Want to be a better leader? Optimize your Personal Operating System.

Take RJ for example (his real name protected for confidentiality reasons). He was a successful individual contributor (engineer), then lead, and showing signs of future potential so was promoted to a management role. However, his career soon stalled. He was responsible for an area of the company driving exciting new technologies and generating impressive results, but with each subsequent talent review cycle RJ received the news he wasn’t ready for promotion.

At first he took it in stride, and it even motivated him to work harder. However, over time he began to see his peers—other engineers who had joined the organization about the same time he had—being promoted ahead of him. What made things worse was the perceived inequity of why they were being promoted.

“A fish is in water but does not know the importance of water.”

- African Proverb

RJ was driven, ambitious, passionate about his work, and he didn’t like the experience of being held back. He worked long hours--often longer than those same peers--and he had his hands firmly on the wheel of how his team was performing. He maintained a high bar for them and their work, and often pointed out holes in the work of his peer teams as well. Therefore, it was doubly confusing to see those who seemed to have a lower bar and to be less attentive to quality work being advanced ahead of him. His frustration began to simmer.

His boss was running out of ideas to help RJ turn the corner. Still viewed as “high potential” for his technical leadership, RJ’s behavior wasn’t helping his cause. His track record of “sharp elbows,” “broken glass,” and peers who no longer enjoyed working with him were overshadowing his technical strengths. During skip-level meetings the manager also noticed that RJ’s team members appeared more “compliant” than truly engaged and were expressing early signs of dissatisfaction about where their own careers were headed. There was a growing attrition risk for some of their most talented engineers. RJ also wasn’t building a strong enough bench to backfill his role should he be promoted. Perhaps counter-intuitively, this was another demerit.

RJ’s boss also witnessed RJ’s frustration “sparking” at inopportune times (i.e., in front of the boss’ own peers and their respective directs). If anything, RJ’s elbows and tongue were growing sharper. Although he was still attracting talent to his area, this appeared to be due to the attractiveness of the technologies they were driving rather than a desire to work for RJ. The strongest engineers had no interest in working with—let alone for—RJ. Unfortunately, senior leadership no longer trusted in RJ’s ability to scale as an effective people leader.

“Our biggest blind spot can be the thing closest to us—our own values and beliefs.”

Over my 30-year career developing into a senior executive leader, myself, and now as a professional executive coach, I’ve had a front row seat to the evolution of the tech industry—from the emergence of the PC, the growth of the Internet, and the dotcom boom, bust, and beyond. Based in the city that birthed GeekWire and home to tech companies that are now global brands and household names, I’ve been fortunate to be in a position to help diverse leaders make the transition from successful technologist to effective people-leader, in collaboration with the executives mentoring and sponsoring their development. RJ’s story is not uncommon, nor is it specific to technical roles, or those new to people leadership. A similar story could be told of leaders I've worked with in VP and C-suite roles from a variety of industry segments across a broad spectrum of functional roles, worldwide.

There is also a vast array of models and frameworks available to provide useful perspective on RJ’s situation, including “The Leadership Pipeline” and a variety of assessments from “Behavior Styles” to the “EQ in Action Profile,” the “Hogan Leadership Forecast,” “Clifton StrengthsFinder” and a host of multi-rater (360-degree) tools. Another aspect is what Michael Gerber coined many years ago as “working in” versus “working on” your business, in his book, “The E-Myth.” I have used many of these in my work over the years, for I find they help normalize, frame, and “triangulate-in” on a leader’s experience in beneficial ways.

How to decide which to use? Over time I've developed a “so what, now what” philosophy regarding which tools deliver the most beneficial results. I’ve found that those that answer this question provide the most practical and actionable path forward to support sustainable growth. From there I collaborate with each leader to customize our approach with respect for their context, goals and needs.

“I realized it was time to ‘optimize’ my Personal Operating System so I was making the most of it versus it running me and my relationships.” 

However, it was while working to integrate these various learnings in my own development many years ago that I first landed on the “Personal Operating System” metaphor. Each assessment provided a facet of insight, but it was my own core beliefs and values that were ultimately driving my behavior. I realized it was time to figure out how to “optimize” my personal OS so I was making the most of it versus it running me and my relationships. It wasn’t until years later that I realized this Personal OS also needs to be “upgraded” from time to time, but that is a story for another day.

As I began working with RJ, it became clear that although he was vaguely aware of his values, he hadn’t given them much thought, let alone written them down or connected-the-dots regarding how they related to his current situation. As we discussed his level of frustration, he began realizing his challenges were not isolated to work—he was experiencing them at home, too.

It is natural to assume that our OS is shared by others, especially if we’re from the same family, the same country, or work at the same company. However, others are interpreting our behavior based on their own Personal OS. This can lead to unexpected and unproductive “software conflicts,” which further escalate as each party assumes the others’ intent must be negative, as their impact certainly is. Take into consideration the many different ways to describe what “fairness” as a value “looks like” in action, and it’s easier to see how “good intentions” can have unintended negative impacts.

