All aboard the Leadership Express!
Station Eight: Joy Junction
Welcome Aboard: The Rise As A Leader Journey!
Every great leader embarks on a journey, and today, we continue ours. Each stop along the way reveals new insights, challenges, and discoveries about yourself as a leader.
Our final destination? Your personalized Leadership Development Plan, a roadmap to becoming the leader you aspire to be.
Today, we arrived at: Joy Junction – What do you love about leading?
Today, you’ll explore what parts of leadership make you feel most alive, and how to do more of what energizes and inspires you.
Reflect. Write. Grow. Joy is not just a feeling, it’s information.
Let’s dive in!
Reflective Questions
Here are some questions to help you reflect deeper.
If fear is the fog that blocks your vision, enjoyment is the sunshine that lights your way. It brings clarity, warmth, and momentum to your journey!
Enjoyment is the genuine sense of interest, fulfillment, and ease a person experiences when engaging in an activity, even if it’s challenging or time-consuming. It’s that feeling of flow (when time seems to disappear and energy feels naturally sustained).
For leaders, enjoyment is more than personal satisfaction, it's also about creating environments where others can feel the same. Great leaders are deeply connected to the aspects of leadership they love, and they intuitively use this energy to inspire and engage their teams.
Enjoyment often signals that you are:
- Operating from your strengths
- In alignment with your values
- Working in a mindset of curiosity and creativity
- At peace with your ego (you’re not trying to prove, just to express)
If fear is the fog that blocks your vision, enjoyment is the sunshine that lights your way. It brings clarity, warmth, and momentum to your journey.
When the sun is out, everything feels lighter, you see possibilities, you move faster, and others around you feel that energy too.
Leaders who are connected to what they enjoy lead with magnetism. Their joy becomes contagious.
Take a moment to remember a time when you felt truly in flow as a leader.
Scenario:
You’re leading a workshop or facilitating a meeting.
You’ve prepared, you’re present, and suddenly, you're in the zone. The ideas flow. The energy is high. You don’t even check the time.
That’s enjoyment in action!
Even if it took hours of work to get there, the process feels meaningful, and you leave the room feeling more energized than when you walked in.
Contrast that with a task you dread, even if you're "good" at it. That’s not enjoyment, it’s likely duty or fear-driven performance.
Write your answers:
- What were you doing?
- What about that task or moment that made it enjoyable?
- How did others respond to you in that moment?
- What does this tell you about your leadership style when you are at your best?
- How can you create more of these “sunshine moments” in your current role?
- Are they based on past experiences?
- Are they real threats or just perceived fears?
Fear can trigger a “fight or flight” response, blocking your growth.
Next stop: [Visionary Terminal] – Imagine the leader you are becoming! Let the joy guide your vision. You’re closer than you think.
Your leadership vision is in motion—let’s keep riding toward bringing it to life!