Add Color and Depth to Your Leadership
Becoming a more effective leader is sometimes about adding a broader range of styles in how we lead. We all have different styles and a good leader is able to flex into those styles to meet the needs of the people they lead. You can think of this as adding more color. As leadership roles become more complex, more color is needed. This move is about reaching out and influencing people who are not like us – in many cases, our opposites. We also need to connect to the parts of ourselves that we have ignored in the past – our shadow, or the opposing parts within us. This adds depth.
It’s like creating a painting; a self-portrait of who you want to become or a great landscape of the vision you hold. Like an artist, we begin with three primary colors and we mix, creating new colors and then add depth with shadow and light until it comes together as one painting. Becoming as great leader is about mixing our primary colors and integrating our shadow to create depth and wholeness. So, what are our three primary colors?
Our three primary colors (our way of being in the world) derive from how we first learn to win love and approval in this world when we realize that we are separate beings; that we are not Mom. The first primary approach is to play nice and if this works well, the approach is adopted (often for a lifetime!). This is known as “moving towards” behavior. If playing nice doesn’t work so well, we “move against” to get our way. You might see tantrums or throwing of objects. This frequently works (otherwise it doesn’t persist). The third approach, if the other two don’t work, is to move away or withdraw. In other words, a tactic of not engaging or withholding of affection.
Fast forward this movie twenty years or so, and a lot happens in-between no doubt, people show up with the same operating systems. For example, many leaders are very people-centered and have a strong sense of belonging and connection with others (move towards). They get things done by maintaining great relationships and close connections with others. In contrast, other leaders show up as being very goal-oriented, focused and driven. What others think of them is far less important as long as they get results (move against). These two styles represent the people vs task orientations of Leadership. The third style is often a blend of these two but the approach is to not be either (move away). The strength of this this style is to be neither people or task focused but very factual and objective. Taken together, these three represent the heart, hands and head approaches to leadership. Eventually, these three become integrated. This can happen early in a career or much later.
It typically happens when the leader encounters situations where the old operating system isn’t up to the job. It could be a new boss, a new job, a different culture, a promotion or just more complex demands of the job. When this happens, leaders often double down on their strengths and it rarely works. Instead, leaders would be better off adding more range to their style by adding some of the opposite style to compliment their strength, just as you would mix colors when working on a painting. In this sense, it changes you. You become that new color depending on how you mix it.
It is not simply an addition of a new skill such as strategic planning or team building. It is a developmental move and this involves letting go of something familiar and safe (your old color) and embracing the new way of being.
Let’s meet Susan, Tim and Carl to see how this might work.
Susan Becomes More Empowering
Susan is on the management team and has worked long and hard to get there. She gets results. However, she still operates with an overly task focused style in her new role. She is ambitious and driven and always wants to do a great job. She sets high standards for herself and the team. The demands of the job are very high. Sometimes when people knock on her door, she sighs audibly, and thinks, “what now?” but instead smiles and says “come in”. Employees feel like they might be interrupting unnecessarily. Susan always takes the time to provide advice and guidance. Employees often feel grateful for this but sometimes feel disempowered. Susan typically feels happy that she has solved another issue and has a good team behind her. What Susan doesn’t see is peoples’ needs to work together as a team. She typically manages down through one-on-one meetings or the usual forms of delegation. It never occurs to her to manage across the team.
To manage across the team means that Susan will need to shift from managing not only task but also relationships. To do this she will need to work on a shared purpose and shared accountability for the results of the team. She cannot hand this down as she would if she were delegating a task. It has to come from the team and this will require investing time with them on the “soft stuff” (this is hard for her). It will also require her to support team members to work better together on projects outside of team meetings. She will need to become a coach.
To become a good coach, Susan will need to let go of her own need to have everything done the way she would do it. She needs to let go of some control and perfectionism. She must support people to find their own answers and to grow – which will mean that her team will make “mistakes” (this is also hard). However, she knows that the way to success is to let go of the old ways and begin to empower the team.
Susan can still be a very task focused leader but by making this shift from control to team play, she becomes an empowering leader and will achieve more in the long run.
Tim Becomes More Inspiring
Tim is Susan’s colleague and was promoted to the management team about two years ago. He has been around a long time and is the tradition holder in the company. He knows everyone and is quite connected. You guessed it – he’s the people person. However, in some ways, he overdoes this strength. For example, last year when the company had to make cuts, he kept revisiting decisions that had been made. He would agree with the direction in the meeting and then backpedal later. This drove Susan crazy. A couple of things were going on for him. First, he was really concerned about the impact this would have on the people. Second, he wasn’t able to take a strong enough stand with the CEO, because to do so might create disharmony in that relationship. Tim’s people love him, but sometimes they wish he would have a bit more spine standing up to the CEO.
