Welcome back to The Look and Sound of Leadership, an ongoing series of executive coaching tips designed to help you be perceived in the workplace the way you want to be perceived. I'm Tom Henschel, your executive coach, and today we're talking about how leaders can play better poker. Ritu had expected a promotion. Not only did she not get the promotion, but a peer, whom Ridu thought a much less effective leader, did get promoted. Ridu complained to her boss, the CEO, Delwyn.
I'd led Delwyn's off-sites for years and had come to know him as a studious man who preferred to avoid conflict. His response to Redu's complaints was to give her coaching with me. I began Redu's coaching engagement by collecting data about her. When I asked Delwyn what he thought success would look like for her coaching, he said, She has to stop being so reactive. She's emotional all the time. She'll be in a meeting, hear an idea, and blurt out, that's ridiculous. It's insulting.
or she'll come to me and propose a project and expect me to green-light it just because she gushes about how great it's going to be you'd think by now she'd know i make decisions based on data she has to calm down In Ridu's 360-degree feedback report, two words were repeated over and over from every stakeholder group, emotional and reactive.
as she and i discussed the report redo said to me it's not a surprise that's who i am always have been heck i was probably eight or so when my older sister started calling me queenie as in drama queen i said so the report feels accurate well she said i didn't think it'd be so obvious to everyone but yeah yeah it's accurate but what am i supposed to do this is the real me you're being authentic i suggested right
What you see is what you get. I asked, how much do you suppose being emotional and reactive was a factor in not getting promoted? She said, knowing Delwyn? Probably a lot. Why do you think so, I asked. Well, just look at our disk profiles, she said, referring to the behavioral assessment I'd done with the team several years earlier. I am way out on the edge for being expressive, and he's on the exact opposite side on the edge for being cautious. We couldn't get further apart. I asked,
You think that's why he didn't promote you? Because your style is different from his? it doesn't seem fair does it my clients love me i'm closing deals left and right i'm racking up better numbers than melissa she said referring to her former peer who'd gotten a promotion when she hadn't i asked do you remember melissa's style are she and delwin a match no she said she's actually closer to me than him but she got promoted and you didn't how do you make sense of that
she's a suck-up she said reacting emotionally i said ritu can i repeat back what i'm hearing she nodded for me to go ahead i ticked on my fingers you have a boss who isn't wired for emotion you are you're being your authentic self full out it's not a good match for him meanwhile melissa flexes her style to match him and gets promoted that's the story i hear does it sound accurate it sounds stinky she snapped really i asked look tom i've been married almost seventeen years
my husband's way more like delwin than he is like me when he read my three sixty he said yeah yeah that's you but he still loves me i mean we work hard at it but we accept each other even though we're different Well, I'm glad, I said. But Delwyn's not your husband. He's your boss. It's not his job to accept you.
Quite the opposite, actually. You're there to serve him. I always say, your boss is your biggest customer. Your primary job is to make your boss look good. But from what you're saying, I'm not so sure that's your approach with him.
she was silent i said can i ask a question ritu sure she said i asked are you saying you and your husband don't accommodate each other no we do she said for example we were just talking about this he needs a lot more time to process things than i do so after i bring something up that's important to me
i'll give him a day sometimes two before i come back to it is that helpful i asked well it is to him she said not for you i asked i'd rather hash it out while i'm in the middle of it but no it's okay i've learned it's better in the long run genuinely curious i asked if you flex your style with him are you being inauthentic in your marriage she looked at me hearing her inconsistent thinking
she squinted and said you got me i said rita i wasn't trying to play gotcha i think it raises an important question what's the goal of the situation with your husband it sounds like the goal is the long-term health of the relationship it is she said and what's the goal with delwyn i asked to get him to see how good i am at my job she answered huh i said with a smile How's that going for you? Not so good, she smiled back. Okay, I said, two ideas. First, I am not sure.
