#UnmaskedLeadership — Becoming More of Who We Are
By: Shivangi Walke
Tags: Leadership Development, Leadership, Shivangi Walke, Leadership Coaching, Unmasked Leadership

Kevin was a role-model of efficiency. Driven, focused and to the point, no meeting with Kevin would go beyond 30 minutes. People would walk in with completed action items from the last meeting and then walk out with a new set. It was as smooth as clockwork.

Sara, the HR business partner for Kevin’s team was new to this culture. She was more used to a “kinder” style of working. I use that term because being driven all the time can lead to burn out and ‘tunnelling’. Kevin believed in optimisation and worked hard. He worked for his team hard too. And when people juggle a lot of problems, they give up trying to solve them all. They adopt tunnel vision. There’s not much long term planning or strategic prioritization. In the tunnel, there is only ‘forward’.

Sara had scheduled multiple meetings with Kevin and they were rescheduled time and again. Sara was keen to work with Kevin on the underlying currents in the team, their strengths and possible red flags. She wanted to discuss succession planning and to create a more engaging culture. Sara even started wondering if Kevin was avoiding meet her.

It didn’t come as a surprise when she ran into Kevin in the car park of a supermarket and he pulled her aside and said “hey! I know you mean well, but I don’t want to get into emotional conversations about my team at work. They are all good workers and I don’t want you to dig and unearth imaginary problems.”

Sara was too stunned to appropriate a response.

A second later Kevin’s son came running at him and he lifted him up and whirled him around, both giddy with excitement. Kevin had transformed into a different persona. Sara was flabbergasted.

Kevin did meet with her the next day at work. He explained that he didn’t mean to offend her, but he preferred staying unemotional and fact-driven at work. Emotions and nurture were best for home.

I have had the privilege to work with Kevin and Sara for a while now. First, it was upskilling his team on the art of crucial conversations (turns out a team as task-oriented as Kevin needed a huge dose of this) and as Kevin’s coach. Working intensively with Kevin has given me a first-hand view of how leaders truly believe that to succeed they should be tough, heroic and save the business in a crisis situation.

One of my most engaging sessions with Kevin was when I asked him if he would be the kind of leader that he wanted to be, who would that person be? Kevin said that at times he gets so caught up in being tough that it takes him time to become a dad at home. He needs a drink to settle down, and his boys know to keep away from him when he’s just back home, and that unsettles him. Given a choice he would be the dad kind of boss at work. He wanted to know more, understand what went on in the lives of his employees, and he knew he could offer advice when a team member was struggling with some life issues.

But he was always hard-pressed for time, there were too many fires to put out and commitments to be delivered on and he didn’t want it to get messy with his people. Kevin believed that if he couldn’t be tough and heroic, he would be labelled ineffective

He had always been led by tough guys, they were his role models and that’s what Kevin had imbibed unconsciously.

When I challenged him that the need for heroism is usually evidence of systems failure — he was listening. He was going home frustrated every day, because he was too driven for his own good, stymied and always felt that he could do better, he just couldn’t quite put his finger on what he could change and how.

And that is the space where we have been working on. Here are a couple of examples :

Don’t override emotional needs to accomplish work goals

When Kevin thought that a team member was distracted in a meeting or wasn’t putting in the requisite effort, Kevin asked for a follow-up meeting. Initially, his team was taken aback. It was new for Kevin to working with adult emotions and that took some fine-tuning in terms of tone, pitch and choice of vocabulary. Kevin started feeling less stressed about it and over time, his team started trusting this new facet of his behaviour.

Don’t flex the reflex mask of command

The moment something didn’t work the way he had visualised, Kevin felt his boss face come up. This was his “I’m in command” card — that he played unconsciously which didn’t allow discussion. His tone changed, he held himself up straighter and he perched his glasses on the top of his head. That was his command mask. His team knew it and learnt to back down. Given his experience, Kevin was rarely if ever off the mark, but it killed learning and conversation in the team. Just becoming aware of his boss stance made it possible for him to start working on it.

My coaching sessions with Kevin have a different flavour these days. He is his unmasked self, more often. He lets down his guard. He shares unformed thoughts as I hold a non-judgmental space for him to voice his apprehensions and feelings. He tells me how much lighter he feels these days — and how he is now attempting to bring that same space to his team to support them to grow.

What could be more satisfying for a coach!

This article was first published on LinkedIn, March 6, 2020