“All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.”
– Sir Walter Scott

Commitment. Now there’s a seemingly dirty word! Valentine’s Day around the corner or not, all one needs to do is to dip her toe in the dating world to see that many people find all sorts of creative avenues for shying away from this “C” word…not that I would know anything about that personally … lol.

But seriously, what is it about the essence of committing ourselves that can seem so daunting? As I reflect on this for myself, I recognize that historically, it’s a concept that has felt forceful, full of obligation and “musts” for me. And how could it not? The phrase we’ve all heard at some point or another describes the weight of a commitment – “You can’t be a little bit pregnant or a little bit married: you either are or you aren’t” And it didn’t fall on deaf ears with me.

Indeed, I heard the message loud and clear: one cannot only dip their toes in commitment, they need to put their whole selves into it. This full-on nature of the “C” word would scare anyone – especially if there is an element of duty attached to it….but does there have to be?

In all my years of working in transformation, no one – including myself – has authentically stepped even one foot toward evolution by being coerced or pushed. Instead, most of us find ourselves on the transformation journey by simple choice. Yet, by the very nature of the discomfort and arduousness which transformation can ask of us at times, one does indeed need to be committed to the process to be able to keep on it and reap the rewards it promises.

“Motivation is what gets you started. Commitment is what keeps you going.”
– Jim Rohn

Commitment: The Vehicle to Getting What We Really Want

So how can the two – staying the course and without the heaviness that often accompanies the notion of Commitment – converge? By being committed to our own growth. That’s it. Not to another person, not to some external rules others are trying to impose on us, not on drinking the metaphorical Kool-Aid. But committed to ourselves, to our own development as humans and as leaders.

How can that not be freeing?

I don’t know about you, but when I look at commitment in the light of overcoming my own challenges, working through my triggers, reframing my limiting beliefs and just generally creating a more of a joyful life I don’t feel the need to escape from, being committed feels pretty darn empowering. And it should.

Leadership in Three Steps

While leadership itself is a vast topic with many different points of view of what constitutes it, in the transformational facilitator and strategic consulting networks I am part of, we boil down leadership into three steps:

1. Awareness: We become aware of something which might need shifting. You may remember that I wrote about resetting to become more aware in my December 2022 blog.
2. Choice: We have the power to choose – or not – to do something about that shifting. In my January 2023 article, you can read more about the Power of Choice.
3. Commitment to Practice (new behavior): Now, as the third in a series of leadership traits, I give you Commitment to our Development as Leaders. Once we choose to move forward with the transformation, we commit to tiny actions to carve out new neural pathways in our brains as a means of reinforcing that new behavior and anchoring it in our comfort zones.

Commitment, therefore, is an integral part of becoming better versions of ourselves – and of creating the optimal conditions for our teams and organizations to step up to their highest levels, too.

Seen this way, such a “dirty” word becomes one of hope – for ourselves, those we get to influence and, ultimately, the world.

Bolder Leaders Commit to Themselves

“Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself.
It is precisely that simple and it is also that difficult.”
– Warren Bennis

Every expert was once a beginner. In fact, in my experience, most experts remain so because they maintain a Beginner’s Mindset. When I graduated from the Newfield Network as a brand-new Executive Coach, guess what their parting gift to my classmates and me was? An aikido white belt. What in the world would motivate them to gift such a (seemingly bizarre) gift? Because apparently, in aikido (I haven’t yet practiced it), once a student achieves black-belt status they go straight back to the white belt: they are lifelong learners. Talk about commitment! …Lol.

Truly, as we look around, most of us will probably notice that those humans who are fairly serene and joyful despite the many obstacles our VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) world frequently throws at us tend to see life as all about learning. That is, instead of getting too far into the “poor mes” or “Why bothers?,” they learn to master challenging situations by looking at what they can learn from them. It’s not always easy to swallow their pride, but their eyes are on the larger prize of peace-of-mind and fulfillment.

And if we want to feel more empowered, as though we are mastering our lives and our leadership, we will learn to see it this way, too – even if it means we first need to commit to learning to seeing it this way.

There will, after all, always be situations which, if we so choose, we can learn (and grow) from. All it takes is making a commitment to ourselves to continue our personal and professional development – however dull or irritating it may be at times.

Here are some ways we can do that…

Eight Steps to Expand Your Leadership Development:

