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Leadership Courage: Take A Stand

2021-04-09T10:31:11-04:00April 11, 2016|Leading Self, Paravis Partners, Presence, Leadership, and Communications|

As the next Olympics draws near, we will again be reminded of the courage it takes to achieve results. Think back to the Canadian figure skater who skated her way to a bronze medal, just days after losing her mother to a heart attack. Or,  Shaun White, having already won a gold medal, demonstrating his spirit for the sport by attempting a new trick on the world stage, elevating the difficulty of the sport to a new level. Each of these is a very different example of courage, showcasing what can be achieved by overcoming fears or pain, facing danger, and still taking action.

Courage extends well beyond these expertly trained athletes. Every day we perform acts of courage for ourselves, at home and at work. Courage is the ability to face a difficult situation and take decisive action. Leadership courage can take place in the context of giving an employee tough feedback, telling a client that a project is not going as well as it should, or raising an issue to management that affects the entire company. Whatever the situation, those with leadership courage are able to take action where others are unwilling to step up. The ability to do this takes confidence, a willingness to take a risk and the knowledge to consider all sides of a situation.

There can also be a downside to leadership courage. If you take a stand all of the time, on every issue, your peers, employees or clients may have a different perception of you. You might be perceived as a complainer, a self- promoter, unable to listen to others, or overly negative. Leadership courage, therefore, requires striking a delicate balance between your own voice, taking a stand for what you believe, and having a voice for others. So how do you achieve this balance?

I recently had a client who required assistance with this question. Kristin was a senior member of a project team and up for a promotion. She was facing increasing pressure to deliver more work for a client, and within the same project deadline. Her project team was falling behind schedule with the out of scope tasks and becoming burnt out with the extra demands. Kristin was worried about approaching her boss, for fear that he would think she was complaining, while the team would view her as weak for not speaking up. Using the framework below, we prepared for the discussion:

  • Confront the issue and be able to describe it specifically. What is the headline?
  • Outcomes. What is the ideal result from addressing the situation?
  • Understand the context of the situation. Does it affect only you? The organization? A client?
  • Respect other points of view. Listen to the other party in the discussion. What might they see or know that broadens your perspective?
  • Act. Contribute possible solutions. Was the end result satisfactory? What obstacles do you face implementing the solution? Are there further steps to take?
  • Gather feedback. What worked with the approach? How did other stakeholders feel about the situation and outcome?
  • Evaluate and learn from the experience. What would you do differently next time?

Kristin approached her boss with a crisp description of the problem and two possible solutions. She learned that there were other factors driving the client’s demand that were outside of the project team’s control. She was able to adjust the project priorities and set more clear direction with her team. Kristin’s boss provided the feedback that he was pleased to see that she had a pulse on the team, and could quickly adapt to the changing circumstances.

Olympic athletes are well-trained, ingraining physical movements into their bodies, visualizing the actions they will take each time they step up to a start line. This occurs because of rigorous and routine practice. Just like athletes, we can train ourselves through practice, enabling us to ingrain leadership courage as a skill. You may not always have the time to prepare for the situation, as Kristin did, but practice this model for effective Leadership Courage each time you confront a situation, and it will become second nature over time.

– Erin McCants Parker

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Signs That You Lack Emotional Intelligence

2021-09-28T14:24:29-04:00April 8, 2016|Leading Others, Leading Self, Muriel Wilkins, Our News, Paravis on HBR, Paravis Partners, Presence, Leadership, and Communications|

In my ten years as an executive coach, I have never had someone raise his hand and declare that he needs to work on his emotional intelligence. Yet I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard from people that the one thing their colleague needs to work on is emotional intelligence. This is the problem: those who most need to develop it are the ones who least realize it. The data showing that emotional intelligence is a key differentiator between star performers and the rest of the pack is irrefutable. Nevertheless, there are some who never embrace the skill for themselves — or who wait until it’s too late.     READ ARTICLE

