The Wake-Up Call
A few years ago, I had a crisis of consciousness. You’ve heard of “crises of conscience”, or even “crises of confidence” and yes, those were key ingredients in the crisis casserole I had served up for myself. This was different. This experience hit me right between the eyes and made me take a long, hard look at the leader I had become. Believe me, it wasn’t pretty.
In the Fall of 2018, I was a digital program director for a large company and I had just completed a leadership self-assessment called the Leadership Circle Profile 360 (LCP). As part of the process, I invited people I worked with closely to provide feedback on my leadership. I had always thought of myself as a strong, capable leader and I expected to receive feedback that validated that perspective. The LCP report that came back told a very different story.
That story revealed that my co-workers - peers, employees, stakeholders, and senior managers - found me to be an ineffective leader - self-serving, arrogant, and lacking authenticity. They scored me low in the LCP’s “creative competencies” (18 attributes that ladder up to effective leadership) and high in the “reactive tendencies” (11 attributes that ladder up to ineffective leadership). Their qualitative feedback was consistent with their quantitative feedback, alternating between scathing and brutally honest, with a touch of wistful longing.
It gets worse. As part of the assessment, I rated myself on the very same dimensions. The story of my leadership that I had come to believe was being told through rose-colored glasses - I had rated myself much more positively than my colleagues had rated me. In fact, the gap between their scores and my scores was so big - and so far out of my awareness - I had no idea how I would ever be able to close the gap. To me, the story seemed set in stone.
What was obvious, and what I struggled to accept at first, was that my ego was running the show. And now that ego was exposed. The “emperor” truly had no clothes.
And then came the voices. In Dare To Lead, Brené Brown talks about the “arena” and the voices that shout at us from the various sections. Here’s what I heard:
The Cheap Seats (vile criticism): “You suck! You were never a good leader!”
The Box Seats (privilege): “You’ll never join the ranks of real leaders!”
The Season-Ticket Holders (shame): “You’re a terrible person and a terrible leader!”
The Support Section (empathy/self-compassion): Silence
I spend the next 24 hours face-down in the arena, feeling shame, guilt, embarrassment, and humiliation, all at the same time.
Then, someone threw me a lifeline.
That someone was my coach at the time, Lorry Schneider. Lorry helped me understand both stories - the one I had carefully created over my lifetime, and the story the LCP and my colleagues’ feedback was telling. He helped me look at this experience as a wake-up call, one of the most important wake-up calls of my life.
As we worked together over the following months, I took away three key learnings:
Who we are is how we lead. My deeply-help beliefs about myself as a leader, a team member, and a manager were obscuring what my colleagues really needed from me. This doesn’t mean I was a bad person, it meant that while my ego was running the show I wasn’t leading from my true, authentic self. The LCP showed me the gap in stark relief and gave me a choice - keep up the facade or let down my guard, put down the armor, and lead from who I really am, not who I thought everyone else wanted me to be.
There’s always something to appreciate, even in the tough feedback. Lorry helped me understand that if my colleagues didn’t care about me, they would have either ignored my request for feedback or glossed over the hard stuff. Neither of those two things happened. Giving me honest feedback was probably scary for them. But that care and vulnerability was a request, calling me forth to be the leader that they needed. This appreciation shifted my perspective from “everyone hates me” to “I have friends who are trying to help me.”
“Anyone can be emotionally intelligent when things are going well”. I carry this quote from Lorry with me as a reminder that the measure of my leadership comes in the moments when things get challenging or when there’s a conflict. In the past, I would power my way through an obstacle, even when that obstacle was a person. Lorry helped me take on the real work - being with tough emotions in the moment and recovering to my values and purpose. That allowed me to slow things down, get curious, and put relationships over results.
I spent the next three years repairing and strengthening my relationships, building self-awareness and self-acceptance, and taking responsibility for the impact I created, both positive and negative. With Lorry’s coaching, I got underneath the LCP feedback and found the two critical areas where I needed to improve the most - Courageous Authenticity, and Integrity. We worked on these areas over many months.
In time, I was able to hear the voices of empathy and self-compassion in the Support section more clearly, The voices from the Critics, Box Seats, and Season Ticket Holders sections of the arena quieted down. They’re still there, but they don’t knock me down as often or as hard as they used to. In fact, they’re kinda useful now and again. More on that in a future post.
Fast forward to 2021, and I re-took the LCP to check in on my progress. The experience was quite different this time around; I had turned things around. My focus areas - Courageous Authenticity and Integrity - had not just improved, but the gap between my self-rating and how others rated me had closed. In fact, they were almost identical. More important than the scores, I noticed that my relationships - including with most of my raters - were now more authentic and enjoyable.
It’s 2023 and I’m writing a different story. I left my corporate job a year ago and Monique and I are living our dream of working together as leadership and team coaches for Hive. Our business - and our lives - are thriving. And though I still feel like the same person I’ve always been, I’m leading a whole lot differently, from a place of awareness and authenticity.
I look back at the stories in play in 2018 with gratitude and caution. I’m thankful for getting a “second chance” to reset how I lead in relation to who I truly am. I’m cautious because I know how easy it is to fall back into old, reactive habits. I still get reactive from time to time; after all, I’m still human. But I’m able to recover and return to center more quickly and get back to leading as wholeheartedly and courageously as I can.
I have Lorry, Monique, my friends, my colleagues, and my current coach Cynthia Loy Darst to thank for their support and patience as I continue waking up and becoming a better leader. The lessons I’ve learned from them and from my wake-up call have made me a better leadership coach and trainer, and a better person in general.