1. Develop a Vision for the Leader (Human) you really want to be: As Maya Angelou wrote, how do you want to make others feel? What values do you want to live? What legacy do you want to leave behind? What do you want to be known for? Why?
2. Uncover your Purpose: What is it that most moves you? Calls out to you as the cause most worthy in your eyes? What are you best placed to do? Thanks to a deeper understanding of my own purpose, I am beginning to open up my business’s focus more toward Adult Children who underwent trauma in childhood. As a topic affecting 25% of the world (at least), it seems it was never before published about in a business context. This is both an impactful and deeply meaningful subject for me – for those affected and for those they touch.
3. Define your Values: not the ones you think you should have, but the ones you want to have. Living our aspirational values are what help us make our Vision a reality.
4. Set an Intention to live your Values and Purpose and to manifest your Vision.
5. Increase your self-awareness: we all can be doing this, even those of us devoted to this profession ;-). Get feedback. Reach out to sponsors, mentors and other role models.
6. Leverage your Network. Connect with everyone who can offer support, inspiration and accountability.
7. Appreciate yourself! Once smart people reach their goals, guess what we tend to do next? That’s right: set another goal! We forget to acknowledge themselves for all of their hard work. And in so doing, they inadvertently contribute to their own dissatisfaction in life (the number one reason for it being – statistically speaking – not appreciating their own wins! So bring out those party favors – it’s time for a dance party… in honor of you 🙂
8. Share your new experiences through writing blogs or articles, or with an accountability group or mentor, for example.

Staying the Course: The Ultimate Challenge for all Leaders

It’s all fine and well to lay out concrete steps for expanding our development as leaders and even to highlight the need for commitment to our own growth throughout.

But this article wouldn’t be complete unless it also brought in how freaking hard staying the course – any course – can be. Especially in this crazy, heartbreaking world we live in which can seem to throw wrenches in our progress at many turns.

It’s at this point and also when we don’t seem to be making progress – things feel BORING and FRUSTRATING – where most of us probably want to throw in the towel. Yet that is exactly the time we need to hang tight and remind ourselves of our vision for ourselves and our leadership. For this bumpy road is just part of our Yellow Brick one which will lead to greater freedom and joy for us.

“When confronted with a challenge, the committed heart will search for a solution.
The undecided heart searches for an escape.”
– Andy Andrews

This means that even when we can’t see immediate results, even when we want to pull our hair out with boredom or stress, we keep going. Remembering one important fact might help all of us here: through our commitment to growth, we are making an investment…in ourselves.

Many, many times over the course of earning my last degree, overwhelmed with yet another paper (23 in total!), I wanted to call it quits. With two little girls at home, clients to take care of and a business to run, who wouldn’t? But I didn’t. As hard as it was and as much as I ground my teeth and wanted to run out of my house screaming, I stayed put. And now I have a diploma which grows my credibility, and which will stay with me no matter where I go, no matter what I do next.

And that’s the sort of thing I want for you, too. You can do it. We all owe it to ourselves and to those we touch to make the investment in ourselves to be the humans and leaders we have always admired. In this world of increasing darkness, after all, even one additional light is sorely needed and desperately wished for.

Looking for small ways to spark your commitment to yourself? Sign up here to access my FREE, simple Weekly Bolder Moves of the week.

Colleen

Colleen Slaughter, Proud Executive Coach to the UN World Food Program, the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Winner

As an Executive Coach for Women in Leadership and Transformational Facilitator, my intention is to help leaders in positions of high influence to understand their worth at a profound level.

Supporting women leaders to truly thrive and step into their greatness, while succeeding in male-dominated industries and spaces is my native genius.

My technique and approach show you how to achieve incredible career success without compromising any part of who you are and what makes you magnificent.

Identifying and making courageous choices is where our power lies in our leadership and beyond.

“Everything in your life is a reflection of a choice you have made.
If you want a different result, make a difference choice.”– Anonymous

Bolder Moves Through Bold Choices

Anyone who has followed me for any amount of time knows that I am all about Bolder Moves – bold choices leading to greater levels of impact and fulfillment through the rewards such moves promise.

This is because I want to help as many of you as possible to reap the same benefits I have of getting your courage on and of making those moves most in alignment with your True Selves so you can accumulate every thriving point in your favor.

A Kentucky girl from a single-parent low-income household who moved to Paris with little money, no job lined up and limited French skills, I somehow managed to make a life in this country.

This has included learning to get around in a foreign language (albeit with a strong American accent – lol), graduating from two of its schools and being able to navigate the (thick) red tape to set up a bonafide business here.

It all started by trusting that nudge I felt in my body. That was the choice I made, among many others which have enriched both my professional and personal lives.

One of my beloved teachers talks about the distinction between decision and choice: decision is of the mind (rational, logical), while choice is of the heart (intuitive, pulled by body sensations).

She also says that when it comes to joy and fulfillment, in the war of the heart and the mind, the heart will always win. It always has for me. No question. And that’s my wish for you, too.

Choice is power. Being able to claim our choices – and providing space for others to do so as well – is what distinguishes Bolder Leaders from the not-so-much.

The Power of Choice in the Workplace

Most leaders are aware of their ability (or inability) to create thriving environments for employees to flourish in.

Two basic elements allow humans at work to thrive, the ability to:

• choose
• have structure

Based on studies, having choice and control in the workplace are what matters to employees – and their work performance.

Tracy Brower, PhD, writing in Forbes, highlights the issues of choice and control, citing the late Barbara Ehrenreich in her book, Nickel and Dimed, who asserted that lack of control – where employees feel they have no choice – is detrimental to the work environment.

Studies have indicated that employees are more involved when they feel they have control over matters that affect them.

