Identifying and Expanding your Leadership Style: Guest Issue by Justin Mulvaney
Using Identity, Polarity, and Play to Evolve your Leadership
Hi Spark readers, and greetings from the Hudson Valley, New York 🙂
I’m Justin, a Conscious Leadership Coach and collaborator of Rebecca’s.
I’m excited to be guest writing today, sharing a tool with you that is central to how I work with leaders on their leadership development.
If you want to keep in touch with me, you can read my writing at The Leadership Lab
or follow me on Twitter at @justinmulvs. Cheers!
- Justin
“Dead on,” I thought. “This thing is dead on.”
It had nailed me down to a tee. Well really, I had nailed me.
I was looking at a map of me, or rather how I showed up as a leader, that illuminated my leadership values, patterns, blindspots, and fears.
I now had a name for my natural leadership style, Measured & Thoughtful, and a clear understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of leading that way. Importantly, I also saw how there was a polar opposite leadership style, Trusting & Playful, that would expand my leadership capabilities, but that I lost access to in the hustle and bustle of my day-to-day.
The map helped me realize that, consciously or unconsciously, I believed that these two leadership styles were an either/or. I believed that in any given moment I could either be Measured OR Trusting, but never both. And in an instant, I saw that one of the keys to my leadership development would be to embody both; to transform this polarity to a unity: a single, unified “and”.
As a conscious leadership coach, this form of identity and polarity work is a huge component of how I work with leaders.
All of us, including you, have a natural leadership style and a polar adaptive style that is projected as a result. If you’re blind to this, it’s easy to overindex on your natural style, reaching for it in situations where it isn’t helpful, akin to hammering a screw or screwing a nail.
It’s also easy to miss that there is an adaptive style which, were you able to access it, would blow open your capacity as a leader and double the number of tools in your leadership toolkit.
Do you Know your Leadership Style?
As a leader, how much time have you spent getting to know your natural leadership style?
You have one, whether you realize it or not. You have a set of leadership patterns that show up again and again, driven by your values and beliefs about what good leadership is.
Having clarity on how you want to show up as a leader is hugely valuable. Identifying your leadership North Star and Values and using them to inform your leadership creates alignment and increases impact.
But there are unforeseen costs to being overly attached to your leadership style.
The more attached you are to any given way of leading, the more limited you become as a leader. That’s because any style of leadership casts a shadow—a set of characteristics with their own superpowers that exist in opposition to your style of leadership—which becomes inaccessible to you if you are overly attached to that way of leading.
I want to show you how to identify your leadership style and the polarity that it naturally creates, and from there, show you ways to play with that polarity to expand your leadership toolkit and range.
Mapping your Leadership Identity and Polarity
Grab a pen and piece of paper, and I’ll walk you through a quick exercise to map your leadership identity and the respective polarity that it creates.
All you need is a four quadrant matrix and four simple prompts…
1) Sometimes, I think I am too…
Start in the bottom left quarter of your matrix. Answer the the prompt “Sometimes, I think I am too…” and write down 3-5 things you think that you can be or do too much of as a leader.
I’ll implore you not to think too hard here. Simply write down the first things that come to mind. Don’t try to capture everything. Capture the 3-5 (6 or 7 tops!) primary things that you can be too much of as a leader.
Here’s what mine looked like:
2) At those time, I would like to be more…
Next, move to the upper-right hand corner, and write down the things you would ideally like to be or do when you notice you’re doing what you said in quadrant one.
You want to create a 1-to-1 mapping. if you wrote five things in quadrant one, there should be five corresponding things in quadrant 2. Here’s what mine looks like:
Notice the 1-to-1 map. Each bullet point corresponds to the same bullet point in the next quadrant—Sometimes I think I am too Analytical, at those times I would like to be more Intuitive.
Sometimes that answer isn’t a clear opposite. For example for concerned with risk, I didn’t say optimistic, I said objective.
3) What I fear, if I do too much of the above…
Next, move to the lower right-hand quadrant and write the things that you fear would happen were you to do too much of what you wrote in quadrant 2.
For this, let your monkey mind speak. Don’t combat the fears with your intellectual brain. Ask yourself, what I am afraid will happen if I do too much of X?
Once again, here’s mine:
The fears may not be rational. You may already see how some aren’t true. But it’s these fear-driven stories that rob you of access to what you want in quadrant two.
4) What I value, too much of which leads to quadrant 1
In the upper-left quadrant, I want you to look back at what you wrote for the the first prompt, “Sometimes, I think I am too…”.
Reflect: what authentic values do you hold that leads those things to happen?
What is it that you value for its own sake which, when you overdo it, leads you to be too much of something? What it is that you value that drives your leadership?
Here’s what that looked like for me:
Making a Map
At this point, you have four quadrants mapping out your leadership pattern.
When you lead, you start with quadrant 4: a set of values that inform everything you do. These values are effective leadership in their own right, but when overdone lead to some ineffective patterns, down in quadrant 1.
At that moment, you may notice that it’s no longer effective, and seek to compensate with the behaviors up in quadrant 2. But your fears in quadrant 3 quickly undermine those activities, leading you back to quadrant 4.
If you’ve ever felt like you’ve been spinning in place as a leader, this is likely the pattern. An infinity symbol from 4, to 1, to 2, to 3, keeping you stuck in place.
