Encouraging boldness

Perry: When did you last take a bold step at work?

Dignen: Yeah, I think with many of us, we’ve had to discover boldness during the last year, during the pandemic experience of Covid. For me personally, it’s been very much a challenge, getting familiar with virtual leadership training, virtual leadership coaching, managing my clients remotelyvirtuell, nicht persönlichremotely. It was, scarybeängstigendscary at a certain level. I’m a performance artist. My job for the last 10 years has been in a classroom, leading training, connecting to people, inspiring people. Very much the power of presence. So, von etw. konfrontiert werdento be faced with sth.faced with having to deliver remotely, having to connect to people remotely where your only tool is a microphone, a PowerPoint presentation and a small video image, that was scary and, yeah, it certainly needed some, some self-inspiration to be bold, to be courageous in that environment. Yes, of course, you have to focus on good content. You have to learn the technology. But I think the key to it all actually is boldness, is courage. Stepping into a virtual meeting and to project sth.etw. (nach außen) vermittelnprojecting a very strong, kind of confident voice. I think voice is very much the tool of leadership in a remote environment — to project strongly, to speak with maybe an extra volumeLautstärkevolume. My partner at home constantly complains that I shout into the computer when I’m delivering training or I’m on virtual calls. But I kind of say to her that, you know, in this environment, it’s not about a normal voice. You have to come to the moment kind of strong, confident, projecting powerfully — and almost reaching through the technology to hearts and minds. And, as a trainer, like a leader, I think without this kind of bold use of voice, without this kind of bold presence, I think there is a risk that your leadership to decline in sth.in etw. nachlassendeclines in impact and that training can also decline in impact. So, yeah, the big learning for me is a bold voice and that can produce actually amazingerstaunlich, tollamazing results – either in terms of training or in leading teams.