Crafting Your Leadership Identity from the Inside Out

Many leaders come to coaching with the assumption that to be more effective, they need to focus on acquiring new skills or knowledge. Or they've bought into the idea that leaders who command strong followership and influence must have some mysterious, perhaps even unattainable, set of personality traits.

However, the answer lies not so much in looking outwards but rather in looking inwards first. Figuring out what powers your actions, what you believe in and what you're striving for significantly improves your chances of bringing teams along with you and helps you carve out a clear leadership identity.

A strong leadership identity acts as a guiding compass. It helps leaders navigate complex decisions and maintain strategic direction, particularly in high-pressure situations.

When you have this clarity, it grounds you, supporting your ability to lead through complexity, manage competing demands consistently, and respond in line with your values and purpose.

Developing Leadership Identity

Leadership identity is developed over time and shaped by your unique experiences. It is built on self-awareness and understanding your strengths, weaknesses, values, and beliefs. It's how well your self-perception aligns with how others experience you. When your internal narrative is clearly defined, and your actions consistently reflect that understanding, you lead with greater clarity and intention.

Identity is not static; it evolves. If it becomes too rigid, it can limit growth and adaptability. Leadership identity extends beyond work alone; events in your personal life can have a profound impact on how you lead. Often, major life events such as personal loss, significant career setbacks, starting a family or unexpected crises can trigger a reshaping of one's identity.

These sorts of experiences can lead you to accept your vulnerability, which, in turn, can dial up empathy. This can lead to a shift in leadership style from a primarily agentic approach, centred on taking charge, to a more communal one, where caring for others becomes more prominent. The point is that leadership identity evolves with experience.

The Barriers to Establishing a Leadership Identity

It is common for leaders to face conflicting expectations, such as demonstrating strength while also showing empathy and being both self-assured and humble. Contradictory feedback can lead to the erosion of your leadership identity, or it can diminish when you believe your style doesn't align with the prevailing leadership style of the organisational culture.

For example, research shows that people negatively judge female leaders when they demonstrate stereotypical leadership behaviours, which are seen to be incongruent with being a woman. The most obvious one is assertiveness. Too often, this results in being seen as too "bossy", a word reserved for describing women, and yet too little results in being seen as not strong enough.

This is the classic 'double bind dilemma' for women, and it can make it harder to build an authentic leadership identity. Similarly, men may feel that they need to meet social expectations of leadership and masculinity as being strong and commanding, which can conflict with their desire to be vulnerable and emotionally open.

Building Leadership Identity with Intention

Developing a leadership identity is not about constructing a brand or a persona. It's about uncovering and strengthening the internal story that shapes how you lead and aligning that story with how others experience you. It's about leading from a place of intention.

These are the five strategies that we use with leaders to help them understand and strengthen their leadership identity.

1. What do you stand for?

Identify leadership situations in which your approach felt both authentic and effective. Examine these moments carefully and think about what values you were acting on and what beliefs guided your decisions. These are the foundations of your leadership identity.

2. Actively Seek Feedback

People rarely understand how others perceive them, but self-awareness allows you to understand your core values and consider how you intentionally weave them into your leadership approach. For example, a leader who values inclusivity might discover, through feedback, that while team members she sees as high performers do feel highly included, others feel overlooked mainly because they think very differently. Seeking 360-degree insights can help close this gap, providing a more comprehensive picture and enabling you to align your intentions with your actual impact better.

3. Test and Learn

According to Ibarra, you won't discover your leadership identity through thinking but through action. In the workplace, leadership identity forms through interactions with others. Much like how, when younger, we internalise adult reactions to our behaviour and gradually shape our sense of self. The key is to experiment with different leadership styles, not to mimic them, but to see what aligns with your values and what feels authentic, as that's what will have the most significant and lasting impact.

4. Anchor to Purpose

Identity gains strength through connection to a clarity of purpose. Ask yourself: What kind of impact do you want to create? Your vision can serve as your guide. Remember, this is not necessarily about an unselfish or 'good' purpose, but it must be meaningful to you. Your intent could include anything from respecting others' deadlines to ensuring everyone on the team feels included to sponsoring others' progression.

5. Review and Adapt

Regularly examine changes in your leadership identity. Consider what you may have outgrown. Which aspects of your leadership hold greater importance in your current context? As your leadership evolves, your identity will also grow.

Leaders seeking to make an impact and create influence require a means to stay grounded amid conflicting expectations.

Understanding your leadership identity acts as your guide.

It enables you to remain focused and intentional in your leadership and decision-making. Using this as a guiding compass helps you be more consistent in your behaviours and approach.

Consistency helps others interpret and understand your way of leading, building trust and followership because they know what to expect, and because they believe in the same end goal.