“What can I do in that moment when I’m so triggered/emotional/frustrated?”

Ten to twenty managers in the conference room, learners, eagerly seeking answers. And every one of the dozens of times I facilitated Emotional Intelligence training for this client, across multiple locations and functional groups, this was the most frequently asked question.

That moment.

The Power Of A Map

Traveling in Italy with four friends, I was our navigator. The map holder. Before our phones could instantly offer multiple routes with precise distances and estimated arrival times.

Once we agreed on our destination, I would locate our current position on the map and determine which direction to lead our group to get where we wanted to go.

The Map Of Consciousness

Sir David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D., developed a comprehensive, and complex, Map of Consciousness. He was a psychiatrist, physician, prolific author and lecturer, spiritual teacher, and pioneering researcher in the field of consciousness.

Dr. Hawkins’ map includes, among other elements, the spectrum of human emotions. He calibrated them relative to each other, from the lower levels (e.g., Shame, Fear, Anger) to the higher levels (e.g., Courage, Acceptance, Love) of consciousness and energy.

You Are Here

When you are in that moment, the first step is to locate your current position on the map. The simplicity and relativity of Hawkins’ scale allows you to identify your emotion/s quickly.

Speed is critical in that moment, when you’re at risk of saying or doing something with consequences you don’t want to create for yourself or your team.

Your Destination Emotion

To navigate that moment, to be prepared, you need to know your destination, your goal for how you want to feel.

Hawkins’ map provides a visual that can both help you choose your destination emotion and guide you toward it when you’re experiencing any of the lower-level emotions.

You can store the scale as a screen saver on your phone to flip back to it any time.

The Journey Between Triangles

In the previous article, I shared Karpman’s Dreaded Drama Triangle and David Emerald’s The Power of TED*: *The Empowerment Dynamic.

Consciously choosing TED*, moving from the role of Victim in the lower triangle to the role of Creator in the upper, requires navigating your emotions.

The Turning Point Of Courage

Aligning the scale of emotions to Karpman’s and Emerald’s triangles gives you a map to transcend your lower emotions and guide you toward your destination emotion.

Hawkins’ map calibrates Courage as the inflection point from the lower levels to the higher levels of emotions and energy.

Your Turning Point

In that moment, remembering your destination emotion of courage or higher can give you the brief pause you need to take a deep breath, to experience your personal turning point.

The physiology of your brain then supports blood flowing to the prefrontal cortex which was restricted when your amygdala was hijacked by the lower-level emotion.

When you see the path up from where you are to where you want to be, greater possibilities open for choosing your words and actions, consciously…in that moment.

What’s Your Destination Emotion?

Shifting from drama to empowerment is an essential step on the journey to creating the foundational psychological safety for people and innovation to thrive.

As you reflect on your leadership, what destination emotion would best serve you and your team?

As his tea steeped at the company coffee bar, a CIO spoke with curiosity about the Drama Triangle. He was just learning about it but sensed it could be helpful in realizing his vision of a more empowered organization.

A collaborator and former client of mine joined the conversation. She explained that I had introduced her to the Drama Triangle a decade earlier.

He wanted to know more.

Karpman’s Dreaded Drama Triangle

Stephen B. Karpman, MD, introduced the Dreaded Drama Triangle (DDT) in the late 60’s.

A clinical psychiatrist, Karpman outlined three key roles of Victim, Perpetrator, and Rescuer in dysfunctional power dynamics. He wrote dozens of papers on the application of it in all aspects of life and work. (https://karpmandramatriangle.com/)

The Power of TED*

Nearly 40 years later, David Emerald published The Power of TED*: *The Empowerment Dynamic. It’s a fable with many lessons on transcending the dysfunction of the DDT.

Emerald introduced the roles of Creator, Challenger, and Coach as the antidote to the dysfunctional roles.

The CIO was preparing for an offsite with 47 leaders in his organization, so I shared a link to both the book and the author’s website.

I also shared the story of my chance encounter with TED*.

How I Met TED*

I was attending the Conscious Capitalism Conference in Chicago in 2015. During an exercise, I turned around to greet the man behind me.

While my first impression was his Birkenstocks and socks, I quickly realized it was David Emerald. He was speaking about The Power of TED* at the conference.