that getting your boss to see that you are good at your job is an achievable goal for anyone you cannot control what he thinks about you i'd suggest that you would be better off imagining the goal is to make him look good or to get yourself promoted she laughed well i definitely could get behind that one here's the second idea ritu it's longer i'd like to start with an analogy are you ready okay she said
do you know what a tell is at a poker table i asked she said it's something you do that gives you away right exactly i said it is unconscious behavior that telegraphs your situation. So let's suppose every time you get dealt a good hand, you tap your finger on your cards. But when you get dealt a bad hand, you keep picking up your cards and looking at them.
if i watch you closely while you play i'm going to figure out your tells pretty fast and more often than not i'm going to beat you i went on saying now you could argue hey me giving free rein to my tells is me being authentic and i would answer by asking what is your goal when you sit down to play do you want to be authentic or do you want to win well can't i do both she asked
oh yes i think you can i said emphatically but in your case you say you didn't get promoted partly because you stuck with your authentic style even though you know it's a mismatch with delwin If that's true, I'd say your authentic self is contributing to an outcome you don't really want. But I don't want to be phony, she said. I replied, I think you can master your tells without being phony.
I think you can flex your style and still be authentic. You've done it with your husband. You adapt your style to achieve a greater goal. I don't hear you saying you're being a phony in your marriage. She thought about that and said, so what can I do? I said, I think there are two actions you can take. First, get conscious. Raise your awareness.
tune in to when the emotional and reactive parts of you show up notice them how do they feel in your body what happens on your face how do they change your voice get as aware of them as you can she said i'm not sure i'd like that why i asked maybe i won't like what i see she said i said ridu you're not noticing in order to judge or to justify either you're noticing to collect data build awareness
okay she said let's pretend i could do that what's the second thing i replied choose make a choice think about being that poker player you want to win the hand Now you know you have a tell. Is the tell going to help you achieve your goal? If not, manage it.
gain mastery practice controlling it learn to turn it off use your awareness to help you make a choice that is in your best interest she gave a little laugh That knocks the prop out from under my argument about just wanting to be my authentic self. I shrugged a little, saying, I don't know. I think making conscious choices about your behavior to achieve a better outcome can be a pretty high form of being your authentic self.
During the course of our coaching, Ritu and I talked repeatedly about authenticity, awareness, and choice. It wasn't her natural path, but over time... Those ideas helped shift her towards the look and sound of leadership. I have this authenticity debate with a lot of leaders. I know it is a concern. People want to feel authentic. And I say, good. I hope you do want to be authentic. Where the debate happens. is around the idea that changing how I show up is putting on a mask.
That it's manipulative. That it's not authentic. And I take the other side in that debate. I do not think it's a mask. I think it can be accompanied by self-consciousness. Absolutely. And self-consciousness can be uncomfortable. Yes. But discomfort doesn't equal inauthentic. Let me give you an example. Let's say you have decided that you are working on some...
new behavior. Maybe you need to speak up more in meetings. Maybe you need to speak up less in meetings. Whatever the behavior is, it's new. That means it is not going to happen without you being intentional and that means you have to increase your self-awareness yes that can make you feel self-conscious
It does not mean you're not being true to your authentic self. I deeply believe that we are more of our authentic selves when we choose a behavior and then work like the Dickens to manifest that behavior. To me... That is the full-hearted expression of your true self. Be intentional. Now, sometimes at this point in the debate, a leader asks,
How can I be more intentional? What does that mean? And here's how I answer. We're all at the poker table, right? There's a lot going on. Being intentional means choosing how you pay attention to the game in front of you. And let me tell you how I notice paying attention when I listen to my clients. I hear two different levels of paying attention.
So let me give you an example of people talking about things that happen in meetings. I hear a lot about things that happen in meetings. Sometimes a client will mention that a meeting happened. and then they'll jump to the summation right away, right? Here's what happened. Here's what I think about it. Great. That's one way of paying attention. Here's another way. Other clients tell me there was a meeting.
And then they give me the roster of the players in the meeting. They tell me relationships. I hear details about what people said and did. I hear a lot about feelings. And then I get the summation. those are two really different levels of paying attention and i am not saying one is better than the other they are both valid what i am saying is if you want to play better poker if you want to win more hands at the table
You have to pay attention at the second level. And that takes mental energy. You have to slow things down. But you can do it and you can be your authentic self while you're at it. I have two challenges for you. Right after this month's gratitude. First, thanks to everyone who asked about my health. That was so sweet and surprising. Thank you. The back story is that last month I briefly mentioned I'd had some surgery.
I also want to say thanks to the folks who reach out to me and ask for the PDFs. I am always so glad to be in touch with you. Thank you. I also want to remind people you can get all the tools yourself for free at your convenience at the Essential Communications website. It's essentialcom.com. It's essentialcom with two Ms, .com.
I want to thank the people who go and help themselves, and I want to thank the people who reach out and are in touch. Thanks to both groups. It's terrific. By the way, we posted a new PDF this month that's available to you now called Answer What's Asked. If you have ever done any presentation skills training with me, you probably remember answer what's asked. Here's the deal. There are only four kinds of questions you're ever going to get asked in English.
This PDF of Answer What's Asked gives you really simple scripts so that no matter what you get asked, You can answer it in a way that you will be perceived the way you want to be perceived. It's a great tool. It is simple, too. And it has really seriously changed the way I think. I hope you know that the reason I make all this available to everybody is to express my gratitude. Thank you, so please go help yourselves. Finally...
Lots of reviews this month. You know, I have a very special corner of my heart that is full of gratitude to all of you who have ever posted a review, those of you who did it this month, those of you who will do it next month. I cannot tell you what it means to me. Thank you. This month from Singapore, Angry Lady Gaga. I loved seeing that. From the UK, H. Longfills. From here in the US, J.D. Sudi, David Lanchart, Jason Levy, J.H. Kirby.
And J.L. Moeller, nice to hear from you again. Thank you all. It means so much to me. Thank you. Okay, two challenges. Here's the first. This first challenge is a challenge about style awareness. So one way that style awareness happens is when we increase our capacity to observe ourselves in our style.
Kind of what I was talking about before the gratitude. But let me just kind of be concrete what it might look like. You know, let's imagine there was a time in your life when you had a particular set of behaviors. You then worked to stop those behaviors. and now those behaviors are no longer part of you, bravo. That is you being aware.
of you that's the only way that can happen another way that we increase our awareness of ourselves is through assessments right the enneagram myers-briggs type indicator the disk whatever the tool is we learn the model, and then look into the model, and what gets reflected back is ourselves. And so our awareness of ourselves grows again. That's all us being aware of us.
My challenge to you is to ask you to add a second mode of awareness without losing the first. The first being awareness of self. What would the second be? The second is awareness of others and their styles. My challenge is to remind you that every person has a style and every style has a tell. Turn your awareness to the game that's being played all around you and you will play better poker.
That was challenge number one. Here's challenge number two. Think back in the episode. Ritu and I are talking about goals. We talk about the goals in her marriage. And then I ask her what her goal is with her boss, and she says, really without even thinking, she says, to get him to see how good I am at my job. Here's the challenge. My challenge...
is could you tell me how she could ever achieve that goal? I challenge you to tell me how would she accomplish that task? How would she know when it's done? How would she decide what's good enough? I challenge you to make Ritu's case for her because I believe that ultimately Ritu's case falls apart. I think this is a thinking error, and I called it out a little bit in the episode.
But it's why I wanted to put it in the episode and talk about it here. A lot of times people think their speaking errors out loud. We listen and we think, yeah, that makes sense. My challenge is to ask if you can hear thinking errors and blind spots. If you can learn to hear them, it will help you play better poker if you can. And I think this goes without saying.
It will help you play even better poker if you can recognize your own thinking errors and your own blind spots, right? Of course, thinking errors and blind spots. It sounds very daunting, doesn't it? But it just so happens. I've done episodes on both.
Blind spots and thinking errors. The links are in the show notes. Help yourself. There are lots of episodes in the library that relate to this idea of playing better poker. Five that are going to lead you off in very different directions are act as if. Creating new behaviors? Self-awareness and self-management? Stop giving away your secrets and, when learning, makes things worse.
They're all available to you for free. They're in the podcast library, and there's links in the show notes. Okay, that's it from me. Until next time, I'm Tom Henschel. Thanks so much for listening.