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The Age of Authenticity

2021-04-09T10:33:22-04:00April 8, 2016|Leading Others, Muriel Wilkins, Paravis Partners, Presence, Leadership, and Communications|

“To attract followers, a leader has to be many things to many people. The trick is to pull that off while remaining true to yourself.”    – Robert Goffee + Gareth Jones

These days, it seems we cannot turn our head without the word “authenticity” in our faces. If authenticity was a product, it would surely be a hot seller. Clearly, the game of being authentic has become high stakes – – one only needs to watch the pundits square off on presidential hopefuls to see how high stakes it is. But what is authenticity? And, is it really as important as the weight we put on it? When asked the meaning of being authentic, most folks surface ideas of “being true to oneself”, “being comfortable in one’s own skin”, “walking the talk”. The problem is that these are all self-centered attributes focused on how one feels about oneself. According to Webster’s dictionary, authenticity is “a state of being that can be believed, is trusted and deemed reliable.” Authenticity is thereby a relational behavior rather than a self-centered one. To be truly authentic, one must not only be able to be comfortable with herself, but also comfortably connect with others.

Take a coaching client, Mark, a vice-president of a technology company. When we first met, he asked me what I thought of him. Given that I had only briefly interacted with him up to that point, it was a risky question to answer – – yet a very important one given what I had observed thus far. Here was my response: “Clearly you are intelligent, ambitious and passionate about the work that you do. You appear to always have the ‘right’ answer to my questions yet I wonder if they are your ‘real’ answers. I feel like you tell me what you think I want to hear. So I’ll be curious to find out if others in your organization are experiencing you the same way.” My response was a hypothesis – – his 360 feedback from his peers and boss provided the data to drive the point home. Mark was seen as someone whom you never knew where he stood on the issues nor where you stood with him. His colleagues had over time lost trust in him because they were never sure if what he said was truly what he meant. This was a clear example of showing lack of authenticity because of an inability to be comfortable with one’s own perspective, stance and direction nor connecting to what others need. As a leader, others want to know where you stand so they know whether to follow or walk with you – – they do not want to have to guess or be blindsided midstream.

While there is not a quick fix to increasing one’s authenticity, there are several focus areas that will certainly help you get on a positive path. We refer to them as the 3 P’s: Point of View, Position, and Personal History.

Point of View: By articulating his point of view on organizational issues, challenges and disagreements, Mark became more comfortable speaking his mind and being challenged on it. Having a point of view is critical to being authentic. Being open and willing to engage in exchanges on that point of view accentuates your leadership even further by demonstrating both strength and flexibility in the midst of challenges and change.

Positioning: While taking a position is important, over-positioning yourself within an organization is detrimental. Know the difference between navigating the political waters of your organization vs. actually becoming the politics itself. Mark became more forthright in his efforts to implement change in the organization – – rather than working primarily behind the scenes, he encouraged an open forum on the issues. Get support for your initiatives but be transparent about what you are doing, why you are doing it and how you are doing it.

Personal History: At the core, one needs to connect with their personal history and identify the key events, messages, people that shaped who they are today. Growing up, Mark did not come from a privileged socio- economic background. When he was sent to elite schools at a young age, the message he received was “to survive in this system, you need to watch your back and not rock the boat.” While that message might have served him well then, it was no longer serving him in the corporate leadership world. Exploring your personal history will often surface messages that are worth reexamining in order to truly express your authentic self.

As the path to Election 2016 continues and we watch with interest the pundits argue who is authentic and who is not, reflect on your own path: if you were the candidate, what would we be saying about your authenticity?

What’s your path to authenticity?

  1. What do people think you stand for? What point of view do you take on the various dimensions of your work and personal life?
  2. Observe how you navigate your organization and your relationships. To what extent do you seek to understand and consider other’s agendas without becoming too chameleon-like?
  3. What steps can you take tomorrow to engender trust from others yet remain true to yourself?

– Muriel Maignan Wilkins

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Confidence: Can You Build It?

