Unleashing Your Inner Leader. Bevenour Vickie

design: Wiley

      Copyright © 2015 by Vickie Bevenour. All rights reserved.

      Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

      Published simultaneously in Canada.

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       Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available

      ISBN 978-1-118-85504-1 (Hardcover)

      ISBN 978-1-119-04711-7 (ePDF)

      ISBN 978-1-119-04703-2 (ePub)

      To my clients, the source of inspiration and the real business heroes of this book.

      To my husband, my partner, my friend, who believes in my dreams and helped me see who I am. And, who for years nagged me to write this book!

      To my parents, who always told me that I could be anything that I wanted to be and I could do anything that I wanted to do.

      My greatest pleasure is being a partner and catalyst in the success of my clients.

– Coach Vickie

      Preface

      To encourage you to think about your leadership behaviors and how those behaviors are affecting (negatively or positively) your performance, your authenticity, and your brand legacy is why I wrote this book. Too many leaders are so busy pursuing results that they do not even notice the wake of dead bodies in their path…until it is way too late. Driving results is one aspect of leadership, and an important one, yet if you ignore the people side of driving results, your Inner Leader will never be able to emerge and thrive.

      Each one of us has an Inner Leader that drives our performance, authenticity, and behaviors. My hope is that this book will help you open up the space to let the real leader in you show up. Once you become aware that your Inner Leader is yearning to escape, then you will be encouraged to take action.

      Simply reading this book (thinking) without doing the exercises and trying on new behaviors (without action) makes your read only a cerebral experience. To maximize the results of your read; I encourage you to read the book, enjoy the case study stories, and commit to do the exercises, in whatever order or manner works for you.

      The major concept in this book is that anyone can be a leader. Whatever the situation and with the proper tools, a leader can learn to recognize an opportunity and feel the confidence to let his or her authentic voice be heard. These lessons are useful for a variety of life's circumstances. The following people are all leaders: the most junior project manager who leads the company's global United Way campaign, the senior executive who coaches his son's Little League team, and the software developer who steps up in a program meeting with a suggestion that provides the needed focus to move forward. They are leaders because they have the confidence to let their voice be heard and are comfortable influencing others to convert an idea from an abstract to an action.

      Unleashing your Inner Leader could mean anything. Analyzing everything that I have coached leaders on for the past 15 years was an interesting process. In all my joyful experiences with more than 4,000 coaching clients in 17 countries, there are some well-known concepts and techniques for leadership success that keep cropping up. My hardest task was organizing them into a meaningful book outline. This is because the coaching process is very dynamic. Time and time again, I would begin an engagement with a new client who would claim to want to be a better leader through improving his communication, and I would end up coaching him on personal branding. Or I would start with a stressed-out executive who got great results but whose family never saw her, and we ended up working on delegation. The book outline that finally emerged parallels the consistent themes that I have found to give the best return on investment (ROI) for my clients.

      I wanted to reach a broader audience so that more leaders like you could find your authentic selves and begin to build your Leadership Legacies. In other words, I want to maximize a global group of leaders' potential. If this book gives readers at least one aha moment, or if they deploy one new behavior that changes the way that they lead, or they achieve a success that they never thought possible, then my mission will be realized.

      About Me

      One of my strengths is that I am a maximizer. This means that both in my corporate career in a high-impact industry and as an entrepreneurial executive coach, I like to take the good projects and make them great.

      This discovery was a huge aha moment for me because it allowed me to target the projects that I wanted to work on – especially in my coaching practice. I learned that I only wanted to work with already successful people who want to get to the next level. Imagine how gratifying it is for me when I can honestly and authentically say to the person with whom I am working: You are my ideal client; you are smart and successful, and you want to be even more successful. Although it took me some time to figure this out, my return on investment (ROI) was huge. I now have no doubt about what I love to do and what I am good at. My Inner Leader is smiling.

      My only measure of success is the success of my clients.

      I am often asked who my business heroes are. My answer without hesitation is…my clients. Each of them was already successful, and because of some external or internal force, each needed to make a change. Together we worked tirelessly to bring that change to the forefront and make it happen. Changing human behavior is one of the most difficult tasks to accomplish. The personal changes that my clients have successfully made were hard to accomplish and yet they persevered. Their success has been unlimited and they are happy. This is why my only measure of success is the success of my clients because I know the hard work and dedication involved to get to their next step. Because of that hard work and dedication, they will forever be my business heroes.

      About the Book

      Are you excited to see what comes next? Are you ready to take on the challenges that