Authentic Gravitas
Page 15
I asked Emma to think about the difference between what she’d be like as a professional in four or five years if she built these simple practices into her life, compared to if she didn’t. Her look said it all. Emma believed these practices would significantly increase her ability to contribute powerful insights. And we hadn’t even begun to look at the time she actually spent at work. Work-related prospection, reflection, and “brain food” are not urgent needs, and rarely is anyone asking you to do them, but they are important. Emma was surprised to learn that the seemingly intangible, inaccessible quality of gravitas could be strengthened by being intentional and disciplined in just a few small, practical ways.
INSPIRING GREATNESS: LESSONS FROM THE BASEBALL HALL OF FAME
By committing to growing continuously, we are better positioned to lead the room—to be an agent of influence. However, we are even better positioned to lead the room when we are also committed to being a target of influence. To do this requires being intentional, courageous, and disciplined.
Research looking at inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame, published in the Academy of Management Journal, highlights the importance of being a target of influence. Induction into the Hall of Fame is the highest honor an MLB player can receive. The researchers looked specifically at first-ballot inductees (those athletes selected in their first year of eligibility). They wanted to know who contributed to these inductees’ success and how. The research team examined induction speeches to identify which developers (communities through which people draw their career support) and what kind of support mattered most to career achievement.16
This study is interesting in our discussion of authentic gravitas because the researchers defined extraordinary achievement as career-spanning (not just one-off but lasting) excellence, built on objective performance, and consensually conferred (recognized by others in the same industry and profession), showcasing an individual’s meaningful contribution to the field.
The researchers found that those with the highest levels of extraordinary career achievement recognized a broader range of developers across and within career communities. They found that these players didn’t just have greater career support, but that it was complementary (the support they received from one person would complement the support they received from another). The researchers also found that the players received psychosocial support that went far beyond skills development. The highest achievers had developers from numerous “core” communities: professional (peers, managers, and coaches), family and friends, and, interestingly, a virtual community. The athletes with extraordinary career success didn’t have direct access to everyone—they engaged indirectly with virtual developers: heroes or idols whose support was unidirectional (developer to protégé) and was gained by watching them on television or hearing them speak. We must go beyond the norm of our direct managers and peers—because people don’t need to be in our game to change our game.
From the findings, the researchers propose that the more exposure one can get to developmental relationships with people from a wide range of communities, including complementary and psychosocial support, the greater the level of extraordinary career achievement.
It’s up to us to be intentional about whom we want to influence us, not just whom we want to influence. Who impacts your development now? Who would complement that development? We need to go beyond learning from the people immediately around us and intentionally expand our networks, inviting a broader, more diverse group of people to offer input on our professional lives—the way we work, the way we interact, the way we grow. We need courage to ask people to mentor us, and we need discipline to seek out and make time to engage virtually with those whom we can’t access directly. Our developmental networks need to be broad—to be both in, and to go far beyond, our immediate teams and organizations.
The people who add significant value in their field are committed to not only being an agent of influence, but also a target of (considered and intentional) influence in and beyond their field.
ON BEING WISE
By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the bitterest.
—Confucius
While being a target of influence can be difficult in practice because it requires taking time out of our schedule, finding the right influencers, and broadening our network, it is far from a new concept. Aristotle advocated a long-term affiliation with a mentor who was known to have exemplary character and to exhibit good judgment and action. A potential benefit of this mentorship could be an increase in practical wisdom. He argued that only individuals with good character could acquire excellence in practical wisdom, but that both good character and practical wisdom could be trained.17
Why does this matter in our context? One of the common themes emerging from the research on authentic gravitas is wisdom. Example reports of people described by others as having a high degree of gravitas include, “I really admire how wise she is,” and “He seems to have wisdom beyond his years.” So if wisdom is a key component of gravitas, a noteworthy question is, how can we develop wisdom? While some consider wisdom to be a fairly stable individual trait, there is evidence that it can be developed.
Traditionally discussed in the realms of philosophy and religion, wisdom is increasingly becoming a topic of interest in management and professional development circles. Some researchers broadly define wisdom as the flexible and appropriate application of pragmatic reasoning to the challenges of social life.18 This would include the challenges within the social context of our professional lives. Much of the research into wisdom has used the Berlin Wisdom Model, characterizing wisdom in terms of competence—a system of expert knowledge regarding fundamental life domains.19 An alternative approach looks at three characteristics of wisdom: cognitive, reflective, and affective.20 One executive described people with high levels of gravitas as demonstrating wisdom by creating genuine connection with other people, showing a strong understanding of the interpersonal. The cognitive dimension of wisdom goes beyond just acquiring facts, to being motivated to attain a deep understanding of life (particularly intrapersonal and interpersonal matters) and human nature (including awareness of our inherent limitations, such as the fallibility of human knowledge and the unpredictability of life circumstances).
