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Understanding Your Why, Purpose and Values

 

Know your ‘why’.

Values and gaining an understanding of your key drivers and motivations matter. I know this because people keep telling me. 

Maybe not in specific values-related language, but certainly when they describe how they feel and what is happening at that time.

CoachStation: Leadership, Pupose, Values and Your Why

Knowing your core purpose, why we make certain decisions and the influence of values impacts lives. They affect how we feel about our job, relationships and life in general. What is satisfying at work? What is frustrating? How relationships are going? The joys of a new friendship…or an old. Your ‘why’ influences all of these questions.

It is when values align and we develop understanding of self and our motivations that genuine satisfaction and comfort is felt. Conversely, we are often at our most vulnerable and emotional when core values are being breached. Or, challenged when asked to compromise the things that matter the most.
Purpose:

  1. the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists.
  2. a person’s sense of resolve or determination.

Values:

  1. the importance, worth, or usefulness of something
  2. principles or standards of behaviour; one’s judgement of what is important in life.

When developing, maintaining and growing my business, I have focused heavily on the ‘why’. Similarly, during coaching and mentoring sessions with clients, I find myself delving into the same theme. Not everyone can answer these questions about themselves easily, however. Understanding your passions, why you do what you do and your core beliefs will help you understand not only who you are, but assist to drive your future goals and direction. (1)

Values and purpose are often downplayed, both in concept and understanding.

Core values are the guiding principles that dictate behaviour and action. Values facilitate self-awareness and help people to know what is right from wrong. They can help organisations to determine their direction and align business goals. They also create a sustained, unwavering and unchanging guide.
It is this degree of self-awareness and self-acceptance that is central to personal and professional development. Taking time to reflect and understand what your purpose is, may be one way that you can learn to describe better influence and connect with others. Ensure that your team members, colleagues and friends can understand your perspective and decisions.

Whether it is your boss, members of your team, spouse or peers, the opportunity to delve, understand and explain has great power. This type of conversation goes some way to breaking down the barriers that exist when we allow others to assume what is most important to us. Be clear about your purpose and ‘why’ and share this detail with those who matter most.

Diversity and points of difference between people can be one of the most important drivers of individual and team success. But, only when the time is taken to improve self-awareness, learn more about other people and the best ways to work together. This rarely occurs without appropriate effort and focus.
I have developed and facilitated workshops focusing on the theme of diversity, specifically the differences that naturally exist between people. Diversity has quickly become one of CoachStation’s most popular themes/programs, when working at group level or with individual clients being coached and mentored. Developing a core purpose, why and set of meaningful values is as important for teams as individuals.

People lose their way when they lose their why – Michael Hyatt

Articulating beliefs and reflective thoughts to people creates a potential common ground of words and language. It certainly provides clarity and opportunity for deeper and more authentic connection. Knowing your values connects with a deeper set of motivations. They help to understand why you make certain decisions, choices and drive your actions.

What we know about people at work is that at the end of the day, they want to matter, to feel significant. They want to be respected, heard, honored, and supported; they want to win, learn, grow, and do their best. What we need are cultures that recognize this principle, and lead accordingly. By creating a leadership culture where people feel they matter, everything else the business needs to do will happen—productivity, quality, customer satisfaction, and profitability. (2)

Help people to help you by providing details about your purpose, values, beliefs and motivations.
 The alternative is to foster ambiguity and allow people to make assumptions about what matters most to you. Which would you prefer?

Watch the CoachStation video clip below to learn more about values and their influence on your life.

 

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13 Challenges to the Current State of Leadership

It’s hard to identify why but there are currently major gaps in leadership, in Australia at least.

 

Actually, it’s not that difficult to understand really. The things we want from work are not that different to what we are looking for from life in general. The difficulty is not in the knowing, it is in the application and doing. It seems that employees in the modern workplace are screaming for a certain style and capability of leadership, but current cultures are challenged in delivering it.

 

CoachStation: 13 Challenges to the Current State of Leadership
The current state of leadership is not what is wanted nor required.

