Author & Confidence Coach: Susan Axelrod
What is the single most important ingredient for Confident leadership 2026? Is it training, education, skill,
emotional intelligence, connections, intuition, or facilitation? Any of those answers might be in the
second concentric circle, but the bullseye answer is this: Energy, yours. Connecting to and being in charge
of your own energy is the vital function that helps a leader take charge, motivate, inspire, and, well, be a
badass lead.
What does this mean exactly? Your personal Energy is unique to you; it’s what made you, what you were
made with and from, it’s what flows in and through you, it’s what you create from your lived experience,
and it’s what seeps out of you moment by moment. Whether you know it or not, people sense it from you.
Confidence, insecurity, happy or positive, anger or arrogance–the energy emanates from you every
second. This is why being mindful is important and why mindlessness is a deficit. Tuning in to the energy
you bring to your space can be the difference between success and failure. You can have all the training
and brains in the world, but if you are not aware of your own energy, what affects it, and how it affects
others around you, then you will be struggling– in resistance–all the time.
Do you wonder, worry, or feel unsure about the decisions you make and the actions you take? Good!
Effective leaders are not afraid to question themselves. Ah, but how do you answer your own questions?
Do you answer from a place of calm and confident energy? Or from a place of uncertain insecurity, low
energy that results in critical sarcasm, or even angry outbursts.
I call this construct your Personal Agency. This is your place of personal control, confidence, and feeling
in charge. The definition of agency is this: The capacity of an individual to actively and independently
choose to effect change; free will or determination. Underlying this is your Energy. Again, it’s what made
you, what you were made with and from, it’s what flows in and through you, it’s what you create from
your lived experience, and it’s what seeps out of you moment by moment.
The most confident leaders are in charge of their agency, in touch with their energy, and everyone around
them feels it. If a leader is yelling, sarcastic, criticizing, demeaning, sniping, angry, cutting, biting, pitting
people against each other, they are likely living with dark energy forces surrounding them, feeling closed
in. If you are lucky enough to know a leader who is curious, challenging you to do your best, supportive,
clear, motivating you with fun and lively ways to accomplish or achieve more with the Team, this leader
is living with light energy; calm and confident, knowing they don’t know everything, happy to have smart
people around them, and knowing they truly are doing their best.
Personal agency is a construct most can understand, even if they don’t ‘get’ the idea of energy. Energy
underlies it all, but let’s not quibble about that. Let’s GO. Calm and confident leadership is exactly what’s
needed right now. Are you confident enough to be a badass leader today?
Confidence Coach & Author
Susan L. Axelrod, Whatwillyourlegacybe.com
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