More Muscles
How do you decide what you should be improving about yourself?
That was the question at the heart of a PACE session with a leader this week.
He’s been leading an international development charity for five years of change, growth, and pandemic survival. Now, in a period of relative stability, he’s feeling antsy.
Wanting to make use of the opportunity of a calmer season, he’s exploring possibilities for developing himself and his team for the next wave of challenges.
The analogy he uses: “I want to grow my leadership muscles now while I can, so I’ll be able to lift more when I need to in the future”. He was asking me to help identify which muscles to work on and how to develop them.
After several questions to help me understand more of his background and current context I introduced the Healthy Leaders model as a way to dig into different aspects he could focus on. He understood it immediately.
Like most of us, he first thought about Skills. Should he prioritize becoming a master public speaker? Learn Mandarin? Take a course in organizational finance and accounting? There are endless options.
But as we talked more about Effort (the ability to generate and manage personal energy) and Confidence (the core sense of identity and connection to what is most deeply true) he became quieter. After a few moments of reflection he opened up a little more about some of the long held patterns in his life and leadership. He talked about the advantages and costs of being a driven leader. He wondered if this stable season might be a time to invest in more things outside work.
He said he realized he was looking for the best exercise for his biceps, but what we identified together is that it may be his triceps that need work.
We’re going to talk more.
For many leaders our first impulse is always to focus on trying to turn our areas of weakness into strengths (which is almost always a path to frustration) and developing skills. That’s often because we can most easily see the benefits of these improvements. But wisdom often reveals that Skill alone does not take us where we want to go, and where our organization needs to go.
Thoughtfully considering giving some extra attention and intention to Effort and Confidence is a sign that a leader is moving into a deeper season of their career. (Of course, some leaders default to Effort and Confidence areas and may need to focus on Skill).
You can learn more about the Healthy Leader model and some of the other ways I work with individual leaders here.
I think I need to go work out…
Contact me if I can be helpful to you and/or your organization.
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