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“The great leaders are like the best conductors – they reach beyond the notes to reach the magic in the players. ”
Blaine Lee

Being a brilliant entrepreneur calls us to bring forth the best of ourselves every day and in every way. As the leader of your business, there are so many people who look to you to take their cues: your clients, your staff, your colleagues and partners, and your suppliers. But the true test of leadership is this – are you practicing your own internal leadership? Would you be inspired, motivated and decide to follow yourself?

My mentor, Dr. Barbara De Angelis, very wisely says that the first person you must learn to lead is yourself. Attending management courses and reading the very finest leadership literature is good, but the greatest arena for learning about powerful and lasting leadership is within yourself. The brilliant entrepreneur knows that having a strong and resilient emotional foundation is a key ingredient to one’s success and impact. So I believe we must always be willing to do our own emotional homework to ensure that this internal foundation is strong enough to hold the business we desire.

Here are some tips to help you diagnose and up-level your self-leadership!

1. Do an Integrity Check
   Do a scan of your life to see if there are areas where what you are doing is different than what you are saying. Are there places where things feel out of integrity? Are you tolerating things that are incomplete? Are you walking your talk? It might be finishing up a product, making a call you’ve been avoiding, or letting clutter overwhelm your office. This scan will tell you where you have the opportunity to recommit to the leadership of your life. Write them down and come up with a plan to tackle these areas that are energetically eroding your leadership.
2. Get in the Driver’s Seat
   It’s tough to lead your life, let alone a business, if you allow other people to be in the driver’s seat. Self-leadership requires you to take responsibility for your thoughts, words and actions. When you’re in the driver’s seat of your life, you get to decide where you’re going, the route you’re going to take, and how fast you want to drive to get there. Yet sometimes we subtly concede that driver’s seat position to others – a spouse, a business partner, a demanding client, or a parent, to name a few examples.
3. Perfection is Not Required, Shifting is
   Don’t forget that we’re all human, and we definitely make mistakes. So even if you see there are areas where your ability to lead yourself isn’t what you want it to be, don’t despair! Perfection is not required in order to move forward to unleash your brilliance, but self-awareness and a consistent choice to shift out of limiting behaviors or patterns is. Being able to see what’s not working and shift it quickly, and with confidence, is critical so your true brilliance can shine brightly in the world. Learning to lead yourself with confidence and ease is the goal.

(If you prefer to listen to the audio version of this week’s article instead, just click “Listen Now” below!)

“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.”

Mother Teresa

As the leader of your business, the buck stops with you. If something isn’t working to your satisfaction, if a team member isn’t meeting your expectations or standards, it’s up to you to express your dissatisfaction and request a change. But dishing out criticism, even if it’s phrased as “constructive,” isn’t always easy to do effectively.

Women, in particular, seem to have a tough time delivering the news. Sometimes we store up our unhappiness and frustration because we tend to be master conflict avoiders. However, you can avoid rocking the boat only so long until resentment and frustration builds to a point of pressure where we lose our composure.

Are there ways for us, as women entrepreneurs, to deliver needed feedback without having to cringe while doing so?

Absolutely!

Here are some ways I recommend you deliver feedback effectively and clearly, and stand in your power in the process.

1. Be Prepared

Do yourself a favor and write a few notes out to help clear your head and get clear on what’s not working. Look at the facts of the situation. Leave any judging or guessing why someone isn’t meeting your needs out for now. Get grounded in knowing what your request is and what the consequence will be if the situation doesn’t get turned around to your satisfaction.

2. See the Feedback as a Gift

When delivering feedback to someone, set an intention to come from a place of service – to yourself and to the other person. Keeping quiet and letting resentment start to brew within you doesn’t help anyone. Telling someone your truth is a gift, even if they end up being disappointed or hurt in the moment by it.

3. Speak Straight and from the Heart

If you have bad news to deliver or a request to make, get to the point. Avoid the tendency women have to start to use indirect language as a way to worm out of delivering a critical comment. Speak from your heart and invite the other person to see how your request for change is in service of the greater good of your company and the people you serve.

