Act yourself into a new way of Leading is something that I often tell the leaders I work with. More about this later!
Recently, I met a bunch of founders at Build 3, a start-up accelerator that helps bring ideas to life. It was in response to an invitation to talk to young founders who were starting their entrepreneurial journey. I started by telling them about an incident from my early professional life. I had a brief stint at Xerox, then called Modi Xerox(MX) as a Territory manager—a fancy term for a salesperson selling copiers. The day I joined, I walked into their office at Maker Towers at Cuffe Parade in South Mumbai & there was this enormous poster behind the reception that said “If you are reading this then you are in the wrong place”. I hope my memory has popped up the above quote accurately. What it meant was that sales associates, should not spend time in the office. If you are here, you are wasting your time, go get in front of your customer.
I thought about this when I met the founders at Build3. I said that when you start something new, there is a lot of temptation to intellectualize what you are doing. Instead, I said, check whether this talk(meeting me) is worth it, against the value you would get by being in front of a prospect or customer. So do that now! Go spend time with your customers!
Even as I thought about the above advice. I realized that the poster at the Xerox office was something that sounded sexy & got my attention. But it created a boundary for me which I thought I should not cross. I must always think only about my client or customer was good advice. But as my business grew, I realized that it was limiting & there were other things I needed to focus on. I began to become alert to which “shoulds” & “musts” were coming into my life & creating boundaries that might limit me! And ending up creating a leadership style that was rigid & stuck in my past! Becoming my own person, breaking free from my “should selves”—the identity molded by important people in my life—is at the heart of any transition process.
When I think back to the various transitions that I have made, I am sure that I have added to my capacity.
Leaving a big job (CMO @ HDFC Bank) & becoming an entrepreneur was a tremendous shift across a boundary for me. I have written about this here 1000 day voyage. Often when we cross a boundary, we still carry baggage from our pasts into this unfamiliar territory. A lot of my initial few years as an entrepreneur were about operating from the baggage of my earlier corporate experience. I thought like a big company guy & made many mistakes operating from that paradigm. Leaving my own company & painting on a new blank canvas was another huge transition. I wrote about this here Walking away from my company
Transitions are particularly visible in today’s world. The concept of a ‘job for life’ is outdated, and all of us move between jobs, countries, and even professions or industries during our working lives. We are constantly navigating transitions, some that we create & many that are thrust upon us. I have written about this here what we call the beginning ...
There have been many such lessons that I learned on my journey so far. But the biggest lesson was that there are no firm answers, there are only “shifting boundaries”. For many years my boundaries were static, judgments held in ironclad opinions & that served me well too. It allowed me to keep chasing sometimes irrational goals, all of which looked perfect in hindsight! But a lot of those strong opinions created rigid boundaries in my leadership style. And so the biggest lesson for me was to not have static boundaries, to be okay with shifting them over time.
I think we tend to look at ourselves as a personality fixed in time, almost a frozen snapshot of who we became at some point in time. We either see ourselves as aggressive or moderate as good listeners or quick decision makers or whatever it is we have a frozen frame about. And that becomes our identity,as leaders, till we reach a breakpoint & realize that “what got us here, will not get us there”. So what is “identity? Most traditional theories about our identity are based on the concept of an “inner core” or a “true self.” By early adulthood, these theories suggest, most of us have formed a stable personality structure, defined by our aptitudes, preferences, and values. It is this concept that we must challenge as leaders. And in most of my coaching work with my clients, this is where we start. The work of Stanford cognitive psychologist Hazel Markus however, offers a different definition of identity: We are not one but many selves. And these selves are waiting to express themselves. Are we willing to try?
Herminia Ibarra has done some wonderful work around this concept. She says that “Possible selves, the images, and fantasies we all have of about who we hope to become, think we should become, or even fear becoming in the future, are at the heart of the career change process. Though the conventional wisdom says that pain – a self we fear becoming attaining realistic proportions -- is the only driver for change, in reality, pain can create paralysis. We change only when we have tangible and enticing alternatives, ones we can feel, touch, and taste. That is why working identity, as a practice, is necessarily a process of experimenting, testing, and learning about our possible selves”.
You can pause at transition points & affect your leadership style using these three related sets of actions.
1. Experiment with multiple selves: This involves crafting experiments, which means trying out new work & leisure roles. You may be the serious type of person who is known as an introvert & you decide to talk a bit more with people you see a connection. It’s not a big shift, but it is an act of experimenting with a new style. You cannot discover yourself by introspection. Start by changing what you do. Take action, and then use the feedback from your actions to figure out what you think, feel, and want. In my coaching work, I often tell my clients that such type of experimentation does not mean that you are not authentic. The advice we have always received is “Be authentic”-that’s what organizations & mentors have often told us. But too often, following that advice can limit us & it is called the Authenticity paradox. So people can be too authentic. They can stick to a rigid picture of themselves that can negatively affect leadership effectiveness. Those incidents & experiences at work or in life that most challenge our sense of self are also the ones that can teach us the most. Herminia Ibarra says, “By viewing ourselves as works in progress and evolving our professional identities through trial and error, we can develop in ways that both feel right to us and suit our changing circumstances.” So this is how you act yourself into becoming a new leader.
