Many women entrepreneurs that I know use a Vision Board to create an idea of where they want to go in their lives. Rather than pen and paper or computerized graphics, they create collages, just like they did in grade school, to capture their dreams. A Vision Board is an ideal, and vision in business is necessary for business leadership. But one component of business leadership is missing from the Vision Board (or any other ways of creating a vision) and that is that it doesn’t identify the personal transformation necessary to develop business leadership.
Women reach at least two, probably more, transformation points when they decide to become business leaders. The first is when we decide to own our economic future by starting a business. Right then, we make a choice not to be an “employee,” but to become a business owner. The problem is that we often still think like an employee and spend a lot of time–too much time–waiting for someone to tell us what to do. We either become perpetual students or find a business consultant that insists that we adhere to their way of doing things. (Hint: Good business consultants and coaches don’t insist on you following their “method.”)
At some point, one of two things happen: either the woman goes out of business or she undergoes the personal transformation necessary to become the business owner.
A second point happens when the woman has a few employees. We like being “friends” with our employees. We want to suggest, to console, to teach. We are rarely trained to develop the leadership muscle and we don’t have a lot of role models that demonstrate women’s business leadership for us. Fortunately, that is starting to change with women political leaders like Angela Merkel and Hillary Clinton, and business leaders such as Anita Roddick (founder of The Body Shop).
Like profoundly good male leaders, women leaders often go through a cauldron of fire, testing their resolve and helping them reach within themselves for personal transformation. While it’s not necessary to go through the gates of Hell to become leaders, it does take some effort and inner soul-searching to define your values, and personal characteristics. What makes you unique, burnished to a high degree, is what makes you a leader.
How does personal transformation occur? How do you develop business leadership?
It begins with the truth. In order to develop leadership qualities, you need to uncover and examine the good and the not so good of your life and who you are. Polish your strengths and acknowledge the stuff you don’t do so well. Try new methods and be willing to fail. Expect resistance, from others and from yourself. No one likes change.
We are the change we have been looking for, we just need to uncover it and bring a strong female flavor to business leadership.
