InGauge Coaching

Influences of Leadership - Part 4

If I were asked to pick just 4 influences of leadership, 4 areas that could signal high potential or warn of real danger, I would pick strength, motivation, individuation, and differentiation.

Yesterday I posted on Individuation so today’s final post is about Differentiation.

Differentiation is an area where healthy leadership is functions mindfully present establishing and maintaining a calm non-anxious presence.

Differentiated people learn to recognize reactivity within themselves, which we call mindfulness. Being mindful of our own reactivity can reduce the volume of our reactivity and push us toward responsiveness. Add skills for appropriately processing and expressing that reactivity and our health level increases exponentially.

Reactivity = instinctive extreme reactions of self-defense, think Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn.

Reactivity isn’t a signal that something in us is broken. Reactivity is an alert to the presence of an unaddressed wound.

Responsiveness = mindful, present, calm, non-anxious intentional responses of self-awareness.

The power in moving from reactivity to responsiveness is fourfold…
1. Slows or stops the highly contagious spread of anxiety in the organization.
2. Signals to the organization, leadership is caring for its own wounds.
3. Orients the larger organization toward identifying and healing individual wounds.
4. Cultivates a non-anxious eco-system throughout the organization.

I found this Ted video featuring Liz Fosslien very helpful. In the short video Liz Fosslien explains the importance of learning selective vulnerability when processing emotions in the workplace.

I'm a skills based coach because I believe the value simple strategies like these can bring to the lives of our individual teammates and overall organization is beyond anything we have imagined.

https://lnkd.in/eVkyY65C

How to embrace emotions at work | The Way We Work, a TED series "You can't just flip a switch when you step into the office and turn your emotions off. Feeling feelings is part of being human," says author and illustrator...

Influences of Leadership Part 3

If I was asked to pick just 4 influences of leadership, 4 areas that could signal high potential or warn of real danger, I would pick strength, motivation, individuation, and differentiation.

Yesterday I posted on Motivation so today’s post is about Individuation.

Individuation is the area where we begin to understand our self apart from the work titles & labeled responsibilities; what others say about us.

Healthy individuation will serve to separate what is said, believed, assumed, or expected of us from what is true within us. Individuated leaders build (ongoing journey, not a destination) capacity to remain true to their values (identity).

Individuated leaders parse between what is someone else’s and what is theirs. They tease apart group think from what is true in them.

To be clear, individuation isn't the same as being contrarian or oppositional. There is a clear difference between someone living true to their values (true self) and a values system (false self).

System living falls into the category of reputation, it is defined by the ideas, opinions, needs, and wants of others with no relationship to my internal values. Systems demand allegiance even when those demands run in opposition to the values of the individual.

Values living doesn't demand any religious type allegiance, just integrity. This way of living frees the leader to make decisions congruent with their values without deploying oppositional defiance or contrarianism.

Identity is who we are in accordance with our values.
Reputation is who others say we are in accordance with their values.

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Influences of Leadership Part 2

If I was asked to pick just 4 influences of leadership, 4 areas that could signal high potential or warn of real danger, I would pick strength, motivation, individuation, and differentiation.

Yesterday I posted on Strength so today’s post is about motivation.

Motivation is an that becomes unhealthy when we give ourselves over to extremism.

Extremism manifests itself in self-centeredness that grows into narcissism or in self-lostness that morphs into enmeshment.

In each expression the self is either over or under emphasized.

Healthy motivation maintains a balance between the me and we.

Healthy motivation for self allows for self-care & self-success without surrending capacity for empathy, compassion, or concern for others.

Healthy motivation for a collective is able to adapt to, sacrifice for/ with, and support others without losing individual identity or surrendering physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual safety someone else.

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If I was asked to pick just 4 influences of leadership, 4 areas that could signal high potential or warn of real danger, I would pick strength, motivation, individuation, and differentiation.

Strength in this sense is not the typical are we strong or weak binary but rather how do we use the strength(s) we have.

Leaders that rely solely on skill-based strengths have limited agility. Whereas leaders who gravitate toward courageous strength have tremendous leadership agility.

The difference really is how we, as leaders, navigate our weaknesses.

Do we turn to what we know and stop there or can we courageously step outside of ourselves and ask for help?

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15 management rules to learn by…

First, I use the word rules loosely, what I think of them as are guidelines.

Second, I say learn instead of live intentionally. Nothing is certain. Element of our leadership and managerial styles have to change when we encounter information that is new to us.

. . . . . . . .

The opportunity to manage diverse people, with ethnic, language, & cultural difference demands agility, openness, & humility.

How would these “rules” play out in your workplace?

15 management rules to learn by…

First, I use the word rules loosely, what I think of them as are guidelines.

Second, I say learn instead of live intentionally. Nothing is certain. Element of our leadership and managerial styles have to change when we encounter information that is new to us.

. . . . . . . .

The opportunity to manage diverse people, with ethnic, language, & cultural difference demands agility, openness, & humility.

How would these “rules” play out in your workplace?

I think this is the part so many people get hung up on. I highly recommend Chuck DeGroat and Steve Cuss work. I’ve benefitted from it obscenely over the past year and a half.

As a matter of fact, I confess I’m not sure what the experience of a brutal case of Covid-19 and the subsequent devastating 11 months of Covid Long-hauler syndrome would have done to me without their work.

Here are my 2 cents:

I’m not sure a person can fully grasp empathy without differentiation.

It is the ability to be together as a body and remain an individual in our body that nourishes a deep capacity for empathy.

The practice of silence & solitude I find to be miracle-gro for growing in differentiation.

Silence is not a metaphor for ignoring or rejecting others or reality.

Solitude is not a metaphor for isolation, detachment, or disassociation from our world or environment.

Silence is the practice of becoming differentiated from the noise around us and within us.

Solitude is a practice of becoming differentiated from the activity around us and within us.

I would encourage you to follow both Chuck DeGroat] & Steve Cuss]

How do you handle emotions?

Are you more reactive or responsive? Auto-pilot or Intentional?

Where do you numb?
Where do you distract?
Where do you attune?

Before we can redirect our reactions or responses we have to understand them.

Emotions do not equal weakness.
Emotions do not define us.
Emotions do not prescribe our actions.

We can say we aren't emotional just like we can say we aren't intellectual or instinctual. We can say anything we want but that doesn't make it real.

We are human emotional, intellectual, and instinctual beings.
We are what we value; nothing more, nothing less.
We choose each moment to live with intention or on auto-pilot.

By noticing when and where I numb, distract, or attune I mindfully create space to live more self-aware.

Where, when, or with whom do numb, distract, or attune?
What emotion words come to mind when I see the faces of each emoticon?

Am I living a large portion of my life in the red?

What are your unwritten rules?

The question isn’t do you have them. We all have them.

The question is do you know what they are?

What are the unwritten rules that rule your life? Do you believe in them? Are they good for you?

I coach people to name them and decide for themselves.

If it’s good, name it and own it.

If we won’t name it and own it, how can it be good?

What are your unwritten rules?

The question isn’t do you have them. We all have them.

The question is do you know what they are?

What are the unwritten rules that rule your life? Do you believe in them? Are they good for you?

I coach people to name them and decide for themselves.

If it’s good, name it and own it.

If we won’t name it and own it, how can it be good?