Leadership DNA: Finding Your Authentic Style

[00:00:03] Welcome to the Quick Take Podcast, the show where you get targeted advice and coaching for executives by executives. I'm Susie Tomenchok. And I'm James Capps. Give us 15 minutes and we'll give you three secrets to address the complex topic of issues that are challenging executives like you today. Hey, welcome to Quick Take. I'm Susie. I'm one of your hosts along with James the Typer. Stop multitasking. Be right here right now. Be a good leader.

[00:00:33] I was taking notes from our prep and now I feel bad. Yeah. Okay. I think we're just gonna keep going. We're not gonna... We're done. Let's just go. Bye bye. Call me out on it. We're showing by in the scenes. This is what happens. This is just who we are. But I do have pants on, just to be clear. There's a weirdness going on here. Just clarity. I'm fully dressed. You know what? Okay, we're just gonna move on. I've learned enough just to move on from that one. All right. So, what a great start to the show.

[00:00:59] And without a good transition, I'm just gonna jump right in. So, one of the things that has been on my mind a lot comes from a senior executive that I don't actually work with him directly, but I've heard him speak for the teams that I go and speak in front of. And he has so many great leadership pillars that he always talks about. And the one thing I love about what he does is he always is very consistent about reiterating these.

[00:01:25] And so, to his senior vice presidents and his vice presidents and like his whole team, he's very consistent. And one of the things he talks about is a leadership journal. And these are his best practices that he talks about that people just get really excited about. And so, for him, it's a collection of journal entries, ideas that come from other people, examples of leadership, whether it's a podcast, a quote, tidbit of information, something that he learned, something he learned from somebody else.

[00:01:54] It's kind of a collection of things that are happening around him. And then he makes a practice of every month, going to his leadership journal and looking through or pulling out or revisiting parts of it. And so, I think that's such a powerful practice. Yeah, I think if you're going to have a style, and I think that's what we're talking about today is really how do you have and define your leadership style, right? You can't do that through dumb luck. You can, you know, if you don't have a style, you have a style.

[00:02:24] And, but I think through active forward efforts like this individual does, you know, that you can go a long way to not only creating that style, but fine tuning that style and growing and improving it. If you, if you really give some thought to it. Yeah, I think that's so important. And unfortunately, when you said that, when you said some people rely on dumb luck, I do think that people believe that once you get into a leadership role, it's just a matter of kind of showing up.

[00:02:53] And it is, it means you need to have some investment in reflection of really be thoughtful around how do you need to show up? It's not how the people in front of you show up for you to lead. It's how you show up as a leader. Yeah. I think that a lot of people believe, you know, which is the pop culture misunderstanding and a lot of things is that, that leaders just do it naturally.

[00:03:16] You know, that charisma will get you there. And the very small fraction, very small decimal points of percentage of leaders who have enough charisma and enough intelligence to truly lead is very few. Even some of our great leaders that we talk about today didn't have enough of what we would like to think they had to simply lead without practice or forward thinking.

[00:03:40] So like many things, if you want it to be well done or well managed, you know, what's managed is measured. You need to be proactive in that. And I think building your leadership style is no different. Yeah. And ironically, I think that good leaders listen to this podcast because they want to get better. That's right. And so by definition, you know that your charisma and good looks and fashion sense is not always enough. Yes, exactly. All right. So what's your first tip?

[00:04:09] You know, I love it. Your first one was a simply what you described from that leader is I love this idea of a style portfolio. You know, I read about a P&G does this thing where they actually require users to have this leadership journal where they can maintain a portfolio of their leadership experiences, forcing them to evaluate what type of team was this? What type of program was this? Was it top down, bottoms up? Was there a lot of direction? Was there no direction? Was it international?

[00:04:37] By doing that, articulating the details around it, you see a huge improvement in your outcomes. And they attribute that to a 57% increase in a promotion rate and a 44% improvement in new leader effectiveness. Think about that. If you're a listener and I told you to do one thing to increase your opportunity for promotion by 57%,

[00:05:00] you would absolutely do it. And this is one of those things that if you simply write down your portfolio, your style portfolio and track that, that's a pretty compelling piece of data. I really like the idea of a portfolio. And some of the things that I do with leaders and getting them to think of the future and really embodying who they are is taking pictures and pulling from a picture and have, and describing, this is the leader I am now.

[00:05:30] And this is the leader I want to be. Want to be. And it can be, I mean, we're not, we're talking, we're not talking literal pictures. Like you could take a waterfall or a baseball diamond or whatever the picture is. And you can give yourself words around why that reflects how you look at the world. And then it allows you to take a position on your leadership. And then it makes you really think about.

[00:05:56] So I'm tying that to, I love the idea of a portfolio because it also allows you to collect artifacts about your leadership and where you are now and where you want to go. No, boy, you, you broke that down brilliantly. I mean, those artifacts could be pictures, could be words, could be notes from a customer, but anything in that true portfolio, you know, like an artist's portfolio, I think is, it goes a long way. That's just, that's really great.

[00:06:23] I just, I, now I have an idea that I'm going to do with the leadership team. So thank you for that. So let's give me another one. Come on. What's your next tip? You know, the second one is equally interesting is, you know, you have to create some flexibility training in your style. You have to realize that what you are doing and how you're doing it won't always apply. And so one, one of the things I read about recently was that Johnson & Johnson does this, this rotation program.

