Sarah Anderson, Visibility Co. – InnovaBuzz 251

Sarah Anderson, Visibility Co.

In this episode, I’m really excited to have as my guest, Sarah Anderson, Co-founder and Director of Visibility Co. She is an award-winning strategist and global engagement expert with deep experience across corporate, non-profit and government sectors in Australia and internationally. 

Sarah thrives on being at the forefront of change. She is driven by partnering with leaders, change agents and purpose-led organisations to facilitate strategic thinking that leads to collaborative leadership, personal and business growth, visibility and connection. She is also part of the faculty for Homeward Bound, a transformational leadership initiative for women with a background in STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, medicine), from around the world.

In our discussion, Sarah and I talked about:

• Being visible in a way that is congruent with your values
• Building visible leadership by beginning with knowing and showing up to yourself first.
• How we can all be visible leaders and lead change for good

Emmanuella Grace in episode 208 introduced us to Sarah.

Listen to the podcast to find out more.

Listen to the Podcast

Show Notes from this episode with Sarah Anderson of Visibility Co.

Key points and takeaways from this episode include:

• The Three Pillars of Visible Leadership:
  1. Visibility to Self – understanding your purpose, vision, and values as an individual.
  2. Visibility to Others – having a platform and being influential
  3. Collective Visibility – amplifying your visibility and using that as a platform to influence and help other people in their visibility and impact.

• The only way that you can authentically lead visibly is by living and working in alignment with who you are. Knowing your purpose, your vision, and your values are the fundamentals of visibility.
• If you can see that beacon on top of the hill of where you are looking towards in the next 5-10 years, it becomes really clear whether each step that you take will get you closer to that point or not. 
• Self-awareness can take the form of anything from getting to know your own narrative and reframing the things that you are telling yourself which is often why you can’t do things.
• A big blockage to yourself as a leader can seem like a really big thing to tackle but if you break it down into something that you can do every day for 5-10 minutes, it becomes more manageable.
• You can have a purpose for anything. A purpose is often emotional. Having a purpose is all about giving meaning and focus to your life or your impact in a way that makes your choices in the present much easier. If it doesn’t make you cry then it’s not a strong enough motivation.
• Practice the way you think it is going to feel when you arrive at your vision. When you understand what it takes to get there and how it feels to get there, you can accelerate to your vision more quickly. 
• Homeward Bound is a leadership initiative for women with a Science or STEMM background from across the world. Homeward Bound takes these women through a 12-month leadership program that is set against the backdrop of Antarctica. It is an immersive leadership experience that combines leadership, strategy, visibility, and science whilst being in an environment that is completely disconnected from everyday life.
• Leading for the future, leading collaboratively, and having a legacy mindset are some of the things that women bring to leadership and are also the skill set that we need in the world right now to solve our biggest problems. 
• Have a strategy from the beginning that everyone can look at and see how they can be involved in that and how they can influence that.
• When you have clarity of the vision, purpose, and values, as well as the strategy, you won’t really need a lot of direction. Things just happen.
• Everyone has the opportunity to lead with a huge amount of impact. Leadership can be done differently, and we can all be a part of that.

The Buzz – Our Innovation Round

Here are Sarah’s answers to the questions of our Innovation round. Listen to the interview to get the full scoop.

1. #1 thing to be more innovative – Innovate yourself first. Be visible to yourself. 
2. Best thing for new ideas – Just do it. Start right now. 
3. Favourite tool for innovation – Unexpected spaces of letting your non-analytical brain do the work freely by giving it a break.
4. Keep project / client on track – Know your strategic fundamentals and stay connected to the vision. Know your vision, purpose, values, and strategy, and keep your communications connected to that.
5. Differentiate – Understand what your brand promise is. If you can understand that dynamic and create an authentic story about it, that makes it personal and relatable, you are going to differentiate yourself very well.

To Be a Leader

You can lead wherever you are. Leadership doesn’t have to be a job title or anything lofty. Leadership is a mindset that you bring to things and it can be achieved by having courageous conversations in important relationships. Leadership is not just having a big platform out in the world. 

Reach Out

You can reach out and thank Sarah through their website and on Twitter.

Suggested Guest

Sarah suggested I interview Mim Bartlett, Leadership and Wellbeing Coach and Trenna Probert of Super Fierce. So Mim and Trenna, keep an eye on your inbox for an invitation from us to the InnovaBuzz podcast, courtesy of Sarah Anderson.

Links

• Website– Visibility Co.
• Homeward Bound
• Twitter– @SarahIsSocial
• LinkedIn

Cool things about Sarah

• Her top four values are authenticity, courage, fairness, and creativity.
• She co-created the Notable Women program, supporting female executives into visibility and leadership.
• She holds a Post-Graduate Diploma in Arts Management from the University of Melbourne.

Listen to the Podcast