What Are Your Leadership Defaults?
I have an executive coaching client. Let’s call her Anna. She’s very successful in her career and her firm engaged me to be her executive coach because they want her to increase her leadership impact. In our recent coaching session she shared how stretched she already feels. She confessed that she doesn’t really know how she can do more. She’s already weighed down with juggling a long list of responsibilities in her job and her home. She feels quite stuck.
Anna’s dilemma is one that many of us feel trying to juggle our multiple roles at the office and at home. One of the most compelling outcomes of executive coaching is to help leaders examine their “default” roles. These are often unconscious behaviors that we exhibit based on who we think we’re supposed to be. The roles that we played in our family and growing up years often become our default roles in leadership. The problem is that we don’t often step back to see them clearly or even have choice about our default roles, precisely because they are unconscious. As I write about in my book Wired for Authenticity, Seven Practices to Inspire, Adapt & Lead, our unconscious roles and behaviors can often derail us. This is because as situations change they require us to choose who we will be to best fit the need.
Back to Anna, in our coaching process we discovered that Anna has some “default” behaviors at work. Her default role is that of being a problem-solver, taking on responsibility for everything being right, always trying hard to add and be of value, making sure that things are in order. She jumps in quickly to address problems. She thinks through every contingency to avoid problems. She makes sure that her direct reports are being seen as successful. Turns out she’s taking care of everyone and everything in her home life as well, and in fact, that is the default role she’s played for many years growing up in her family.
You might be wondering, “What’s wrong with being responsible? Isn’t that what we’re paid to do?” A big part of growing as a leader is to step out of our defaults to choose behaviors based on what is most appropriate for a situation. It’s also to expand our leadership range so we can be more effective in different situations. Anna’s default behaviors have her exhausted trying to do too much. She doesn’t have enough time and space to think clearly. She is not allowing her direct reports to make decisions, make mistakes and learn from them. She believes her leadership impact comes from “doing” rather than “influencing” and growing leaders around her.
One of the seven practices of authenticity I write about in my book is “Stay Curious”. This is about a mindful and friendly (to ourselves) way of observing and self-regulating our behaviors. It’s about asking ourselves a question “Who am I being now?” as we observe ourselves during the day.
So here’s the invitation to you. Start observing your own default roles. What strengths do you over play? Where is a place in your leadership where you may be stuck? What greater range in leadership behaviors will serve you?
Author Bio
Henna Inam is the CEO of Transformational Leadership Inc and the author of Wired for Authenticity. She is a leadership coach, global speaker, and often plays junior philosopher on her Forbes and company blog. Join her to create a movement for greater authenticity in our workplaces. If you enjoyed her musings, please follow her on Twitter, Facebook or her blog.