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Introduction
Rick Karash is a close colleague of mine with whom I've worked on a number of significant coaching and consulting projects. He is one of the creators of a program entitled "Coaching from a Systems Perspective." As part of his contribution to that program, he articulated a concept he's termed leadership stance. I was interested in learning more about this concept and asked him to describe it in more detail.
DER: How do you define leadership stance?
RK: This is a term I use to describe how you hold yourself in relation to the context you face, the multitude of things you're dealing with. The components of stance, as I see them, are: Attention, intention, state of mind, and state of the body. For example, the impact of stance is evident when we are nervous and self-protecting. And, it's different when we are self confident, at ease, and open to possibilities. Finally, there is further difference when we are over-confident.
DER: Let's take the components apart. And, how do you know it when you see it?
RK: Attention: Where you are placing your attention, and with what degree of focus. Attention includes both external and internal. Focus ranges from broad to narrow. When we are with a person, we are naturally able to tell what they're paying attention to. We are exquisitely aware of whether they are paying attention to us! In a broader sense, we can tell what they are watching and much of what they are seeing. How often do we notice where we are placing our attention?
Intention: I'm talking about what drives us, which may be different from stated intention. The first aspect of intention is whether it's about us, for example self-protection or self-promotion, or about something else, for example a shared mission or goal. As we know from the Ladder of Inference*, it's easy to draw mistaken conclusions about the intentions of others. How about our own intention? As we act moment to moment, we are seldom fully aware of our own intentions. Noticing and confirming our intentions is a good start.
State of mind: Another good term is mindfulness. Are we flitting from thing to thing or are we staying with some topic? Are we re-running old scripts with fears and voices? We can notice in our interactions when we're seeing mindfulness in others. And when we are seeing totally scattered mental activity. State of mind is linked to state of the body. Reading the body gives hints for state of mind.
State of the body: This is the quickest and easiest reading. As we know, body language communicates an awful lot in a conversation. I watch for activation and agitation. In modern parlance it would be how "hyper" somebody is.
My thesis is that for each kind of human activity, there's an optimal state for each dimension of stance, and the optimal state differs from one kind of activity to another. For example, in full-contact karate, the optimal level of activation is extremely high and attention is quite focused. In most leadership activities, you're aiming for a state of the body which is more relaxed, a state of mindfulness, and an awareness which is attentive and broad, open to a wide set of possibilities.
DER: What's the impact of leadership stance?
RK: An awful lot of leadership is person to person. Your leadership stance affects how you show up for other people. An effective leader is really paying attention, they have their radar out, they are open to possibilities, and they are open to surprises. An effective leader is not knocked off center easily. When you are really listening, it affects the relationship, building trust and respect.
DER: How do these four components affect one's credibility as a leader?
RK: Let's take each one in turn and see what the impact might be.
Intention: We are continuously making assessments of other people's intentions. When those intentions are off the mark in our eye, this has an impact on our relationship and affects our sense of them as a leader. Distrust of intentions makes us less likely to follow. Additionally, we are continuously assessing whether the other person is driven by their own intentions or open to others'. We're continuously recalibrating our sense of their leadership based on our observations of intentions and actions. Leaders are effective when they create with others a sense of alignment of intentions, and a sense of openness to hear others.
Attention: There are two components of attention that affect one's credibility as a leader. First, when you look at a leader and see that they have blinders on, that affects our perception of their credibility. One of the ways we gain credibility and trust is when we carry ourselves so that others have confidence in our ability to see the world.
Secondly, credibility is affected when we perceive that someone is not paying attention to me. If they're not paying attention to me, are they paying attention to anyone? Do they care about us? All this goes right to the heart of leadership and credibility.
Mindfulness: Someone who's clear thinking, stays on topic, displays intellectual rigor. Someone who is not scattered, moving from thought to thought, never staying on anything long enough. Does this affect credibility? Of course!
State of the body: My thesis is that all four of these dimensions of stance are linked together. Pam Brill's book goes into some of the science of the nervous and hormone systems that provide the linkages. We know that intention and state of mind trigger hormones and thus show up in your state of body.
How do you feel when you're dealing with someone who is hyper? Highly active, highly focused, we say "single minded." This generates some respect, say in an athlete, but in a leader, we might well feel that the hyper-focused person is too narrow, missing too much. Stance is active in leadership interactions.
DER: How about personality types? Do people have to become someone different in order to have a credible leadership stance?
RK: There are things you can do as a leader to build credibility. Maybe if you know your type, you acknowledge it. As a leader you start with your genes and your history. You add the best self awareness you can muster, you adopt a stance that's limited by and strengthened by your makeup... then give it your best shot. Part of it is up to the receiver and whether the receiver is going to cut you any slack, give you a chance to think, respect your mental process and ways of seeing. This question of credibility arises in the interaction of people; it is not inherent in one person. A good leader's credibility depends on having a good team.
DER: What about trust?
RK: My best source on trust is Fernando Flores who said, more or less, "Many people think of trust as kind of a moral thing. You should trust me! Instead, trust is contextual. Do you trust me to do a certain thing in a certain context? Trust is an assessment of three elements: Sincerity, reliability, and competence."
Competence: Can they do it?
Sincerity: Do they mean it?
Reliability: Will they follow through? There are real differences in reliability. I've known people who were extremely skilled and sincere, but unreliable.
DER: What are some of the practices that contribute to a leadership stance?
RK: As you learn in yoga, use the physical to impact the other dimensions.
One of the easy levers for getting into a more productive stance is to relax the body. Two deep breaths and a 10 second relaxation can bring you into a better stance in all dimensions.
I find many of my clients are overactive... tapping fingers, fidgety, tapping a foot, etc. I try to help them find ways to slow down to a more optimal degree of activation.
For attention, intention, and state of mind, I think the first thing is to get control of our wild and crazy thoughts. Then, once you have some control of your attention, point it in the direction you want.
Getting control: There are more than a thousand years of zen and martial arts exercises on the question of centering. Most people have some experience of yoga or sports psychology. I encourage my clients to do whatever practice works for them. The specific practice doesn't matter. The ability, through practice, to achieve centering when you need it, this really does matter!
Turning attention where you want it: That requires knowing where you want to go. Once your mind is centered, gently ask, "What's most important to me now? What do I want to pay attention to? What do I care about? What intentions do I want to have right now?" When we are centered, we can focus our mind, and our body relaxes.
Many clients tell me, "This is hard work." The good news is that practice helps. This ability is like the conditioning in our muscles, we strengthen the ability and keep it sharp through practice and repetition.
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*The Ladder of Inference was first put forward by organizational psychologist Chris Argyris and used by Peter Senge in The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. The Ladder of Inference describes the thinking process that we go through, usually without realizing it, to get from a fact to a decision or action. The thinking stages can be seen as rungs on a ladder. For a useful article on the Ladder of Inference click here: The Ladder of Inference.
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