The following excerpt comes from chapter one of the Harvard Business Review Press book, The Leader You Want to Be: Five Essential Principles for Bringing Out Your Best Self Every Day. The first part of the excerpt describes the most common challenges leaders face each day, making them vulnerable to what I call “Leader B” mode. Leader B is the part of us where, in the face of struggle or challenge, we resist the moment or situation at hand and become stressed, ineffective, or reactive. This is in direct contrast to what I describe as “Leader A” mode, the part of us that can hold a broader perspective even in the face of challenge, complexity, or struggle with greater ease, effectiveness, and resilience.
Coming to awareness of the natural fluctuations between our own Leader A and Leader B modes is especially critical given the ripple effect and positive change you hope to lead. The second part of the excerpt, therefore, fast forwards to the end of chapter one, which describes how to increase the probability of Leader A mode by executing against five essential principles. The rest of the book details these five principles, which are: reset your compass, reboot your personal operating system, raise your game while raising the game of others, don’t scratch that itch, and loosen the grip. I hope this excerpt encourages you to consider the current challenges that are getting in the way of your showing up as the leader you want to be. Your own sustainability, effectiveness, and satisfaction are foundational to the mission of your organization and the impact you hope to see in the world. – Amy Jen Su
Whether you are a leader of an organization, team, family, community, or school group—or like most of us, some combination thereof—each day you are faced with many moments that test your ability to lead effectively. Decisions need to be made, work needs to be prioritized, and initiatives need to be coordinated with colleagues, all of whom have their own agendas, styles, and perspectives. The landscape of contemporary life is pocked with challenges for all professionals, irrespective of industry, level, or skill. Many of these challenges lead us down a slippery slope right into Leader B mode, where things start to look more difficult by the day.
We can all come up with our own lists, but I’ve found that these challenges fall into four general categories. See if any of these sound familiar:
1. There are never enough hours in the day. This may be the number one challenge I hear, and it’s one I struggle with most myself. Many of us face the constant quandary of wanting to do more, advance and complete our initiatives, expand our impact in new and exciting ways, and be the best version of ourselves we can be. But we’re all limited by the finite hours in any given day. Our challenge is figuring out how to get everything done within that set framework—and without sacrificing too much of the things that make life meaningful outside of work, such as time with family and friends, personal interests, and exercise.
2. Work is more complex. Many leaders are grappling with overwhelming complexity on multiple fronts. It seems that the problems we are being asked to solve are becoming more complex, and more and more of us are working in complicated matrixed environments where many hands need to touch an issue but often without clear accountability or decision-making rights. Meanwhile, work is becoming more global, which brings its own set of challenges: what to centralize and decentralize, how to work within and navigate different cultures, and how to work virtually with colleagues in multiple locations and time zones.
3. Our organizations and other people get in the way. Our bosses, peers, direct reports, and other stakeholders can create frustration, unnecessary roadblocks, bottlenecks, or conflict. Most organizational cultures today emphasize intensity and encourage long hours. The examples of roadblocks that come from external sources are endless. A toxic work environment, an underperforming team member, differing visions, poor planning, unclear or unreasonable expectations, a lack of support, budgetary restrictions, competing priorities, conflict with a colleague or boss . . . any of these can get in the way of our progress.
4. We get in our own way. Highly ambitious, successful people tend to be more self-critical, place greater demands on themselves, and generally feel an outsized pressure to succeed. Many leaders bear the weight of performance pressure and accountability more heavily than others, while quietly we harbor self-doubt and a deep fear of failure. These are the issues that are borne from within—our inner drives, natural inclinations, and motivating factors—and they’re often deep-rooted, part of our psychological makeup. Professor and leadership researcher Laura Empson points out that high achievers tend to blame themselves when they feel inadequate, taking colleagues’ success as confirmation of their own inadequacy. In an effort to conceal their perceived shortcomings, they don’t share their struggles with their colleagues, “thus perpetuating the myth of the invincible professional, which encourages their colleagues to feel inadequate in turn.”
Which Lens—Leader A or B?
The truth is, we all struggle from time to time, and we all have days in which we regret how we responded to or handled something. Finite “clock” time will never go away, the work ahead will likely become more complex, difficulties and conflicts with other people are bound to crop up from time to time, and naturally, our organizations will continue to have their ups and downs. With these conditions in place, every professional I know—and certainly I include myself here—fluctuates between Leader A and Leader B mode. The image that comes to mind for me is of an internal teeter-totter—we all have our up days and down days, shifting back and forth from A to B and back again. I wish I could tell you that I’ve figured out how to be Leader A all day, every day, but what I’ve come to realize is that the very expectation to be Leader A 100 percent of the time is not only unrealistic, it’s actually a surefire way to slip into Leader B mode.
