As a leader, you cannot hide yourself from the people around you—your bosses, your team and your colleagues. Some of us are trying to hide, as we do not feel comfortable being in the spotlight, but, believe me, that doesn’t work.
‘The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.’ — Jim Rohn, entrepreneur and motivational speaker.
The reason that behaviour becomes so important in leadership roles is the fact that you are more visible: you meet and talk with more people and you are exposed to a wider, more complex interpersonal environment. Not to mention the fact that you are becoming an example for others: you walk the walk and talk the talk. This is the part that you cannot change much as a leader. The only thing that you can manage is your behavior, if you are willing to spend the time learning about yourself and decoding said behavior.
As people, we only understand what we see rather than what we do not see. What does seeing each other mean? It means that, more than registering each other physically, we notice and observe behaviour, or the way in which people act or conduct themselves. This is how others come to see you as a leader: through your behavior.
When do we become aware of the importance of behaviour? Usually only when we behaved in an inappropriate manner. Or, when we meet someone who is really challenging us, and it feels that whatever we are doing or saying, it’s not okay. We feel it so obviously at that point, we know that behavior counts!
Let me share with you a few leadership situations where your behavior matters a lot:
Leadership transitions from one role to another;
Starting a leadership role in a new company;
When you, as a high-potential individual, are being ‘groomed’ for promotion and need new management competencies to complement technical expertise;
You need to develop and communicate a strategic vision or strategic planning;
Your company is changing its culture;
You are leading an executive team;
When you feel the need to communicate and deal effectively with your colleagues and to do so with power;
You’re in a challenging business context, and so, you really need to change or shift something;
You’ve done a 360, but the results are not at all what you expected.
Let’s stop here, and think about the impact of your behavior on situations, people and contexts, together.
Can you share with me one specific behaviour that you’ve shown in your leadership role that you remember? What was the context? Was your behavior appropriate? Did you feel good after?
Behavior is the result of things that we know and don’t know about ourselves and others.
About yourself:
In a discussion with someone, you behave in a certain way based on your beliefs—about the other person, your experience together, what you know about them, what you previously did in a similar situation, if you think that you can or cannot solve something together, your emotional state etc.
The more you are aware of this and the more you learn about why and how you behave in a certain way to accomplish what you hope to achieve, the better you can behave as a leader in the future.
If you’ve made it to a leadership role, you have what it requires to be a leader. I wonder: in your role, how do you perceive the behavior of other leaders and how you behave in response to that?
The more you realize how complex the causes of other people’s behavior’s are, the more you can learn to listen to what people are not saying to see things that are not shown, and to understand the multitude of elements guiding people’s actions.
The iceberg model is a good way to understand this. In the above picture, what is visible (the tip of the iceberg) is the behaviour itself. That is all that you can see with the person in front of you. What you do not see, however, is the larger, hidden part of that person and that interaction. They may not be aware of this either. Outward behavior and action is just the visible part of who we are, but it is based on our hidden experiences, fears, values, believes, know-how etc.
My hope is that by knowing this you can realize just how complex human behaviour is. This may help you decide if you want to jump to conclusions regarding someone’s behaviour, or slow down and attempt to understand it.
Your behaviour very much depends on how much you know about yourself and how willing you are to align yourself with your intentions by choosing the most appropriate behaviour style based on what those intentions are. This requires that you find who you really are.
