Digging deeper

When starting a coaching assignment or debriefing a Leadership Circle Profile™ assessment (LCP)¹, I always start the conversation by asking my clients to share their origin story, or rather a snapshot of it, in terms of particularly important events or people that had an important influence on them while growing up and becoming who they are today.

Sometimes these stories are quite rich and full of vivid anecdotes, sometimes people just stay on a superficial level, basically sharing their professional curriculum. Some people are eager and excited to share, others seem a bit puzzled by my invitation.

But even those who share very little at the beginning, end up sharing much more during our conversation, referring to situations, experiences and relationships that brought them to develop their deeper beliefs about themselves and the world around them.

Becoming aware of our inner beliefs and of their influence on our present behavior and impact is probably one of the most important steps toward being able to unleash our full potential, become the best version of ourselves, and scale our own leadership.

Let me share two stories…

I met Sarah* a few months ago. Her LCP showed a very high leadership effectiveness, with all creative competencies (those competencies that, according to the LCP model, are positively correlated to leadership effectiveness and business performance) scoring over the 80 percentile.

In the comments to her assessment, her colleagues shared highly appreciative feedback on her ability to relate to others in a caring and authentic way, to not shy away from difficult conversations, and to always have the broader picture in mind, just to name a few.
Her colleagues also invited her to dare more, to fully embrace her value, and get ready for bigger roles.

Interestingly enough, her own self-assessment showed a very different picture, with Sarah constantly under-rating herself in most of the creative competencies.

While discussing her profile, two important topics emerged:

• She grew up in a traditional culture where women were praised for being modest and not speaking up. She was the first female in her family to graduate from college, and her family was privately very proud of her but also made it clear that she should keep her successes for herself and never self-promote
• She started off her career in a start-up, as “the right hand” to the founder. A very small company with no job title, where she had huge de-facto responsibility for business development but no official titles. Her boss knew her value and deeply trusted her, so she never felt the need for more official recognition. This led her to develop a self-belief that “doing a good job speaks for itself, and there is no need to self-promote or seek visibility”.

As she shared these stories, she realised how different the situation was now: Working for a very big multinational, with constant organisational changes, being sure that her impact was seen and recognized could make or break her career going forward, and could support or hinder the development of her team as well.

Tim* came to me a bit frustrated by the feedback he had received in his 360° assessment.

Always rated as a top performer, he was shocked to see that in a few dimensions (especially in the Relating field- Team Play, Interpersonal intelligence, Mentoring and Developing) he was actually rated quite low.
At the same time, he was rated quite high in terms of Arrogance and Critical.

Reflecting on his origin story, he started to share:

• Coming from a low-income family, he got a scholarship for a very good high school, where he was the only one not paying the full tuition and therefore felt the need to constantly prove himself to deserve it, with teachers and peers.
  He built his identity around always being the smartest guy in the room.
  Out of the classroom, he didn’t feel as confident, since social interactions didn’t come very easy for him, and required a lot of energy he thought was “wasted”.
• His first boss reinforced this message, saying that he didn’t "need” to be nice to people, since others already recognized his high knowledge and therefore his leadership.
  His inner belief “I constantly need to prove to be the smartest in order to be safe”, developed since a young age, was therefore reinforced, as he rapidly got promoted from one role to the other.

Reflecting on the results of his assessment, he started realising that he was reaching his edge: With new responsibilities, leading a bigger team of talented individuals, smartness per se was not enough, and he needed to find new more effective ways to exhibit his leadership and scale it through his team.

Although this is certainly a simplistic version of much longer and deeper conversations, it still strikes me to see how in a relatively short time we all, just like Sarah and Tim, can get to very powerful realizations that can stir our actions and development efforts going forward, when we allow ourselves to dig deeper into the inner beliefs and assumptions that underpin our actions.

• Which tools do you need to start digging deeper?
• How can greater awareness of your inner beliefs driving your behavior help you going forward, in your life and career?
  

*fantasy name, real story

¹ Leadership Circle Profile™ (or LCP) is the 360° leadership assessment developed and owned by trademark The Leadership Circle ®.

Photo credit: Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash