IT'S ALL MENTAL

Self-Esteem and Coaching, Part 2

The Next Steps To Strengthening Your Self-Esteem as a Leader

Trust

Integrity is one of the pillars of self-esteem.?It is an equally essential pillar of effective leadership.?An intimate relationship exists between integrity and the ability to inspire trust.?It is no mystery how trust is created.?At the heart of trust is congruence between words and actions.?In short:

One tells the truth, keeps promises, and honors commitments.?One’s behavior manifests one’s professed values.?One deals with others fairly and justly.

?Few company heads realize how closely their smallest moves are noted and absorbed by those around them, not necessarily consciously, and reflected via those they influence throughout the organization.?If a leader is believed to have integrity, a standard is set that others feel drawn to follow.?

?Integrity, trust and character are not peripheral to business but fundamental—which means that self-esteem is fundamental.?While this truth is relevant at every level for the long-term success of an enterprise, nowhere does it more urgently need to be kept in constant focus than in the office of the CEO.?CEOs may not usually think of themselves as moral teachers, exemplars, or inspirers—but they are and they should.

?Apart from the general matter of integrity, one of the ways leaders generate trust is through the clarity of their communications.?Another way is by the quality of the people with whom they surround themselves.?When a reality-orientation is perceived to be consistent and basic to an organization’s culture—because a leader exemplifies it, teaches it, insists on it, rewards it (and punishes its opposite)—people feel safe, they feel honored, and they feel trust.?And then they may astonish themselves and others with what they are able to accomplish.

?Yes It’s Lonely at the Top

While full consensus is the ideal, it may not always be realizable, not even by a superb teacher or persuader.?To invite everyone’s feedback does not mean that everyone has equal authority regarding the final decision.?After all the respectful talking, listening, debating and interacting is done, someone has to say, “This is what we’re going to do.”

The ability of leaders to do their job rests on at least two factors.?The first, obviously, is trust in their own ability to think, choose, and make appropriate decisions.?The second is their ability to manage any desires to be liked or approved that obstruct the perception of what needs to be done or the will to do it.

?The leader’s job is to do what he or she honestly thinks is right for the organization.?Sometimes this task will test self-esteem.?But if, without repression, denial, or disowning, leaders manage and rise above feelings that may stand in the way—if they place their judgment of the realities confronting them above other considerations—they grow in personal stature, in self-esteem, and in professional effectiveness.?

Self-Awareness is Central

You cannot successfully manage feelings of which you are ignorant or which you have denied and disowned.?On the contrary, such repressed feelings tend to manage you.?Self-awareness is one characteristic of effective leaders.?Without it, they cannot manage themselves; unable to manage themselves, they cannot properly manage others.?Without a commitment to self-examination, a leader operates at a severe disadvantage.

Focusing only on your strengths and being blind to your weaknesses does not build self-esteem.?You need to be aware of both.?No one is equally strong in all respects; if you know what your weaknesses are, you can compensate for them—which is precisely what effective leaders do.?Ineffective leaders do not recognize that they have any shortcomings, and therefore do not think their way through to solutions—they merely resort to denial, blaming, and alibis.

?Then there is The Challenge of Change

A great deal is written these days about the problems of leading people in a company through the trauma and anxiety of change—as if leaders do not have to confront the same fear and resistance within themselves.?

The difficulties with change experienced by employees are often the reflection of difficulties existing in the minds of senior management or the CEO.

?At some level people know whether the boss means it or not.?His senior associates know it, and his ambivalence commonly becomes their own, which travels through the organization like a virus.?The change that a leader sees as needed in his organization has to happen first in his own mind.?Often, problems in an organization reflect attitudes/problems at the most senior level and need to be addressed at that level.?A relatively small amount of corrective action at the top can produce major changes down the line. In other words, "speed of the leader, speed of the team!"

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What about Accountability: Test, Source, and Expression of Self-Esteem

In any organization, personal responsibility and accountability—and culture change—begins at the top.?The most effective leaders operate at a high level of self-responsibility.?They do not waste energy on blaming.?They do not pass the buck.?They ask, “Did we error in placing that person in that position??Did we fail to provide the necessary training??Where was the mistake made and how can it be corrected??Is there something I ought to have done differently?”

Such a leadership practice of self-responsibility, openness to self-examination, and commitment to taking corrective action is at once a test of self-esteem, a source of strengthening self-esteem, and an expression of self-esteem.

?A Paradox or Contradiction?

Effective leaders need confidence in their own judgment; perseverance even when others do not yet share their vision; tolerance of misunderstanding and opposition; and a passion to realize their vision.?They must also recognize that sometimes they can be wrong, that they grow stronger, not weaker, by testing their ideas against others, by being open to discovering errors in their thinking and being eager to correct them, and by being a student/learner as much as the teacher.

These two attitudes represent a paradox, not a contradiction; there is nothing contradictory between confidence in one’s judgment and awareness of one’s fallibility.?A high self-esteem mind can easily and comfortably hold these attitudes in balance.?To be open to new information that may require a revision of some of my premises doesn’t mean that I wander around in self-doubt.?It is defensive-ness, not openness, that reveals insecurity.

So Who Solves the Problem?

The president of a firm had eight managers, all “good people,” but with one failing.?They rarely averaged better than 90 percent on following through on commitments.?The president needed 100 percent.?After explanations, reproach, dialogue, and listening had failed, she asked if I could help.

I explained my philosophy that, whenever possible, problems should be solved by the people who created them.?After spending a day working on an exercise I designed, her staff came up with many more and better ideas than she or I might have produced.?They were then asked to develop an action plan for translating their ideas into practice.?Almost immediately, the problem of the missing 10 percent disappeared.?A brilliant leader is not someone who produces brilliant solutions.?It is someone who inspires other people to produce the brilliant solutions.

?Beware of the Pressure Cooker

When things go well and profits rise, leaders may find it easy to practice the kind of principles discussed here.?When business takes a downturn, competition intensifies, interest rates rise, stock prices fall, or market share shrinks, leaders may forget this “soft stuff,” may become less concerned with ethics, less willing to tolerate dissent, or more autocratic—because they are frightened and their anxiety has flung them back to earlier, less adaptive forms of behavior.?Their ego-strength was not sufficient to withstand the pressure of the difficulties and challenges.

?Leaders who succumb do not tell themselves their driving motive is fear.?They say that “tough times demand toughness.”?But since their notion of toughness is not the answer, and since they abandoned the better policies when they most needed them, their problems tend to become worse.?Of the various causes of business failure during the last five years, this was the one clearly maladaptive pattern.

Training New Leaders

If there is one aspect of successful leadership that the modern U.S. military seems to understand better than anyone, it is the importance of leaders training others to lead.

Everyone in the army is trained in three basic leadership priorities:

·?????Accomplish the mission

·?????Take care of personnel (an officer sees that his soldiers are fed and sheltered before attending to his own needs)

·?????Create new leaders.

It is clear that the long- term success of a business enterprise requires that it have more leaders at more levels than its competitors.?This means that a commitment to creating as many leaders as possible throughout one’s organization is a strategic imperative.

Leaders who are secure in the knowledge of their own value are more likely to nurture and support potential leaders than to feel threatened by them, and to realize that no organization can sustain success without them. The virtue involved is not selflessness but realism—responsibility toward what the situation requires.?The more a leader’s self-esteem is equal to this challenge, the more likely it is that the challenge will be met.

-Jim Madrid

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