2. Shifting connections: So it is not possible to think yourself out of an authenticity paradox, rather, you have to act your way into thinking about a new version of yourself. If you do, and if your experimentation encourages you to grow your leadership style, the next set of actions involves shifting connections. This means developing new nodes in your network. It means listening to & making connections with unexpected people. Stanford psychologist, John Krumbholz, coined the term “planned happenstance.” Krumbholz has said, “A satisfying career, and a satisfying life, is found through actively creating your own luck and making the most of new and unforeseen experiences. “This thought is built on the insight that a network of relationships is also a network of perceptions. Ibarra says, “Changing careers is not merely a matter of changing the work we do. It is as much about changing the relationships that matter in our professional lives. Shifting connections refers to the practice of finding people who can help us see and grow into our new selves, people we admire and would like to emulate, and with whom we want to spend time”. Strategic networking can be difficult for emerging leaders because it absorbs a significant amount of the time and energy that today is being put into operational tasks. But the biggest danger for leaders as they attempt to transition is in Ibarra’s words: “When it comes to reinventing ourselves, the people who know us best are also the ones most likely to hinder rather than help. They may wish to be supportive, but they tend to reinforce — or even desperately try to preserve — the old identity we are seeking to shed.” So go open new doors & make unexpected connections.
3. Telling ourselves stories- sense making: The third set of actions involves making sense of your unfolding experiences, and modifying your life story as a result. The point of your modified life story is to make a link from who you were (or why you worked) to who you are becoming (or why you will work) in the future. Again Ibarra says it beautifully: “Anyone trying to make a change has to work out a story that connects the old and new selves. For it is in a period of change that we often fail, yet most need to link our past, present, and future into an interesting whole.”
If I think of my leadership capacity as my laptop or my hardware or should I see it as my software? Both can have capacity increases, but my software can be added infinitely. So I can expand my leadership capacity over time.
This is the work I do with my clients, expanding their leadership capacity.
One of the biggest challenges that leaders have is that they mistake the coaching work to be only about attending the sessions with the coach. The real hard work is actually in between the coaching sessions. That is when you, as leaders, are “in the akhara”(in the wrestling ring). It is when you are in the wrestling arena that all your planning & thinking meets reality. That is when you show your mettle. There has been a lot of research done on what is called the “learning/doing” gap. We know from this that many people don’t apply what they learn. We have all experienced this in our lives. Life intrudes to stop us from using this learning. We get too busy to apply the principles that we have learned. Also, evolution has taught us to do things in a certain way & any change to that is a very difficult task. If we have always yelled at someone to get work done, it’s not going to be easy to change that, whatever theory about emotional intelligence that you may have learned.
In fact, just being aware of something is just never enough. Evolution has designed our brains to run on the “easier path”. Using the Prefrontal cortex which is the center of our executive functioning(reflection, intuition, empathy, etc) is highly energy-consuming & the brain would much rather use the lower energy-demanding subcortical areas. So our brains are designed to run on the lower fuel-consuming tasks & the behavior that we see gets built with this insight.
This is why no training program book or video can change the leadership behavior game for us. All of us will remember many training sessions where a bulb was lit & we had an aha moment & yet we didn’t end up changing our behavior. If we want to assemble new micro behaviors in our repository, we just need to practice them every single day. The only way to build a new leadership capacity is to try out the new behavior and practice daily. This is the work that we need to do outside our coaching sessions. And to do this, we need to be ready to take some risks and be a little more vulnerable. Try some behaviors that just don’t seem to be about you when you first do them. Then build new networks to add insight and value to yourself. And follow that up with making meaning & telling yourself new stories that will grow your leadership style.
I truly enjoyed reading this piece of yours. There’s a lot to learn and apply and it is no easy path. Leadership is so dynamic, and like you say, with shifting boundaries. You’ve spouted a lot of wisdom which you’ve clearly picked up along the way. I’ve marked many passages to share with my partner who is into leadership training himself and I have always believed him to be an excellent leader himself. I’d like him to also read your piece and then share his takeaway. I love this (learnt this): " In fact, just being aware of something is just never enough. Evolution has designed our brains to run on the “easier path”. Using the Prefrontal cortex which is the center of our executive functioning(reflection, intuition, empathy, etc) is highly energy-consuming & the brain would much rather use the lower energy-demanding subcortical areas.” among others. Do keep sharing via your writings.