This is hard to write and I am sure is difficult to read for some. We wish it wasn’t the case. However, no matter who I speak to either on a personal level or within my professional contacts, there is great frustration and disappointment with the current application of leadership in business. In fact, there is considerable angst about leadership being portrayed in most areas including government at all levels. Statements and feelings referring to disengagement; indifference; self-interest; ego; fear; incompetence; and no time to focus on people are common issues, amongst others.

In a strange way I feel that this is the most important blog I have ever written. It encapsulates so much of what is missing, yet is most important and required to rectify the existing glut of good, effective leadership and relationships that impact business and personal success.

Conversations over many years have highlighted the similarities in what employees want from leaders. Consistency in the need for change, themes and discussions, no matter the person, industry or organisation is prominent. I have been speaking about  similar themes and topics with various people. Different discussions, different people, same inputs and outcomes! It is in moments such as these that I reflect on what matters most to my clients and customers.

The key leadership challenges across industries are remarkably consistent.

Although referencing a survey incorporating employees from the U.S. a recent HBR Interact/Harris poll highlighted some of the existing challenges related to communication and leadership. None of these work in isolation or silos, with one or more issues/traits influencing at least one other. In their entirety they create a powerful ‘check-list’ of skills and potential actions. Depth of understanding can make you more effective in communicating and ultimately, becoming a more informed and influential leader.

Employees called out the kind of management offenses that point to a striking lack of emotional intelligence among business leaders, including micromanaging, bullying, narcissism, indecisiveness, and more. In rank order, the following were the top communication issues people said were preventing business leaders from being effective (1):

The Current State of Leadership: Communication Issues that Prevent Effective Leadership

I work with dozens of organisations in various capacities. Within these existing organisations and the dozens I have been engaged by in recent years, a very defined and clear message is being delivered. The discrepancy between what is wanted and what is being provided by leaders remains too substantial – and it is widening. Although a leaders ability and willingness to communicate with their team members is key, it is not the only aspect of effective leadership. Failure to understand self and others is a key contributor amongst other relevant points.

Why is this so? In some cases it is intentional and conscious, political and full of self-interest. In some others it relates to self-awareness, honesty or people not knowing what they stand for and what drives them.

For some it is an unconscious set of decisions and influences built up over time and from previous experience and role-models. Whatever the input or cause, there is a need for change.

The skills and attributes below are attainable…they matter…and are important if we want to turn this around.

As highlighted in one of the points below, to develop in this space is a choice – yours, not someone else’s. There are many traits and attributes but the first step is…

1. Self awareness and knowing who you are…acceptance of self: this could be the single most important attribute of leadership. It is certainly a great place to start and incorporates emotional intelligence and honesty. When coaching leaders, self-awareness and the development of comfort in seeing things as they are, not as we would like to see them is the first, big barrier to overcome in almost every case. For some it takes longer than others and over time, if a coachee is not prepared to go down this path, then I will refuse to work with them. As an employee you often don’t have the same luxury.

However, through developing greater awareness of yourself; comfort, clarity and self-esteem builds and you are more likely and capable to manage the barriers as they arise.

2. Connections and relationships: you cannot be an effective leader who people look up to if you don’t take the time to build relationships. This must take into account the needs of each of your team members, however some people are more interested and engaged in this space than others, so tailoring your style and communication based on individual needs adds power and opportunity.

3. Passion: caring about what you do and who you are. Similar to one of my earlier points, if you are not passionate about leadership or your role it is time to review your direction.

People feel either the benefit or the lack of YOUR passion every day.

Five indicators that a leader has true passion:

• Commit honestly – Passionate leaders genuinely believe in what they espouse. People are touched and engaged by the genuineness of their passion.
• Make a clear case without being dogmatic – They convey the power of their belief without dismissing or belittling others’ points of view.
• Invite real dialogue about their passion – Their passion is balanced with openness: they want to hear and integrate others’ points of view.
• Act in support of their passion – They walk their talk: their day-to-day behaviors support their beliefs.
• Stay committed despite adversity and setbacks – Their commitment isn’t flimsy; when difficulties arise, they hold to their principles and find a way forward. (2)

4. Be a giver, not a taker: altruism in its pure sense has merit. More specifically in leadership this relates to the caring theme in that those who are most successful are those who see their role as one of providing and giving, not removing or taking. Put another way, you exist as a leader because of your team, not the other way around! This remains one of the biggest negative influences on successful leadership and how others see you.

