What are Flawed Leader Values?

At Flawed Leader, our mission is to create the conditions where we can empower leaders and organizations to lead imperfectly through the lens of their growth and the growth of those they lead to transform their path forward.

We have seven core values that provide the means and intention to cultivate these conditions for empowered leaders.

Curiosity

Growth

Presence

Humanity

Community

Advocacy

Resilience

Flawed Leader Value #1 - Curiosity

How curious are you?

You may ask yourself, 'why would an organization that values growth so much place the value of curiosity first?'

The answer is simple: growth, intentional growth, cannot happen before we recognize its need! To do that we need to be curious!

Curiosity opens the door of possibilities for our growth and our team's growth. The adage ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’ provides the purpose to sit in Curiosity. You must step back to be able to explore to even be able to understand what may be required of your growth and your team’s growth.

Curiosity allows us to sense into how we are able to most intentionally support. As leaders much of our work is sensing into what our gut is telling us. Curiosity is the ear of this sensing and positions us to be open to hear and understand that gut instinct.

Curiosity allows us to step into a place of radical self honesty to understand how we are contributing to the environment around us. Leaders that are working to be true partners have a responsibility to understand their effect on the world around them.

Curiosity opens us up to more potential paths in our process. Letting go of the ego to sit in a place where we can explore all the possibilities can help serve our leadership.

Curiosity allows us to recognize that it is normal to not have the answers; what's important it is to be asking the questions and seeking the answers. Curiosity lives in the negative space of quiet and presence.

The best leaders are not experts, but always a work in progress! Through this drive to stay curious, we are able to actualize our best self in that moment, model the value of growth to our team, and support by example.

Flawed Leader Value #2 - Growth

Growth includes self-awareness about where you and your team are, owning opportunities, and recognizing how far you’ve come while forging the path ahead.

Build in time for your Growth. The benefits of intention with Growth will actualize over time. It can be too easy to put Growth to the back burner without dedicating time to it. Schedule this time in and make it a non negotiable. You have the ultimate responsibility to model growth as a priority.

Build in time to support your team’s Growth. Co-create a Growth path with your team and commit to how you’ll support them in the process. Keep these commitments as a priority and approach this work with consistency.

Have clear values to support your Growth path. Values will serve as an anchor to guide what type of Growth will have the most impact. Make sure your team understands the values, that they’re visible, and they are clear on how to utilize them in their work.

Be realistic about Growth. You do not need to have a grand plan for Growth; you can use even small moments to create progress forward. A moment here and there through the lens of support can help create the stepping stones of progress.

Allow Growth to be imperfect. Not everything you take on will work out and that is okay. Growth is a pursuit not a destination. Growth as driver will help steer the car to the ultimate destination.

Flawed Leader Value #3 - Presence

As leaders, how we show up matters. Intention to Presence helps us show up in all the ways our people need.

Make yourself available and visible. Your people need to see that you’re reachable. There will always be a power dynamic between leaders and those they lead, so the most basic thing you can do as a leader is just ‘be there’ in an obvious way. This lays the foundation of Presence.

Sense into what is not being said. You cannot expect people to come to you or even to say what they really want to say. You must read and sense what is under the surface and intentionally invite it to the surface.

Engage consistently. Your people need to know they can rely on you, which will require consistency in your approach. The more you follow through on your intention to support and they can see you really showing up, the more they’ll continue to come to you and trust you.

Create a space of held safety. The most important element of Presence. It won’t matter how visible you are, how well you’re sensing, or how consistent you are if you’re not creating a fundamentally safe space. This will help your team stretch their wings in growth while ‘knowing’ that support is there to guide them.

Flawed Leader Value #4 - Humanity

The fundamental essence of our Humanity is that we’re all flawed, and that it is our flaws that provide the common thread between us all.

Flawed is the reality of how we exist and live and serves as a call to action to lead even with those flaws. In our business lives we are often looking for an element of ‘perfection’ before we feel ready to act. Give yourself permission to live in that imperfect place of your Humanity and cultivate growth wherever you are.

It's easier to create collective growth and not just meaningful, but sustainable growth forward when we honor our Humanity. As leaders, recognizing our own imperfections and still pursuing growth allows us to be both an example to the teams we lead and allows us to lead better as a work in progress.

Our flaws are what connect us in our Humanity. When we’re all in it together.

Flawed Leader Value #5 - Community

Relationships are at the center of our ability to lead well.

