A Case for Balance

Have you ever been told you are overly confident? Maybe your self assured and grounded presence helped you land the career opportunity of a life time! In my experience, it’s one thing to land the position, it’s an entirely different set of skills that’re required to excel in the role. Sound strange?

Well my theory is that people who exude confidence draw attention and make things happen more quickly. They impress people – maybe because most of us don’t feel as much confidence as we’d like. Once in a while a leader who leans more into trust makes it to the senior levels, although in my humble experience it is reasonably rare.

While the character strength of trust conjures images of service and humility, reflections on confidence produces images of power and presence and certainty. Clearly, a leader who can lean in to both of these strengths as needed will be a balanced and capable leader.

Confidence has always been my leaning – often demonstrating it subconsciously. I know my first promotion to management in 1987 was a direct result of my ability to exude confidence in the financial world where excessive confidence was, and I suspect still is, a required commodity. I recall a quarterly results meeting when an employee on another team called me out for apparently misleading recruits during a meeting. She concluded this when these recruits told her they had met with the most senior person in the region – referring to me. The Regional Director – to whom I reported laughed and said so she did a great job representing us. It wasn’t the first or the last time my confident presence got me the mixed message of distrust from some and affirmation from others. It was confusing to me early in my career. While I have learned from it, I recognize how difficult it is for leaders moving into positions with increasing degrees of complexity to distinguish which and how to draw on in any situation.

Watching the recent primaries in the States, I can’t help myself from reflecting on the character strengths of the democratic candidates.  Is it Hillary’s strong confidence that is creating her challenges AND whether Bernie will be able to remain balanced in his apparent character strength of trust.

I don’t presume to know which is more of a natural strength for either and still I want to play with it a bit.

Hillary like my character Cynthia demonstrates a high level of self-assurance, even certainty about her abilities, her positions and her qualifications. Interestingly this kind of certainty is often received as arrogance and self-promotion – possibly more in women than in men. Bernie, like Pete, is more thoughtful and authentic which leads people to believe he is more reliable. In the Tilt Model Bernie’s strength of trust would suggest he leads mainly from his heart (with humanity) while Hillary’s character strength of confidence would indicate she leads with courage and from the gut. (Clearly they are both more than this one trait so forgive me for limiting my observations for today’s topic).

Taking it one step further – Cynthia (and possibly Hillary) exude a confident presence (commander and chief) making people feel they’re in good hands during dramatic change. Pete (and possibly Bernie) leaves people feeling cared about and for – the much needed stability during difficult times.

So what can you expect from Cynthia when she goes into over-use? In my observations, when threatened, she dug her heels in more firmly and she sounded aggressive, even demanding and arrogant. When her ideas were challenged she would waiver between being dismissive and argumentative – making it hard for people to hear her even when her points and ideas were spot-on.

When Cynthia lost faith in her self and felt unappreciated she would move to under-using her strength of confidence causing her to throw up her hands and waiver in her positions sometimes becoming stuck or even paralyzed to act.

How would Pete behave when he was in over-use of trust? I witnessed him absolving himself of responsibility and almost becoming subservient in an effort keep the peace. He would minimize the possibilities and sometimes resign himself to the status quo when the effort became too much and during these times he ingratiated people to him by allowing himself to be vulnerable.

When pushed too far and feeling used, Pete would move into under-use of trust. In these moments he would over-state his contribution to the team and point out his importance to the process or success of the team. He would criticize the little things that annoyed him displaying a high degree of annoyance for people’s inability to see what he saw and what he thought needed to be done.

Mastering Leadership Podcast Series

If you haven’t listened to Part 1 in this series Episode 28 I recommend you do that.  In this episode I introduce the foundational story for this series and the characters I reference in every episode – Marley, Pete, Alan and Cynthia. They are actual people but these are not their real names. In the related Blog Post I describe them in more detail and I offer a 2-part assignment to help you get more out of the series.

In Episodes 29 and 30 we discuss 4 of the character traits that influence your leadership style – to get the most out of this series listen to those when you get a chance.

A couple of helpful points to remember:

1. You do not fit neatly into one style. I hope my reflections in the podcasts and accompany posts make this abundantly clear. In this post I share how I moved between inspiration and focus in the way I designed and conducted interviews–while the transformation didn’t happen immediately, it is an example of how we are not stuck in one trait as a FIXED strength.  In my earlier examples I also make the case that change for change sake is not the answer to improving performance. Both my over-use of Inspiration and Focus, while years apart, failed to serve me or anyone else well.
2. Don’t fall into the trap of a label. Frequently when talking with clients I hear complaints about how many of the typologies or assessments seem to attach labels. I am intentionally not focusing on labels in this series but rather on behaviours, patterns, tendencies and preferences. Yes tilt has language to help us understand these and I will share more about those in time. Labels are helpful and even necessary for understanding, however when we trap ourselves in labels we lose sight of our free will to grow and shift as wanted and needed.  REMEMBER THIS.