4. Be Prepared to Listen

When delivering feedback, it’s important that you allow space and time to listen to the other person. It’s not all about you talking. It’s also about listening. Give the person a chance to be heard and to have their views acknowledged. You may still end up parting ways, but at least you have defused any potential for lingering resentment or upset.

Using these strategies, I bet you’ll be surprised at how quickly and effectively you’ll be able to deliver feedback without cringing!

STEP INTO YOUR BRILLIANCE

Identify a situation, either in your business or in your personal life, where you need to offer feedback to someone else. Take 10 minutes to journal about how you can handle that potentially difficult conversation differently in light of these strategies.

© 2011 Carolyn B. Ellis All Rights Reserved

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“Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you’ll be able to see farther. “

J. P. Morgan

Decisive action is critical to creating brilliant success. In time of great change, opportunity and creativity, one of the biggest blocks to building momentum and impact is indecision.

Just ask yourself the following questions:

Are you sitting on the fence in terms of decisions you know you need to make?

Does cutting off options feel uncomfortable for you?

Do you like to hedge your bets and keep your options open, just in case your Plan A doesn’t work out?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, don’t worry. You’re not alone!

Let 2011 be the year that you take a stand for yourself and your brilliance. Jump down off the fence of indecision and make a choice. Otherwise you risk getting caught up in a swirl of overwhelm, procrastination and not creating the results and impact you are meant to deliver.

Tip #1 – Decide When You Will Decide

How many times have you told yourself, “I’m not sure now so I’ll decide later.” But then you find yourself constantly thinking about the choice you need to make for days and weeks.

When you finally do make a decision one way or the other, it can feel like more like the victory of getting all the gum off the bottom of your shoe, rather than an empowering choice to create your future.

To keep yourself on track, set a specific date when you will sit down and make a decision. Put it on your calendar. This simple act alone will save you lots of splinters from sitting on the fence forever!

Tip #2 – Get The Big Picture

One reason people stay frozen in indecision is fear. There’s fear of change or that things won’t work out the way you hope. There’s fear your life will be different and your choices put you at risk of losing the approval or love of some people who are currently in your life. We zero in right on the fear and forget to look up for the big picture.

It is true that making a decision does change things. That is pretty much the point! We all need to make regular course corrections along the way to steer the ship of our lives in the direction we really want to go.

So isn’t it more scary to have yourself feeling stuck in this same issue a year from now, or 5 years from now? Think of how much energy, focus and time it is costing you to stay there. When you find yourself on the fence, get stop perspective and remember the big picture.

Tip #3 – Create Some No’s to Make Space for the Brilliant Yes

Have you ever been to an “all you can eat” restaurant? You get excited by all the choices, and so you start to pile all the food on your plate. What happens when you sit down to eat? You have to carefully pick your way through your meal to avoid it spilling all over the table.

Life is like that fabulous buffet table. Anything we want is possible, but we need to realize we only have so much energy and focus. We need to say “No” in order make space for the brilliant “Yes” to come in.

If you’re making a decision and you catch yourself rationalizing why you give it the green light, stop. Step away from the buffet table. If you have to talk yourself into a “Yes” chances are high that the decision you’re about to make isn’t in alignment with your highest purpose. We need to say a lot of “No’s” so we can gracefully and clearly feel our “Yes!” when the purposeful, soul-fulfilling choices come our way.

STEP INTO YOUR BRILLIANCE

Take 15 minutes to brainstorm a list of the different ways you know you’re sitting on the fence somehow. Be sure to scan around in all areas of your life – your career, money, relationship, health, social, spiritual. Read your list slowly and feel into how much of your life force and energy is being tied up in those various places of indecision. Now, pick one item from your list and make a clear decision – Yes or No – right away. If you decide “Yes”, write down the next actionable step you can take to start to breathe more life into that choice. If you decide “No,” cross it off your list with a big red marker and give yourself a pat on the back. Pick at least three more items off your list in the next 7 days.

