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On Leadership: A Series
A snapshot from one of many relaxing walks around the University of Michigan quadrangle on a break between classes this semester.
Happy New Year! In my last blog post, I shared my journey from a fixed to a growth mindset in my approach to leadership. I unlocked this perspective shift through self-reflection, specifically in re-visiting my upbringing to understand how it shaped who I am today. I encourage you to self-reflect and to view leadership as a journey, rather than a natural skill or disposition in some people over others.
As a fruit of my self-reflection, I highlighted flexibility as a key leadership skill to continue to sharpen throughout my time at Ross. In addition, I’ve identified three other core strengths that I need to develop to effectively empower others to bring out their best: open-mindedness, empathy, and cross-cultural competence. I see all of these skills as very interrelated, with the common theme of building authentic connections with others as a key to empowerment.
This blog post is Part II of III in my series On Leadership.
In Sanger’s Legacy Lab this fall, I defined open-mindedness as genuinely believing that anything could happen, and that people are inherently good. At a basic level, open-mindedness sounds simple, but as we learned in our Leading People & Organizations class this term, there are many biases that can get in the way of approaching situations with a true open mind. I continue to believe that bias itself is not inherently detrimental; it serves as an important cognitive function to facilitate rapid assessments in a complex world – in other words, it’s how our brain takes shortcuts to make our lives easier. However, unchecked biases can undermine my efforts to be a flexible leader who empowers others, because bias can thwart my ability to understand others’ perspectives and needs.
A few biases that are particularly relevant to my leadership journey, and the conscious strategies that I will use to mitigate them in order to practice open-mindedness, include:
Halo effect: I should separate people from their ideas and practice evaluating contributions on the basis of their merit alone. Just because I like someone on a personal level, doesn’t mean that their idea is the best. On the flip side, an idea from a colleague with a different interpersonal style or with whom I have a tougher time getting along is not inherently worse. I must evaluate both ideas with an open mind and select the one that is best for the given situation.
Fundamental attribution error: I should challenge my beliefs that specific actions or contributions from an individual are dispositional versus situational. Just because someone failed at a given task in the past does not mean that they are incapable of future positive contributions.
Confirmation bias: I should seek to surround myself with people who bring diverse perspectives and to challenge teams in situations that are susceptible to ‘group think’. I can make a practice of asking “is there any other information that we should consider before making this decision?” to draw out non-shared information and amplify minority opinions.
Next, empathy – or as I like to remind myself in simple terms: putting myself in the shoes of others – has been an incredibly useful tool thus far in my leadership journey and one that I hope to continue to develop. After all, how can I be flexible in adapting to others’ styles if I cannot understand their perspective first? I can’t, which is why I actively remind myself to practice empathetic leadership. The most tangible way I do this is through active listening; not just hearing what people have to say, but rather internalizing their words and understanding their perspectives. It is through this style of engaged communication that I can use context clues to detect their interpersonal style and take any steps necessary to modify my own approach to bring out their best.
An in-class simulation on negotiation was a powerful exercise in re-framing empathy as a tool, as opposed to a compromise of my own goals or authenticity. Taking time to consider my counterpart’s perspective is crucial to being able to achieve a good outcome in any situation, whether it is a formal negotiation or simply an interpersonal conflict. This means understanding what the other person’s true interests are. In Margaret Neale's video on Negotiation, she shared an example from when her boss (the Dean of the school) asked her to begin teaching an extra class at Stanford. In this example, the Dean’s true desire was not that she actually begin teaching another class, but rather to satisfy the wishes of his boss, the provost, in ensuring all faculty taught a minimum number of credits. By leveraging empathy to put myself in the other person’s shoes, I (like Margaret) can think of creative solutions that have the potential to satisfy the interests of everyone involved and re-frame negotiations as a conversation instead of a conflict.
Finally, cross-cultural competence is critically important in an ever-more diverse workplace, and particularly crucial for me as I seek to establish a career with global scope. Certain cultures naturally skew towards a particular Communication Quadrant or have business customs (whether explicit or implicit) that differ from American values. For example, in a recent conversation with a European executive, she mentioned that the French way of doing things revolves around ‘spheres of influence’ and gathering informal support for an initiative before bringing it to a formal forum for approval. To navigate the complexities of leadership in an international career, I am very focused on building cross-cultural competency.
In my Cultural Intelligence (CQ) assessment before school, I scored relatively highly on CQ Drive (my level of interest) and Knowledge (my understanding of cultural differences) but much lower on Strategy (planning for multicultural interactions) and Action (ability to adapt). These scores highlight my awareness of the need to be flexible in cross-cultural situations, but my few current tools to do so. My approach to developing this skill is two-pronged: first, I will seek to expose myself to as many cross-cultural situations as possible to gain additional practice in navigating their complexities (more on this in part III), and second, I will tie in the work I'm doing in my other development areas (flexibility, open-mindedness, and empathy) to apply it to cross-cultural contexts.
As we head into the New Year, I encourage you to set aside time to self-reflect and identify a few key skills to focus on developing in your leadership journey. In the next and final blog post in my series On Leadership, I'll be sharing a few of my strategies for tackling my own focus areas of flexibility, open-mindedness, empathy, and cross-cultural competence.
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