I was excited and proud to share with him how we had used his work with a client.

The DDT & Leadership Transformation

When I was working as VP Culture of Innovation in 2012, our team designed and led a workshop with dozens of technology and customer service leaders of a big insurance company.

The emphasis was encouraging the leaders to see how everyone can play the three roles of the DDT…Victim, Perpetrator, and Rescuer.  Then helping them learn how to transcend dysfunction with the empowered dynamics of the Creator, Challenger, and Coach roles.

The Student Was Ready for TED*

During my first meeting with the CIO, he shared how he had introduced the Drama Triangle to his team.

He admitted to them, with examples, how he had shown up at different times in each of the three roles of Victim, Perpetrator, and Rescuer.

It was an honor to acknowledge and celebrate the courage, vulnerability, and humility he had demonstrated to his team of leaders. He had embraced the wisdom of TED* and applied the first step immediately.

How Is The Drama Triangle Impacting Your Leadership And Team Dynamics?

As you reflect on your leadership and your team dynamics, where do you see the roles of the DDT show up?

How might empowering your leaders and teams enhance creativity and innovation in your organization?

A Technology Leadership Team hired me to facilitate a team dynamics workshop on the first day of their 3-day offsite.

Eleven R&D leaders in a division of a Fortune100 company, mostly (software) engineers.

New team leader. Lots of tensions.

3D Intelligence
Working with teams, it’s important to understand their Cognitive, Affective, and Instinctive intelligences.

Cognitive indicates knowledge, skills, and experience, what’s on a resume or indicated by a job title…these are visible “above the surface.” In addition to the Head of R&D, this leadership team included Customer Support Leaders, Project Portfolio Leaders, a System Test Manager, and others.

Affective includes emotions, values, and personality. We’ve all experienced within ourselves, and witnessed in others, when emotions burst above the water line and impact our interactions with others. When teams are new, or have a new leader, trust (affective) often takes time to build.

Instinctive intelligence measures action-based strengths…how we invest our time and energy to seek possibilities and solve problems. It provides a robust view of what’s happening beneath the surface, what’s driving people’s actions and interactions.

There’s more information on these intelligences in my 2016 article, Conflicts and Silos and Teams, oh my.

Lurking Below The Surface
The Kolbe assessment I invited the leaders to complete in advance of our workshop revealed the source of several challenging dynamics within this Technology Leadership Team.

The implications of having a team full of engineers was aligned with my expectations but a surprise to them.

It revealed the conflicts, blind spots, and inertia on the team and offered clues to map the path forward to address them.

Culture Of Engineers = Culture Of Experts
Engineers frequently have the profile of an “expert.” Ten of the eleven leaders were deep dive fact finders.

They research and share information with specificity and nuance, they pay attention to precedence.

While this can impact personality or behavioral styles (Affective,) we were measuring how they invest their time and energy, naturally or instinctively.

Complexity Over Simplicity
The expertise of engineers is usually a strength in their role but can wreak havoc on team dynamics.

It can be the source of inertia as well as leave a critical blind spot for translating complexity into simplicity…for customers, decision makers, etc.

Symptoms Of A Team Of Experts
Analysis Paralysis.

The most common challenges on teams of “fact-finding experts” include long, and often unproductive, meetings driven by in-depth analyses and debates over facts, theory, reason or experience.

The inertia in fact finding, specificity, and historical precedence is the most common pattern I see on teams.

This is true not only for technology teams but cross-functional leadership teams as well.

Creativity & Innovation
Another characteristic common among engineers (with exceptions!) is to minimize risk and uncertainty. They tend to drive incremental improvement and refinement, to assure quality. Which is valuable if it aligns with the team’s objectives.

Seven of the eleven leaders on this Technology Leadership Team were hardwired to instinctively minimize risk and uncertainty rather than lean into new possibilities.

Collectively, that can create team dynamics that resist change and rely on close-in solutions that are perceived as safer.

This underlying pattern, often lurking beneath the surface on technology and leadership teams, can thwart their need for creativity and innovation.

The Value Of Outliers
Only one leader on the team instinctively leaned into brainstorming solutions that have never been tried before rather than looking to historic precedent.