5. Managing outputs: an anomaly in thinking that is being practiced by many leaders during coaching, feedback and discussions with employees. If the goal, target or KPI is 80 and someone is consistently at 70, help them to find the gap. A direct or indirect challenge without support is unreasonable and unfair, but is quite common. Providing feedback only or highlighting the differential is not enough and demonstrates poor leadership. It also does very little to develop trust and engagement with your employees.

Managing outputs or numbers has little value.

Understand and influence the inputs and you will see improved results whilst bringing everyone along during the process – a true win-win. Your role as a leader is to:

• understand what is required
• why it exists
• seek understanding and views regarding what the person/people can do to close the gap
• understand what is required from you to assist
• follow up and follow-through.

6. Care: leaders can only build true connections and relationships if they have a genuine interest in others and care about them.

There is no trick to this – if you are a leader and you don’t care about your team, change it or change jobs because the angst and challenge this creates will always work against you.


7. Trust: is the willingness to believe that someone is honest and means no harm. Not an easy concept in business until the right has been earned, both ways. Trust should not be given to another lightly but once it has been earned can create a platform for honest, frank, challenging and beneficial relationships.

8. Self-esteem: to value self and to be self-accepting is a challenge for many. How you view yourself will determine the course of your life, the choices you make and those you avoid. I previously read somewhere that when taking into account self-esteem, you will never rise above the image you have of yourself in your mind. In reality, this is very true.

9. Values: my journey has led me down many paths, yet values remain a constant. They drive much of who we are, our decisions and motivations. The alignment of values between an individual, their immediate leader and the employer/organisation is very important for sustained engagement and relationships. Values are not understood as well as they should be and have a massive impact on why employees are feeling how they are.

Learn more about your own values and then take the time to understand those of your team and friends.

10. Integrity: how many poor examples exist of this? Privately and in the media we hear and see many situations that have, at least in part, been driven by a lack of integrity from senior leaders and CEO’s in many organisations. This lack of integrity is not the sole remit of senior leaders however, with many employees feeling the pain of this at all levels of leadership.

11. Empathy: The ability to see situations and things from someone elses perspective is a real gift. It may not mean that you relate to even agree with their position, but by positioning your view based on another perspective can be enlightening and a brilliant contributor to relationships and building connections.

12. Choice: has so many implications in our personal and professional lives. This impacts and relates to time management, prioritisation, goals and much more. Choice is also something that many of us struggle to take ownership of. It is becoming increasingly clear to me that the absence of either making a choice at all or making the wrong choices is have a negative impact on leadership in principle and practice.

As with several other traits listed, choice has strong alignment to accountability and ownership, which are their own topics altogether.

13. Ego: is what I consider to be one of the major negative influences on self-awareness, growth and genuine leadership. We see this in our politicians and the decisions that leaders make across industry. Sometimes even when it is known and proven to be a wrong decision, ego and its relationship to integrity and fear continue to drive the momentum of a wrong choice. As leaders, it is most often about others. Ego always makes it about the individual.

It is not just entry level and more junior employees who feel this pain. A report on the InsideHR website notes that the issue is as relevant within leadership ranks also.

There are worryingly low engagement levels of Australia’s workers across different industries…which found that those earning between $70,000 to $150,000 are the least engaged in their work, suggesting that middle management as a collective are disengaged.

“Middle income earners are less engaged than any other type of employee,” said Andrew Marty, managing director of organisational consulting firm SACS Consulting, which conducted the Disengaged Nation study. “Middle managers have less autonomy in their decision making and more disenchantment with their work than either lower paid workers at the coalface or higher paid executives leading organisations,” he said. “This middle manager lag is no doubt dragging organisational productivity down.” (3)

There will be a tipping point in leadership competence, capability and style in coming years. This will increase the requirement for strength in communication skills and developing relationships. They are not ‘soft-skills’ that are negotiable. Ignoring the needs of others and the evidence of what people are looking for has a limited lifespan.

The need for a broader demonstration of genuine, authentic and giving styles of leadership is coming.

They already exist in some areas and organisations, however clearly there is room for improvement. The data and feedback overwhelmingly reminds us that we are some way from providing leadership that resonates with the majority. It starts with each one of us. Being comfortable enough to acknowledge what is working well and what could be improved is a fine start. Doing something with this information matters more.

I am interested in your thoughts. What are your current experiences with leadership? What have you done to resolve these challenges?

 

Related Reading:
Three Cornerstone Leadership Skills

What Is Your Personal and Professional Brand?

 

References:
(1) https://hbr.org/2015/06/the-top-complaints-from-employees-about-their-leaders

(2) http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikaandersen/2012/06/11/passionate-leaders-arent-loud-theyre-deep/

(3) http://www.insidehr.com.au/how-hr-can-boost-engagement-through-2-key-levers/

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Character and Personality Contribute to Leadership

Is a strong personality an asset or a hindrance in leadership and how does it compare to character?

As is the case when dealing with people, there is no clear-cut right or wrong ‘type’ of personality. The ability to flex styles and meet the needs of various situations is an asset however we all have ingrained preferences, beliefs, characteristics and personalities. A ‘strong’ personality in itself is also neither good nor bad. However when an individual possesses too dominant or overbearing a personality it can certainly challenge relationships in and out of the workplace.
Personality and Character: CoachStation
I like to think of personality and character as related, yet with significant differences. An online definition of personality references character as if they are the same, or at least heavily influenced by the other.

per-son-al-i-ty: noun
1. the visible aspect of one’s character as it impresses others: He has a pleasing personality.
2. a person as an embodiment of a collection of qualities: He is a curious personality.
3. Psychology: a. the sum total of the physical, mental, emotional, and social characteristics of an individual; b. the organized pattern of behavioral characteristics of the individual.
4. the quality of being a person; existence as a self-conscious human being; personal identity.

In what I consider and have proven (at least to myself) to be an astute choice, when recruiting I am much more likely to select a candidate based on character than personality-based attributes. Of course, both are important as is background, skills and capability, although many of the requirements for the role can be taught. It is much more difficult to change someone’s ingrained personality traits.
A risk in recruitment is to hire people who are most like yourself, or those we naturally affiliate with, sharing similar personality traits and views . This is most often not an optimum strategy. Variation and diversity are all attributes that within a team are more likely to add value to the business. Natural affiliation may mean that you will get along more easily with a person, however is that what is best for achieving the team and business goals, as well as the right contributing mix for the team? Generally, it is not, although developing an understanding of each person within the team and sharing this knowledge is most likely to create an environment where diversity is accepted and is a positive rather than a differentiator in a negative sense.

Force of personality is a poor substitute for strong character.

In life too often we see the ‘squeaky wheel’ receiving the most attention. We see this in hotels, retail establishments and in the workplace, amongst other times and places. As leaders we need to be aware of the differences and be clear in what we are looking for in our teams. Those who shout the loudest or longest are not necessarily the same people who have the best ideas or contribute with any more effectiveness than others who may be more reserved. Of course, when it comes to people, it is not a ‘perfect science’ and we have to make judgments every day to find the balance.
Although character traits are much more difficult to ascertain in the short-term than personality, the value add of spending the time to assess an individual more fully is worth the effort in the long term. Conversely the risk of getting it wrong, particularly in business, can be a difficult process to unwind.  Alex Lickerman notes the key differences between character and personality, highlighted below:

Personality is easy to read, and we’re all experts at it. We judge people funny, extroverted, energetic, optimistic, confident—as well as overly serious, lazy, negative, and shy—if not upon first meeting them, then shortly thereafter. And though we may need more than one interaction to confirm the presence of these sorts of traits, by the time we decide they are, in fact, present we’ve usually amassed enough data to justify our conclusions.
Character, on the other hand, takes far longer to puzzle out. It includes traits that reveal themselves only in specific—and often uncommon—circumstances, traits like honesty, virtue, and kindliness. Ironically, research has shown that personality traits are determined largely by heredity and are mostly immutable. The arguably more important traits of character, on the other hand, are more malleable—though, we should note, not without great effort. Character traits, as opposed to personality traits, are based on beliefs (e.g., that honesty and treating others well is important—or not), and though beliefs can be changed, it’s far harder than most realize. (1)

It is interesting to see this play out within the friendship groups that our 3 daughter’s have formed. At age 6 there is little identification with anything other than affiliation and mostly personality-based relationships are formed. With our 9 year-old I can see the first signs of relationships strengthening or lessening based on values and character to a limited degree. Whereas this is obviously undefined and is mostly intuitive, the difference is there.

Our eldest daughter recently had 6 friends over for a sleepover to celebrate her 12th birthday. For the first substantial time, it is possible to see the resistance to the personalities that are over-bearing and/or more self-centric than others. In some cases we have even observed intervention and active management of situations within the friendship group when poor character traits or behaviours have been displayed. The stronger bonds have and are forming between the girls who display a depth of character and level of maturity more than others. It is still ill-defined and again mostly intuitive.

One of the interesting changes that I see as our girls have grown up is that the passive acceptance of the overtly strong personality is there to be seen and accepted to a degree, but appears to lessen as they mature and become more self-aware.  I imagine in only a few short years these people will either need to taper down the overtness to find a better balance or continue to struggle in how they are sometimes seen and reacted to by others.

When coaching people, it is more common that I work on elements related to character than personality.

Character traits tend to be more fluid and yet, have a level of substance that, when changed, adds real depth to a person and how they are viewed by others. The challenges I see in an individual constantly putting their own ideas forward forcefully, talking over others and listening to little that is being discussed is that these behaviours offer an insight into their persona, not all of it positive.  Others see this also and is regularly one of the key reasons I am engaged as a coach.

The outward appearance of these behaviours can make a person appear confident however when the surface is scratched the reality is often a degree of over-compensation for low self-esteem or confidence. I have even observed this with senior leaders and executives in business, which can be a surprise to many. This in itself, is part of the problem as I see it. The apparent broad-ranging and all-encompassing skills and capability deemed appropriate for leaders is misguided.

No one leader has the perfect mix of attributes and capability – neither do they need to. People talk about the fact that an individual leader does not need to possess all of these traits and attributes, however the expectations of others in reality places unreasonable expectations and pressure on our leaders. Many senior leaders feel this pressure and in some cases feel as if they are ‘frauds and are waiting to be found out’. This is a genuine challenge to business and to the leader themselves. I have even had some senior leaders make the statement that they would not be at such a level if they did not possess all of the skills and capabilities. If only that were true!

As the image in this blog identifies, personality is important as it reflects much of the outward image of how we are seen. Character is the bedrock that who we are is built upon and reflects and enables much of our belief system, values and the deeper aspects of us as individuals. When it comes to relationships in the workplace, we often have less choice who we associate with. As a leader, the point of difference is the level of self-awareness and emotional intelligence we have and are prepared to develop. It is also reflected in how much this is encouraged in our team members and through the type of culture and environment we create.

When it comes to people and personality there are no rights and wrongs. A ‘strong’ personality, when balanced and used to advantage can be a valuable asset…of course the opposite is also true. Depth and strength of character are certainly attributes and traits that I look for within my team members, both when recruiting and in their development. This forms a superb base to grow all elements of the person, team and business and without it, becomes a potential long-term challenge. What are your thoughts?

 
(1) Personality vs. Character: The key to discerning personality from character is time: Alex Lickerman, MD – Psychology Today

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