Tim is playing it safe by not rocking the boat and maintaining good relationships all round. There is nothing wrong with that other than, in this job, it is not possible to keep everyone happy. What Tim could use is a clear vision to guide him and the people he leads. It is not just about having a vison. The growth for Tim is to “let go” of his need for approval and harmony while at the same time get clear on vision and purpose. This won’t be easy because he has never thought about this before. It will be a new way of being for him. He will change in the process.
Getting clear on his vision will allow Tim to have a consistent and inspiring message. He will now be able to stand for something and encourage others to see things differently or take action. It will also be his North Star when confronted with difficult decisions and conflicts.
Having a vision is like a compass for Tim and makes him a more inspiring leader because he has direction and can stand his ground.
Jon Becomes More Authentic
Jon was promoted to the management team about a year ago from another division. He is super smart and gets to the core of issues very quickly. He doesn’t seem to worry too much about what people think of him as he often will confront an issue head-on in meetings or question decisions with persistence. His boss and his colleagues are getting quite weary of him.
In the other division, Jon was valued for his expertise and analytical thinking which got him promoted. Now, as a member of the management team, things are more nuanced and this approach is causing problems for him. He knows he is making an impact, but at what cost?
The problem is, Jon is over-identified with being right and his colleagues really don’t know who he really is. They could support him more if they truly knew what he stood for, what he believes in or even what worries him. In a way, he is over-identified with his work. It is his character mask; the role he plays. Perhaps Jon is missing a little vulnerability or humility. He could wait for the Great Screwup of His Career to finally access some of this or he could start to work on it now. He could begin by sharing some of his doubts and fears, asking for help or admitting where he doesn’t have good answers. He will need to let go of being right or the need to be respected for his opinion. He will allow others to support him and get the benefit of broader input from the group.
Letting go of being right and asking for support is a big change. It’s a new way of being – a new color if you like. In this way, Jon will become more authentic and paradoxically will gain more respect as a leader.
Adding Depth
Adding depth is about looking at the opposing forces within us and integrating them. These often show up when we criticize of blame other people for things. When people irritate us to no end (an over-reaction), it is usually a sign that we have work to do. It is a sign that there is a part of us that we have pushed aside and ignored. We cannot see this part in ourselves which is why Carl Jung called it the “shadow”.
The part that we cannot see is usually a form of our opposite style. We see task focused people as some version of domineering or arrogant. We see relationship focused people as some version of overly accommodating, too sweet or even insincere. Quite often, this can be a quality of the less favored parent. If Dad/Mom was X (fill in the blank) and this was troubling, painful or traumatic for us a child, we then spend a lifetime trying not to be X. We hide this part in us from ourselves. We choose not to see it because we are not X. Uncovering this is called “shadow work”.
I used to think that working on the shadow was a case of “You spot it you got it”. So, if I thought someone was manipulative (yuck, not me!), then I had to ask “where am I being manipulative?”. Maybe that’s it at a basic level. But to make it useful for growth or leadership development, it requires a slightly different frame and a few steps. Here are four useful steps to the process: Blame, Name, Shame and Claim.
1. Blame. This is the easy one. We are being critical of someone else. Repeatedly. They get under our skin and it feels like an over reaction. Never happens, right? For example, “Tom never returns my calls. He only calls me when he needs something. I can’t stand that”.
2. Name. What is that quality that bugs me? For example, it could be Tom is unresponsive or self-centered.
3. Shame. If I were to simply not return calls, who would I be? Like Tom I suppose. I would be very much out of integrity and this would feel bad for me - I would have some shame or embarrassment around it. I would think of myself as self-centered or not caring. That’s probably why it irritates me so much when Tom does it.
4. Claim. We are not asking you to claim it and become that Out of Integrity Person in a Shame Spiral. No. Instead, look for the underlying strength in it. In this example, I could say that Tom is very inner directed (that’s me being magnanimous – but stay with me). When I look at my own side of the street, I realize how much I lean towards others, perhaps too much sometimes. I am often off balance. I might even say, I am a little reactive/overly responsive sometimes. I claim this aspect of the quality. I claim its strength. I become more inner-directed, organized in my responses or less reactive.
In a way, I integrate that part of me that can stand backs and is less responsive. That’s the part I was demonizing in Tom. This is not to excuse uncooperative or stand-offish behavior, but it does allow me to examine where a percentage of that would be useful for me. In fact, it puts me in touch with that part of myself that I have been ignoring.
Doing this work has the benefit of allowing us to be more compassionate leaders. The more parts of ourselves we see and integrate, the more we can appreciate those who we believe are not like us. This adds real depth.
If you are interested in doing Shadow Work, I recommend the work of Byron Katie. There are lots of free resources on her website (http://thework.com/en).