Two studies on “Leading Yourself and Leading Others,” one of 447 professionals with leadership experience and another of 35 leaders and 151 followers, found that the notion of effectively leading others is associated with first effectively leading oneself.3 If we are to lead the room, we need to lead ourselves. The findings were consistent regardless of the participants’ sex, age, and even leadership experience. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been a leader for decades or you’re new to leading the room. Self-leadership matters. Self-leadership can be thought of as the process by which we influence ourselves.4 It includes behavioral, motivational, and cognitive dimensions.
The researchers found that self-leadership was positively associated with active styles of leading (transactional and transformational leadership) and negatively associated with passive styles of leadership (laissez-faire leadership). Transactional leadership refers to exchange processes between leaders and followers. Transformational leaders also look to further develop their followers. A transformational leader establishes high standards and goals; gives meaning, purpose, and direction to followers and their work; leads followers with enthusiasm, inspiration, charisma, motivations, and emotions; and creates an atmosphere of intrinsic motivation. Laissez-faire leadership, however, indicates a lack of active leadership and thus is regarded as a passive and ineffective leadership style in which leading followers is avoided or practically nonexistent.5 People who engage more in self-leadership are more likely to lead others in positive, active ways. Your self-leadership influences the way in which other people regard you as a leader.
Self-leadership can impact not just how you’re seen, but also what you get done. German and Swiss researchers, in a study of forty teams with a total of 310 members, found that self-leadership is positively related to our individual performance.6 A recent Norwegian study found that self-leadership influences work effort and creativity, and Austrian researchers identified a positive link between self-leadership and “expressivity”: those people higher in self-leadership were stronger in terms of their ability to express themselves and thereby influence others.7, 8 Self-leadership enables us to bring integrity to our intentions for making a significant contribution through our abilities, ideas, and outcomes.
It’s easy to spend all our time reacting to others’ requests (whether a boss’s, team’s, client’s, or peer’s), but in constantly giving out, we can end up giving less. In the same way that we’re able to be better leaders, colleagues, employees, friends, partners, and parents when we’re physically healthy, we’re able to give more to others and therefore have more authentic gravitas when we’re mentally healthy with good habits. In this chapter, we’ll look at how those with authentic gravitas lead themselves—proactively driving their own personal growth and development—and how to do this effectively and sustainably. They are intentional, choose courageous behaviors, and are disciplined in following through on the choices they’ve made, evaluating the impact of their new actions, and continually adjusting to align their outcome with their intentions.
A ROUTINE OF EXCEPTIONS
As much as we may be trying to excel, we often get to the end of the day feeling anything but excellent. Without realizing it, we can get stuck in a Routine of Exceptions (“It’s because today . . . ”), and day after day, year after year, we fail to personally change to accomplish our ambitions and meet our potential.
It’s often the small, daily choices that, over the years, shape who we are and whether we are able to make a positive, meaningful, and lasting impact on others. The somewhat glamorous notion of gravitas is realized in the unglamorous reality of self-discipline. People who are disciplined and effective at self-leadership engage in self-regulation—they proactively direct their thoughts, feelings, and actions to achieve established goals.9 But it’s more than merely setting goals. Interdisciplinary research across educational, psychological, social, and organizational studies reveals the complexity of effective self-regulation. Factors that come into play include our affect, cognition, behavior, context, and the reality of multiple, and at times competing, goals. We can succumb to a self-generated myth that to have gravitas we “need to do more.” Over the course of twenty years of teaching leaders, I’ve seen how easy it is to focus on our output—how we lead, influence, produce, manage, and drive change. But to be better leaders, we equally need to focus on our input—nurturing our own abilities, whether that’s by staying up to date on industry news or taking courses to improve our skill set. Only then can we continue to see greater value in our output.
The people others describe as having authentic gravitas have new ideas and a fresh approach, actively driving change. To be such a person, here are six factors to build into your life:
Space for “Thought Leadership”
Clarity Around Your Game Plan
Being Curious through the Busyness
Commuting Well
Being a Target of Influence
Choosing Wisdom
“IT’S JUST ME AND THE ROAD”: THE PRECIOUS, LOST ART OF THINKING
As professionals advance into roles with greater responsibility, they increasingly have so many demands on their time that it’s easy to slip into the habit of not doing one of the main things they were recruited or promoted to do: think. Caught up in tasks, emails, endless meetings, supervision, and conference calls (all of which are important), it’s easy to lose sight of thinking, the precursor to all these. We give more in time, data, and content, but we can end up giving less in quality and impact—less than we have the potential to give. This is not just less for our business and our field, but less for the people around us. We need to develop sustainable thought leadership practices.
