Self-Awareness | Dave Holvig

October 29, 2024October 29, 2024

How To Beat Protect-Your-Own-Butt Leadership

Part 4 of Speaking Up

Welcome to Part 4 of this growing mini-series aimed at convincing you that protecting your career path is killing your potential.

If you’ve been following along, hopefully, you’ve identified your primary method of preservation—the one that sabotages your decision-making and causes you to shrink back when you should speak up. You are doing the work to suppress that internal urge to put yourself first. Well done!

If not, click here to read Seven Deadly Methods Of Self-Preservation, then come back! By the way, this is not just a “YOU problem.” This is a human problem, a shared instinct every leader must defeat.

It’s only when we let go of the illusion of job security that we can lead with the kind of reckless vulnerability needed to make a difference.

And when I say vulnerability (in this case), I don’t mean sharing embarrassing feelings; I mean putting your neck on the line for someone else.

This blog is for you…

IF you’re afraid to do what you (and everybody else) know needs to happen.
IF you worry about what others will think if you address the elephant in the room or tip the sacred cow.
And finally, IF you’re tired of playing it safe and ready to make an elephant-sized impact, this blog is for you!

This blog will help you understand your desire to self-protect so you can rewire it. Because playing it safe is riskier than you think, it's costing you influence.

Let’s dive in!

August 9, 2024August 9, 2024

The 7 Deadly Self-Preservation Tendencies And How To Overcome Them

Part 3 of Speaking Up

So why is speaking up REALLY becoming a “lost” art, increasingly rare, borderline extinct? One word (with a hyphen): Self-preservation.

So far, we’ve covered the importance of speaking up—reasons we don’t, reasons we should—and the influence that follows. Click here to read Part 1, Part 2.

Now let’s probe a layer deeper into the thing behind the thing that’s keeping you from speaking up, sabotaging your decision-making, and “protecting” you from LEADING!

This blog will outline 7 deadly self-preservation tendencies that hold us back from maximum impact so you can identify yours.

June 30, 2022July 1, 2022

This Is Not My First Rodeo Leadership

Moving From Proving To Improving

Have you noticed—no matter what kind of work you’re having done on your house—the person giving you a bid always rips on the work that’s already been done?

Is there a drywall guy on the planet that thinks someone else’s work is good?

No one comes in and says, “Well, it looks like the drywall was done by a pro.”

Usually, it sounds more like…

“Well, whoever did this must have been completely insane, possibly drunk and a bonified ‘hack,’ BUT we can rip it all out, do the same thing and keep this cycle of insanity going if you’d like. You are lucky to be alive.”

“Also, this is not my first rodeo.”

Proving mode: A state of needing everyone to know that you know.

This is not just a drywall problem; this is an occupational hazard that permeates every profession at any level of the org chart. It’s one of the least talked about, most pervasive reasons people don’t thrive in their careers.

None of us are safe from it and becoming it. Our inner ‘know-it all’ is one weak moment away from making us walk the proving plank. So, the faster we recognize it, the sooner we can “knock it off!” Then improving can begin.

This blog will outline three overly practical steps to help eliminate the urge to tell people it's not your first rodeo. And more importantly, help you start moving from proving to improving.