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Marc DUFRAISSE - AutentiCoach

Finding your own personal way is possible, we accompany you on the path to your Authenticity.

Tuesday 17 May 2011

What type of leader are you? Do you put on a hat?

I was raised with the belief that leadership was synonimous of strength, pride, arrogance, authority, command. I have evolved to believe that it is not exactly that. It may in cases be the exact opposite.

Leadership is about being, about self awareness, humility, connection, sharing. It is linked with vision, direction, ambition, contribution to humanity, to the world.

We may act as leaders and not really be ones or act as ordinary people and be powerful leaders.

Leadership is about sparks in the eyes, about resonance, about being happy to be here, about being alive here and now and open to life, to the unknown.

Leadership is confidence for oneself and for the others. It's inspiration.

In corporate life and working environnements, leadership tends to be contaminated by limiting beliefs and habits. Beliefs that when you take on a position, you have to act in a certain way, do certain things, be like this and not like that.

It is not totally untrue. Some norms may be helpful. But the problem is that a majority of executives tend to get away from their personality, from their personal desires, objectives and beliefs.
They tend to become stereotyped managers. Stereotyped by their own idea of what they should be like. Stereotyped by the corporate culture, habits, unsaid rules and regulations.

Don’t expect too much creativity or out of the box thinking from that perspective!

Have the courage to take off your hat! Be yourself! Blow away barriers!
Even if your are an excellent actor, you playing a role will finally ring false.
Be in a position to be yourself! From there you may be more of a leader.

Focus on the responsabilities, on the objectives, not on the etiquette or the idea of the role. Be yourself in that context. Don’t take on any preformated attitude.

Of course what you have learned in your education and during your experience is useful. But let more space to spontaneity, to intuition, to aliveness. Give space for authenticity, for originality in the workplace. Allow clumsiness and mistake to be acceptable. Allow differences in attitudes to sneak in. Go for creativity and open the teams to out of the box thinking.

Go for the infinite magic of free human beings and liberated teams!

Tuesday 10 May 2011

Competing with whom? Surpass oneself or surpass others? Be the best we can be or be better than others?


Competition. As children we love to compete.
We want to be faster, more agile, more clever than the others ....
Competing is fun. It puts us in movement, motivates us, teaches us the values ​​of the effort, of learning and improving.
We also learn to deal with frustration, to accept the fact we cannot always win. It also demonstrates what diversity is all about, that there are some sports where you excel and others you are terrible at.

As children, there is a less exhilarating competition. The one with brothers.The struggle there is to be more noticed by the parents or family, is to have more presents, more hugs, better relationship, more attention, more love. This competition is relentless, it eats us, it imprisons us, overwhelms us, because we always compare and it’s without limits.

If we stay in an attitude of being in competition, we can become pathetic, unbearable, always wanting to be the best. Unhappy.
Luckily with time we generally learn to accept our limits, accept losing and learn humility. We learn to rise again after falling down, to let go when there are no more possibilities. We don't always try to demonstrate to others how great and lovable we are.

Unless we get stuck in the belief that life is nothing but competition with others.

Then the relation with others tends to limit itself to proving you're right, you're the most clever, trustworthy and reliable person. You become arrogant and very quickly can become unbearable.

We all learn differently from our life experiences. And the paradigms, the vision of the world that we are taught and that we will develop will make the difference in the beliefs we have. In our expectations towards ourselves and our relations with others.

In fact we are at the same time our best friend and our worst enemy and the only competition that is really valuable is the competition with ourselves. Surpassing ourselves. 

This drives self-awareness, self-management, self accomplishment and leads to personal growth.

Competition is then about getting the best out of who we are, without having to compare any more to others.