What triggers and small actions make them confident enough to stay on mission, despite setbacks and deviation to plans? There are 4 main characteristics that helped me become braver professionally and that are predominant with the professionals I love working with the most:

1 – Brave leaders recognize that they have something unique to share and do it often

It might seem banal, but this is one of the biggest mindset issues to overcome for professionals, and any strategy applied before this is addressed will only be partly effective at best. I should know since it took me almost 2 years to nail my own niche as a business owner.

Like many others, I used to analyze my position on favorite offerings and compare myself to the best on each one of them. I always came out short. When I understood that the sweet spot between my experience, talents and ambition made me unique, it became so much easier to show vulnerability and share my messages with confidence on a frequent basis.

I meet professionals all the time who never reflect about their professional sweet spot. But the best leaders frequently revisit the topics forming their unique brilliance to nail their leader position further.

2 – Brave leaders are willing to do things that are unexpected or against the norm

Using the element of surprise seems to be another common denominator for leaders who are perceived as courageous. I recently observed this powerful effect in a situation where the Executive untraditionally assumed a masterminding mentor role during a management meeting. He awarded all participants exactly the same amount of time to present ideas and reflect upon their key priorities. The result was that everyone knew they would not be overridden by others claiming more time and that they all had the same opportunity to influence the decisions.

Another example is the leader demonstrating vulnerability when sharing a new insight in a group setting. Both actions build trust and resonance with peers and followers. What do we remember most from an introduction, a presentation or a reflection session: The person following the norm, or the peer breaking the pattern? Brave leaders break patterns all the time and stay top of mind.

3 – Brave leaders mobilize formal and informal mentors

When I ask people: “Who are your professional role models?” I often get very vague answers.  I notice that those who are actively looking for and shadowing their role models are often stretching themselves professionally more than others. The courageous ones are approaching their role models and building relationships, online as well as offline. Asking for help and mobilizing mentors takes courage as it demonstrates vulnerability. Therefore, many people refrain.

When I change perspective and ask the same people: “How would you react if someone wanted your feedback on a crazy idea or asked for help on a delicate matter?” most of them respond that they would love to help. There seems to be a substantial potential for raising the bar as a leader in mobilizing the mentoring environment.

4 – Brave leaders take imperfect action

After the mindset shift towards understanding and trusting their own unique brilliance, this is probably the most important visible behavior for leaders who want to make great results on a daily basis: Brave leaders do not need all the answers nor any guarantees for success before kicking off their journey.

On a personal note, I experienced something during my first year as a business owner that helps me stick to imperfect action on a frequent basis: I was planning to run my first webinar as part of a program launch in January 2011. The program was a game called “Boost Your Personal Brand By Linking In.” It enabled players to learn how to use LinkedIn effectively over a period of 4 weeks via gamification techniques such as leader boards, feedback and community sharing. I needed at least 8 players to make the program work.

One week before the program start date, I had only 2 people signed up for the launch webinar and none for the program itself. Only one person showed up for the webinar and I was devastated. I was minutes away from cancelling the launch itself. Despite my stomach pain, I decided to go ahead, not showing the list of attendees so I could keep up appearances and use the recording of the webinar to promote during the final 6 days. What happened? 8 people signed up for the program and we re-launched 3 more programs during 2011. Since then, using webinars is business as usual.

Taking imperfect action is a method of reducing risk when making progress. The ruling mindset is all about playing to win, not avoiding failure. Failure is substituted by learning, exploring and reflecting.

What have you been putting on hold lately because you do not have the perfect circumstances? Taking imperfect action on this is probably the perfect challenge to build your courage as an Advancing Leader.

Virtual Leader Conference 2014: “Empowering the Advancing Leader in You”

If you like this topic, you will love the Virtual Leader Conference coming up September 15-21, 2014 where more than 20 Advancing Leaders and experts are sharing their success strategies to empower other Advancing Leaders. You are welcome to join us on demand and free of charge via http://vlc14.katycaroan.com

The post How Brave Leaders Build Courage Through Daily Action appeared first on Katy Caroan.

“What do you mean, I never get any opportunities”, or “There is typically someone else who gets the opportunity”, or “I don’t know what to do to become visible to opportunities” are all perceptions I meet over and over again.

Then we explore some of the root causes for the perceptions. Maybe we are waiting for other people to step forward and ask us to take action, or maybe we believe there is a formal process or a code of unwritten rules that we don’t understand in order to become eligible for those making the decisions.

These patterns are common when analyzing both internal as well as external professional opportunities.

Sometimes, the professional opportunities are not even appearing to us because we don’t know how to recognize them. What is that you want more of in your professional life? And what do want less of? By looking more into the job content and degree of challenge, it becomes easier to broaden the “smorgasbord” of professional opportunities and get a glimpse of alternatives in totally different roles and industries.