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If you want to use this feature article in your ezine, blog or web site, you can! I just ask that you include this complete statement with it:

As the brilliant leader of your business, you know that as you reach for bigger goals and dreams, inevitably glitches, push-back and set-backs often appear. For example, you’re in the middle of a new product launch, you’ve got it all planned out how it’s “supposed to go” and you make the decision to forge ahead.

But then unexpected things start to happen. A critical team member becomes ill and needs to be replaced. Mercury goes retrograde and your computer and website start to do funny things. You feel your anxiety level start to rise and question whether these are “signs” you are headed in the wrong direction. It’s like a mighty wind has shown up out of nowhere, trying to push you back to where you started.

When the wind starts to blow, a brilliant entrepreneur finds her flow. It’s like you’ve been out there paddling on the ocean, you spot the wave and you jump up on the board to ride it to shore. And the ride isn’t necessarily smooth or effortless. As Jon Kabat-Zinn says, “You can’t stop the wave, but you can learn to surf.”

The ability to operate in the midst of chaos from a centered, connected place is critical to living in your brilliance. Here are a few tips on how you can do that:

Breathe into your Belly — When your emotions start to run high, stop and take a few deep, centering breaths. Making important choices when your body is flooded with adrenalin isn’t the best strategy for long-term success.

Take a Big Step Back — Gain perspective by stepping back from the immediate crisis and take a “big picture” view. What issues are truly at stake here right now? What lessons are there for you to learn?

Find Your Flow by Staying in the Present Moment — Be vigilant about staying in the present moment as you deal with the unexpected. When everything feels out of control, identify what IS within your control. Take inspired and consistent action on those things that need your attention right away.

Brilliant entrepreneurs are masterful at creativity and taking inspired action. We get so fired up in doing what we love we sometimes lose track of where we are going.

I know many well-intentioned entrepreneurs go flat out in offering their brilliance they unknowingly can develop tunnel vision. They aren’t crystal clear with their business or personal goals, or they fail to set up appropriate benchmarks for their progress and success along the way. Unfortunately, what starts as a joyful dream of a successful business can end up becoming an energy-draining expensive hobby. The result can be feeling you’re choking on your “to do” list, running on empty and struggling with a perpetual worry of “What’s next after this launch? Where is my cash flow going to come from?”

The first ship that landed on the moon was actually off course over 90% of the time. Yet it landed within inches of its desired destination. Necessary course corrections were made en route so it landed right on target. This is a great metaphor to hold as we captain the ship of our brilliant business forward in a quickly changing and increasingly competitive economy.

Here are 3 keys to help you make brilliant course corrections:

1.  Confirm Your Destination
Do you really know where you are going? Are the goals you have for your business truly yours, or are you trying to emulate someone else or their definition of success? Whether your goal is to earn a million dollars or to break into 6-figures, you are the one who needs to set and articulate a meaningful and authentic goal and vision for your business.

2.  Leave Judgment Out of the Equation
I believe it takes a courageous person to step onto the entrepreneurial path. Your business will only grow as big as you are willing to grow yourself. With this strong correlation between your business and yourself, it can be an easy mistake to judge yourself harshly when you hit the inevitable road bumps you’ll encounter in growing your business. Learn to see needed course correction as simply observations and valuable information, rather than as an excuse for negative self-talk.

3.  Go for the Subtle and Powerful Shift
Course corrections are often subtle. Think of when you’re driving at a fast speed on a highway. Correcting for a strong cross-wind by jerking the steering wheel is likely to create an accident instead of a smooth ride. Establish some basic measurements of your business success, such as monthly sales, number of products sold, the average sales/client or the size of your database.

Don’t focus solely on acting just on course corrections that might means massive improvements. Perhaps it is time to tweak your sales copy, update an autoresponder series or set aside time each week to make customer appreciation calls. Don’t forget to look for the “low hanging fruit” opportunities that are likely right there in front of you that could improve your results in subtle, yet powerful, ways.