There are a few hallmarks of this map worth noting.
First, the upper part of the map, quadrants 4 and 2, are both pictures of effective leadership. While they are different, both paint the picture of effective leaders in their own right.
Second, the lower part of the map, quadrants 1 and 3, both look like ineffective leadership. Both of these are leadership styles in dysfunction, overdoing it.
Finally, you’ll notice a divide between the left and right side. The left side paints one picture of leadership, functional at the top and dysfunctionally overdoing it at the bottom, and the right side paints another picture of leadership, once again functional at the top and dysfunctionally overdoing it at the bottom.
What you’ll also notice is that the left and right side appear to exist as a polarity. It appears that I can either be the leader on the left or the leader on the right:
I can either seek truth and understanding or be intuitive.
I can be either kind or direct, assertive, and candid.
I can be either self-sufficient or collaborative.
I can either focus on longevity or be objective.
The developmental unlock is to reconcile that polarity. To bring these oppositional leadership styles from an or to an and and find a way to be:
Truth-seeking AND intuitive
Kind AND Direct, Assertive, and Candid
Self-sufficient AND Collaborative
Focused on not failing AND Objective
We’ll talk more about how to do that soon, but first…
Naming your Styles
I want you to put names to your polar leadership styles.
Remember before, how I said my natural style was Measured and Thoughtful, and what’s lost is Trusting and Playful? Let’s do the same for you.
Look at the left side of your map. This is you natural leadership style. Is there a word that comes to mind to describe that leadership? Try and find a descriptive word, one that is neither too positive nor too negative. If you’re struggling, aim to be a bit positive. How would you describe this leadership? Don’t worry about getting it perfect, you can always adjust later.
Next, head to the right side and do the same. This is your adaptive leadership polarity. What is a word that describes this style of leadership?
And finally, put them next to each other. Do these feel like polarities? Does the left feel like your natural state of operation, and the right an oppositional style that gets projected?
This is more art than science. Some people use descriptive words, other name them as characters. Either way, massage them until they feel like they exquisitely describe your leadership and its polarity, and make them easy for you to remember.
For me, that came down to measured and trusting:
Playing with Polarity
You’ve now identified and named your natural leadership style, as well as the style that exists in polar opposition to that.
Your main focus is to play with these so that these polarities shift from a disintegrated, polar relationship to a unified leadership style. We want to shift it from an or “Measured OR Trusting” to an and “Measured AND Trusting”.
The way you’ll do that is twofold:
First, practice noticing when you reach for your natural leadership style as a default, even when it’s not of service to you. Pay particular attention to when it’s not effective or seems to set things back. Forewarning: there’s a decent chance that you’re doing this a lot.
Importantly, I don’t want you to try and change anything yet. I simply want you to notice when you reach for your default style and it isn’t effective. Take note. What was going on for you in that moment? Did something feel stressful or threatened? Was there fear present? Is there a pattern to when it’s ineffective?
I want you to log these times. Create a record of all of the times that you tried to hammer a screw and how it went for you.
Second, I want you to find a specific setting in your leadership where you can experiment with leading from your adaptive leadership pole.
Maybe that’s a recurring meeting with a trusted teammate or whenever you work on a project that you identify would benefit from this approach. Whatever works. I just want you to find an avenue where you can unabashedly be that polarity. I want you to unleash it. I want you to test your fears and open your eyes to some of the unknown advantages.
It can be helpful to let colleagues know you’re running this experiment. This can be as simple as saying “I’m running an experiment. I’ve identified that I have a particular way of leading, and I’m experimenting with another way of leading that I’d like to integrate into my leadership. Here’s what those styles are, and here’s how I intend to experiment.”
Over the long-run, the goal is to notice when your natural pole doesn’t serve you, make space for your adaptive pole in your psyche, and slowly see these styles of leadership merge.
The combination of independent awareness and play allows this to unfold naturally.
You’ll almost effortlessly notice that your natural style isn’t working in a given context and, if you’ve played with the other style and learned its strengths, deploy that instead.
You’ll probably still play in your natural stye most of the time, but at the times when it matters most, you’ll find you have access to an entirely new set of powerful leadership tools. You are now capable of being this AND that.
Access to this range, and the adaptability and fluidity it creates, is my wish for you.
My Integration
I’m still working on integrating Trust with my Measured ways of leading. The process isn’t always quick, but when things start to shift, it’s rewarding.
I find myself trusting partners more, being more assertive, and doing so while also maintaining independence and compassion for those I work with. I’m still highly analytical, but can more readily identify when analysis is paralyzing and lean into my intuition.
The process of integrating is wobbly. It requires a lot of toddling, and a fair share of falling. It’s not always clear or easy. And, as it happens, you’ll notice seismic shifts in your results. Keep going. Integration is worth it.
Good luck to you!
Challenge
Use the above prompts to map your leadership patterns
Name your two leadership poles and tell a trusted colleague about them
Commit to identifying when your natural leadership style shows up in a way that is not in service of you. Commit to noticing one instance per day, at first, and write it in a journal. If you don’t notice any in a given day, note that.
Find a recurring meeting or project to actively inhabit your adaptive leadership pole. Tell your team you’re running an experiment, and commit to showing up that way, even if it’s unnatural. Play with it and see what happens! Commit for at least two weeks, up to a month.
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