The Welsh Wire: Rob Elliott of Pondera Leadership Consulting

Do you know who you really are? You better if you want to be an effective business leader.

Self-awareness is crucial to leadership, says Rob Elliott, a partner in Pondera Leadership Consulting. He talked recently with Sheri Welsh for The Welsh Wire podcast, sponsored by the Family Business Alliance.

“We believe as a leader, to successfully lead other people, you need to first of all be aware of your strengths, of your gifts, of the things that you do exceptionally well,” Elliott says. “And ideally, you want to set yourself up for success in that you spend most of your time focusing on the things that you do exceptionally well.”

That’s not to say that you should ignore your shortcomings. “People need to be aware of their limitations, the things about me that get in the way, that create noise, create interference, create problems in my work. We have to become aware of our blind spots, we have to be open to learning about aspects of our personality that really create problems for us with other people that we weren’t aware of,” he says.

Self-awareness contributes to authenticity, which is another important component of successful performance. “We find in our work that nine times out of ten, when clients ask us to try to help them with someone who’s not performing well, almost always it’s because the person isn’t in the right job, there’s no alignment between who they are and what they do,” says Elliott. “And in discovering your authentic leadership, we take our clients through a process to help them start to really look deeply at who they really are. And so people get to show up at work and just be themselves. They just express their God-given talents. They’re not always working outside of themselves.”

Listen to Sheri’s entire interview with Rob Elliott.

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