Standing Out, While Blending In: Leading with Courage & Compassion

By Alex Abramian

Tired of status quo? Wishing you could find your own version of thought leadership and live with a growth mindset? 

Standing Out While Blending In will enable you to reach the next level of leadership potential you have within you. Author Alex Abramian shares stories from Fortune 500 leaders like Elon Mus

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: May 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9798885041522

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Standing Out, While Blending In

Standing Out,

While Blending In

Leading with

Courage & Compassion

Alex Abramian, PhD

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2022 Alex Abramian, PhD

All rights reserved.

Standing Out, While Blending In

Leading with Courage & Compassion

ISBN

979-8-88504-501-8 Paperback

979-8-88504-603-9 Kindle Ebook

979-8-88504-152-2 Ebook

Contents

Introduction

Part 1. The Art of Self-Discovery

Chapter 1 Understanding Mindset

Chapter 2 Why Now?

Part 2. Leadership Fundamentals

Chapter 3 Purpose

Chapter 4 Trust

Chapter 5 Confidence

Chapter 6 Resilience

Chapter 7 Risk

Part 3. Writing Your Story

Chapter 8 The Fundamentals in Action

Chapter 9 The Leadership Journey

Acknowledgments

Appendix

To my unconditionally loving support system

Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.

Maya Angelou

Introduction

Ever think of President Abraham Lincoln as a boomerang? I have. Why? you may ask. He would just keep coming back. He never let many failures and losses stop him.

There are facts most of us knew about Lincoln, like how he helped abolish slavery with the Emancipation Proclamation and wrote the Gettysburg Address. But did you know he lost eight elections? This was news to me. These many hidden facts about Lincoln display his resilience and show how passionate and dedicated he was toward becoming our sixteenth President of the United States.

Based on the major accomplishments he made during his presidency, Lincoln was one of the earliest thought leaders. He implemented risky solutions, inspiring the country into a bigger and better future, and continues to inspire many Americans to this day.

To better understand Lincoln’s thought leadership, it’s important to know where the idea of thought leadership came from. Thought leadership was coined by Joel Kurtzman in 1994. Even though it may feel like a relatively new concept, it’s been in existence for almost thirty years.

A thought leader is recognized by peers, customers, and industry experts as someone who deeply understands the business they are in, the needs of their customers, and the broader marketplace in which they operate. They have distinctively original ideas, unique points of view, and new insights.

Joel Kurtzman

In addition to Abraham Lincoln, a few other great thought leaders include Tony Robbins, Seth Godin, Simon Sinek, Adam Grant, Steve Jobs, Sir Richard Branson, and Brené Brown. These thought leaders inspire others through their creativity, expertise, unique perspectives, and innovative solutions.

Let’s take best-selling author and podcast king Seth Godin as an example. Seth is known as a great thought leader because he takes action toward what he’s passionate about by providing unique perspectives while motivating and influencing his employees and customers along the way. With over thirty years of experience effectively building, leading, and marketing businesses, Seth has encouraged and motivated people all over the world with his talents.

In The Thought Leader Revolution Podcast with Nicky Billou, Seth mentioned,

The idea of being clear around what you believe in and what you care about is a decision you get to make every morning while eating your Froot Loops. If you wanted to, you could start right now.

How about Sir Richard Branson? Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, is a successful entrepreneur and made a bold choice early in his life. At the age of fifteen, he dropped out of school and chose to build over a hundred businesses, with the most successful being Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Records. Branson set up a vision for himself—a vision that inspired his daring ideas to develop and sell an enjoyable product or exciting experience. With this vision, he chose to surround himself with other bold, innovative, and brilliant people who weren’t afraid of sharing their thoughts, ideas, or opinions.

As I reflected on Seth Godin and Sir Richard Branson’s example of leadership, I started wondering what the mindset formula was for other great leaders like Jeff Bezos, Oprah Winfrey, and Elon Musk. My curiosity led me to explore and identify what their purpose and passion was, what drove them toward changing the world.

What do I think about leadership?

I believe leadership starts with our mindset. A leader isn’t a person who just tells the team what to do and how to do it. That’s a manager. A leader is someone who is listening more than telling, one who is paying attention to the people in the room instead of treating them like worker bees. If you are constantly telling people what to do, they’ll never think outside the box for themselves. This only accumulates more stress on yourself to consistently create innovative solutions to projects and challenges that arise, rather than focusing on empowering others.

