The side effects of (over) protecting yourself

Living in a foreign country, with only basic knowledge of the official language and absolutely no knowledge of the dialect, which is what people actually speak in the streets, often pushes you out of your comfort zone.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to pick up my son from his soccer tournament, starting back after Covid restrictions were eased. I got there a bit earlier, looking forward to finally meeting the other parents. But once I arrived, and found them all happily chatting in swiss german, I felt so out of place, being only able to smile and not understanding a word of what they were talking about, that I just pulled up my phone and started scrolling, isolating myself completely.

The following week my husband went, and he came back telling me about some of the parents he met and the talk they had. I was very surprised, since he speaks less german than I do, and no swiss german at all!

When asked, he said he simply started to speak english, and actually found out many of the parents did speak english to some extent.

That made me think. Why was I not even trying, withdrawing from the opportunity to join in the conversation?

A bit of embarrassment, an underlying self-talk that I would have just annoyed them and there wasn’t anything meaningful I would have added to the conversation anyhow. I even convinced myself that I wasn’t actually interested in getting to know any of them, since I was just not part of that crowd.

I was definitely getting in my Protecting space, letting my lack of self confidence get in my way of building new connections.

This brought me to think how many times, during my coaching conversations with leaders, I hear them say they keep conversations minimal and to-the-point, only business-related, since they believe no one has the time nor is really interested in knowing more of them. They walk into the office, or into their Zoom call, wearing their well crafted professional mask, and try to leave everything else out of the door.

But the truth is, when their co-workers are asked to assess them (the tool I use for this is the 360° assessment tool the Leadership Circle Profile™), what emerges is a very interesting picture: other people do feel this distance as actually hindering their human connection, and as a result their business relationship.

They describe these leaders as cold and uncaring, and they perceive no interest in building a more meaningful relationship, in which deeper values and emotions can be shared, besides the “facts and figures”, and in which experimentation and errors are encouraged.

At the end of the day, the umbrella these leaders use to protect themselves, as in the famous Banksy artwork¹, is actually causing the rain to fall on them.

In their effort to establish their sense of worth and security, they are causing their own pain, and significantly diminishing their leadership effectiveness.

As The Leadership Circle ® research shows, scoring as “distant” for a leader has a 0.55 negative correlation to Leadership effectiveness.

Distance (measured as being emotionally distant, standoffish, hard to get to know and aloof) is thus one of the reactive tendencies with the highest negative impact on leadership effectiveness and business performance.

So… next time you feel embarrassed, out of place, overwhelmed when starting a new position in a completely new environment, remind yourself that there might be a voice whispering in your ear that you’d better keep yourself safe by remaining small, uninvolved, invisible, and that encourages you to wear your well-crafted “boss mask”. Instead, let the mask in the closet, show up for who you really are, let other people see your authentic face, thus fueling real connections. You won’t regret it!

If you are interested in reading more on LCP reactive tendencies, go to my post "Letting go of old leadership habit- The mindtrap of control"

¹Banksy, Nola (Girl with umbrella). 2008