Sole survivor, or sole fatality?
My coach thinks I need to be more selfish.
Apparently, the act of putting others first has gone out of fashion, and ‘the new black’ is egotism...
Well, not quite. Perhaps I ought to qualify that just slightly, because nobody likes a narcissist.
What my coach is actually working hard for me to understand is that sometimes you can’t put others first, and the act of doing so is actually harmful, not just to your own self, but to others too.
He’s not the first person to point this out to me. The cabin crew on my twin-prop flight over the Alps in December were also keen to make sure I understood that, in the case of a sudden drop in cabin pressure, I was to don my own oxygen mask before helping others with theirs…
Joking apart, the oxygen-mask analogy is a good one for business. Because there are times when leadership is absolutely about putting yourself first – nobody else – in order to better help your organisation and its people. Thinking back to Leaders in London last November, guest speaker Nicola Horlick, CEO of Bramdean Asset Management, talked about selfishness (in the oxygen-mask sense).
She discussed her leadership approach to working and dealing with
difficult people. With 20 years’ knowledge of the fund management
industry, Ms Horlick has helped grow some of the UK’s premier asset
management businesses, including Mercury Asset Management (now
BlackRock). So it was with a voice of experience that she advised: ‘If
you can’t change something, change your attitude to it. Or move away
from it.’
Many leaders, myself included, will identify with the
first option, to change their attitude towards something (or more
specifically someone) in order to resolve an issue.
Walking a mile in someone else’s shoes is a worthy approach.
But the more ‘selfish’ choice is surely Nicola’s second option, to move away from the person, either figuratively or literally? After all, changing your own attitude requires a certain degree of flex, or selflessness in favour of the needs of others. It involves making allowances for others, over and above your own needs. Where’s the selfishness in that?
Perhaps good leadership is rather about spotting those people that you can’t change, and you’re not willing to change your attitude towards (selfishly), and about moving away from them, or making sure they move away from you and your organisation? The more I think about it, the other alternative feels weak.
My particular coach is an Applied Emotional Intelligence specialist; our top-team has been working with him to maximise our own leadership capabilities, as our business grows apace and expands into some exciting new markets.
The business imperative for our work on leadership effectiveness is strong: to improve individual, team and organisational performance, within 6 months, against bottom-line profitability.
And it’s surprising just how many bottom-line deliverables can be
achieved through EI coaching. Many think of it as a ‘soft and fluffy’
approach to leadership development; but far from being an easy option,
EI coaching invites you to take a detailed and challenging look at your
leadership approach, and to ask yourself some tough questions about
behaviours vs. results. The direct impact of EI on business performance
can
be startling.
My coach has reviewed the EI profiles of many top teams, alongside our own. The ‘please others’ condition of worth is not uncommon, I’m told, and it’s what’s at play here when we offer too much flexibility to staff that are such a bad fit with the organisations that they’re toxic.
Pleasing others, including people we don’t really want to spend time with, is a short-term fix. Very short term. It’s not a good leadership trait and is definitely a demon worth vanquishing. So how to become less ‘others-focused’, more selfish, less concerned with making allowances, and changing our attitudes?
Nicola Horlick feels like a good role model in this regard. She’s strong, self-assured, and gives the impression of knowing and asserting exactly what she wants and needs, in order to create success for herself and others. Certainly she’s been through a multitude of challenges, personal and professional, and has emerged stronger than ever. Probably because she put herself first somewhere along the line.
Knowing what you want, and need, is definitely the most important part of the selfishness jigsaw, and something that many of our coaching clients explore with us. Getting to the point where you can put yourself first, above others, must start with knowledge about what you want.
Do you know what you want today, this week, this year?
This feedback from a coaching client is helpful: “I started out not knowing what I wanted, or needed. I still haven’t bottomed that one out yet, but just the awareness that I can and ought to choose to put myself first, because that’s better for my team, is really powerful. It puts me back in control.”
Control – or to use coaching language, choicefulness - is really what this is all about. If you know what you want, you can choose whether you will flex or not. Moving away from people or issues that you choose not to flex for is then much easier.
So what are the implications for leaders? That we should be more selfish in asserting our own views and making business choices that are right for us, personally? That we should spend more time thinking about ourselves, and our own needs, than those of our teams?
Well yes, partly. But it is about balance. For certain, listen to
your people, offer them fairness, flex when you want to, but don’t
compromise your own self in the process.
In the swing-o-meter of
self vs others, leaders need to be somewhere in the middle, so that
personal needs and wants get as much attention as those of the
organisation and its people. Otherwise we’re dictator, or doormat; or
in the oxygen-mask sense, sole survivor or sole fatality.