We all need to purposefully carve out headspace, wherever that is. But it’s not enough—it must be the prequel to action and change. I do need time and space to focus on myself because authentic gravitas doesn’t start with my interaction with others, it starts long before those encounters, with just me. There are two forms of headspace we need to intentionally build in: free-flow thinking and thought leadership windows.
The Top of the Red Bus
For me, it can be hard to find space to think in London. But respite from the busyness can come in the most random places. Years ago, after traveling from my home in southwest London into the center of town one day, I realized I had made a major breakthrough in my doctoral research. I had also come up with some good ideas for my work with a colleague. I had just let my mind wander on the bus and now my brain was buzzing. Had I eaten something different for breakfast? Slept particularly well? The difference, I noted, was having freedom to simply think—upstairs, in the front window seat of a red double-decker bus. Since then, many a time I have gone for a bus ride—up top, at the front—just to have some headspace. I ride around London whenever I get the chance, thinking. As I look down at the buildings, parks, and people we’re passing by, my mind tends to wander between random thoughts about what I’m seeing and ideas or reflections about colleagues, things I’ve read, goals I’m working on, challenges I’m facing. To me, the red bus now strangely symbolizes being intentional and resolute about the importance of carving out headspace.
I recognize this red bus experience to be free-flow thinking, and there is much evidence of its powerful effects. One study led by David Creswell at Carnegie Mellon University highlighted the role of unconscious thinking in decision-making.10 He and the research team looked at how the brain operates when faced with a challenge—in this case an imaginary car purchase with multiple factors to take into consideration. They found that better decisions were made by people who were distracted by other tasks. These people had time to engage in unconscious thought, and they outperformed people who were asked to make an immediate choice as well as those who had some time to consciously think about their decision. A friend, fellow psychologist, and mentor challenged me when I felt I wasn’t making much progress
in my thinking about work. When I explained to him how I felt stuck, like I was just running around getting stuff done but not really significantly moving things forward, I thought he’d suggest I was overloaded and needed to drop some activities. That’s often people’s response. But (thankfully) he rarely follows the norm. He advised me to decide on one thing I want to move forward and then park it in the back of my brain while I’m doing other stuff—when I’m dropping my kids off at school, shopping, out with friends, traveling. He said to just have one thing I’m not thinking about that gets a special parking space in the back of my mind. Sure enough, once I followed his advice, I made some major breakthroughs, and once again felt I was adding significant value above and beyond the daily “stuff.”
Your Personal Thought Leadership Window
We need to think strategically (or strategically not think, so to speak) through the busyness. But we also need time to step away from the busyness and think in a more focused way—regularly. This might sound great but in reality it’s hard to step away from the to-do list, whether it’s written neatly in one place or a flurry of thoughts churning around in our head. It’s hard to stand still, even if we know that we should. Israeli researchers conducted a study of 286 soccer penalty kicks in top leagues and championships worldwide.11 The results, published in the Journal of Economic Psychology, suggest that given the probability distribution of kick direction, the optimal strategy for goalkeepers is to stay in the goal’s center. The researchers noted, however, that goalkeepers almost always jump right or left, highlighting that the goalie will feel worse if the other team scores after inaction (staying in the center) than if the other team scores after action (jumping). They argue that this action/omission bias has implications far beyond soccer. It’s not only on the field that jumping is the norm. We need to fight our learned professional habits of constantly moving and sometimes just be still. This is another form of headspace we need to proactively build in to be able to give our best.
An activity I advocate to all clients involves scheduling a regular personal “thought leadership window.” First, you commit to spending at least one and a half to two hours at the start of the month on personal strategic thinking—a window of time for you to just think. Then, at the start of each week through the rest of the month, you put aside forty-five minutes to an hour. These windows are time to think about your larger goals (your personal career goals and/or your goals for the area of business you’re responsible for) and how they’re progressing; to reevaluate your strategy for achieving them and what you currently spend most of your time on, and reprioritize if necessary, shifting or refocusing the direction of where and how you spend your energy. It’s different from thinking about what tasks you need to get done on a daily basis. It’s time for thinking strategically about the areas you are responsible for and the people you have the opportunity to influence. This sounds like professional common sense. It sounds too easy. But in the quiet confidence shared during thousands of executive coaching hours, less than 5 percent of my clients were doing this before we met. Not all keep it up perfectly, but the majority have adopted this as part of their professional routine and have experienced firsthand the positive difference it makes in their ability to contribute in a noteworthy way when they are with others. People around them have offered unsolicited feedback about the difference they see in them, unaware that they have had any professional coaching or development. They are not just thinking clearly and being more strategic, they know they are better than their former professional self. And with that, they add substantively more value. Some people feel that it’s something they would like to do with their team. Strategic thinking time with the team is vital, but as we all play a unique role, it doesn’t replace the need for our own personal thought leadership window.
