'Professional Development:' Embracing and Improving Your Leadership Style

To achieve your highest potential, to be more “actualized,” you must embrace your leadership style (see Table 1 below). What is your style? Are you an Achiever, Affirmer, or Asserter? What are your leadership shadow behaviors? Which of the Nine Attributes of Actualized Leaders do you need to focus on to improve your leadership, to be an Actualized Leader?

An Actualized Leader is someone who more effectively elicits the willing collaboration of others because he or she effectively manages his or her own behavior under stress. Unchecked behavior under stress is a person's “leadership shadow.” The more effectively a leader manages this shadow, the less reactive and more resilient, and therefore, more self-actualized the leader is.

The Actualized Leadership framework and concept of self-actualization is based on the seminal work of Viktor Frankl, David McClelland, Carl Jung and Abraham Maslow, from which two key concepts are derived:

1. Our freedom to choose our response, attitude, and approach to anyone or any situation; and
2. The concept of paradoxical intent, which posits that the more one fears something, the more likely one is to experience it.

The latter concept is critical to understanding the connection between a leader's unmitigated shadows to the leader's experience of what he or she fears under stress. Each leadership style's fear stems from the style's motive driver, as set forth in Table 1. The Achiever, for example, is motivated by achievement and fears failure. When stressed, the Achiever leads by doing it him- or herself, micromanaging and being critical and narrow minded, all but guaranteeing the team's failure.

Table 1 briefly describes the three leadership styles along with corresponding motive drivers, underlying fears, strengths, shadows and behaviors when self-actualized. Each leader has a dominant style and may have a secondary style.

Leadership Under Stress: The Shadow

Under stress, the strengths of each style can become exaggerated, bringing about the leader's underlying fear. If you're like most people, you've identified your leadership style and, like most, are chagrined by your shadow. Don't be. Everyone has shadows; the key to living to your greatest potential — to self-actualization — is to manage your shadow so that you are more resilient and less reactive.

Improving Your Leadership Style: The Nine Attributes of Actualized Leaders

The answer to the self-actualization question and the ability to mitigate shadow behaviors is found in the Nine Attributes of Actualized Leaders (Table 2). Happily, it's not a foregone conclusion that under stress a leader's shadow drives his or her behavior.

The Nine Attributes fall into two intertwined patterns: Level and Sequence (Table 2). The Levels are Cognition, Emotion and Behavior. The three levels are organized in this manner because a person's thinking affects his or her emotions, which affects behavior. Typically, a leader can improve behavior by changing thoughts and feelings, the former being the root of the latter.

The three sequences are Confidence, Performance and Renewal. If a leader wants to improve a Behavior, he or she will first want to consider the degree to which he or she experiences the attribute at both the Cognition and Emotion levels within that sequence.

For how to improve your self-actualization and resiliency, while reducing your reactivity, consider the strategies identified in Table 3.

Summary

Embrace your leadership style, including your shadow, and you can improve your leadership. It's as simple as engaging in one or more of strategies to improve one or more of the Nine Attributes.

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Anne Collier, MPP, JD, PCC, CEO of Arudia, is dedicated to improving culture and collaboration by developing clients into better leaders, managers and communicators. For more information, reach out to Anne at [email protected], 202-744-2015.