it’s not your job. Leaders appear everywhere.

Great leaders know themselves well, and are authentic in all aspects of their lives. Great leaders know themselves – and embrace themselves – for who they are in positions of leadership and outside of formal settings. If you want to be a great leader, and live a great life, self-awareness is a journey that can be enlightening, fun, daunting and frustrating.

Once you decide embrace yourself honestly and with appreciation, you are well on your way to being a great leader who is leading a great life.

One of the first steps on this journey is to identify the qualities of yourself that don’t change over time … your natural personality, talents, needs and vulnerabilities. Learn to identify behaviors that work well for you and that you want to apply more often as well as behaviors that aren’t helping you lead the life you want to live. Assessments can help you put words to your inherent traits, values and natural, preferred style. Don’t judge your past behaviors or current mindset, just learn about yourself. It’s a journey that will help you find the freedom to be who you are and connect more deeply with the world.

My career as a leadership and team consultant began with friendship and a common interest in self-discovery. My friend Paul Burgess introduced me to his I.D. System™ more than 15 years ago, and it has been incredibly helpful to understand aspects of myself that I intuitively knew but couldn’t articulate. My experience with the I.D. System has created opportunities to work with terrific leaders around the globe, helping them grow their leadership skills and develop their teams.

Commitment to self-awareness is one of the universal traits of successful leaders. I recently participated in a Women’s Conference for a large Corporation. Without prior planning, every one of us presenting at the conference emphasized and shared this fundamental belief — that a key to success is finding one’s passion and creating a career and life that reflects an honest embracing of one’s natural style.

Actively growing as a leader will make your life better.   Work life balance is really a desire to live a full and rewarding life. Discussions about how to best lead teams and hit aggressive business goals morph into thoughtful exploration of how career aspirations can enhance rather than infringe on your life. Many of the leadership management strategies I create with clients in the office became effective life management strategies.

Great Leader Great Life is intended to be a fun way to explore leadership growth, self-awareness and fulfilling integration of work and life.

No one is a Great Leader living a Great Life without encouragement of others. Great Leader Great Life is an idea that evolved from some wonderful discussions that started over five years ago with my Mastermind mates, Scott Propp and Barbara Stafford. They have encouraged me through the slow creative process. Thanks to Scott and Barbara for years of weekly support and inspiration.

Thanks also to Michelle Jennings for putting action to my ideas. I wouldn’t be launching Great Leader Great Life without her. Thanks also to Keri Rivera for contributing additional momentum through her ability to help put my feelings and ideas into words.

One of the key ingredients to my great life is a rich and rewarding marriage. I am deeply grateful for and to my husband Steve Feinberg.   His patience with randomly being asked I.D.™ questions as well as his devotion to me being at my best lets me take risks I wouldn’t think of taking otherwise. Thank you Steve for always being by my side no matter which way I meander.

You’ll meet these wonderful people as well as others as I share Great Leader Great Life stories with you. I will never share stories without permission, and will change the facts of examples and discussions to protect the anonymity of people I’ve met over the years.

Knowing yourself will be a recurring theme through Great Leader Great Life. We’re starting off with exploration of talents, including how to look at what seem to be vulnerabilities to see what talents are there to be leveraged.

If you want support on creating your Great Leader Great Life journey, give thought to the one trait about yourself you wish you could change. Feel free to share your trait in the comment section. We’ll explore the hidden talents of our most persistent vulnerability, and work on some ideas to be manage the traits at work and in our life as the next step of the Great Leader Great Life journey.