She instinctively worked with greater speed and brought a sense of urgency to the team.

Cultures of engineers often reject these valuable strengths, judging them as risky or reckless. Yet they add diversity of strengths that can have a significant positive impact on the speed and productivity of teams.

I don’t have enough data to prove a broader pattern, yet, but Agile Coaches I’ve worked with tend to be wired as Outliers which makes an important contribution to their teams.

What Are Your Technology Or Leadership Team Dynamics?
As you think about 3D Intelligence and what might be lurking beneath the surface of your team dynamics, what are you seeing and learning?

As we prepare to ring in 2024 this weekend, most leaders are reviewing the past year.

One simple exercise has had a significant positive impact on my planning.

The reason is that it shifts my perspective on what I’ve accomplished over the prior year.

Inspiration Ignites Intellect

That shift in perspective energizes and inspires my process and my plan.

This is especially important because I naturally resist planning, or even maintaining a plan. And because I lead from my heart more than my head.

Regardless of your personality or instinctive strengths, this energy shift can inspire you to see greater possibilities and potential for you and your team in 2024.

How We See Impacts What We See

Are you looking through a lens of judgment, with a critical eye?

Are you choosing to see through the eyes of acceptance, maybe even with a dash of compassion?

Both?

The Horizon

In our busy-ness, we are usually focused on what we need to do, what’s not done. We’re looking at the horizon and the shore always seems to be elusive, so far away.

Even for naturally optimistic, hopeful people, it seems to be easier to see what we haven’t accomplished than what we have.

The Shore We Left Behind

It’s more difficult, or maybe simply not practiced, to turn around and look at how far we have come from the shore where we began.

The simple practice I’ve been doing in December these past few years is reviewing my calendar, week by week, and noting big events and accomplishments. It’s the starting point in the YearCompass.

Outcomes And Actions

It’s helpful to review not only the outcomes we achieved but also the actions we took.

Did we take the actions we believed would deliver the results we desired, that we committed to take?  Did they have the impact we assumed?  Did we course-correct if they weren’t working?

A Simple Hack For 2024

I add two simple summaries to my weekly planner pages:  Wins and Social. It reminds me to track my business wins and to celebrate connections with my family and community of friends.

I simply add bullet points throughout the week, or at the end, which gives me a sense of accomplishment…or clarifies what I’m not getting done, where I need to focus next.

It makes my year-end review quick and effective. I can see the mountain of actions I took throughout the year, and the significant accomplishments, rather than just focusing on the shore I haven’t yet reached.

It shifts my energy, inspires greater confidence and belief in myself and my ability to achieve my goals.

What Really Matters

Most importantly, this simple weekly planning hack reminds me that I am devoting time to creating meaningful experiences with family and friends…an especially poignant recognition for me at the end of 2023.

Find The Joy

Celebrate wins. Express your love and gratitude for your people, your teams.

That’s where the joy is.

And ask for help if you need to see hope and possibilities on the horizon that could transform your team dynamics and your outcomes in 2024.

I was surprised when a potential client, the first time we met, introduced me to the restaurant manager who seated us by saying “she’s going to make me a better person.”

I was proud and humbled that he sensed I could help him based on what my friend and former client (who is now on his team) told him about my work.

But mostly, I was excited that he had such an inspiring intention…not just to be a better leader, but to be a better person.

I wanted to know more about him, his people, his goals and challenges.

The Challenges
As a C-level technology leader with more than 1,600 people in his group, he was frustrated that decisions were too often escalated to the top of the organization.

This wasted time and energy plus created delays in making decisions and solving problems for clients.

“Why Am I Here?”
He shared a story of being invited to a meeting in which it was quickly obvious that everyone in the room was in agreement. They didn’t need his input or another perspective.

He asked one question with many implications, “Why am I here?”

The Goals
This leader’s primary goal is to free up his time and his leaders’ time to focus on the future, their vision and strategy, and minimize firefighting.

He wants to do this by transforming their culture from a top/down approach of handing out work to be done to an inside/out coordination in which people and teams are empowered to solve problems and make decisions.

Ultimately, he wants to reduce the time needed to solve client problems from hours to minutes.

Additive Versus Exponential Impact
It takes a confident and courageous leader to choose empowering leaders and teams, to give them the freedom…and the accountability…to solve problems and make decisions.

The impact of empowerment is exponential rather than additive. The positive effects can ripple out across teams, cultures, organizations, customers, and stakeholders.

It can inspire engagement and creativity beyond what is possible when decisions are made at the top.

What’s Your Highest Leadership Potential?
What are your leadership intentions and goals for 2024?

What’s your plan to operationalize your goals?

What support do you and your team need?

How Inspiring Are Your Leadership Goals for 2024?
Are your goals inspiring enough to motivate you to action and sustain you through the inevitable challenges and distractions 2024 will bring?

To inspire your people and teams to grow into their potential?

I often coach leaders struggling with what to do, how to support, People Who Resist Planning (PRP’s.) From the C-suite to VP’s and Directors and Managers, this phenomenon occurs at all levels of organizations of all sizes and all stages…from scaling startups to the Fortune 100 and nonprofits, from technology to manufacturing companies.

Visible Symptoms…Or Not?
PRP’s are often racing to the finish line, putting out fires, struggling to coordinate all the steps of their projects. They may even miss deadlines or critical steps when it seems to you there is enough time to have anticipated and addressed them more proactively, more effectively.

Other examples of little time and energy for planning are submitting expense reports at the last minute and delaying other routine tasks. My best friend, a good fit for her sales role, submitted expenses at 11:55pm on New Year’s Eve when the deadline for reimbursement ended at midnight as her husband and I waited to celebrate with her.

Leading & Leveraging Differing Strengths
Most of us have worked with colleagues who naturally create structure and order, insist on agendas before meetings and bringing closure by clarifying next steps before adjourning.

Whether they’re bosses, coworkers, direct reports, or collaborators, these people are great at making sure the trains run on time…and on the tracks.

But how do you and your organization leverage the gifts of people who are more likely to be chasing the train as it’s leaving the station, or taking shortcuts, or skipping steps in the system, rather than following established processes?

The Paradox of Planning & Systems
Long-term projects without structure and regular accountability are a potential train wreck for PRP’s.  They’re likely to be behind schedule and over-budget.

Although PRP’s may resist process, structure provides essential support for their productivity and success. PRP’s innately strive to keep the path forward open and flexible, but they likely don’t recognize this pattern in themselves.

The best remedy for this is the very structure and deadlines they resist because they require convergence. Weekly progress updates and accountability with you, as well as frequent team meetings, keep them on track and on time.

“Franklinstein” & Her Planner
After I started my marketing career at Helene Curtis (now Unilever,) we received training in Franklin Covey’s planning system. I quickly earned the nickname “Franklinstein” because I was obsessed.

I had somehow survived my first job in litigation consulting, and business school at Michigan, without any organization or time management skills. To be given a system that laid it all out for me was a truly life-changing, career-saving gift!

Do What You’re Good At
Role alignment is always important, but it’s essential to success for PRP’s. Some are fortunate to have found (or created) jobs that don’t require significant planning.

One client who leads the IT function, including the Help Desk, for their organization leans into his resistance to planning. His flexibility serves him well in his role with new challenges arising constantly and the need to shift gears quickly and effortlessly with little notice.

Another key to his success is his humility and understanding of the need for planning, as well as his appreciation of the CIO’s (his manager), insistence on it. They work closely together to fill his blind spot and balance their differing strengths.

Business Besties
Another career-saving serendipity happened in the last role of my corporate career. Not long after I was promoted to Director of Gatorade Package & Product Innovation, I was assigned the project of redesigning our product development process. This was a high visibility project that required coordinating 40+ active innovation, commercialization, and cost savings projects including monthly cross-functional meetings with 40+ people and multimillion-dollar budgets.

I had deep knowledge of the projects and people, but absolutely no idea where to start on revamping a complex process for a multibillion-dollar brand. My boss didn’t intentionally set me up to fail, but it was an assignment in direct opposition to my unique strengths with no related work experience on which to build.

Thankfully, the consultant hired to work on the project with me had perfectly complementary strengths to mine. She took all of the ideas and insights I had from working with the teams and structured them into a cohesive, refined process that delivered exactly what the business needed.

Know Yourself & Your People
Knowing how to support yourself and your people, including your PRP’s, and who to partner for maximum productivity is critical to success.

Whether you’re a natural-born train conductor, or struggle with consistently planning to support your team, you can create significant positive impact by understanding these patterns and how to appreciate and leverage the differing strengths of your people.

“Can you help me get better at planning because my team needs more of it from me?” The fact that a leader asked this question in a recent workshop should be celebrated.

Why?

The leader had become aware of their blind spot in planning and had the motivation to find solutions for their own leadership development.

Please Understand Me
People Who Resist Planning…PRP’s…don’t naturally identify the process to move a project forward. They don’t easily list what it will take to get from where they are to where they need to be.

They’re not great at getting across finish lines. It takes significant energy and focused attention to converge on the steps necessary to bring closure to a project/process/plan. That convergence is mentally exhausting.

PRP’s don’t have an internal rhythm that moves them in an orderly way step by step by step.

What can look like unnecessary chaos from the outside, is an internal striving (often without awareness) to keep the path forward open. Becoming aware of this pattern opens the door for greater agency, for empowered action.

Planning Hacks for PRP’s
If your Why is clear, and you’ve practiced some Acceptance & Appreciation, now you’re ready for some hacks. (more on the backstory of Acceptance & Appreciation here…)

1. Brainstorming as Planning. If you naturally ideate, then use your brainstorming energy to generate possible planning solutions. Identify key project milestones. What are some steps that could be taken?

Do the same thing to figure out a sequence of steps that could work. Trust that you can change it up later, but prototype it. Then refine.

For example, if you’re creating a presentation deck, use the View/Slide Sorter function to see the overview and move slides around until the order makes sense.

This also works with post-it notes or index cards, record one idea or step on each. The flexibility of this approach is supportive for PRP energy.

2. Race the Clock. If you instinctively ideate and resist planning, you need to treat planning as a sprint. Set a timer. Give yourself a finite amount of time.

What’s happening is that you’re overriding your natural tendency to keep your options open…you have to move toward convergence of a plan. You may feel the resistance to limiting the path forward, but if you’re clear on why it matters and race the clock, you’ll give yourself the best chance of getting at least a draft plan in place.

You’ll be surprised by how much you can get done in a short time and relieved that you’re done planning. Celebrate!

3. Adaptability as Advantage.  Don’t try to create your own system for planning, it’s too big of a lift for someone with so little planning energy.

Pick a planning process…the simpler the better…then give yourself permission to adapt it to work for you.

I started using Brian Moran’s 12 Week Year in January, but I had to simplify it, using only the elements that felt essential for me. Then I fell off the planning wagon with midsummer travel.  Now I’m back on track and happily starting a new 12WY in the middle of August…12WY3.5 works for me.

4. Minimum Viable Planning. Creating a planning system that is simple enough to be supportive, while requiring very little time and energy to maintain, is key for PRP’s.

Remember that you don’t have much energy for planning. You need to create a simple approach that works for you.

5. Finish Lines Are Your Friend. PRP’s can benefit from shifting their mindset around finish lines.

Clarifying the goal line, giving yourself a carrot of following a planning sprint with a task or project where you are in the flow, in your groove, can be the motivation you need to get essential planning done.

Next Up
Are you a leader wondering how you and your organization can support People Who Resist Planning? Do you want to leverage their contributions of flexibility and adaptability?

In the next article, I’ll share solutions for leaders and orgs to embrace PRP’s as the valuable contributors that they are and support their success.

In our Creative Power & Potential workshop with a new client last week, I heard a familiar plea.  “Can you help me get better at planning because my team needs more of it from me?”

Near the end of the day, this same courageous leader shared that she hasn’t asked for help before because she felt shame. She judged herself that she “should be able to do it better,” it “should be easier.”

PRP’s: People Who Resist Planning (& Organizing)
PRP’s don’t need a plan to get started on a project or task. They don’t naturally create systems to sort or store things…whether it’s data they’ve collected, or brilliant ideas they’ve conceived, or all the materials for their favorite hobby.

