Unconscious micro-behaviors that undermine your chance to be a leader

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6 unconscious micro-behaviors that undermine your chance to be a leader

By Harrison Monarth

When senior leaders in organizations discuss candidates in talent reviews for promotions and leadership opportunities, they often consider the informal narrative that exists about someone as much, if not more, than the formal narrative, the latter typically referring to an individual’s professional experience, their credentials, and quantifiable accomplishments.

It’s the informal narrative that often gives valuable insight into the type of leader you would likely make—your ability to influence others, how you approach conflict and difficult conversations, how proactively you build relationships across the organization, and how you manage stress in new domains that are out of your comfort zone.

Some of what gives oxygen to the informal narrative are the micro-behaviors we all engage in, fleeting actions, communication habits, and emotional expressions we convey to others, often below our conscious awareness.

Here are six of these behaviors I’ve seen get in the way of talented professionals’ leadership prospects across all types of organizations in my work as an executive coach.

LETTING PEERS INTERRUPT YOU IN MEETINGS

Interruptions are to meetings what turbulence is to pilots—expected, and virtually impossible to avoid. It hardly matters what type of meeting it is; someone is bound to interrupt someone to refute a point, to steer the conversation in a different direction, or to change the topic altogether. ?

The problem, if maybe by nature you are more conflict-averse, is when someone at your peer-level interrupts you successfully, meaning they get you to stop talking or change the topic to something they want to talk about.

You may not think too much of it, but research shows that while the interrupter may give up likeability points during such an exchange, they gain in leadership status in the eyes of others. You on the other hand lose leadership points in the transaction, and are subsequently perceived as having less influence and credibility than your more dominant peers. ???

This doesn’t mean you should suit up for a brawl in the next team meeting, but to be prepared to stand your ground, to manage such interruptions , and not let someone of equal standing steal your power and gain status in the process, at your expense. ?

MAKING NEGATIVE REMARKS ABOUT OTHERS BEHIND THEIR BACK

If the occasional impulse to vent about certain colleagues in their absence is an emotional itch you can’t help scratch, know that it comes at a cost to your leadership presence.

Integrity is at the top of our list when we intuitively evaluate someone’s leadership potential, according to Dr. Robert Hogan, cofounder of Hogan Assessment Systems, though we hardly need scientific research to tell us that leaders with integrity inspire trust and loyalty, and positively impact team dynamics, collaboration and overall organizational success.

Honesty is one of those innate cognitive criteria we rely on to determine whether someone can be trusted to lead. You’re better off being seen as engaging directly with someone you disagree with, rather than signaling your lack of integrity with subversive gestures and disparaging comments about them. ?

FAILING TO SPEAK UP IN MEETINGS

Study after study has found that speaking up in meetings positively correlates with leader emergence, meaning that in a group of people where everyone is roughly equal in status, those who actively participate in group discussions benefit from perceptions of higher status and leadership qualities over those who don’t.

I’m not talking about that one person everyone knows who habitually dominates meetings and disproportionately takes up airtime. However, this is often the negative example the more quiet, shy or introverted coaching clients I work with hold up as vindication for their lack of speaking up.

They are generally not aware of the impression they create by their passivity, but most of them eventually understand that the cost of their reticence over time may amount to a critical lack of organizational visibility, influence, and exposure of their ideas to a wider, more senior-level audience, all of which may prevent them from reaching desired positions of leadership. ?

ALLOWING YOUR EMOTIONS TO GET THE BETTER OF YOU

We’re not robots, and we all have good days and bad days, but there’s a different standard at the leadership level in terms of how freely we can express our emotions. It’s one of the reasons the term psychological safety has found its way into the organizational lexicon.

You may take pride in being a what-you-see-is-what-you-get type of person, but if others feel like they have to walk on eggshells around you, that your moods are unpredictable, or that you’re quick to lash out in frustration at a team member’s mistake, you will likely get feedback to work on your emotional intelligence first before a leadership assignment would be available to you.

SHOWING RESISTANCE TO FEEDBACK

Feedback, whether positive or negative, presents an opportunity for learning and development. If you aren’t open to feedback, or get even the slightest bit defensive when managers point out opportunities for growth, you are essentially signaling your resistance to change, a lack of genuine interest in developing your capabilities, and an indifference to continuous learning. This unconscious behavior on your part can disqualify you from any serious consideration for a leadership role where learning agility is a foundational requirement. ?

Even if you swallow your aversion to feedback and make a convincing show of embracing the harsh truth when you first receive it, but then fail to implement the feedback in a meaningful way that would demonstrate your commitment to personal growth, you are no better off in terms of your perceived leadership potential, which will be seen as lacking.

Your best bet to guard against such perceptions is to proactively and frequently ask for feedback and enlist the help of trusted colleagues for advice on how to implement it.

IGNORING THE NEEDS OF OTHERS AS YOU FOCUS ON BUILDING YOUR CAREER

You are driven, you’re dedicated, and you deliver great results. Your performance reviews are regular lovefests, and your managers are happy to have you on their team. But then the informal narrative about you catches up with all your accomplishments: You tend to act unilaterally, the story goes, without sufficiently involving others. You don’t focus enough on collaborative decision-making, your colleagues complain, and you don’t consider the nuances of different situations.

You can’t succeed in today’s highly matrixed organizations without understanding their political dynamics, without anticipating the concerns of others, and without the sincere effort to forge the types of relationships that ultimately enable you to influence at the leadership level when you get the opportunity. ?

Once you’re a leader, Jack Welch used to say, it’s no longer about you, it’s all about making other people successful. It’s probably fair to say that you can’t afford to wait until you become a leader to help others achieve their goals. Because it’s only with the broad support of colleagues across your organization that you even get the chance to lead. ??

Harrison Monarth is an executive coach and the CEO and founder of Gurumaker . He is the author of Executive Presence: The Art of Commanding Respect Like a CEO .

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