I find that leadership skills and competencies are sometimes over-complexified by people trying to sell a product. The reality is that leadership comes down to one thing, practice. Within that practice are two distinctions regarding leadership competencies. First is that everyone is a leader, even if only of themselves. Second, that there are no leadership competencies, only life competencies that leaders use. Drawing a distinction between competency buckets solidifies the mistaken belief that humans make life easier by compartmentalizing work and personal, when it actually makes life harder.
Humans have only one brain, one body, one self. When a person tries to compartmentalize, they lose access to their wholeness or whole “ness.” Ness being essence, soul, or spirit. Compartmentalizing results in a decrease in possible actions in the moment because the actions can only be accessed from another compartment that is offline. Emotions in the workplace are a common example. The Life Competencies I use with clients:
If you want to be a more effective leader, that's what you want to practice. While you might not know it by name, you most certainly know the inner critic by reputation. It’s that voice that fills your head with shitty thoughts and says you’re a no good, stupid, arrogant, selfish, worthless, terrible human. The inner critic is like a loud, foul-mouthed, demeaning DJ using a playlist containing your worst hits of all time. Today we’re taking a look at how the inner critic and shame work and where they come from.
When humans first evolved about 180,000 years ago, we could only survive in tribes. To be kicked out of the tribe meant certain death from animal attack, starvation, or the elements. Thus, the goal was to stay in the tribe and to achieve this, humans had to develop two capabilities: 1. A way to keep track of actions that could result in tribe expulsion 2. An internal mechanism to force compliance. Think of the first capability as a computer hard drive containing a database or electronic encyclopedia. When we’re born the database/encyclopedia is blank. The entries in it begin soon after our first breath outside the womb when we begin interacting with the world. The database is populated with the messages we received as children from parents, family, caregivers, teachers, institutions, and peers, that told us which actions were acceptable (by the tribe) and which were not (and could result in tribe expulsion). Essentially it functions as a list of societal rules, norms, ethics, and laws to be obeyed. Think of the second capability, the inner compliance mechanism, as a playlist of shame messages. Shame is our most powerful human emotion. It says, ‘we are fundamentally a bad human because of an action we took.” It can shut us down, make us shrink and most importantly from an evolutionary perspective change behavior. In real life it looks like: · Person takes an action · Inner critic checks the action against the database · If action is acceptable, inner critic is quiet · If action could result in tribe expulsion, inner critic presses play on shame playlist to force compliance. The inner critic and shame messages are actually not all bad. They keep us from killing people, leaving the toilet seat up, and wearing plaid with stripes. However, they can become dysfunctional as we grow to adults and use a database that was designed for an 8-year-old; the messages that applied back then do not necessarily apply now. Imagine wanting to hear a calming nature sounds playlist as you go to sleep and instead you get death metal because your Spotify playlist got corrupted; neither is wrong and it’s not what you wanted. If a computer becomes corrupted or stops working the way we need it to, we don’t have to throw it out; we can simply take it in a get it working correctly again. Two key takeaways are that your inner critic database and shame playlist were given to you as a child, regardless if they were helpful/harmful or if you wanted them. And your parents or other humans are at fault; every human is imperfect, they did the best they could, and they can miss the mark. The good news is that as an adult you can install a new playlist with messages you get to choose and we'll cover that in next week's post. How many times has someone said, "That's wrong. Do it the right way instead." The conversation is as old as human language. I'm sure an Egyptian architect stood around 4000 years ago debating with the pharaoh if the stone monuments should be cubes or pyramids. The pharaoh insisted he was right for wanting cubes because that's what the pharaoh before him had (though much smaller) and wouldn't take no for an answer. The architect wanted pyramids. They were at a standoff.
They both claim to be right and are trying to change the other's behavior. The architect saw all this and remembered the hieroglyphic his coach recently provided. He shifted to an easy vs. hard conversation with the pharaoh. He relayed that a pyramid will be a lot easier to build because it requires quarrying less stone, for lower labor costs, and will be built faster. The pharaoh, like most people, wasn't about to take a hard action once he saw the easier option was so much, well, easier! He dropped his defensive posture and breathed. And the architect was not fed to the lions. Right vs. Wrong: -Shuts down conversation -Creates a winner (right) vs loser (wrong) construct -Creates an adversarial relationship -Creates constriction and defensiveness Easy vs. Hard: -Encourages conversation -Invites expansion and openness -Fosters collaboration -More possibilities for action Right/wrong creates a fight. Easy/hard creates a conversation. Everything in life is a practice. The more you do something the easier it becomes. Think about driving a car. When a person first learns to drive, they have to really focus on the steps; hands at 10 & 2, check mirrors, turn key, put car in gear, etc. Now as an adult you jump in the car and go. That's because the person has done the steps enough times that they are now what we call embodied. The practice has percolated down from the head into the tissues of the body just like rain water falling on grass goes down into the soil.
Unfortunately this same process is at work with practices that don't serve us; alcoholism, hot temper, and time on the Internet to name a few. And we have a choice to do that practice or not. It might be challenging to change and it can be done. All it takes in practice. What are you practicing and is it serving you? |
AuthorMike Coe. Transition, Creativity, and Leadership Coach Archives
April 2022
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