[00:06:51] GE was notorious for this rotation program. You know, GE would move people from division to division to make sure that their skills weren't domain specific back in their, their heyday. Right. And what Johnson or Johnson & Johnson does is it actually forces leaders through different types of teams on a regular basis so they can require them to get different leadership skills. Think about that. Nice. Yeah. So for a while, you're going to be working on an international team. And then for a while, it's going to be a domestic team.

[00:07:19] That ability to, that, that required delta, that change in your, your, your approach absolutely will increase your understanding of your leadership style and ensure that you are evolving and growing. Yeah. And, and as you gave two good examples, I think sales versus engineering. And, and I can say, you know, I think leadership, there's a direct parallel to being a speaker or a facilitator.

[00:07:47] And there is a different way I have to show up when I'm in front of an, a group of engineers. I show up differently in front of a sales group because innately they are different personality types. One needs, and very stereotypically, one needs more time to think more silence. I need to slow down the other one. I need to, to stay with them. And so I think as leaders thinking about how you're showing up, doesn't just come from behind

[00:08:16] your eyes. It also is thinking about how is that perception of me? And that's actually external self-awareness is having the ability to understand how you're perceived from the outside. So taking that time to consider that is really powerful. No, I think it's so huge. And, and I think when you understand the places you've been successful and why you were successful

[00:08:41] and really have that a different perspective on it, you're going to be that much more invaluable to your organization because you can be adapting at all times. You are adaptive, you are flexible. And I think that those are, are huge traits are very important traits for a company when you are looking to promote, when you are looking to maybe spin off an organization. Or if you're hiring for a new company that those are the skills and traits you're looking for. I totally agree. That's an interesting example. I'd like that one. All right.

[00:09:11] What's number two? I mean, maybe the third one and maybe it should have been the first one, but you got me excited with your, with your story. And it's really, you should, you know, you should do a leadership style map. I always like to, as a, as a good engineer, I always like to know where we are. I like to sit down and start where we are at the current moment. And, and what many companies do is they have you take some sort of personality tests. We've all taken them. I think I have a bookshelf full of different types of ways to measure myself.

[00:09:41] But what I thought was interesting was Zappos does something and they measure your leadership style across 12 different dimensions. So that's leadership style. And then what that means is you're looking at the way that you talk and communicate to your employees. And then what they really more interestingly do, they do a monthly check-in on that 12 point analysis. So it's not, did you have a breakfast burrito that day and filled out the form in a certain fashion?

[00:10:09] It's really a way of measuring and then, and then consistently in checking in on your style. The improvement that they have seen is, is really kind of ridiculous. The article suggested it was nearly a 90% increase in leadership effectiveness and 50% increase in team satisfaction. Again, if I told my, our listeners here that you could do one thing that you would have a 50% increase in your team satisfaction. You would absolutely do it.

[00:10:36] If you simply do take the small step to, to, to understand and evaluate your leadership style, 50% increase in team satisfaction. That's a, that's an earth shaker. Because it allows you to step into that and grow into that. It gives you more context of yourself. And like we've talked about in other episodes, you know, when you write things down, when you journal, when you have that little objectivity, when you go down and say, what is my leadership

[00:11:06] style? Am I authoritarian? I'm a collaborative, blah, blah. You write those things down. It really makes them real. And to go and document them and then reevaluate them on a regular basis, I think is just so key. So, you know, create a style map and evaluate and adjust that mapping over time, I think is a huge way to adjust and understand your real leadership style. Yeah. And that can be chapter one, the forward of your leadership journal or portfolio.

[00:11:36] Yeah. I love it. I love it. We should write a book. Ideas. But you did write a book. You should write another book. All right. So what are the three tips? So we're going to go in the other order. I'll create a style mapping. Yep. Document the way your style is today. Maybe that, you know, where you are and where you want to be, but really document that so you can understand your style. Second, create some way that you can pressure test and create training around your flexibility.

[00:12:04] Give you the opportunity to try different styles so you can not be stuck in the style that you originally documented and understand where you need to do work. And then third, you know, as you said, create a portfolio, document and keep track of the programs and projects you've worked on. So you can really well understand the types of areas you've had success, maybe the projects that you need to work on, but understanding where and how you lead and tracking that is

[00:12:34] so helpful. Oh, such great advice. I'm going to take some of this back to my clients that I work with. Thanks, James. All right, James. I asked you at GPT, so this was not something that came from my head. So I want to make sure that you understand that. Way to deflect ownership on this. Okay. So what is the best thing about getting older? Best thing. Dun, dun, dun, dun. I don't know.

[00:13:03] I think you, if I tell my kids, the thing that I find most satisfying is that you have the experience to know what to worry about and what not to worry about. Hmm. Oh, I worry about everything. And I know it's not right, but that's so funny. Don't sweat the small stuff. I remember as I was getting older and going from my 20s, I hear people go, I just love being in my 30s because I feel so good. And then I was in my 30s and people would say, I love being in my 40s.

[00:13:32] I'm like, you're rationalizing being old. That's all you're doing. And then, but then I got there and I'm like, but it's true. But it's true. Yes. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Quick Take, where we talk about the questions that are on the minds of executives everywhere. Connect with us and share what's on your mind. You can find us on LinkedIn, YouTube, or whatever nerdy place on the internet you find your podcasts. All the links you really need are in the show notes.