I asked this leader if it resonated with her that she’ll jump in and get something done then have to look back to see what steps she took. Yep. That’s how it works.

If you’ve ever asked someone for their plan to get something done and they freeze like a deer in headlights, or scoff at the suggestion that a plan is needed or even helpful…you may be working with a PRP.

Yes, It’s A Strength
People who don’t naturally plan and create systems to organize, who actually resist spending time and energy planning and organizing, have a strength at the opposite end of the continuum.

Their superpower is flexibility, dealing with scheduling and other last-minute changes. They find shortcuts in processes. They keep systems from being too rigid.

They move things along quickly…sometimes too quickly, because they skip steps. Sometimes important ones.

Baby, You Were Born This Way
So, what to do if you have this blind spot in planning?

First, accept and claim it as your truth. This acceptance is actually freeing. When you stop judging yourself for being who you are, it frees you from self-doubt and the shame spiral that can limit you from liberating your creative potential.

Next, appreciate and celebrate the flexibility you naturally contribute.

If you can’t see your own genius, ask people how your flexibility and shortcuts add value to your work together. Sometimes we need others to hold up a mirror to see our strengths, especially if we’ve struggled throughout our careers, and lives, with so little energy for planning and organizing.

The Impacts of PRP Energy
You may already know your team and/or colleagues and collaborators are impacted by your resistance to planning. Like the leader in my workshop.

But it may be hidden in the dark because you don’t know what to do about it.

Ask. Get feedback. Be open.

It’s much easier to be open to this “negative” feedback after you’ve invested some time in Acceptance & Appreciation. Those are steps you can’t skip.

When you’re asking for feedback on the contributions of your natural resistance to planning, those same people have also likely experienced when/how your PRP energy has caused problems for them or others.

Why Does It Matter?
This question always matters! If you’re not clear on your why, then you’ll never change, never create the habits that could make a difference.

Note, you’re NOT changing who you are…you’re addressing a blind spot that isn’t serving you or your people.

You have to want greater agency over your way of doing things to implement any potential solutions. Clarity on your Why is critical path to making this change.

“Move Toward” Goal
What will it make possible for you? What’s worth investing your time and energy to create a learned behavior for this planning blind spot?

One of my coaching clients who struggled with all the productivity and planning systems on the market feels the relief of what she calls her “personalized productivity planning” system. Simple.  Customized to her unique strengths, including her resistance to planning.

Don’t Skip This Step
Did I mention you need to start with acceptance and appreciation of this natural talent? Whether it’s yours or someone on your team.

Next Up
Are you a PRP? Do you know a PRP who could benefit from planning hacks?

In the next article, I’ll share some tips and tricks for PRP’s and the people who want to help them succeed.

Multiple colleagues have expressed to me recently how frustrating it is for them, even disorienting, when their schedules change, important meetings move, priorities shift.

They have a plan for the day, or week, and when the inevitable change happens…a client cancels or postpones a meeting, or the finish line they were about to cross on a key project moves or becomes irrelevant…they spend precious time and mental energy trying to reorient their focus, reestablish their flow.

A Rapid Whirling About
The concept of a pivot in business, when we have to radically shift our approach…to our clients, our product, the market…is essential to staying relevant, meeting emerging and evolving needs.

But for some people, a pivot, or the series of pivots they’re forced to make frequently in today’s rapidly changing workplace, can feel as difficult as a pirouette…a 360 degree turn around yourself, in place, balancing on one foot while making it appear effortless.

What’s That Cape You’re Wearing?
Leaders and others who experience the impact of disruptions as frustrating and destabilizing likely have one or both of the following strengths.

First, they are Planners. They’re instinctively wired to put systems, structures, process in place…sequence the essential steps…build plans, and back up plans…and sometimes contingency plans for the backup plans.  Redundancy, with intention.

They can also be Stabilizers. The related and often conflated, but different, strength is minimizing risk…not changing things for the sake of change, but ensuring what’s already working is not altered or eliminated without a strategic reason. They resist unnecessary change.

What’s The Pain Point?
Adding to the frustration of responding to the many changes in their schedule and their work focus, these Planners & Stabilizers often judge themselves. They think they should be able to smoothly shift gears. They expect themselves to make a quick pivot, but it can seem like the notoriously difficult ballet pirouette.

