As we take up leadership roles, in fact, any type of role, we will define how we install that role based on experience as well as values.

The way we lead is deeply influenced by the first leaders we met in life, our caretakers. They have been our first role models. The way they influence us can be threefold. We might have liked the way they were leading us just as well as could have disliked it. In both cases, we’ll install our leadership based on theirs, either by doing the same or by doing the opposite. The third option available to us is to make our own choices based on practices we appreciated from a larger variety of role models.

We bring all these ideas into the way we lead. It’s how we understand leadership and implement it.

The experience gathered as children have a deep impact on our values and leadership style. It often becomes such a strong influence, that the learning from this experience becomes the help we want to give others most.

As it grows in importance for us it also seems to be so important that it becomes a message we believe everyone needs to hear and follow. Having developed our experience we also see ourselves as knowledgeable and even as the ones who know.

As we lead with this knowledge in mind, we might even start to apply our experience to others and assume that it is what they need.

That’s a moment in which resistance will come up.

As good as our intentions might be, as valid our experiences are, we are leading people who have a different experience than we do. We lead people who search for different learning or solution than the one we bring. Helping others with solutions we have determined to be the right ones for them will often lead to rejection and a feeling of not being understood.

We can only teach those who want to learn what we have to offer.