“He was seen as a strong technologist, but a failing people leader. The technology we needed to focus on refining was his own.”

As we delved deeper into RJ’s assessment of his situation and I completed a round of customized Stakeholder Interviews, it became clear that RJ also had expectations that he’d never explicitly shared with others. Therefore, the impact was two-fold; expectations were being missed (or misinterpreted), and people were stepping on values that were important to him without ever realizing it. He would “spark” and they would react to the impact of his behavior, and around and around it went. In short, he was seen as a strong technologist, but a failing people leader. The technology we needed to focus on refining was his own. Therefore, we embarked on an “experiment” to assess and fine-tune his Personal OS.

6 Steps for Optimizing Your Personal Operating System

1.    Research – What Core Values are most important to you at this time? If they don’t easily come to mind, consider a free-write exercise. Turn off the “inner editor” and list all of the values-related words you can think of for 5-10 minutes. Another clue is what “triggers” you most by what others do--or don’t do (i.e., when others don’t keep their commitments). If you’re really stuck, ask those who know you well--chances are good they know what really bothers you and can help you reverse-engineer the value behind it.

2.    Diagram – Review your list and cull it down to your top 5-7. You may find that you’ve used similar words to describe the same core value (i.e., integrity, congruence, honesty, transparency). Select the ones that best capture your intentions at this time.

3.    Develop Use Cases – What do each of these values look like in action--particularly when used well. Describe what it is that you do—behaviorally—that will help others to recognize this value at work and in life (sometimes they manifest differently). How are you being and what are you doing when you’re exhibiting how important “excellence” is to you?

4.    Target Users – Think through how these apply to various stakeholders. For example, where are you using these well, and where might you be over-using or under-using your values with your boss, peers, directs, key business partners, family members, and even yourself? One leader I worked with realized that although she was accustomed to thinking of how “keeping commitments” was important with others, she hadn’t considered how this applied to keeping commitments to herself—such as honoring her training goals in preparation for the marathon she planned to run later that year, and the added benefits the workouts had on her ability to remain calm, focused, fully-present, and effective at work--and at home.

5.    Test – Which of these values needs further refinement at this time? Perhaps you’ve landed on one that is over-used (i.e., “high standards” may be leading to “micro-management”). Or one that is under-used with a particular stakeholder group. It might be that you've gained insight into what “highest and best use” of this value looks like and can now test this with key stakeholders.

6.    Launch – Decide how you will take a more deliberate approach to leveraging your newly optimized OS. This might be a "soft launch" to continue iterating your list and descriptions as you observe your own behaviors in real-time, or to share your OS with a few trusted colleagues to see how they might describe things differently. When you’re ready, it can be highly useful to deliberately share your OS with your team and invite them to do the same. It is also a useful shared exercise for fostering stronger collaboration across your team as a whole.

The 3 key benefits RJ realized through this experience:

A greater sense of clarity, calm, and authenticity.

The more self-aware, intentional, and deliberate he was with his own values, the easier it was to notice and name what was frustrating him (versus “acting out” with frustration). Even better, he was able to find new ways to apply and “use his superpowers for good.”

Greater awareness of (and empathy for) his impact on others.

The experience helped him to depersonalize the impact when others stepped on his values. He now realized they may have different values and/or different ways of interpreting them. As he shared his Personal OS and openly invited others to do the same, a different picture emerged that made the inevitable conflicts far easier to navigate—together. 

The improved ability to bring out the best in others—which he realized is a core strength of effective People Leaders.

RJ’s colleagues finally had a “code map” to make sense of his behavior, and as RJ settled into a calmer place, he became easier to collaborate with as well. RJ also realized that learning more about how his directs were “hard wired” made it easier for him to authentically engage and motivate them to greater levels of performance. Over time he applied this with his peers as well.

In summary, RJ realized that, whether conscious or not, his personal OS was driving his inner motivations, where he was focusing his attention, what he prioritized, where he invested his time and energy, how he “filtered” decisions, and how he behaved (including what “triggered” his re-active behavior and negative impacts). Although it took a little more time for his stakeholders to believe he had turned the corner and was sustainably more effective, RJ went on to lead larger teams across multiple geographies. He is now a respected and sought-after mentor and people leader. However, even more important to RJ was the impact on his family and on his own personal sense of well-being. 

Coach Kelly Holm is a professionally certified and ICF credentialed executive coach, with a passion for “Strategically and creatively engaging the whole leader for authentically sustainable results.” An award-winning leader and coach, she brings a unique blend of hands-on senior executive experience, professional coaching presence, and a gift for leveraging diverse strengths to accelerate leader, team, and organizational effectiveness. She’s had the honor of coaching executives, leadership teams, entrepreneurs and professional coaches from over 16 countries and 30 industry segments, including 100 Best Companies and the Fortune 50. | t: +1 425.970.3552 | e: [email protected] | www.CoachKelly.com