Creating Community allows us as leaders to create the environment where relationships are at the core of our work. This pursuit of community should be an authentic reflection of the members of the team and provide for a range of participation. Community that is cultivated organically and authentically will create a space for your team to flourish.

Our responsibility as Leaders reaches beyond just the relationship we have with those that we lead and extends to support the relationships between those we lead. You are tasked to lead in all directions, and to steer the relational web within your group.

Community creates a fellowship when people can show up in a way that works for them around a shared set of values or purpose. Not everyone will want to show up in the same way and that is okay. Community that honors how all wish to engage will persist over time.

Community equips us to face the challenges of our day to day with an expanded net of resilience and support. It creates a built in network of support to lean on others when challenges come up for guidance and a known sense of having their back.

When we cultivate Community, we create a group greater than the sum of its parts, and each person benefits in their own way. A team that has community will be equipped to take on more and stronger outcomes in a way that will also contain more ease.

Community at the core allows us to create the conditions for us to Grow. Together.

Flawed Leader Value #6 - Advocacy

Advocacy is leadership in action. Being a leader is not a state of being, but rather is a state of motion. A Leader tends to themselves, their people, their work, and the world around them through acts of service. Advocacy is an act of service that amplifies and enhances the collective. We create a space where needs and desires are allowed to be known and where it is equally known that those needs and desires will be served and cultivated.

Care. Leading is about more than the 'job at hand'. Leaders don't just have a job, true leaders fulfill an imperative to care, and to truly give a damn. Leaders that care position themselves to be able to advocate and amplify those and the work around them.

Take care of yourself. Leaders must tend to themselves first. A Leader must first advocate for their own balance and grounding to be in a position to advocate for others. You cannot pour from an empty container.

Advocate for those you lead. When Leaders advocate for their people, they fulfill the ultimate act of support. They create the space where their people fundamentally know that their Leader is in their corner and in it with them. Advocacy for our teams includes development and ensures resources are available to meet the needs of growth and strong outcomes.

Elevate the organizations that you lead. Advocacy across our teams creates the conditions for everyone to be better equipped, more visible, and will signal broadly that teams are seen and their needs and the works they do are known. We're all in it together.

Take the time to give recognition. Advocacy provides part of the equation of successful outcomes. It becomes the 1 in a 1-2 punch of success. Success is all well and good, but true advocacy follows through to the end to recognize and honor the work. Advocacy creates the means for our people to step into opportunity. They still have to do the hard work. Recognizing this hard work and the outcomes it creates validates the work of advocacy through to the end.

Connect your Advocacy out. It can be easy for leaders within a team or leaders of an org to get siloed in advocacy for their specific focus. When you thread your advocacy across multiple functions and connect it out, and make it visible, you strengthen the whole.

Flawed Leader Values # 7 - Resilience

Resilience stands as a cornerstone of growth. Any growth process will inevitably have challenges and failures, and there will always be many paths and the risk of the path not taken. The ability to navigate and rebound can define how well a Leader fulfills their purpose.

Own results. The good, bad, and the ugly are all on your shoulders as a leader and that is okay. All types of results are par for the course. With a spirit of Resilience the results are what they are and you can tap into the learnings and lessons as a means of growth to continue to evolve forward.

Make the hard choices. Even with shaky hands you have a responsibility as a leader to act even when it feels impossible to do so. The hard choices could include ending a failing prospect, letting go of a beloved team member, or even recognizing you're not equipped at that moment in the way you need to be. When honoring Resilience you are equipped to be radically self-honest.

Persevere. Even when it feels like you can't take one more step, you must put one foot in front of the other and carry on. Tapping into the spirit of Resilience will provide the reassurance that this too shall pass. Growth is never without its challenges, and true growth is created when we continue on.

Optimism at core. Believe in the potential at all times. This may also include recognizing that there is a better way, a way that may require a harder path to achieve. Resilience provides the motivation to pursue the best in what we do because we become equipped with a sense of knowing that we are capable.

As a Flawed Leader, you recognize that flaws are at the core of your ability to lead well. There is power in this and Resilience provides the means to continue to evolve in your pursuit to support your team and to Grow. Together.

Values in action

Values are not meant to be aspirational. In the spirit of Flawed Leader, the best way to actualize values is to utilize them as best as you’re able to. You can start now, in your imperfect form, and continue to evolve as a work in progress. Growth is never about perfection, but it does call you into a state of perpetual action.