Leveraging Leadership Profile in Coaching

A Conscious Leader Vs A Natural Leader

Do you think there’s a difference between being conscious and being natural? Do you think leadership should be naturally established?

Being a conscious leader and natural are two different things. This is my opinion, but I feel very strongly, the second is that we as people mature and evolve over time. So in our early years, that which is natural is not conscious, it’s actually the opposite of that. And we kind of mature into and evolve towards something that looks more and more like that. So while we’re on the journey, and research has about 95% of us consciously addressing things is necessary. So the question is, does that mean I’m being a natural?

No, not at all. One of the key themes in creative compensation is to be authentic and real. We can be conscious, and authentic, and real, all at the same time. But it requires honesty, and it requires integrity. So I will say, if we want to be meaning-making, highly contributing leaders, the natural thing to do is to be conscious, and constantly challenge that which is natural.

Reactive and Creative Competence

People in position are always in a power game. Now, how do you identify their reactive or creative competence?

Leaders create influence. And there are different kinds of influence. Your question speaks to positional influence, where my role is- I’m an executive vice president, and therefore I have influence versus a personal influence where it’s earned based on my integrity in the way that I work. So I think one thing to work through is, is it a positional influence or a personal influence. But that’s one of the benefits of coaching and one of the benefits of the 360 assessment.

Many of us have gotten long in the world, not really knowing how we’re doing. So a 360 allows us to look at these questions that we maybe never thought about before, these research-proven questions, there’s about 124 of them in the leadership circle, and also invite people in whose feedback we care about and hear their perspective, I would say probably half of the leaders I work with who are executive and my age or older, probably half of them are completely surprised at the data. It’s not at all what they would expect. And it’s common to see somebody’s self-score looking one way. And the combined ratings of 10 or 15. Other people look a different way. And that big old gap is like wow, brand new information. That was my experience. So the thought would be one way to measure all this is to do a candid, objective 360.

Gaurav: My observation is that reactive leaders try to bully creative leaders during open forums, how to handle the situation?

Michael: There are a lot of different ways that we can be reactive. Bullying is one of those 11 strategies. There are others where there any effective contribution is acquiescing or ignoring or disengaging, you’re playing small or something. So there are lots of different ways we might look at this. But if we’re dealing with the bully, let’s see, wow, that’s you. One of the things that are foundational to all of this is just calling things out, naming them that as they are. So if it is appropriate to pull this bully off to the side and help him or her understand the implications, that’s one thing, or it could be setting ground rules or something. There’s a lot to that. But if there’s public bullying, there’s becoming increasingly not okay. In, in forums of people doing their work. So it needs to be addressed one way or the other. And sometimes that’s very challenging because sometimes it is the most senior leaders that are doing that. But it tends to be a common thing for coaching conversations. So that’s one point of view. I’m sure there are Other ways to look at it. So I’d like to hear if there’s anybody else who has a different opinion.