2021-04-09T11:31:48-04:00April 8, 2016|Leading Self, Muriel Wilkins, Paravis Partners, Presence, Leadership, and Communications|

Confidence – we all want it. And, we all look for it in others, especially those in positions of leadership. Yet, time and time again, I encounter executives who do not feel confident nor exude confidence to others. (I also encounter those who are overly confident – to the point that they are blinded by it – but that is a topic for another article!) What these executives fail to realize is that what makes you confident in one situation will not necessarily have the same effect under different circumstances. Therefore, external circumstances cannot dictate one’s confidence. Otherwise, your confidence feels like a loose piece of newspaper on a windy day – – swirling every which way depending on the force and direction of the wind. So, the real question is: “What builds a leader’s confidence?” The answer lies in the three primary confidence-builders: Facts, Focus, and Faith.

Face the Facts: The starting point for building confidence in a difficult situation is to face the facts. A review of one’s past accomplishments and professional track record typically shows that successes far outweigh failures. One need only look at a Tiger Woods to reinforce that idea – do any of his tour losses undermine his phenomenal track record? No – his record speaks for itself. Likewise, executives have track records with successes, and more importantly, with failures that they endured.

Take for example, an executive whom I coached at a global marketing services firm– we’ll call him James. Having recently been promoted to a Vice-President position, James found himself facing new challenges: turning around a low-morale staff, driving new strategic initiatives, and rebuilding the reputation of his department. In addition, he now had a whole new set of relationships to manage given his position including being part of the executive team and being frequently sought after for advice by the CEO. “I often feel like I am going to ‘get caught’ – – that someone is going to realize that they made a mistake by promoting me into this position,” said James at one of our coaching meetings. When James stepped into the executive suite, his confidence leapt out the window. After taking inventory of the various promotions that he had received throughout his career, James realized that he had successfully faced new, albeit different, challenges before. His success track record served as a basis of fact against the uncertainty he currently felt regarding his ability to excel in his new role.

Focus: With a track record as the foundation, it is helpful to focus on one’s strengths to build confidence. Research shows that most people are very strong in a few competencies, weak in several others and average in the majority of skills. Rather than trying to be perfect at everything, successful leaders primarily focus on leveraging their strengths and closely managing their “average” and “weaker” areas. With the help of a 360 assessment, James accepted that he was not going to be great at everything (nor did anyone expect him to be). He recognized that his strengths in “managing others” and “creating vision” would be key contributing factors to his success in his role. By focusing on his contributions, James grew more confident that he could accomplish some of the challenges ahead.

Faith: It is not by chance that the Latin root of the word confidence is “con fide” which translates into “with faith”. Ultimately, faith is a belief in the unseen. Leaders are called to create vision and change for the future out of uncertainty – fundamentally, they operate on a level of faith that gives purpose and strength to the path that they carve out for their organizations. James’s fear of failing obstructed his ability to step out on the faith he needed to believe he could succeed in this role despite the newness of it all. By shifting his attention to the excitement of building, creating and leading something new, he tapped into a deeper purpose for his role beyond his own day-to- day successes and challenges. His confidence in the future gave him the ability to accept his place as Vice President and make the impact that he had been asked to make.

Confidence is a constant practice of building – especially as one’s circumstance change. By tapping into a blend of Facts, Focus and Faith, you can continuously strengthen your confidence to prepare you for the next level. And when that next challenge comes your way, do not be surprised that others remark, “You are so confident – – how do you do it?”

Reflection Questions:

  1. Think of a particular challenging situation or circumstances in which you lack confidence. What fear is obstructing your confidence in this situation?
  2. What facts do you have from your past, which show how you have overcome similar, albeit, not the identical challenges?
  3. What can your strengths contribute to working through the situation?
  4. What will you need to believe, even though it does not yet exist or you cannot see it (faith),to make you feel more confident about the situation?

– Muriel Maignan Wilkins

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