The challenge and risk then mainly lie within 2 areas: How well you position yourself towards the broader selection of opportunities and how you manage expectations of yourself as well as expectations by others. In order to make progress, you need to become highly conscious about which type of opportunities you want to attract, you need a strategy to manage expectations and maybe learn some skills on how to position yourself where your stakeholders hang out.

Today’s social media tools enable us to listen to the market and communicate with colleagues, potential employers, customers and business partners in a new way, and this gives you a chance to tell your story, demonstrate your ambition and build your network effectively for long term relationships. And it gives you something else as well: An opportunity to start attracting professional opportunities which may not even exist yet!

So, are you ready to take on some risk and start identifying what you want more of and less of in your professional life?

The post How to embrace risk when the professional opportunity appears appeared first on Katy Caroan.

This seems like opposing principles until further investigation.

When people are facing a professional decision of  LEAP nature, it´s so easy to fall into procrastination mode and start using excuses for not taking action.

I should know, I did for years.

What strikes me after looking back on my own professional journey and now benefiting from helping others make professional leaps is that there are a few, key success factors characterizing those who start acting without knowing exactly what they want.

First of all, they are able to visualize what it feels like to be in professional role they are passionate about. Secondly, they are willing to learn new skills,  experiment outside of their comfort zone and reflect about their insights. And finally, they are assuming an open attitude towards opportunities emerging as part of the process.

When I decided to enter into my current professional adventure, I knew what I was passionate about. But I had no idea of the business partners nor the supplementary services and tools I would find out there to define my new professional platform. In fact, some of them did not even exist when I made my LEAP. I decided to learn, explore and experiment with services in demand and stayed open to new opportunities coming my way. I started to align with my professional intentions of becoming a business woman supporting my ideal clients no matter where they are located in the world.

Everyone has an opportunity to attract professional opportunities in line with their area of passion, but sometimes we need to remind each other to align more with our intentions. So, to which degree are you aligning with your professional intentions?

The post When you do not know what you want professionally appeared first on Katy Caroan.

Over the last 2 years, I’ve seen colleagues and clients get stuck in limiting thinking patterns when taking on LinkedIn.

This pattern is disabling some of them from expanding their number of contacts, asking for recommendations as well as moving into a more proactive, influential mode.

As a result, they are not in a position to leverage the great collaboration and business intelligence features within LinkedIn.

I’m currently facilitating a LifeVille group coaching game on the topic of effective use of LinkedIn to position the personal brand. 4 days into the game, I observe the majority of the players challenge themselves, share insights and inspire each other. As the coach, it’s my role to facilitate the game and encourage everyone to build skills, explore new territory and get the results they are playing for. A new community is emerging out of the team’s total effort.

Why they decided to join a game and not simply complete a long list of TO DOs when taking on LinkedIn? The gamification of real life challenges seems attractive to more and more people: We like getting inspired. We love getting insights. And we feel great when an opportunity is given to share our knowledge with others. So, instead of ticking off your TO DO list, think about what you can do to turn your current real life challenge into a game and involve your different environments to succeed.

The post Stop doing, start playing: Gamify your real life challenge! appeared first on Katy Caroan.

Are you among those waiting for other people to step forward and ask you to act, or are you positioning yourself towards opportunities on short as well as long term?

Today’s social media tools enable us to listen to the market and communicate with potential employers, customers and business partners in a new way:

You can tell your story, share your passion and demonstrate your professional reputation as perceived by others when leveraging social media effectively.

Social media, such as LinkedIn, is increasingly becoming your arena to attract your next professional opportunity. It takes some initial investment in time to shape up the profile and learn the specific DOs and DON’Ts with the various tools.

The investment pays off very quickly when other people start finding you and you may get introduced to opportunities you never knew existed.

So, by whom do you want to be found, and what is your next step to get started?

The post Are You an Opportunity Magnet? appeared first on Katy Caroan.

Many of us were energized by her approach – how come we didn’t come up with this ourselves? The number made it much easier to commit to a daily challenge, a REALISTIC daily challenge. So, I’ve implemented the same approach when I work with my clients, and my experience is that the big fear of stepping out of the comfort zone becomes more manageable.

What did the local bank HR Director do to stretch herself 10% that day? Well, in front of the Finnish President Tarja Halonen, she started to dance salsa to waka waka tunes. Within minutes the full audience joined in and the so did the president. I still wonder what Tove Erikslund did the following day to stretch herself beyond that.

The post What can you achieve when stretching yourself by 10 percent? appeared first on Katy Caroan.

What I notice when listening to their daily challenges is a desire to move out of a state of overwhelm, originating from being constantly available via smart phones, social media and having a global “smörgåsbord” of information via the web at your fingertips.

I have no problem in relating to this, as a collector of numerous tips, e-learning packages and “nice-to-have” articles put into a dedicated computer folder. And my book shelves are full of materials I’d love to digest…later.

Occasionally, I decide to put aside time to focus on my favourites, promising myself I will make a habit out of it. Looking back, this has not been a very successful strategy.

The only time it truly works, is when I have made an exercise upfront. It’s so simple: Grab a piece of paper and divide into 2 columns. In the first column, list 3-5 inspirational sources you would be devastated to see vanish the next day. In the second column, list 3-5 tasks you will stop doing to free up time. Make sure the list is visible to you at your desk, refrigerator or anywhere you need to be reminded when the temptation to derail hits you. Congratulations to your effective STOP DOING LIST!

Note: I stopped blogging for a while due to information and inspiration overload. Guess what’s on my STOP DOING LIST as a fixed item as of now…

The post Overwhelmed by inspirational TO DOs? Mindful decluttering time! appeared first on Katy Caroan.

The answers might be easy at hand…or require a longer period to emerge as a result of our dialogue.

One of my most effective questions is: “How do You want to be perceived by others?”.

This question brings us to the key values and beliefs we live by in our daily lives, consciously and unconsciously.  This provides tremendous insights on which alternatives and decisions You in fact have at hand upon ANY challenge in life.

To many of my clients, the pattern language , the “self-talk”, on what is possible and not has taken precedence unchallenged for a long time. One of my clients recently stated “…I didn’t realize that I had an option to decide differently”.

This week I’m kicking off my very first LifeVille coaching game coaching my players to leverage LinkedIn strategically. This has nothing to do with how to push which button in the tool. It has all to do with mobilizing their network, challenging their visibility comfort zone, building their professional reputation and making a bold decision on how they would like to be perceived, by potential employers, clients and business partners.

Which pattern language is limiting Your opportunities in life?

The post Time to ask Yourself a powerful question appeared first on Katy Caroan.

When asked about their strategy and plan for using the tools as part of their pursuit of a new career or getting new clients to their business, very few can provide a crisp reply.

My next question reveals the truth: Most of them are just keeping their profile above water, staying in touch with people they already know and there seems to be little effort put into a solid description of who they are, what they love doing and whom they would like to interact with in the future when looking for a new career or new clients.

In summary, there seems to be a huge potential for boosting their personal brand and positioning themselves as a unique candidate for a job…or why not as the obvious service provider to future clients.

Reflecting back on 2010, I was astonished to see that in fact 20 out of my first 25 coaching clients were the results of my LinkedIn efforts.  I had the best selling force available there is: My connections! They know me, they know their own connections, and this resulted in the numbers above over a period of 3 months. My effort? I built my LinkedIn network based on my own criteria and then carefully selected among my connections. I sent 1 mail to all of them, and told them what I was offering. That’s it! In fact, some of my connections returned themselves and hired me as their coach after listening to the experience of their connections.

The power of relationship building when leveraging social media such as LinkedIn is incredible, but in order to succeed You need a strategy and a plan. When listening to my clients, I know that the real challenge has little to do with understanding LinkedIn functionality. The real challenges lie within the area of visibility and limiting beliefs. I found that my clients’ challenges were so similar, that I decided to turn my experiences into a LifeVille group coaching game. In LifeVille, all participants are playing their game, supported by me as a coach as well as by their co-players. From playing other coaching games in the past myself, I know there will be excitement, resistance, insights…and FUN. All the typcial requirements of any great game in life.

What would it mean to You, if You could boost Your personal brand in 28 days?

The post Why Linking In matters for Boosting Your Personal Brand appeared first on Katy Caroan.

This one is different. I’m witnessing fabulous coaching of business owners who are willing to step up, but who need to go from information gathering into action in increasing leads, clients and sales. There is tremendous co-creation in the room, and one of the key ground rules is that nobody will make any attempt at selling anything to any other participant during the event.

In this climate, the brave ones are putting themselves in the hot seat for masterful coaching in front of 150 people.

“What do you want to achieve for your business this year”?

“What’s stopping you from achieving that?”

“What do you need to make this happen?”

All are examples of great coaching questions. But, the breakthroughs are coming when people are asked:

“Who do you want to become?”

“Which position are you claiming?”

The questions are relevant to anyone wanting to make significant transformation in their career of life in general. Thank you Bernadette Doyle for several memorable moments this weekend, one day, I hope to be able to inspire my clients the same way you do!

Coach Katy Caroan

The post "Name it, then claim it" appeared first on Katy Caroan.