5 Hints to Harness the Real You

5 Hints to Harness the Real You

How much of the real you are you expressing in your role? 

In my last blog I spoke about the need to articulate your story - who you are, what you hope for; your sense of purpose. In my second blog in the series, I want to touch on the question of authenticity - getting the balance right between your real Self and what’s expected of you in your professional capacity.  

We are given and occupy a Role. It needn’t consume us. Yet many people seem to feel they must fully wear their Role, or shelter behind it, with barely a glimpse emerging of their true persona. As a consequence many people feel fake, or ‘imposters’, as though they are playing a part and not being genuinely themselves. A number of clients have said to me, “ I am a completely different person at home and at work.”  This is exhausting and can have unintended consequences for ourselves and the people following us. Ironically to make the Role really live, and to be sustainable, it needs something of us in it.  

I think of Self and Role as two moons which co-exist side by side. Our Self is our unique identity - the product of our character, family, ethnicity, beliefs, values, personality, preferences, purpose, education and professional background. By contrast role is a manifestation of a lot of things, many environmental. Formal authority, status, business outcomes, standards of conduct and capability, accountability, culture, delegations and relationships all shape Role. 

If we allow our Self to be eclipsed by Role, then we can seem aloof and task focused, our humanity, emotional expressiveness and self-belief are dramatically reduced, along with our capacity to engender trust, engage and inspire others.

Conversely if Self eclipses Role, then we can seem like over-sharers, volatile, possibly narcissistic, unconscious or uncaring of role appropriateness, organisational requirements, our relationships or accountabilities. 

Clearly either ‘eclipse’ will limit and drain a leader, and the people around them, over time.

The GENOS International model of emotionally intelligent leadership identifies authenticity as one of the six essential competencies for emotionally intelligent leadership. A healthy balance between Self and Role is key to our authenticity, confidence, energy, well-being, engagement and resilience. To be optimal and sustainable, one moon illuminates the other in a harmonious integration. 

At Institute of Executive Coaching and Leadership (IECL) we train coaches to manage the integration between their own persona and their role as a coach, and also work with coaching counterparts to reflect on this and how it might be helping or hindering their practice.   

In my leadership development work, I challenge leaders to identify how much of their authentic selves they are bringing to their role and what it would mean if there was a more organic interplay between the two. 

In Egypt last month, I was viscerally reminded of how ingrained is our human tendency to wear our role. Witness the statues and hieroglyphs from the early and middle kingdoms, which reveal the Pharaohs as deified beings, irrespective of their individual characteristics or imperfections.

Only one Pharaoh stood out as the exception to this rule, revealing his true self for posterity. He worked to develop Egypt and its people, letting his actions tell the story of his leadership; rather than the statuary or the rhetoric promoting him. In a very short reign he achieved a lot as a leader, despite having a deformity and a terminal disease. 

For many of us today, we’ve not had any formal learning about how to balance Self and Role. We tend to model on the examples we’ve seen around us through our life journey.  

So here are five hints to help you:

1. Practise Self-Awareness and Reflection: Raising our own awareness and reflecting are first steps in exploring the issue and recalibrating where and if we need to:

a. What am I seeing/ hearing? 

b. So what – what does it mean/what’s my takeaway from it?

c. Now what – what will I do with it? (Tim Rolfe) 

2. Ask Powerful Questions: You might like to ask yourself some deep (slightly existential) coaching questions. 

• What’s your real purpose or intention as a leader? [BTW, this is not the business outcome you’re there to deliver or your agenda on any given day.]    

• If you could inject just a little bit more of your Self to the Role, how might this help you build momentum and engagement around your intention? 

• How much richer will your leadership narrative be, with more of the real you in it?

3. Use Your Horizontal Sphere of Influence: Check in with others (peers, direct reports, stakeholders) whom you trust. How do they experience the real, authentic you? How might they respond if you could integrate your Self more to the Role? How would this impact trust, connectedness, influence?    

4. Make Incremental Change: What’s one thing you will embrace, learn to do differently if you’re really balancing Self and Role? What’s one thing you might let go or ‘hold lighter’?

5. Focus on Your Purpose: When you’re worried about whether you’re really up to playing the part (sorry - Role) or ‘feeling fake’ you might want to remember Seth Godin’s adage - time spent fretting about our status as impostors is time away from dancing with our fear, from leading and from doing work that matters.

I’d love to hear your insights and any other hints to help leaders create a richer integration between Self and Role. 

Wishing you all a joyous and reflective Christmas and New Year. Make the most of the time out to think about how you're balancing your authentic self with your work role requirements.

Who am I? Am I Enough?

Who am I? Am I Enough?

In my leadership development and coaching work this year it’s struck me how many people are penetrated by the worm of self-doubt. This worm is no respecter of gender or industry. It manifests in people of both sexes and in diverse professional roles. In my observation women may be more expressive of their self-doubt, but neither are men immune to crises of confidence.   

We rise to the challenge of a new job, a special project or a promotion, in a wave of simultaneous pride, pleasure and anxiety. Will I be good enough? Do I really have what it takes? Am I a fake hiding behind the mask of this role? Will I be discovered as an imposter? As one senior executive put it “I don’t have just one inner critic, I have a whole continent of them!” 