The Learning

I struggled with a comparison of these traits most of all. The concept of trust just seemed so basic and desirable in every human being that to explore it in contrast to self-confidence was uncomfortable. I suppose in part because I know I have been received in some ways much like Cynthia (and even Hillary) forced to face the fact that people don’t always trust me hurts.

As a character strength, trust isn’t measuring how trustworthy you are BUT rather, how easily you garner trust from others. The character strength of confidence doesn’t measure how confident you are BUT instead,  how people experience your presence.

A few things you can do to join me in learning more about yourself and your influence:

1. Reflect on your own behaviors and follow along today to see where you lean and whether it is in service of your ultimate goals and supports the kind of influence you desire.
2. Observe the impact others have. When you see someone who resembles Cynthia and Alan  or Marley and Pete pay attention and consider the impact and kind of influence they have as a result. Some times it’s easier to first learn from observing what works and doesn’t work in the performance of others.
3. Monitor yourself. While you may need to do some Monday-morning-quarterbacking initially, in time,  you will be able to notice your impact as it happens AND eventually you may even be in a position to anticipate the play and adjust on the fly. Be patient with yourself because you can’t become the Peyton Manning or Wayne Gretzky of leadership over night.
4. Identify an area of focus and develop yourself in this character strength. You will be delighted to see how with focus on one trait you will improve your balance in ALL traits.

To recap:

Trust – A leader with a well balanced character strength of trust will appear as humble, patient (carefully measured actions), authentic and reliable (will look at all sides to ensure they are fair) – leading with humanity from the heart and attracting people with their grounded stable manner. When they are over-using this strength you will experience them as  subservient, even minimizing things rather than facing them, resigned to defeats and revealing. When they are under using or have not fully developed this strength you will experience them as boastful, restless, superficial and even unreliable.

Confidence – In contrast a leader with a well balanced character strength of confidence will demonstrate a self-assured presence, decisiveness (look for declarative language), certitude and assertiveness (willing to challenge conformity) – leading with courage from their gut instinct and attracting support through their ability to make necessary change a reality. When they are over-using this strength you will experience this leader as arrogant, even dismissive, defensive when challenged and aggressive. When this leader withdraws from their strengths or hasn’t fully developed them you will experience them as insecure, very uncertain (even passive) and indecisive.

NEXT TIME…. We’ll examine how to be open to new possibilities while productively focused.…what would it mean to be both open to change and diligently attending to the details? Don’t miss it….

Background on the Building of this Series

While the observations are mine alone and they are coloured by my own journey and many of the tools I have learned along the way including MBTI, Enneagram, Kersey-Bates, DISC, Colours, StrengthsFinder and more… this series was inspired largely by a new tool and my own very specific reflection exercise or case study. To increase my comfort with and ability to apply the tool with clients I created a case study for myself in 2013 to further my own learning.

The Tool

A number of years ago I was introduced to a progressive model called Tilt 365–a positive influence predictor. It combines a 360 degree assessment with a framework for leadership development.  It uses the 21st Century language of strengths with a focus on interests or as the founder and research scientist behind it, Dr Pam Boney would say, interests or preferences.

In a recent mastery call with her, Dr Boney reminded us that leaders can be really intelligent, competent and driven but if they don’t attend to their character strengths, no one will follow them…at least not when it matters.  Dr. Boney talked about how when a leader over or under uses their strengths or preferences, they steal energy, making your teams and organizations less creative and productive.

Not being a proponent of the typical 360 experience I wasn’t immediately interested in Tilt 365.  Based on advice from a mentor I trust, I decided to invest in learning more and I earned my Certification as a Tilt 365 Practitioner and Coach.

My Case Study

The next step for me was to do my own case study, based on my own experience to see how I could and would have used the learning as a leader AND to develop leaders reporting to me. One day in 2015 I realized how much my reflections during the completion of the case study had strengthened my ability to apply Tilt 365 AND how often I saw its application to the leadership experience of my clients.

Interestingly, as much as I learned from the exercise of the case study, creating this series has only enhanced my comfort in and belief about the tool.

The story, that forms the foundation of my case study, and the people do exist (not their real names of course) and are part of my leadership journey.

If you are interested in learning more about Tilt 365 or would like to explore how I can help you in your leadership journey using Tilt 365, please contact me for a complementary conversation.