In order to understand these leaders’ vision and better understand their choices and actions, I had to examine where we are today in terms of organizational leadership and the practices therein.

Looking at the structure of organizations, there’s a hierarchical way of thinking that’s been passed down to us from one generation to another. In a typical work environment, we see early career professionals take orders from those in higher ranks. Oftentimes, these employees don’t speak up to challenge or present new ideas to their boss. They just absorb information and do as they are told. The typical employee is obedient to leaders in the organization and plays a submissive role in order to avoid inviting unwanted negative attention or causing difficulty with new ideas and perspectives.

We are in a new era where the flow of ideas can come from all places, all levels, and all individuals. Breaking the mold from a militant environment into an entrepreneurial culture has been challenging for most.

Based on my experiences and conversations with colleagues from Fortune 500 companies, I believe we are starting to see the change.

While working on a project at a Fortune 50 media company I worked for, my boss transferred into a new role, and I had to take ownership of the global performance management cycle for the division I supported. I was honored, excited, worried, and anxious all at once. My boss, the department head, and the team trusted me. It was a challenging project in multiple ways because we decided to implement a new system and philosophy that hadn’t been experienced before. The reach and scale of the initiative was beyond what I believed I was capable of doing as an individual contributor at the time.

This project was transformative for my personal growth as a leader because it challenged my ability to implement a new philosophy for performance management across the organization. We had a certain way of doing performance management, but the leadership team decided to invest in a different direction our team was told to bring to life.

During that period, I didn’t have the time to process or understand the range of emotions I was experiencing. I just jumped into this project with the attitude of it being successful regardless of the hurdles I would face along the way. I didn’t doubt myself. I trusted my gut and my instincts. I built connections and relationships with those who could support me when the project needed adjusting and when leaders needed to be nudged to encourage their employees to act. Senior leaders of businesses contacted me about certain issues their team was experiencing and how to adapt the system in real-time to get it to work for them the way they needed. I partnered with the most supportive human resources business partners to make this as seamless as possible. I was trusted.

During that time, my direct supervisor was no longer on my team. I knew he was willing to support me at any moment, but I wanted to work through this on my own and only ask for help when it was truly needed. I was provided more autonomy than I had ever experienced. Regardless of these circumstances, I was able to help launch this initiative.

At the time, I was new to the company, only having six months with the team. The opportunity to launch, communicate, and train others on our new performance management system and philosophy was eye-opening. This system and process supported over five thousand employees. That’s five thousand people’s performance, feedback, and growth opportunities tied to this system. I was looking at it from a high level of how much this could influence or change the how the company gave employees feedback.

This experience defined my leadership voice and helped me understand my potential, mindset, and capabilities. Looking back on numerous similar experiences I’ve had similar to this made me realize I want others to know what they are capable of.

In 2015, when I was in a new role within the Human Resources team at a large entertainment company, I was responsible for specific tasks and duties that were either interesting or somewhat mundane at times. When it came to a particular time-consuming and mundane task impacting all employees at the company, I chose to find a more efficient process. This way I could spend less time on the mundane tasks and more time on the ones I was passionate about.

After putting together a proposal and recommendation for my boss on making a certain mundane and outdated process more efficient and effective, she supported my idea and told me to move forward. As afraid as I was at the time, being early in my career, I chose to speak up about the inefficiencies and how they could be improved, and I took initiative. I didn’t wait for my boss to tell me what to do and how to do it. I told her what wasn’t working, and she supported me and gave me creative freedom to implement these changes.

The support I received to make a positive change within an organization along with the opportunity to take risks helped me build my confidence in myself and my abilities. This led to innovation in organizations while allowing employees to learn through successes and failures.

We are all capable of becoming thought leaders within any company and business setting.

This same denial of self and taking risks is often seen within those individuals who grew up in a traditional household, as I did. I remember my parents telling me in high school and college to find a career with stability, structure, and a consistent source of income in order to feel safe, like a doctor or lawyer.

This resulted in many of us studying majors we may not have been passionate about and working for companies that didn’t give us meaning or joy. Now, with social media exposing us to stories of tremendous leaders who disrupted industries with their innovative ideas, we are more willing and excited to make our own choices and become great leaders in fields that ignite our creativity and connection to our world.

Mindset Influences Engagement

As leaders within organizations are starting to become more open to ideas and innovation from all levels, there’s also another challenge we need to be more aware of. The statistics around employee well-being and burnout are eye-opening.

The World Health Organization (WHO)