She’s been called the most inspiring woman in the world, Lolly Daskal delves into what’s holding us back as leaders and what it takes to change ourselves, when we can’t change the situation.
About the podcast with Lolly Daskal
Lolly Daskal is an author and speaker who has observed leaders rise to their positions on a specific set of values and traits. But Lolly recognized that after reaching a certain point people’s performance suffered. So she delved into understanding why and came up with a system to help top executives ensure they weren’t getting in the way of themselves.
She came up with seven important traits of leaders that others want to follow and in her blogs, book and speaking engagements she focuses on what successful people need to do in order to bridge the gap.
Dolly says that in leadership, as in everything we do, we all have our own strengths and limits and the better we can understand ourselves and our motivations, the more effective we can be. We need to remember that we can only change the things we pay attention to and that it doesn’t have to be drastic to be impactful, it just requires effort.
Lolly Daskal’s highlights for how we can overcome our own “leadership limits”
#1: Change the lens through which you view yourself: Look at who you are now not who you were in the past. “If you’re stuck in your own past, it’s important to update your view of yourself and the way you think and talk about yourself,” says Lolly. Consider the things you’ve accomplished and the positive feedback you’ve gotten to connect with your potential in the here and now.
#2: Know what you need to change. Dolly says weigh your strengths and weaknesses as objectively as possible and prioritize the areas where you most want to improve.
#3: Be willing to do the work. Breaking through limitations requires effort, says Lolly so spend time addressing and understanding your belief systems and rethinking your assumptions.
#4: Identify and remove any obstacles standing in your way. We all put obstacles in our path and we don’t always realize which ones are there or that we’ve even put anything there to start with. Try to learn what they are and remove them.
#5: Leverage your limits: Lolly says that most people would tell you to concentrate on your strengths if you want to reach your potential. But she has a different view. In her book, The Leadership Gap, she talks about how to leverage our weaknesses as well as our strengths, “because what we don’t own ends up owning us,” she says.
#6: Lead from within: As a leader you have control over who you want to be and how you want to lead. Lolly challenges us to answer the question: Will you lead by your limits or your potential?
