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EXECUTIVE
TEAM LEADERSHIP EFFECTIVENESS
One on One
Coaching
The
New Face of Leadership |
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If the connected
team is a form yielding advantage, then one of the leader's first
accountabilities is to create this connected team and the environment fostering
it. This leads to a form of emotional custodianship, and to the need for
qualities like courage, connectedness, empathy, direct and tactful
expressiveness, instinct and even compassion. These right-brain aptitudes join
with equal authority those already contributing from the left, for it is the
coexistence of reason with emotion the leader must seek, not the overthrow of
one by the other.
The
new leader learns how to augment his already proficient skills in financial
statements with an understanding of social capital and internal currency. S/he
must realize that big gains will come not from the small incremental
improvements of what he has already been working on, but the leap into the
unknown of what he has not been considering at all. While emotional content is
alluded to in our business schools, it is not effectively addressed. Yet a real
understanding of emotion, the kind generated only from within, is crucial to
outcome. Untrained, the leader often runs the cold steel of the analytic
approach like a flatiron over issues of trust, fear, dignity and meaning, and
the novice—you and I—is sent out into the business world inadequately prepared
for the emotional animation awaiting.
Fast-track leaders have a particularly
difficult time letting go of the "right" choice of strategy, systems,
structure, and quantitative analysis that they presume early on will be their
basis for success. Often these leaders feel that success stems from
anticipating the "winning" side, rather than converting to closure the them vs.
us wars they see all around them. This obsession with left-brained technique
may be the smoke screen covering the perceived difficulty of understanding
one's own emotions as the essential prerequisite to understanding
others.
But this journey
into ourselves need not be difficult and torturous if it is traveled with
guided closure at every step, weaving practical left-brained vision and
strategy into current business dilemmas. This way, the participant continuously
reinforces the connection between emotion and the bottom line in his own sphere
of influence. S/he finds himself able to solve the most difficult human and
interaction dilemmas, thus converting emotion to margin. Expanded opportunities
for implementation become more visible and a new, human center is established.
The elusiveness of
one's center is understandable enough, though uncomfortable and unprofitable.
We first lose the reins in times of trauma, often early in life when the
"primitive mind" can only blame itself for disaster ('the trauma must have been
my fault, therefore I can't, I'm not, I'll never'). Thus, in defensive reaction
to trauma, we form strong limiting beliefs that over time become unconscious.
These beliefs result in blind spots and knee-jerk reactions that become the
focal points of unfulfillment. These automatic attitudes and reactions tend to
be self-fulfilling, to generate more ineffectiveness through events that
reinforce the belief (a pattern). In our original and perfectly appropriate
desire to get away from the hot stove (the trauma), we often find ourselves as
adults avoiding the whole kitchen! The result can be missed opportunities,
unseen choices, prolonged decision dilemmas, and silent personality
clashes.
The new leader
strives for inner freedom, full choice between the various dichotomies facing
us daily. Dichotomies are collections of opposite emotional values that result
in everyday conflict. Examples are Wrong/Right, Dependent/Independent,
Love/Hate, Inferior/Superior, and Good/Evil. Inner freedom means that neither
side of the dichotomy is unduly weighted, resulting in more objective choices.
Acting from this center, the leader may prefer to be right but doesn't have to
be right. The leader who has the emotional flexibility to be wrong can approach
a decision-making process with the goal to understand all viewpoints before
selecting the best. This is true leadership and is quite different from
entering the process unconsciously bent on prevailing. In the first instance,
we adjust the project blueprint for the best result, an inexpensive change in
the planning stage. In the second we are down the road moving whole walls in an
expensive and often blind attempt to recoup.
Click here to see examples of
"abandonment."
The
new leader is able to combine this inner freedom with practical implementation,
thus achieving the environment that fosters consistent closure, proactivity and
vision-driven productivity. This priceless achievement begins with the journey
within. |
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For free consultation on your critical team/leader/performance
issues,
or leadership training seminars in California or your own
state/country
email
info@learningcenter.net
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