The reflective dimension of wisdom refers to the willingness and ability to invest in self-examination and to look at things from various perspectives. So what matters is not just whether we have the skills to engage in reflection (which we can acquire), but whether we’re prepared to do the work. A Dutch study of over seven thousand people examined the relationship between wisdom and happiness and found a moderate positive relationship between the two (regardless of sex and age). The researchers noted that reflectivity tends to reduce self-centeredness, which in turn leads to a deeper understanding of one’s own motives and behavior and others’. This, they note, is likely to result in greater sympathetic and compassionate love for others.21 This takes us on to the affective dimension.
The affective dimension of wisdom is concerned with acceptance of, and sympathy for, others, together with a compassionate motivation toward helping and general positivity. A German study of over three hundred people found that wisdom-related knowledge is positively associated not only with valuing personal growth and life insight, but also prioritizing the well-being of others.22 This others-focused component of wisdom relates not only to the people immediately around us, but also to wider society. Ikujiro Nonaka, professor emeritus at Hitotsubashi University in Japan, and Hirotaka Takeuchi at Harvard Business School appeal for leaders who consider what is good, right, and just for society, arguing that wise leaders practice moral discernment about what’s good and act on it in every situation.23
Being wise is about far more than what we know and how we reason. In a review of the neurobiology of wisdom, researchers at the Un
iversity of California, San Diego, identify that there is partial overlap in the brain regions linked to the subcomponents of wisdom, and discuss several important characteristics that differentiate wisdom from intelligence and reasoning. They note that wisdom includes domains such as the practical application of knowledge, the use of knowledge for the common social good, and integration of affect and knowledge.24
Interestingly, wisdom is often defined in terms of a motivation—being motivated to acquire a deep understanding, to reflect, and to give consideration and have concern for others and the wider social good.25 So perhaps more important than asking ourselves if we have these abilities and behaviors is the question of whether we want them. Whether we’re choosing to pursue them. It’s about what we’re interested in knowing, and how we go about building and making sense of that knowledge through exploration and reflection—mindful of our own limitations and the uncertainties and reality of change, and intentional with having a positive impact on those around us at an individual and wider societal level.
Wisdom can be developed. In addition to being a target of influence, taking into account changing contexts, and seeking to have a positive impact on others, here are a few complementary suggestions that studies indicate may be practical ways to develop wisdom:
1. Practice mind-stretching routines. Nonaka and Takeuchi recommend that to cultivate the ability to grasp the true essence of a problem, people should engage in three routines that anyone, regardless of their organizational position, can do.26 The three routines are relentlessly asking what the basis of a problem or situation is; learning to see the trees and the forest at the same time; and continually constructing and testing hypotheses. They offer the example of employees of 7-Eleven stores across Japan personally making decisions on what to order by generating hypotheses about what customers will want, based on the current environment and changing factors in their particular context. Although many of us feel that we regularly generate ideas about why things happen, choosing to construct hypotheses and test them may be a next level of discipline that stretches us and leads to increased practical wisdom.
2. Choose intellectual humility. Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Canada found that people endorse wise reasoning strategies as more useful for resolving other people’s social conflicts than for resolving their own. 27 This is Solomon’s Paradox: we can be “wiser” when reflecting on other people’s problems than our own. Conflicts that are personal to us can stand in the way of our employing wise reasoning, as we’re likely to be immersed in our own perspectives and emotions. We might think, I rarely have conflict. Conflict, however, can be defined merely as a situation where our wishes differ from the wishes of others—a frequent reality in organizational life where even internally, we often have competing priorities within the broader collective goals. Various researchers discuss the value of intellectual humility—that is, recognizing the limits of our own knowledge, or realizing that our perspective alone may be insufficient to understand our social conflict. Rather than posturing as the one who has all the answers and is objective regardless of the situation (because let’s face it, we often think we’re being objective and others are being subjective), it seems that when it comes to wisdom, a little humility can go a long way.
3. Develop wise habits. Given what we know of wisdom, rather than seeing it as fixed, we should regard it as fluid, as something we can influence. In different circumstances, we may demonstrate more wisdom or less. While there is some evidence that the dimensions of wisdom are linked to traits that are dispositional and fairly stable over time, the reality that it can be developed means we can influence the extent to which we engage in behaviors associated with wisdom. It may be the case that we need to intentionally introduce the discipline to follow through on what we know of practical wisdom. For example, in a meeting, rather than rushing through the agenda, we can ensure we are engaging in three practices when it comes to issues of importance: seeking a deep understanding—not only of the facts and options, but also being mindful of uncertainty, change, and the interpersonal dynamics contributing to that situation; being self-reflective, considering our own role and influence in the situation; and considering the impact of various options on the well-being of others, and figuring out what is positive, right, and just for those in our wider sphere of influence.
