Helping Julie the manager become a leader

Strengths Upside
Julie is known to remain calm when emotions are riding high, can cut through the complexity and see issues that others just can’t see. She takes bigger perspectives than most. She’s offers a great deal of wisdom. Overall these characteristics are admired by others and she’s aware of this. They’re strengths in use, are appealing and are likely to be beneficial to any team and organisation. So what’s the problem?

Strengths Overplayed
When Julie’s strengths are overplayed under circumstances of stress and pressure she lands with others as someone who is cold and aloof, adopts a posture of being superior and avoids taking risks. As a result she unwittingly alienates herself from others.

Inner Assumptions
Julie’s way of being is underpinned by several possible inner assumptions that sit in a “blind spot”:
– for me to be right others must be wrong?
– I’m worthwhile only if I am right and find weaknesses in others?
– I’m valuable because of superior capability or insight?
– I’ll stay safe and accepted If I remain uninvolved and avoid risk?

Any one of more of these assumptions may be limiting her latent potential. So she’s getting in her own way.

Building Awareness with Coaching
When I work with leaders like Julie, I often ask “how is this working for you?”, “when does it show up?” and “at what cost is there for you being this way?” It usually doesn’t work that well and it’s costing leaders like Julie in terms of building and maintaining strong working relationships. This ability to remain detached and the perception of being cold and aloof means that there’s few clues for others to work out what she’s really thinking and feeling. With the absence of emotion, faulty inferences are made, stories created and erroneous conclusion made about what she’s thinking and feeling. As a result she’s not deemed to be as trustworthy.

The way forward when I work with leaders like Julie is to enhance her awareness. When a 360 degree survey is undertaken, leaders often learn that others are experiencing a different reality than what their experience is. Now they see what they’re doing from multiple perspectives. This is a helpful methodology to gather consolidated data, build awareness quickly and ignite motivation.

Getting out of our own way
Coachees learn that their internal assumptions linking thoughts and feeling with behaviour aren’t necessarily supporting them to be as effective as they might be. I coach to communicate openly – to be more increasingly transparent so that other know what they are thinking, what they’re opinion is. More accurate inferences and conclusions can then be made. Leaders just like Julie then become more authentic with the people they work with and the result is that people trust them more, and in so doing enhanced their leadership effectiveness.

Do you know someone like Julie? Do you want to help them to develop a more effective leadership style?