When control is taken away or little is available in jobs of high levels of stress, employees’ health is affected. Not surprisingly, it makes a difference when workers feel that they have some say in their next steps and can make their own choices.

When employees have a greater freedom in their workplaces, stress is lessened and performance is enhanced.

The Goldilocks Choice: A Leadership Analogy

Too much choice – or too little choice – have their downsides.

We all remember the childhood story, Goldilocks and the Three Bears. While the bears are out of their little cottage, Goldilocks tastes from their three different porridge bowls and decides for herself that one is too hot, one too cold…and it’s the middle one, neither too hot or too cold, that she likes best.

Thus, the Goldilocks Principle: just the right amount.

That analogy mirrors how most employees feel about their experiences with choice in the work place.

Experiments have uncovered that if people aren’t given enough choices, they aren’t satisfied. Yet giving people too much choice can result in a feeling of overwhelm and may hinder effective decision making.

We’re all pretty much like Goldilocks. Not too much, not too little. It’s a little bit of both. Leaders who communicate and listen will be aware of what level of choice their employees are comfortable with.

“Leadership is a choice, not a position.” – Stephen R. Covey

How Leaders Can Empower Through Choice & Control

So how do we take the Goldilocks Principle from the fairy tale and transform it into everyday business?

It’s all about providing choices. Where to start?

Communication and trust-building are essential. Leaders need to both empathize with employees’ individual needs and to co-create the path to achieving a common vision with them. In giving workers the space to work out how to both follow their own priorities while remaining true to what the organization requires, leaders are setting the tone for higher levels of engagement and impact from their team.

Brower highlights areas where choices may abound:

• In work scheduling and locations: Research by Steelcase found that 87% of leaders foresee offering much more flexibility to workers, as to location, hours, and how they work in general. These issues are important (and challenging) to balance. On the one hand, employees face school/day care concerns, other family obligations and the need to take better care of their physical and mental health. On the other, leaders need to have times where teams are gathered physically together.
• Through work content: Yes, of course leaders need to ensure they and workers are on the same page about what needs to be done and by when– but providing variety in how or where this is done is key. It motivates and lessens burnout and can provide new opportunities to boost enthusiasm and create a sense of being a part of something in the workplace.
• With colleagues: For sure, we tend to work together well with those with whom we feel ‘in tune’, but oftentimes diversity enhances new lines of thinking and fresh creativity. It’s important for leaders to allow employees choices when working together.
• Via technology & office settings: Specific chair designs, visibility of windows, lighting and reduced noise levels can all contribute to increased productivity. Yet, most people feel even more motivated when they are able to also have choice in their office location. Technology and the various apps it includes allows for tracking categorized time, working from home and even having a dance off with colleagues!

The most important element in any choice we give our people, however, is the strong sense that they matter to the team and to the company.

The Power to Choose is Powerful in Leadership & Life

Surviving – and thriving – post-pandemic has shown us that we can think outside the box and work in ways never before thought.

Most leaders recognize how debilitating it feels when the power of choice is taken away. We must also remember that those who work for us feel no differently.

In a LinkedIn article aptly titled Leadership: The Power of Choice, author Utpal KC reminds us of Viktor Frankl, the groundbreaking Austrian neuropsychiatrist who believed that we humans have a choice of responses to any stimulus. In other words: between stimulus and response exists the freedom to choose.

Yet, he shares, “My experience is that individuals are so used to their spontaneous response to stimuli that many of them cannot even recognise a possibility of freedom of choice between stimulus and response.”

As I look at my own life and leadership here, I chuckle: how many times have I seen myself as a victim – “stuck with absolutely no way out”? Give me a break! How shortsighted I can be when I am unable to identify all my options and see that I am always at choice. Even choosing not to decide is a choice.

Providing choices is key, this we know.

But perhaps we should also recognize our own power to choose – between that moment of stimulus and our subsequent response to it exists the vast, all-powerful realm of one little word: choice.

As we begin to recognize this freedom within ourselves, so also will we be more effective at offering those we lead the dignity and power that comes from the opportunity of choice.

It was the renowned Frankl who spoke the profound words:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—
to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Choice comes in many forms: from setting simple boundaries to speaking up to stating our needs. The truth is, our choice probably isn’t going to be someone else’s choice. One is neither good or bad.

Rather, it’s the freedom of choice that provides the golden key.

If you want additional thought-provoking leadership moves that inspire you to lead with greater impact, Sign up for my FREE weekly Bold Moves messages here. They’re simple, free and delivered right to your inbox.

Colleen

Colleen Slaughter, Proud Executive Coach to the UN World Food Program, the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Winner

As an Executive Coach for Women in Leadership and Transformational Facilitator, my intention is to help leaders in positions of high influence to understand their worth at a profound level.

Supporting women leaders to truly thrive and step into their greatness, while succeeding in male-dominated industries and spaces is my native genius.

My technique and approach show you how to achieve incredible career success without compromising any part of who you are and what makes you magnificent.