The real danger is that if we are not aware, we can end up in Leader B mode for so long that it becomes our operating norm, and not only do we become less effective, but so do our teams and possibly our organizations. So how can we recognize when we start to shift from Leader A to Leader B? And how can we recognize the triggers that set us on the slippery slope?
The first step toward answering these is to recognize that the lens is variable. If we’re looking out at the world through a Leader A lens, problems look like opportunities for us to flex our expertise and hone our skills. We feel energized, fully present, and satisfied as a leader, even during those inevitable crunch times. We’re like the surfer who doesn’t fight the current but works with it, using it to her advantage to ride right into the perfect wave. On the other hand, if we’re looking at the world through a Leader B lens, we may find ourselves whipped off the board and struggling against the waves. When we’re in a Leader B mindset, problems can feel insurmountable, and we may find that our effectiveness, presence, and internal satisfaction have been compromised.
Falling Into the Four Pitfalls of Doing
What I have come to understand is that more often than not, the shift from the clear-eyed view of Leader A into Leader B’s cloudy vision begins as a coping mechanism. In response to some sort of challenge or uncertainty, we turn to our go-to form of relief. This makes perfect sense, as all coping mechanisms offer a short-term benefit, such as temporary relief from anxiety and stress. But inevitably, most coping mechanisms reach their limits, and if relied on too long, they can lead us into a deeper hole. The progression can look like this.
I’ve found that there are four types of pitfalls we typically fall into, which keep us in a cycle of stress, ineffectiveness, negativity, or feeling overwhelmed. I call them the Four Pitfalls of Doing:
- The I’ll Just Do It Now Pitfall
- The I’ll Just Do It Later Pitfall
- The I’ll Just Do More Pitfall
- The I’ll Just Do It Myself Pitfall
The Leader You Feed and the Five Ps
As we become more aware of when Leader B has become the operating norm, and the triggers that cause us to slide down the slippery slope, we increase our ability to lift out of the noise and consider a different way of looking at things. We realize that every moment presents a choice between being Leader A and Leader B, and that we have the power to choose the course of action that will bring us back to Leader A.
The choice we have between Leader A and Leader B reminds me of a Cherokee Indian legend. Here is how this story goes.
A Cherokee elder was teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil—he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good—he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you—and inside every other person, too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked, “Grandfather, which wolf will win?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
To me this legend captures a profound truth: whatever we “feed,” whatever we sustain with our time, energy, and action, is what will flourish. We can nurture and sustain an attitude of anger, arrogance, or inferiority, just as we can nurture and sustain an attitude of peace, empathy, or compassion. So it is with anything: What we feed is what will flourish.
How do we feed Leader A? The first step is built upon self-awareness, and this is where our inner spectator comes in. Knowing which wolf you are at the moment is a prerequisite to feeding the right one. We need to become a spectator to our own experience so we can recognize when we’ve fallen into Leader B mode and understand what led us there. Getting back to Leader A after you’ve been in Leader B mode requires the ability to “clean the lens” and take a larger, more elevated view from above the fray. It requires the willingness and the ability to come out of the trenches and regularly take stock of ourselves. As we mature and our self-awareness deepens, we will recognize more quickly when we start down the slippery slope and can arrest the slide well before entering a pitfall. We learn the particular set of factors that help us to be our most effective, present, and authentic selves.
When we continually feed Leader A and can habitually look at life through the Leader A lens, we can even turn a pitfall into a performance enhancer. Take a look at how it can work.
The Leader A lens allows a kind of alchemy to happen. I’ll Just Do More becomes “I’ll do more only if they are things that add value.” I’ll Just Do It Now shifts to “I’ll do it now only after weighing each decision and determining that the task is truly urgent and in my wheelhouse.” I’ll Just Do It Myself becomes “I’ll do it myself only if it’s my highest and best use and it benefits the team and organization.” And finally, I’ll Just Do It Later becomes “I’ll do it later only after assessing the situation and making a conscious decision to de-prioritize a project or a task.”
The good news is, we don’t have to do any of this work alone. Attending to the five Ps provides a methodical framework for remaining in Leader A mode as much as we can, and for feeding our good wolf after slipping into Leader B mode or even a full-blown pitfall. The five Ps, in fact, are a reliable antidote to each of the pitfalls—they give us confidence that there is a way to get back on track, and when regularly attended to, they enhance our overall performance. As often as we need to, we can align and realign ourselves to the five Ps.
Leader A stays connected to purpose and regularly infuses it into her day-to-day. She upgrades her processes as needed to execute her highest and best work. Leader A relies on the people around him—he creates an invigorated and effective team and a strong community of support. Leader A has a presence that is calm, stays focused, and doesn’t react impulsively. And ultimately, like the tale of the two wolves, Leader A is able to be at peace, leading from a place of generosity, humility, and servant leadership rather than from striving, greed, false pride, or ego. He knows that a mix of Leader A and Leader B is all part of the entire leadership experience, and he can put all of it to work for the greater good.