Three powerful ways to strengthen your impact as a leader and build a positive legacy of empowerment.
Willow Blythe-Carroll
Founder
Weaving Wisdom, LLC
Texas
Building an empowering leadership legacy begins with you. The way that you lead matters, and the legacy that you leave behind will shape our future. Your mark on the world—your leadership and legacy—can inspire, create positive change, and pave the way for future generations.
Our success in leadership reflects our ability to empower by helping others find their own voice, inner strength, and step boldly into their power. When we positively pour into others, that empowers them to pour into their own communities in impactful ways. This is how we create movement and positive change in our world that extends our impact beyond just ourselves as leaders.
From an Indigenous lens, leadership is about building a legacy of empowerment through community-centered values that support growth, healing, and resilience. It’s a responsibility. And I like to think of this leadership responsibility like a light—a guiding light—that illuminates pathways for others to shine, especially for our youth and emerging leaders who are finding their way. This is how we create a brighter future for all. And when we lead in this way—in service to others—we build empowering skills and resilience within people and teams that can positively influence the dynamic of communities, organizational cultures, and our world.
No matter where you are in your leadership journey, these three insights can help you strengthen your impact and influence as a leader:
Embrace Authenticity
Authenticity in leadership fundamentally represents being genuinely true to yourself and being vulnerable enough to uphold your own truths and values while leading others. Being uniquely you is how we inspire and encourage others around us. When we break free from the confines of expectations and demonstrate the ability to bring our authentic selves to work, we better achieve our shared goals and make lasting positive change by empowering others to do the same. Leading by example, we can naturally build credibility, honesty, and trust in others by simply staying true to ourselves.
In Indigenous culture, authenticity in leadership is relational—our ability to honor our core beliefs and align with our truest self is how we support others and our communities. Leaders demonstrating the confidence, power, and commitment to staying true to themselves, model the change they wish to see in others by first doing so within themselves. By leading from our own truths, we create powerful lasting change together for the future.
When we cultivate an inclusive space and environment of encouragement, positivity, and acceptance——because people feel safe to be themselves—knowing their leader has demonstrated transparent authenticity, our teams grow and thrive.
Strengthen Transparency
To make a positive impact as leaders, we need to be able to communicate with others from a place of transparency. And that means being vulnerable enough to speak openly. It starts with listening. When we listen with care and respect, we earn trust, and help others feel safe to be transparent and authentic.
In Indigenous history, warriors stood out for their remarkable bravery. What set them apart was their vulnerability—prioritizing the needs of others over themselves, and their service and commitment to their community. Their courage was their ability to listen to the needs of their community and tribe.
The environment and culture we create for others, especially on our own teams, is everything—in fact, it’s essentially core to our success as leaders and the organizations we are leading. When we lead from a place of vulnerability, we create opportunities for transparency—and that builds growth and resilience in ourselves and others.
Build Resilience
Leadership is incredibly rewarding and fulfilling, and it can also be challenging—which is why it’s essential to build resilience and perseverance skills along the way. This may mean prioritizing self-care or being brave enough to ask for support when we need it. Having a community to support us in our leadership journey—through mentorship, coaching, and meaningful connection—helps us to navigate with intention and new perspective.
In Indigenous culture, our communities are core to our identity as people and as leaders. Our community supports and sustains who we are—including our sacred traditions, ceremonies, knowledge, and languages. And so, community serves as an essential and vital source for our shared belonging and connection, including our growth as leaders.
There is power in community. Being able to lean on others for support and guidance—just as we do with our teams at work—can help us build our resilience and our perseverance in leadership. When we strengthen the way that we lead through resilience-building, we become stronger and more effective leaders. And it’s through renewed strength and boldness that we can build strong, resilient teams.
We are all leaders—in our communities, our households, organizations, and all areas of influence in our lives. As leaders, we have an important responsibility to help others find their own voices and step into their power. By embracing authenticity, strengthening transparency, and building resilience, we can pave a powerful path and leave a lasting leadership legacy of empowerment for generations to come—all through the choices we take today.
The ways that we pour into people and communities reflect our true strength in leadership. When we lead from a place of commitment and service to others—with a focus on community and the collective—we shape our future for the better.
Lighting the Path for Future Generations
My deep-rooted service and dedication to pouring into communities, youth, and professionals through leadership development and inspiring change has been a lifelong journey—a calling that runs deep within my Indigenous culture and upbringing. I’ve committed my leadership journey to lighting the path for others by partnering with individuals, groups, and organizations to revitalize what leadership means and looks like from a place of authenticity—inspiring leaders to be true to themselves.
I believe that every individual is a leader in their own right. Empowerment is about sharing restorative resources and tools to support and guide leaders in unleashing their own strength and power that already lives within.
It’s important for me to continue sharing my voice and speaking on topics of leadership to positively change the dynamic of leadership and uplift the leaders of now and the future—because that is how we will carry forward powerful legacies of empowerment for generations to come.
My invitation to you: What empowering leadership legacy will you build for our future?
Willow Blythe-Carroll, an enrolled citizen of Muscogee (Creek) Nation, is an award-winning Indigenous communicator, international speaker, and storyteller.