Share your leadership lessons

At Coaching Buttons, we believe everyone has a role in leadership, whether you hold a traditional "leader" title like CIO or Director, or whether you're in a typical "line staff" role like systems administrator, network administrator, or technical writer. Everyone has the capacity and ability to step up into a leadership capacity and move the organization forward.

And we want to share your leadership lessons. Here are a few suggestions to write your first article about what you've learned about from within and across the organization:

What was your first experience in leadership? Describe what it was like the first time you stepped into a leadership role, such as helping your team to see the future and move toward it, or taking charge of a project that was failing, or setting goals for a new initiative. You might start by describing the situation, then the target you helped define, and how you shaped the actions that would get you there. Or you might reflect on a project you led and share what went well and what you might do differently to make it a better experience the next time around.

Have you been someone's mentor or coach? Share your story about what it was like to become a mentor. Maybe your mentee reached out to you as someone who could share your experience, or you might have joined a professional networking group or advisory board where more experienced members coached newer members. Serving as a mentor is both an honor and responsibility, and we'd like to hear about your approach to helping others gain new confidence.

Interview someone in a leadership role. You don't have to tell your own story, our readers want to hear everyone's leadership experience. If you know someone who has made a difference in their organization, either as a C-level executive or as someone who provided leadership from within, you might interview them about it. We love to hear these perspectives on leadership.

Consider what the future landscape will look like. As the saying goes, "change is the only constant." Share your plan for how you'll meet the future. We want to know how your organization establishes and acts on your strategic plans. Do you plan one year at a time, or do you set a "marker" ten years ahead and aim for that?

Sharing your leadership lessons

We want to celebrate everyone who contributes to Coaching Buttons and makes this a vibrant community of writers and leaders. To that end, we are planning to collect essays into a book about leading from within and across an organization, to be published in late summer or early fall. Anyone who shares an article on Coaching Buttons will be considered for the upcoming book.

We're planning to release the book in both ebook format and print-on-demand, via our publishing partner Lulu. All authors will be credited and listed individually with their contribution, and the ebook will be distributed from Coaching Buttons under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license.

Share your story with us to be considered for the book!