Life’s Primary Tension
Early in my career I was overly protective of my ideas, believing they were “the best.” I didn’t listen well to others when they tried to contribute their own thoughts because I was convinced I had “the answer.” I’m two steps ahead of you, buddy, was my thinking. I know what we should do and how we should do it.
We all have behavioral tendencies like this. They originate when we are very young, as we develop into socialized beings and figure out how to survive in the world. What we discover becomes part of our identity which, for me, was making the connection that being a smart kid with creative skills meant getting recognition and reward.
Decades later I learned that what had served me well as a child and young adult was no longer working to my advantage. Protecting my ideas was actually dragging me down as I assumed roles where I needed to collaborate with others. It was only after taking the Leadership Circle Profile 360 assessment that I got wise to my internal operating system - and much like software, it needed an upgrade.
The Leadership Circle (or LCP for short) beautifully illustrates how we each engage with life’s primary tension, which is the perpetual tug ‘o war between purpose (leveraging our strengths, making a contribution, being creative) and safety (sticking with what’s familiar, seeking validation, averting risk). To illustrate, here are three common situations where our purpose-oriented creative competencies may be in tension with our safety-oriented reactive tendencies:
Steadfastly holding people accountable to get things done while being compassionate towards their personal needs.
Relentlessly managing a specific process while inviting others’ contributions.
Stubbornly protecting an idea while ensuring alignment with broader stakeholder agendas.
The good news is that all of these behaviors are dimensions of leadership; the bad news is that using some of them comes at a much higher cost than the others. Leadership is a bit like a sound mixing board in that way – we can dial up or dial down certain dimensions as needed. The key is learning which qualities to deliberately lean into and which to keep in check, and that’s what makes the LCP so valuable.
I’ve been using the LCP for the past 5 years and I think it’s hands-down the best 360 instrument of its kind. It’s especially powerful with very senior leaders who have previously received feedback but they didn’t really “get” the feedback, if you know what I mean. Or they got the feedback but nothing really changed. Because the LCP offers evaluation against 29 distinct leadership dimensions that are directly correlated to business performance (not personality traits) it can reveal specific, not vague, developmental opportunities.
As leaders we are all, constantly, managing life’s primary tension whether we are conscious of it or not. What would be possible if your own IOS was optimized to leverage more of your creative competencies, and less of your reactive tendencies? If you’d like to explore, I’m here for you.