In some workplaces, “leadership development” is all about equipping people to influence others. That’s a virtuous goal, but it often misses a crucial reality: to be genuinely effective in leading others, you must first master the challenge of leading yourself.

Heather Younger understands that reality. She’s a celebrated workplace culture and employee engagement expert who’s written several bestselling books helping people navigate the roads to effectiveness in both their professional and personal lives. Her latest offering is The Art of Self-Leadership: Discover the Power Within You and Learn to Lead Yourself.

Heather embraces the view that leadership is a personal quality, not a job description.

If self-leadership involves growing inwardly to shine outwardly, how can a leader-in-embryo deal with occasional bouts of imposter syndrome?

“The first thing to focus on is measuring your own successes and recognizing the work you put in to get to where you are today,” Heather says. “At the center of imposter syndrome is a propensity to compare someone else’s journey to our own. The most practical way to keep our eyes on what we have accomplished is to keep a daily journal of the things we are most proud of. When we do this, we shift our mindset and then our behaviors to keep moving us forward. One added layer here is that preparation makes us perform at our best and the positive results reinforce that we are as good as others expect of us.”

* If you maintain an honest record of what you’re doing and the contributions you’re making, you’re unlikely to experience imposter syndrome.

* A “fixed” mindset can hamper your attempts to prepare for future leadership opportunities. By adopting a “growth” mindset, you can open doors of opportunity you never imagined.

* Gaining clarity on your personal values is critical to your self-leadership journey.

* What can you do to build a network of people who can provide unvarnished feedback and supportive guidance in your self-development journey?

* How can you improve in your “active listening” skills, and what specific benefits would you expect to derive from that improvement?

* How can you “manage up” if your own leaders provide ambiguous, less-than-helpful direction?

“We are living an earned life when the choices, risks, and effort we make in each moment align with an overarching purpose in our lives, regardless of the eventual outcome.”

That’s Marshall Goldsmith’s definition of an “earned” life. Of course that pesky final phrase—“regardless of the eventual outcome”—is a stumbling block for many people. But Marshall offers simple approaches that accommodate both people’s persistent need for achievement and the inescapable realities of everyday life.

Marshall is widely regarded as one of the world’s top leadership coaches. He’s author of multiple bestselling books, and for more than four decades has helped top CEOs and executives overcome limiting beliefs and behaviors. His work has been profiled by major media outlets around the globe.

* Even when things are going well, inertia can sneak up on you and prevent your living the life of fulfillment that’s available to you.

* Discover and implement your “one-trick genius” and your performance will soar.

* “Feedforward” is a powerful practice that helps clarify what you can do to improve every day.

* How can clarity on an overarching sense of purpose help you enjoy the life you really want?

* How can you be sure that your present activities are not jeopardizing the future to which you aspire?

* Based on Marshall’s advice, what questions should you be asking yourself about your relationships with people who are important to your success?

In a crowded and noisy world, it’s sometimes hard to get your ideas heard. You want to stand out and make meaningful contributions, but you also want to avoid coming across as a self-promoter.

Dorie Clark can help. As the New York Times has reported, Dorie is “an expert at self-reinvention and helping others make changes in their lives.”

Dorie is widely regarded as one of the top business thinkers in the world. She teaches executive education at Columbia Business School. She’s the author of several bestselling books, and she consults and speaks for clients like Google, Microsoft, and the World Bank. She always offers wise and actionable advice for people navigating the turbulent waters of jobs and careers.

* A key to successfully managing both your career and personal life is learning to say no to things that have short-term allure but limited long-term value.

* With some simple strategic planning, you can escape the “busyness” trap and make more productive use of your time and energy.

* A “personal brand inventory” can help clarify the desired trajectory of your career.

* What are some of the “nice-to-have” things you can say no to in order to make room in your life for the “must-have” things that are truly important?

* How can you re-position yourself in the marketplace so people can more clearly see the value you offer?

* How can you expand your learning opportunities in your current job to help prepare you for greater opportunities in the future?

Early in his career, Doug Conant was unexpectedly fired from his job. He felt blindsided and was devastated. It didn’t make any sense to him. He’d been working hard, putting in extra hours, doing everything he thought he was supposed to. Then, bang! A young family, a mortgage, and no job.

With hindsight, Doug says it was one of the best things that ever happened to him.