Many people have asked me how to deal with the negativity of their inner village. It’s prompted me to reflect on what forges our strong relationship with our inner critic and how we learn to use it without it disabling us. This is the first in a five part blog series about how we harness purpose, authenticity and mindfulness to build our confidence and our resilience.

First, tell your story. 

Who are you? How do you see and engage with the world? What’s your thumbprint?

Story telling is a skill that differentiates us from other mammals. It is the way we make meaning and engage others and yes, your most vital narrative is the story of yourself. To shape your story, focus on your strengths and potential - the things that make you uniquely you. These are a product of the family and culture that bore you, your professional heritage, your character and preferences, the things you hold dear and the purpose you are working towards. We are often very alive to our weaknesses or, as Tim Gallwey coins it in The Inner Game, the ‘interference’ that detracts from our potential. These interferences can subsume our vision and feed our inner critic.  Answering the questions in italics above requires some level of conscious appreciative inquiry (Cooperrider) directed at oneself. 

Second, articulate your purpose.

Why are you here? What gives you meaning? 

Seligman highlights meaning and purpose as one of three critical ingredients for a fulfilling life.  

This piece transcends day to day tasks and business achievements and goes to what you hope and strive for at a higher level. Knowing it and repeating it to yourself and others gives rein to your visionary self. When your inner critics rages, and you’re at risk of losing focus and confidence, your sense of purpose is the compass that helps you find your way again - swing back to your inner north.  

I work with leaders to help them articulate their purpose and the narrative around who they are, what they hope for, the leadership character and value they bring, now and in the future. Once we have realised our purpose and value add, reiterating it to ourselves in moments of self-doubt is a self-steadying strategy. It turns down (if not off) the voice of our inner critic.  Without a clear self-narrative and purpose, we can find ourselves preoccupied with the rules and the status quo, being who others want us to be, a ‘pleaser’.  

In his work on Stages of Adult Development, Robert Kegan identifies the light and dark side of the socialised stage where affirmation is ‘outside in’. Our self worth is dependent on others’ good opinion and hence we are very attuned to the voice of our inner critic and the negative feedback of others. He explores the value of ‘self-authoring’, where we express why we’re here and what we bring to the world. Self-authoring generates a sense of self worth and affirmation that is ‘inside out’. Of course if we go to the dark side of self-authoring, we become so consumed with ourselves that we ignore the needs of others and our impact on them. 

As a final thought, the voice of our inner critic has an upside.  It is an antidote to arrogance and can also be a trigger to personal growth. However we need to hear it lightly - not let it dominate our narrative and our consciousness. 

Here are some of my strategies to help you live with your inner critic, and still be your authentic self, true to your narrative and purpose. 

• Be mindful of and manage your own inner state. For competent adults, when we become aware of something it becomes object, (rather than we being subject to it). We then have a choice about how we deal with it.  When your inner critic starts to voice, consciously rebut it by questioning the truth and the value of what it’s saying. This inner debate is helpful because it activates your prefrontal cortex - the cognitive function of your brain - and calms the limbic flare of anxiety

• Tune into your purpose and authentic self. Remind yourself of your story and where you’re heading and use this as your inner north - a means to find your way again and turn down the inner critic. 

• Mark your experience and progress. Bookmark in your consciousness the things you’re grateful for, achievements against your purpose and the times you were your best self. Celebrate these - e.g. It was a great day for...

Self steady using one of the following strategies:

1. Have a personal word or mantra – To help you rise when you’re spiralling into self doubt and the socialised stage. My word is ‘lift’.

2. Look for a Dopamine Hit – Time with nature or those you love and who love you back! A conversation and trip to the dog park with Oakley helps calm my inner critic.

3. Stand back and exercise perspective – If I’m ever feeling rattled, I like to remind myself that it’s not about me, but about the other. I ‘flip it’ and think, what does this person need and what can I give in this situation? 

4. Corral a few moments for yourself – Close your eyes. Use a simple breathing technique. Reset. My friend Irene Booth at IECL taught the A B C D technique:

• Anatomy: Sit in a chair and focus on your body - weight of head on your neck, line of your shoulders, hands resting in your lap...

• Breathing: Take a deep breath through your nostrils, feel the air go to your lungs and your diaphragm inflating, breathe out though your mouth, and again...

• Contact: Feel where your body touches the chair – elbows on the arms, bottom, backs of legs and calves, feel your soles of feet on floor...

• Distraction – start to notice the noises around you, in the room and outside and slowly bring your attention back to the outer environment and the present...

Love to hear others suggestions on this. 

For those interested in Kegan’s and Gallwey's work I recommend the following texts:

Kegan, Robert; Lahey, Lisa Laskow; Miller, Matthew L.; Fleming, Andy; Helsing, Deborah (2016). An everyone culture: becoming a deliberately developmental organization. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.

Kegan, Robert; Lahey, Lisa Laskow (2009). Immunity to change: how to overcome it and unlock potential in yourself and your organization. Boston: Harvard Business Press. 

Gallwey, W. Timothy. (2000). The Inner Game of Work. New York: Random House.