Always Choose Integrity
One of the most important things young leaders and managers need to understand is that our choices reflect our integrity. Every day, we as leaders are confronted with problems, difficulties, and challenges, all of which are begging for our time, and attention. Every person who brings them to us is seeking a solution or an answer. And in our role, we often provide them.
But, more often than not, we are tempted to create a fast and easy answer, rather than to choose the more difficult and, at times, uncomfortable answer or solution. Patrick Lencioni in his book, The Five Temptations of a CEO: A Leadership Fable (Jossey-Bass, 1998), writes about five common temptations that leaders routinely encounter. They are as as follows: choosing status over results, choosing popularity over accountability, choosing certainty over clarity, choosing harmony over productive conflict, and choosing invulnerability over trust.
Each one of these choices must be explored and discussed with young leaders and managers. They need to understand the pros and cons of these choices, and the short and long term consequences of these choices. Because once a choice is made, the resulting unfolding post the choice can result in limited future choices or more productive opportunities.
Finally, all leaders need to understand and consistently remember that our integrity always precedes us, whether it be through conversation, decision making, or actions. Experienced leaders recognize that our choices do not happen in a vacuum. They are seen, discussed, and often debated by many people. And these same people come to their own conclusions based on these interactions. When we choose integrity, and subsequently respect, we build capacity on many levels, and a depth of commitment that results in purpose driven actions. And this is a powerful outcome.
Expand Your Emotional Intelligence
Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Anne McKee in their book, Primal Leadership: Realizing The Power Of Emotional Intelligence (Harvard Business School Press, 2002), write that “The fundamental task of leaders ... is to prime good feeling in those they lead. That occurs when a leader creates resonance - a reservoir of positivity that frees the best in people. At its root, then the primal job of leadership is emotional.” As they continue, “Great leaders move us. They ignite our passion and inspire the best in us.”
In order to ignite our passion and to inspire us to do our best, Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee note that success depends on how leaders “move us.” As they explain, “... foremost among the many jobs of leadership: driving the collective emotions in a positive direction and clearing the smog created by toxic emotions.” For them, toxicity is defined as “dissonance,” i.e. the “undermining [of] the emotional foundation that let people shine.” Thus, they conclude that the key “lies in the leadership competencies of emotional intelligence: how leaders handle themselves and their relationships.” From their perspective, emotional intelligence has four domains, namely self-awareness, self-management, social awareness with a focus on empathy, and relationship management.
As an executive coach, I think we need to focus on two of these domains when working with young leaders and managers, namely self awareness and relationship management. Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee define self awareness as “having a deep understanding of one’s emotions as well as one’s strengths and limitations and one’s values and motives.... Self-aware leaders also understand their values, goals, and dreams. They know where they are headed and why. They’re attuned to what ‘feels right’ to them.”
When I meet with young leaders and managers who are struggling, I often discover that they do not know their own values, goals, and dreams. They also have lost touch with where they are headed in life, and why. When they choose to do this level of deep internal work, they become more grounded and centered professionally as they move through the complexities of their job. They also are able to build on their own strengths and better manage their weaknesses.
Recognizing the importance of self-awareness, Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee write that “Relationship Management is friendliness with a purpose: moving people in the right direction, whether that’s agreement on a marketing strategy or enthusiasm about a new project.” While this seems straight forward, I believe many young leaders and managers forget to manage a relationship over time, and instead focus on managing their own goals and objectives. They become outcome focused when they need to manage the relationships and the outcomes. It is the former, namely the relationships, that will transcend the outcomes, which will surely change over time due to changing market conditions, plus changing customer expectations. Relationship management is the line of continuity in the midst of uncertainty and risk.
Furthermore, when young leaders and managers do their own internal work plus manage relationships, i.e. “friendliness with a purpose,” then we need to integrate some important ideas from the writing of Brene’ Brown in her book, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience (Random House, 2021). As she writes, “I’ve learned that power is not bad, but the abuse of power or using power over others is the opposite of courage; it’s a desperate attempt to maintain a very fragile ego. It’s the desperate scramble of self-worth quicksand. When people are hateful or cruel or just being assholes, they’re showing us exactly what they’re afraid of. Understanding their motivation doesn’t make their behavior less difficult to bear, but it does give us choices. And subjecting ourselves to that behavior by choice doesn’t make us tough - it’s a sign of our own lack of self-worth.”
Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Anne McKee in their focus on the importance of emotional intelligence within the realm of leadership grasp this perspective. However, I believe Brene’ Brown captures it in a down-to-earth and honest perspective. As she continues, “Without understanding how our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors work together, it’s almost impossible to find our way back to ourselves and each other. When we don’t understand how our emotions shape our thoughts and decisions, we become disembodied from our own experiences and disconnected from each other.”
Expanding our emotional intelligence is a critical growth step in the journey of becoming a leader. And yet the key to doing this is to understand what we are feeling in any given moment, i.e. self-awareness, and then to have the language to define and share it with others. Otherwise, we will stumble in our work in relationship management. As Brown noted earlier, our “our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors work together.” Furthermore, “our emotions shape our thoughts and decisions.” The continual level of interaction between emotions, thoughts, and behaviors is the path forward to expanding our emotional intelligence.
As Richard Rohr, an American Franciscan priest and author, explains, “You do not think yourself into a new way of living, you live yourself into a new way of thinking.” And when we choose to expand our emotional intelligence, we have the capacity to live into our role as leaders in a more healthy and productive manner.
To be continued on Monday.
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