How to grow as a leader
How good is your leader?
Pick a leader, any leader. Is (s)he really great, good enough, or just terrible? Chances are you know right away how to rate them, and also how they make you feel. As a leader, you too have this strong influence on how the people you serve and lead feel – for better or for worse. And that has a direct impact on their engagement, their job satisfaction, and their ability to make a positive difference in your business. What is the relationship between leadership competency and Personal Executive Presence (PEP)?
Three zones of leadership
We previously used Figure 1 to discuss the relationship between inner wholeness and PEP.
Here, we’ll go more deeply into this relationship to illustrate three zones of leadership. We’ll also see how a competent leader can take their leadership capacity to the next level.
A simple way to describe different leadership capacity is to divide leaders into three categories: highly effective, competent, and ineffective. Each category can then be mapped to their zone of Personal Executive Presence (PEP), as shown in Figure 2.
We see that the impact of an ineffective leader on those they lead is demoralizing.
The competent leader is regarded as “good enough”, while the highly effective leader's impact is inspiring.
Growth is not linear
Something we have not discussed so far is that the relationship between Inner Wholeness and PEP is not linear; the line is curved. This becomes critically important when we look at how a leader grows from one zone into the next.
Picture David, a business leader rated as competent and “good enough” in his current position, but not highly effective and inspiring, and therefore not eligible for promotion. David is in the middle zone of leadership. If he were to begin work to develop his PEP to reach the top zone, his desired movement in the graph is as in Figure 3.
It is critical to appreciate that David already has a good degree of inner wholeness, and hence PEP, to begin. From this position, a small additional increase in inner wholeness will result in a comparatively large increase in PEP. The relation is not linear, which makes it possible to convert a relatively small reduction in inner conflict into a noticeable change that shifts the leader from the middle zone to the top zone.
Why I only work with already competent leaders
Now consider the opposite scenario: an ineffective, demoralizing leader in the bottom zone. They are suffering from severe inner dividedness and conflict, which leads to chronic ineffectiveness of thought, communication and action. If they begin to work on their PEP, there will initially be little change. Even as some inner conflicts are reduced, too many remain to allow the development of a robust PEP. Again, the relationship is not linear, and here it works against the efficient development of PEP, in that initially a lot of work is needed for a small increase in PEP. While progress can still happen, there is not enough of a basis for the work on PEP to proceed efficiently. Most often, these leaders experience inner divisions that are severe and disruptive and need to be worked through, for example with the help of a therapist, to develop a firm basis on which the more advanced work on PEP can begin. Fortunately such help is widely available, whereas support for developing PEP is harder to find. This is why I only work with individuals who have already grown into the middle or top zone of leadership.
Making highly effective leaders memorable
As you can see, a highly effective, inspiring leader in the top zone has not much more inner wholeness to achieve. Yet even the most high-functioning leader (and their team!) knows that particular situation that can throw them for a loop and trigger an uncharacteristically ineffective reaction. If we can find the inner division that underlies that reaction and work with it, the difference can be enormously noticeable to both the leader and their teams: suddenly they don’t do “that thing” anymore! These are the kinds of changes that are rarely seen, because they are only achieved through deliberate practice. As a result, they are the kinds of change that make an already highly effective leader truly memorable.
It cuts both ways: small changes have big impacts
Incidentally, Figure 3 also illustrates the reverse: a high PEP can be noticeably reduced by a relatively small inner division that finds its way into the leader’s behavior. Seemingly minor things like chronically ill-fitting outfits, a single off-color joke, an overuse of filler words (“you know, “actually” and “basically” come to mind) or a subtle favoritism can drastically degrade your PEP. And yet they can be surprisingly engrained and difficult to overcome.
Sometimes all that is needed is an invitation to become more aware of the behavior to see it adjust, and sometimes a deeper inquiry paired with deliberate practice does the trick. It’s incredibly moving for me to watch a client begin to see clearly how and why they are cramping their own style. And it’s nothing short of thrilling to share their excitement once they – and their teams! - see themselves change in ways they never knew possible!
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