A gritty outplacement counselor helped him realize that he hadn’t done anything wrong, he simply hadn’t been doing enough right. He had siloed his “work” self and his “real” self and the two were at odds. When Doug came to that realization and brought his true personality to the workplace, his career took off like a rocket.

If there were a Hall of Fame for business executives, Doug Conant would be a member. He served as president of Nabisco Foods, President and CEO of Campbell Soup Company, and then chairman of Avon Products. Doug is the only former Fortune 500 CEO who is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellng author … who has been a Top 50 Leadership Innovator … a Top 100 Leadership Speaker … and twice named one of the 100 Most Influential Authors in the World. Doug’s most recent book is titled The Blueprint: 6 Practical Steps to Lift Your Leadership to New Heights.

* There’s a danger in regarding your “work life” and “real life” as two separate identities. You can’t realize the full expression of your leadership if you’re bringing only part of yourself to it.

* The path to self-development is in finding a way to build a bridge between your résumé (your skills) and your eulogy (your legacy)—who you want to become and how you want to be remembered.

* Effective leaders make decisions with logic and mental toughness while always operating “with heart”—considering the impact on people.

* What can you do to achieve a higher level of self-awareness and self-knowledge?

* Even if you don’t write 30,000 thank-you notes, how can you acknowledge and celebrate the good performance of others?

* How can you make better decisions by realizing that your sphere of influence extends across three times zones—the Past, the Present, and the Future?

Have you ever been around leaders who walk into a room and you can almost see lightbulbs going off over people’s heads while the ideas flow and problems get solved? Liz Wiseman refers to these leaders as multipliers.

Then there are some leaders who are also smart, but they have an entirely different effect. They tend to shut down the smarts of others. They are idea killers and energy zappers. Liz refers to these leaders as diminishers.

Diminisher leaders issue directives based on what they can see and what they know, while multiplier leaders define opportunities and invite others to stretch toward them. And the saddest part of it all? Research shows that diminisher leaders get less than half the benefit of people’s intelligence, whereas multiplier leaders get all of it.

CEO of the Wiseman Group, a leadership research and development firm headquartered in Silicon Valley, California. Liz has received the top achievement award from Thinkers50 is consistently named one of the world’s leading management thinkers. Her clients include Apple, AT&T, Disney, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Nike, Salesforce, Tesla, and X. She writes for Harvard Business Review and Fortune. Her bestselling books include Multipliers, The Multiplier Effect, Rookie Smarts and Impact Players. Liz is a frequent lecturer at Stanford University and Brigham Young University.

* Regardless of where you are in your career, learn to use your “rookie smarts.”

* Wearing “opportunity goggles” can help you be an impact player in your workplace.

* Although it may seem counterintuitive, you can often be at your best when you know the least.

* What habits can you develop to help you avoid letting your knowledge get in the way of your problem solving?

* How can you learn to “see around corners” to discover opportunities to solve problems?

* Which of your well-intended behaviors could be diluting your contributions at work?

Trust is the operating system of every relationship.

Think about that metaphor: operating system. You can have great software programs installed on your computer. But if the computer’s operating system has a glitch, nothing seems to work right.

In your work environment you can have world-class processes in place, backed up by well-conceived procedures. But if trust is fragile, you can never achieve consistently good results.

In personal relationships, trust is always the key. It’s possible to like and even love someone. But if strong trust is not part of the relationship, it can never reach its full potential.

Honesty, of course, is a component of trust. Yet some people can be basically honest but simply unreliable. Reliability is also a matter of trust.

New York Times and #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Speed of Trust and Trust & Inspire: How Truly Great Leaders Unleash the Greatness in Others. With a Harvard MBA, he’s the former CEO of the Covey Leadership Center which, under his stewardship, became the world’s largest leadership development firm. Stephen is the son of the late Stephen R. Covey, best known as author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People which, according to CEO Magazine, was one of the two most influential business books of the 20th century.

* Trust is a competency and an actual skill that can be learned.

* Both individuals and organizations should be alerted to low-trust taxes and high-trust dividends.

* Trust and inspire leaders always produce better results than command and control leaders.

* What are some low-trust taxes that you may be inadvertently imposing on people?

* How can you use transparency, straight talk, and keeping commitments to increase or reinforce the trust people have in you?

* How can you be more explicit about your trust-building behaviors?