This self-judgment can have its roots in a variety of life experiences where they felt judged by others for moving too slowly, for identifying what could go wrong. They may have been told they were not flexible enough, even rigid.  Or, not creative.  They may have felt like they couldn’t keep up even if they’re highly intelligent.

Appreciating Their Gifts
Yes, these are strengths, talents, gifts…even though they’re not always understood or appreciated for the value they bring to organizations…especially in startup mode and early stages.

In larger companies, these leaders can be the architects of the innovation process.  They understand the integration and continuity required to develop a sustainable innovation capability and outcomes.

These leaders can establish a rhythm like a metronome.  They can bring their leadership team a sense of steadiness in the storm of change.  Often they are methodical, predictable, minimizing the chaos and reducing the risk.

Leveraging Your Strengths
If you’re struggling with the frustration of rapid and multiple changes, first pause to acknowledge the emotions that it brings up for you.  Our emotions often seem bigger than the experience we’re facing because they’re tied to past events.

Then use your own strengths to solve the challenges of disruption. Consider it an opportunity to double down on what you’re good at and plan your way forward.

PLAN for the inevitable changes. Create contingency plans that build in alternative uses of your time.

I See You & Thank You
Every team benefits from the strengths of these Planners & Stabilizers. If you don’t have one (or more) on your team, you may not have the traction you need to be effective and efficient.

Let’s hold compassion for those whose strengths are undervalued, not seen and celebrated as they deserve to be.

If you see these traits in a fellow leader or team member, I encourage you to acknowledge their contribution and offer thanks.

I saw a post on LinkedIn recently about the rapid pace of change and the shifts we “all” need to make in response.

The author insisted, “you need to be bold, spontaneous, and confident.”  They continued…”you need to be willing to take risks.”

Many of my leadership coaching clients would cringe if they read this.  Some would have the self-awareness and confidence to dismiss the suggestion that they need to be spontaneous.

Others would feel judged for not meeting this cultural rallying cry.

All of them know they can’t expect all of the people they lead to be spontaneous and confident.

The Continuum of Spontaneity
The dictionary.com app defines spontaneous as “coming or resulting from a natural impulse or tendency; without effort or premeditation; natural and unconstrained; unplanned.”

Our natural impulses in response to risk and uncertainty vary widely.  Some of us lean into risk, insisting on improvising our way forward.

Others lean out…instinctively minimizing or mitigating risk, resisting it.

The people in the middle are more flexible in their response, easily able to assist those people leaning into or leaning out of risk…building a bridge between those more extreme impulses of insistence and resistance.

Too Much Of A Good Thing
Spontaneity can be highly effective…in the right proportions.

Startups and teams with too much spontaneity often spin without traction, exploring options but not executing. This can create a culture of chaos within teams and across organizations.

Yet without enough spontaneity, leadership teams often get stuck over-analyzing, over-planning, not allowing for greater possibilities, riskier ideas. I’ve seen this over the past ten years with teams of engineers and attorneys…and even tech companies.

Context Matters
Ideal combinations of spontaneity, and resistance to it, depend on the organization’s and team’s goals, their reason for being.

What works for insurance companies and law firms differs from what’s needed for startups and industries in which innovation is critical to their survival and success.

First, Do No Harm
Leaders who care about leading well, growing…themselves, their business, and their people…invest in building self-awareness.

When people aren’t a good fit for their roles, for what’s expected of them, it’s uncomfortable.  They have to work harder, not seeing the success of when they’re working in their strengths.

Leaders who understand what’s going on beneath the surface with their teams can help their people navigate the potential feelings of friction and frustration with other team members.

Playing To Your Players’ Strengths
These leaders know who to give different parts of the ‘work to be done’ to, so that everyone can contribute in a way that’s natural for them.

They understand that people need to have freedom to be themselves while also being responsible for productivity and collaboration.

They appreciate the diversity of strengths across their leadership team and functional teams.

Is “Be Spontaneous & Confident” Good Advice For Everyone?
It’s not a natural combination for many leaders or their people.

Learning to become more…or less…spontaneous can build greater leadership capability and confidence.

It begins with awareness of yourself and your people.

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