By intentionally choosing these behaviors, having the courage to try out new ways of working and interacting, and committing to the discipline not only of adopting new behaviors but seeking feedback to check if our intention is aligned with our impact, we may increase the extent to which we demonstrate wisdom. It’s one thing to be consistent with the new behaviors (be they simple or significant alterations to the way we act) when things are going well and as expected. But what happens when things are stressful or difficult? Research suggests a relationship between wisdom and coping. In one study, conducted over an eleven-year period with 615 participants who had been in military service, researchers looked at whether combat exposure and the perception of benefits from military service were associated with greater wisdom later in life.28 They found that age was not related to wisdom, nor was it directly predicted by experiencing the extreme stress of combat exposure. Wisdom was predicted, however, by the way in which people looked back on those experiences. The researchers argued that how one interprets experience may be more important for positive experience later in life than the experience of trauma. The ways in which the respondents coped with adversity and developed a broader perspective (their perception of the effects of combat exposure) were positively related to transcendent wisdom. It is not necessarily what happens to us, but how we face, cope with, and reflect on challenges that makes the difference when it comes to growing in wisdom.
Just as wisdom has been positively associated with coping under stress, my research findings suggest that just how authentic our gravitas really is can be seen in the moments and seasons when things are hard. Whether it’s intrapersonal or interpersonal stress (at work or elsewhere); challenges with our team, organization, clients, or suppliers; disappointing outcomes or a difficult period in the market in general—how we behave in these moments is likely to shape the extent to which others consider us to have truly authentic gravitas. What matters is not just how we show up when things are going well; how we learn to show up as we intend to, demonstrating authentic gravitas in the midst of adversity, is perhaps of even greater significance. We look at this next in chapter 6.
PRACTICES FOR SELF-LEADERSHIP
The key to effective self-leadership is regularly self-assessing and making tweaks to behavior along the way. We never “arrive” at self-leading. We can slip out of good habits and back into unintentional ones. The following points are offered as a quick checklist that you might want to look at once a quarter.
Remember that in order to lead the room effectively, you must commit to leading yourself.
Check if you’re caught in any Routines of Exceptions (“I can’t today because . . . ,” which becomes a daily excuse). Hold yourself accountable if you find yourself making excuses, and be realistic about what you can achieve and intentional about following through on goals that are important to you.
Build in and maintain your Personal Thought Leadership Window.
Check your pregame. Are you rushing between meetings without building in even a little time to think before each important encounter? Are you following the Reactive Rule and planning only the percentage of time you actually have control over in a day, or are you filling up 100 percent of your schedule as if others won’t make demands on your time? Push the goalposts out—if people need your input sooner, they’ll ask; free up time to move quickly on priority items.
Choose to be curious. We’re wired for curiosity, but sometimes we overlook it in the busyness of each day. Create meaningful windows in your schedule for things that are not urgent but are important to you. Stay on top of you
r industry developments and keep learning—even when nobody is watching.
How’s your commute? Are you using it in the best way possible with prospection (thinking about your workday ahead and making plans about tasks and goals)—or is it often spent on social media and getting a head start on emails? On the way home, remember that reflection has an impact on performance beyond just getting more done. Spend just fifteen minutes at the end of the day to articulate and assess your experiences and learning that day.
Join your own industry’s equivalent of the Baseball Hall of Fame by intentionally becoming both an agent and target of influence. Actively keep building a broad, diverse network of people you choose to influence you professionally.
Choose wisdom! Beyond self-reflection, wisdom is linked to consideration of others’ well-being, looking for a deeper understanding of the situations and contexts we’re in, and choosing intellectual humility—recognizing our need for others’ input, particularly when it comes to our own challenges.
SIX
GRAVITAS IN THE DARK
Taking On Your Gremlins
A coaching client described to me how he felt he had “lost his swagger.” He certainly didn’t mean he used to come across as arrogant or self-important, but he felt he had lost confidence—he felt “knocked down.” Not only had this impacted how he felt, but how he interacted at work and, to some degree, literally how he walked. Jackson was the COO of a start-up in California, and having played a major and challenging role in getting the business to an established, successful place, he was now feeling gradually pushed away by the CEO. He was feeling silently and increasingly rejected. Research using fMRI studies demonstrates that not only does social rejection activate the same parts of the brain as physical pain, but suggests that rejection may even lead to various physical pain disorders.1 For Jackson, his metaphorically slumped shoulders were starting to take their toll and manifest in actual behavior. He was beginning to question himself, his skills, and his ability to take the business forward, and it wasn’t just painful for him—many who knew him well could see a physical change. Jackson, despite his self-described naturally optimistic nature, felt deflated and defeated. He wanted to “get his swagger back.”