Prepare Your Leadership: Versatile Leadership

Hi everyone. Happy Monday, July 14th. I hope you had a good weekend and have something to look forward to. Be excited for this week. Coming up we'll jump into the three things of three and then we'll jump into the idea of versatile leadership, leadership versatility and explain what that's all about. So kind of just to get started, I'm Matt Tappe, IO psychology practitioner working in leadership development with the main focus on self leadership development and really building leaders who lead themselves effectively first before they they are in charge of an entire organization.

And I really find this to be applicable to everyone in all situations, whether you're leading an organization or just leading yourself in self leadership. So we'll start with the three things of three. The first list of three is what are three things that you experience right now? Experiencing right now? Could be feelings, could be sensations, could be, you know, just a hunger, or maybe you're warm or maybe you're, you're carrying something from the weekend, maybe some sadness or joy. So what are three things that you're carrying with you right now?

Moods, feelings or sensations right now? And then what are three intentions that you have for the rest of the day? So now we set our awareness. Where are we at right now? And then where are we going to? Our intentions are where are we going to? So do we want to show up a certain way this afternoon? Maybe we have a big meeting or maybe showing up a certain way for your family, maybe it's just you want to eat something or maybe just you want to go for a walk. Now what are three intentions that you have for the rest of the day?

Hi Nikki, Welcome. Thank you for for joining. We're just setting our second list of our three things of three. We just went through our what are we experiencing? And now we're talking about what of our what are our intentions? What do we want to accomplish today? And that could be to do lists or just showing up a certain way. What are our intentions for the rest of the day? Then the last are what is three things that you're grateful for? Could be from the past weekend, could be going forward, could be from this morning.

What are three things that you were grateful for? So I'll kind of let you think about that and I'll jump into my topic today of versatile leadership. So I just finished reading the book of leadership Versatility by a consultant and researcher out in, I believe it's out in North Carolina on the east coast named Robert Kaiser and Robert Kaplan. I think Robert Kaiser now leads this type of work. But it's all about being versatile in different situations as a leader. So we often hear about using your strengths and using those to your advantage.

But oftentimes our strengths can also be our weakness. There's new research in personality that shows our highest personality scores, our extreme personality scores that are really high can actually be the derailers in the workplace. So things like extremely high extroversion, you know, this may lead people to take over conversation, or extremely low agreeableness might be. You might be defensive, you know, and then high agreeableness, this would be, you know, you might need full consensus of the whole office before you go get donuts.

So we often hear about playing to our strengths, which has beneficial aspects, and you can look to Gallup for all that. But then it's also, you have to be aware of those strengths. And, you know, it can be damaging if you're unaware of how that might be used in excess, you know. And this stems from a lot of rating scales on performance management, like performance evaluations. You get rated on 1 to 5, and you look at what am I doing well and what am I not doing enough of or doing well enough? Or in high school, you get graded on, you know, F to A.

And so if you get an A, that means you're doing well. And if you're below that, it means you need to do better. Personality tests are the same way. Where you might see a personality trait like extroversion or, you know, emotional stability, and you might be low on that and you might see that as a bad score when in fact on a lot of those things, finding a middle ground, especially in personality, can actually lead to the most effective use. So it's the ability to demonstrate both and not just want to be more and more of something, but find out what is the correct level.

So versatility is all about the ability to tune as needed from side to side and to the opposing leadership virtues. This means that even if you have the tendency to be more strategic and be big vision, it's being able to take a moment and look at what do we need to do to get there. So it's acknowledging the operational side as well. So while it's important to look at our deficiencies, which we often get taught is how can you get better? Where do you need to improve? It's also to look at what do we do in excess.

So being in the weeds about details, as a middle manager, they might help you, as a middle manager is really being able to plan, but that's not going to get you to be the senior Leadership who can also be big, strategic and visionary and help you move up to the executive level. Being forceful may make it seem like you're a good leader and make others perceive you as a leader in that group. But sooner or later you know that team's going to get sick of you and you're going to get booted off the island.

So versatility looks at leadership and it's broken down into two different spectrums. So strategic, big picture thinking and operational. What's the plan for the day to day? And then there's forceful, which is being decisive, making decisions, telling people what to do. And then there's enabling, which is more that empathy, consideration, asking good questions to help others develop. So you often aim to be in the middle, being able to do both, or at least acknowledging the other side, the other virtue, the other value and having people around you who can fill in the gaps.

So that's, that's good if you're an executive leader. But how can we develop this, you know, in the day to day, the self leadership standpoint, how can we all kind of develop this versatility? We'll start by picking out and becoming aware of, of something that you might be doing in excess or not enough of. And that's something you could ask a friend, a family member or in the workplace you could ask, you know, a colleague or your supervisor and so find that out and then choose what they call a swing thought.

So this is just a single correction that you can keep in mind. I like to call them kind of concentration cues. It's a lot of self talk. So if you want to listen more, it's about maybe putting up a post it note on your computer. So when you're in a meeting and you look to your computer, you also see this post it note that reminds you to listen. And then so then also another part is know the signs. So know when you know you might feel emotionally that you want to take over a conversation or that you might be too timid to speak up.

So know the internal awareness of when that's happening and then adopt a plan. So what are the goals and how, what do you need to do to improve in this and then build in those feedback loops? So ask somebody who's going to be in the meeting with you or who you work with, am I actually growing in this area? What do you see? And so those can help you develop. And it's a lot of basic self regulation tactics that you can apply to really growing in any area or not just growing, but reducing some, some maladaptive behaviors in some areas.

So that's having a concentration cue to remind you of, of this new goal that you have, of this new intention that you have. And then internally know the signs, make a plan and get feedback. And so how it is. And then circling back to our theme of the month, freedom. And with this versatile leadership about, you know, being forceful or not being forceful enough, a lot of this has to do with the outside opinions of others. So if we feel that leaders, we perceive that leaders need to be decisive and tell others what to do, that's our expectation that we have from others.

And so we need to step up and do all that or, you know, we might be more agreeable because we're afraid of upsetting other people. And so it's a lot of fear of other people's opinions on how this leadership works. Well, the versatile leadership from research has shown to be the one that's more mindful, the one who's more present in the moment and really building those connections with others and the work that they're doing. As Csikszentmihalyi talks about flow state, and that's all about versatile leadership.

So, you know, being able to look at the big picture and then jumping down to the day to day and so going back and forth and being in the flow of the work you're doing and not just trying to be the best perceived leader that you perceive leaders to be or trying not to upset others. And so being in the flow state and freedom from other people's opinions. So that's all I have today for you all on Cadrite. I hope you have a great rest of your week and I'll see you next Monday. Bye.