2023-11-13 - Directness and Authentic Leadership
My focus the last two months for personal improvement has been to stop people pleasing.
People pleasing typically results in a lot of undesired behavior, ironically. Even to the point of not being promoted or advancing in a career when that was the goal initially and why people fall into people-pleasing behavior, according to Forbes, "Being ‘Nice’ Can Actually Hurt Your Career. Do These Three Things Instead."
I often struggle with directness. Instead, I tend to mitigate my speech, which is a giant red flag and bad trait, especially, in executive communication. Assertiveness, confidence, conciseness, clarity, brevity, many of the important features of executive communication and Executive Presence are sacrificed when mitigating speech. My tone shifts into a higher octave, I stutter, lack confidence, and say things like, "umm, maybe we should think about doing x, y, or z?" I phrase things as questions instead of declarative statements, even though most often I know beyond a shadow of a doubt the proper solution and path forward.
I think this has a lot to do with my apprehension in defining myself as an expert. I want to be a constant learner. In my field of information security, there are so many domains, so much to know, and it changes and iterates by the minute. It is virtually impossible to be the true definition of an expert. There are also multiple ways, usually, to do things and rarely is one method far superior to others.
With that, I am the expert in my company for information security. I am also our risk leader and a general leader in the organization. I should exhibit a more definitive posture and stop mitigating my speech.
There is a staggering difference between posing options as a question versus providing options which a clear recommendation for consideration.
I am learning to be more direct. To say what I mean and mean what I say. It has taken dedicated a constant practice, rebuking myself, gamefilming and reflecting on meetings or conversations. I attempt to approach things with humility yet decisiveness keeping the mission first.
I have certainly struggle with keeping the mission in focus in one area or project with a certain individual recently in my organization. I spend time prior to meetings in preparation on how I want to show up, I practice all of the tips, like breathing, jotting down my thoughts to stay on point, think through #EQ points, like The Story I Am Telling Myself regarding the person and more, yet almost every encounter provides another opportunity to practice and enhance EQ and #communication skills. Aligned with the Forbes article mentioned above, I tend to take a lot of things personally which is all part of the people-pleasing root-cause of the issue.
Going forward, I am confident I can directly present options with a clear recommendation to move the mission forward and let the rest go. I can be a confident, authentic expert in my domain, and exhibit #nobelPurposeLeadership with humility.