Making friends with Heat experiences

I have worked across companies big & small. I have started & grown my own company from scratch. Companies have a way of getting things done & a unique culture forms as people join & different styles start to come together in a mashup of sorts. This culture is not so much about what people say, it's a lot about what people do & how they do it.

When a company is small, everything is a lot more about survival. There is anxiety everywhere & a culture of speed & urgency begins to develop. The founder or important leaders impact everything. Sometimes this is good but often a leader brings his quirky style along & it impacts the culture. How do we respect each other, how do we dissent, do we have permission to speak back or is it taboo here, all the strands of company culture begin getting formed from the early days. My own experience of creating Cequity was that I brought many of my strengths but more than enough of my edgy style to the table. As an entrepreneur, when you start a company, the passion to succeed at all costs becomes the primary force. And that success mantra drove me all the time & probably drove many of my colleagues up the wall too! And to top it all I had a partner who was my opposite! So we had two dramatically opposite styles at play as we started to create a company.

One of my colleagues from back then, Jiju George , described it very well. "working with both of you is like experiencing halal & Jhatka together". While I laughed about it then, I can only imagine how the kind of pressure it must have put our colleagues through. And the fact also was that at that stage, both of us were convinced about our styles as our leadership behavior had served us well for so many years. We were both successful corporate executives trying to make an impact with a new startup. And we would do anything to not lose, as long as it was ethical & above board, it was fair game. So for both of us, our clients were kings & queens! We would stretch ourselves & others to make a mark. I brought a lot of restlessness & entrepreneurial energy while my partner reveled in stabilizing the ship. Cequity needed both energies to succeed & grow. Many leaders joined us & worked with us as we grew. All of them absorbed cultural fabric from both of us & also contributed important cultural strands back to Cequity.

Leaders will often say that their greatest growth happened through what is called "heat experiences". Periods when they felt so stretched in terms of experience, skills & capability that they floundered. Early in my career, I worked at Pepsi & my boss pushed me to do pricing for a large joint venture project. I wasn't able to get my act together but the experience taught me & allowed me to reach out for help whenever I was out of depth in the future. Stories that leaders tell about these heat experiences are the crucibles of their development as leaders. I had plenty of heat experiences over the 12 years that I helped to grow Cequity. I also offered heat experiences in plenty to our colleagues as Cequity grew. As leaders, we recognize that as we 'turn up the heat', learning multiplies & personal growth happens. But heat experiences are also extremely stressful & emotionally confusing.

What I probably needed to learn at that stage is that turning up the heat is ok but be mindful of the temperature & also be deeply aware of the support that you are providing people through the journey.

We all have heard of stories where sportspeople went to great lengths to win at their chosen field. Cricket lovers would remember that when Shane Warne was visiting India, Sachin Tendulkar had prepared for the series by creating rough patches outside his leg stump to simulate Warne's leg breaks and asked Laxman Sivaramakrishnan to pitch balls on those areas.

Just as Sportspeople must practice, so too must leaders. Yet while leaders will happily sharpen their skills on what is considered "hard skills", many of them don't focus on improving in the area of "soft skills". These are commonly defined as non-technical skills that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with others. In fact, I sense that soft skills are harder skills. Tendulkar didn't stop at the hard skill of playing spin, he also focused on the mind games that Shane Warne was known for & beat him at his own game. I wish I had appreciated it earlier in my career so that I could practice my soft skills & get better with focus. That this is something that can be learned, is often not appreciated by leaders. Emotional skills are becoming more crucial as intelligent machines take over more physical, repetitive, and basic cognitive tasks.

In the work I do as a Leadership coach, I observe that people are reluctant to reflect more deeply about their heat experiences. And after reflection, taking action on changing embedded behavior is even more difficult.

Research shows that peak performers in a variety of fields (from Sportspeople to musicians to leaders) spend thousands of hours in deliberate practice, pushing the boundaries of how they can compete. Spending those hours to look at what changes you want to make in your leadership behavior(the soft skills) may change the trajectory of your journey.

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