Have you ever felt like those who work with you don’t support you, even though you’re trying to achieve amazing results? Do they tell you you’re difficult to work with, or that you’re too much? Do you feel like they just don’t understand your intentions?
My guest, Parissa Behnia, coaches C-Suite and Senior leaders who are—what she calls—high-will, high-skill badasses. These leaders offer tremendous value to their company, but their edges may start to erode their relationships because their colleagues feel overwhelmed.
Parissa says badasses are like well-meaning bulls in China shops. They don’t mean to break as many dishes as they do, although let’s be honest, a lot of those dishes were ugly anyway.
Modern Badasses are often described as brilliant jerks (or worse). They’re told that they’re too brash, too much, or too colorful.
Live examples of Modern Badasses are Steve Jobs, Gloria Steinem, Thomas Edison, and Malala Yousafzai. You don’t have to like them personally to recognize the impact they’ve had on society. But Parissa is concerned about the ones we’ll never know because they’ve been sidelined, or they didn’t know how to get out of their own way. What technology or gifts to society do we not benefit from because we’ll never meet them?
How can we help Modern Badasses? What lenses have to be changed so they can be seen as important leaders instead of nuisances?
In our conversation, Parissa shares great advice—not only for badasses themselves—but for the people who interact with them every day. People who may be put off by the badass’s need for speed. Parissa knows that these badasses usually have a lot to offer, and if the rest of us can learn to harness that energy, we might find we’re in for an exciting ride.
Parissa is the author of Modern Badass: Tales from the Leadership Front.
RESOURCES
You’ll find the resources we discussed—including the assessment to find out if you have Modern Badass traits and the Sixense Empathy Model—on Parissa’s website:
Don’t forget to connect with and follow her:
Here’s the link to the episode on Apple podcasts
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Powerful Behaviors that Lead to the C-Suite
The Art of Personal Presence & Compelling Communication with Catherine Johns