Finding Your Own Power

(This post based on an interview with Rose Hall, VP and Head of Construction Innovation at AXA XL. The text was adapted, with permission, directly from an article Rose wrote for IRMI.com. Please read Rose’s full article here. Thanks Rose again for sharing the powerful leadership story.)

Last week, I had a conversation with Rose Hall from AXA XL about leadership. She shared with me a powerful exercise she called “one word” game to better understand her own traits and how she was being perceived by those around her. She asked friends and colleagues individually what one word they felt best described her. After polling 20 or so people, none of whom knew the others' answers, and Rose was astonished to hear that?9?of the 20 responses were identical: "intense" was the word!

One definition of intense is "extreme force, degree, or strength; having or showing strong feelings or opinions; extremely earnest or serious." It gave her quite a bit to reflect on how she was perceived by others. Even more shocking was when she looked up the synonyms of "intense," which include almighty, blistering, deep, dreadful, excruciating, explosive, exquisite, fearful, fearsome, fierce, frightful, furious, ghastly, hard, heavy, hellacious, keen, profound, terrible, vehement, vicious, and violent. That in and of itself is intense to hear!

That experience helped her to reflect her leadership. Today, her intensity hasn't changed because it's part of who she is. What has changed, however, is how she harness it and use it. She has since learned how to balance her intensity and use it as her superpower in some situations and tuck it away in others. She could have looked upon "intense" as a negative, harsh thing that she had to change about herself. Instead, She decided to develop it as one of her strengths. In fact, everyone can use their inherent traits as their own personal power, leveraging them to their advantage.

Knowing ourselves better is important but knowing how we are being perceived by others is often the more important half of self awareness. Some might think that I know who I am and I do not care much about how others think about me. It is not wrong to think that we should figure out what is right and not care what other people think. However, in the context of leadership development and self awareness, how you are being perceived by others can have impactful consequence regardless whether or not the perception accurately reflects our true identity. The perception can and will affect ones effectiveness in the organization. People who know how others see them are more skilled at showing empathy and taking others’ perspectives into their decision making, or in Rose’s case, leverage that awareness of intensity as her strength.

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