In the movie What Women Want, Mel Gibson’s and Helen Hunt’s characters pitch a Nike advertisement showing a woman running. When brainstorming the idea, Darcy Maguire (Hunt) imagines this woman’s experience: “She’s running, it’s early, it’s quiet, just the sound of her feet on the asphalt . . . She likes to run alone; no pressure, no stress. This is the one place she can be herself . . . She can think any way she wants. No game playing; no rules.” As a working mom of three busy little kids, I can certainly relate. When I’m running, I often turn the first corner, exhale, smile, and think, It’s just me and the road, and off I go. But that’s only once I’m back in the habit. Over the years, I’ve often gotten out of the habit of running. And when I start up again, I’m certainly not smiling. If I’m honest, I’m just thinking, Keep going, don’t die; keep going, don’t die . . . I hate running when I first start again after some time away from it. But if I can just get through the first few weeks of making it a priority, in a fairly short time I love it. I’m able to run a distance I’m happy with and enjoy it. Not to mention that it’s the one window in my day when nobody is asking anything of me. I’m in love again with my running window and annoyed if I can’t have it. It’s just me and the road.
Creating a personal thought leadership window habit is like starting to run again. At first it can seem impossible and a pain. There is so much to get done; work is already busy enough—carving out peaceful, personal time just to think seems like a luxury you don’t have time for. But actually, it’s a necessity you can’t afford not to have. So if you can see the potential benefit, choose it and put it in your calendar (not ten minutes here and there, but substantial time at least once a month).
Carving out this time for thinking offers you a regular window to check in and, if necessary, realign yourself with your goals for how you show up. To be intentional, reflect on what kind of professional or leader you want to be, and assess if your intention is aligning with your impact. Of course, we can consider this at any time, but it’s difficult to remember to do it in the busyness of daily working life. Top of your agenda for this meeting with yourself can be checking if you’re showing up in the way that you wanted to. The ideal is to have a substantial monthly window, as well as the shorter weekly one, but even if you can’t make this work as regularly as you’d like, it’s always worthwhile. And just like Nick Marshall (Gibson) notes, “You can call on the road whenever you feel like it. Whether it’s been a day, or even a couple of hours since your last date, the only thing the road cares about is that you pay it a visit once in a while.”
YOUR GRAVITAS GAME PLAN
Through regular thought leadership windows, we can set ourselves up well to achieve our broader goals, but how do we maintain gravitas through the day-to-day pressures? Let’s take a look at how one client, Juan, made choices to increase the value of his contributions through his challenging career on a daily basis.
The Pregame
Juan is a smart, high performer in a corporate real estate team. He feels well equipped to keep up with the demanding role and his busy schedule. In working with leaders across many departments of the global corporation, Juan prides himself on building strong working relationships, meeting deadlines, and setting high expectations for himself. His energy and can-do attitude make him well-regarded by the business’s leaders. Yet one thing is holding him back from consistently showing up with authentic gravitas: his pregame. Juan rushes from one meeting to the next. Perhaps overrelying on his ability to connect with the business’s leaders, he bursts into internal meetings with a smile, puts the last meeting behind him, and gives his colleagues his full attention. But through coaching conversations, Juan came to realize he wasn’t giving his best. While he would prepare extensively for external meetings with clients and suppliers, he failed to give the same consideration to his internal colleagues, even the most senior. He saw internal meetings as more relaxed and informal, which they were, but he recognized this didn’t mean they were less important. Juan realized on reflection that his colleagues represented perhaps the most important professional relationships he had.
We introduced a ten-minute pregame into his meeting routine. Juan decided to carve
out ten minutes before any planned meeting in the office where an important project or topic would be discussed. He wouldn’t use this time to prepare notes or reports (these would already be done). He certainly wouldn’t use it to get on top of emails between meetings. He would use it to think about what he thought of the topic at hand. He would shift his mental attention to the upcoming issues and clarify his thinking. This enabled him to go into meetings with a grounded, clear opinion. His colleagues may not agree with his opinion, and he was certainly open to being convinced of alternatives. But from the moment Juan committed to his pregame, he noticed a tangible difference in his ability to contribute ideas and thought leadership to the meeting. He shifted from being just a positive, on-the-spot contributor to someone who added greater value. How he behaved before the meeting shaped his contribution during the meeting.
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