I have been thinking about..and I invite you to think with me…the distinction Success Strategy/Winning Formula and styles of leadership/being in the world. Are they distinct, if so in what ways? What can we impact and what do we simply want to own and enhance?
A conversation with Alice-Lyle started me down this thinking path. She said she has been with both Gary and Doug, in the room with each of them, and that she doesn’t know if she can/wants to do what they do.
Each of us in Dorrier Underwood, and each leader that I have ever known has his/her own “leadership style.” Some of us/them are forthright and direct, impacting others in an unexpected way, in the moment; some of us/them are seemingly “born” to lead to groups, get in front of others and articulate something that impacts in specific ways as well as general ways; others of us/them are quiet, acting more intuitively to impact over time.
Each of them/us has gradations of all of these styles, and some I haven’t distinguished yet. If you watch any leader over time, the style becomes familiar. You know it when you see it happening
Success Strategy, as we speak it, has a ceiling, a limit to what’s possible. So does a style. A Success Strategy is generated as a response to situations when they arise in our lives, and we do and/or say something(s) that turn the situation out in ways we deemed positive because they worked to change the issue in some way. So we “learn” from those situations and repeat them. This also happens with a style.
Both of these seem difficult to alter, because they have a solid existence in our behavior.
In the world of enhancing strengths rather than working on weaknesses, we could go for embracing our style, loving our way of interacting/being in the world, owning it and accepting it as perfect just the way it is. Anytime I do that about anything, it settles me down and has me operate more effectively – I am more there, present, at my best. When I am confronted with my success strategy limits, I feel I have to get over something or change something about myself to be effective.
In my case, and you can look in your own life to see what fits for you, my success strategy begins with comparing myself to others and always falling short! And I begin to be more of that coping mechanism – pulling back, feeling personally wounded, misunderstood, and then a bit feisty and resistant. The resistance then has me go into some version of “I’ll show you.”
My leadership style is more in the vein of “quiet, acting more intuitively to impact over time.” That isn’t my success strategy, which is bolder, unsettled, and more aggressive.
I haven’t reached any conclusions about all this, and I don’t want to. I am going to leave this here, as I want to play with it more.
What do you see, for yourself?