Sometimes leaders feel stuck in a straight-jacket of behaviors. Sometimes the reason is that they just don’t know that other (potentially more effective) behaviors are available. Some leaders have fallen in love with their faults. Some leaders are superstitious — believing that they have succeeded because of their faults when sometimes they have succeeded despite their faults.
One of my clients experienced a big shift when they realized that their employees could come up with and implement great solutions on their own with application of the leadership skill of coaching. Another client realized that spending excessive time over-accommodating and searching for consensus of the team was sowing its own form of conflict.
The amazing thing is people have freedom to choose both their thinking and their behaviors. In the spirit of a still relatively new year, I would challenge you (dare you?) to try something new and perhaps completely opposite of what you are doing today. If you are very frank, stay frank and add diplomacy. If you are very helpful, stay helpful and add assertive. If you are very focused, stay focused and encourage big picture thinking. Whatever strength you have try and find it’s opposite and see what you can apply.
The key is to remember that even if we feel stuck doing things in certain ways, we certainly don’t have to stay there.
Recent Comments