A Conscious Leader Vs A Natural Leader

Do you think there’s a difference between being conscious and being natural? Do you think leadership should be naturally established? 

Being a conscious leader and natural are two different things. This is my opinion, but I feel very strongly, the second is that we as people mature and evolve over time. So in our early years, that which is natural is not conscious, it’s actually the opposite of that. And we kind of mature into and evolve towards something that looks more and more like that. So while we’re on the journey, and research has about 95% of us consciously addressing things is necessary. So the question is, does that mean I’m being a natural? 

No, not at all. One of the key themes in creative compensation is to be authentic and real. We can be conscious, and authentic, and real, all at the same time. But it requires honesty, and it requires integrity. So I will say, if we want to be meaning-making, highly contributing leaders, the natural thing to do is to be conscious, and constantly challenge that which is natural.

Gaurav: From where I reflect, if you look at the evolution of consciousness itself is a natural process. So it’s not a question of whether it’s natural or conscious. What I’m saying is, the evolution of the conscious consciousness is a natural process, provided you are willing to unlearn and unwind all the conditioning that you have picked up in this world, which is a part of nurturing. And at times, we all are domesticated in the environment in the context that we are born into, which actually hampers our natural process of evolution, and evolution of consciousness.

Reactive and Creative Competence

People in position are always in a power game. Now, how do you identify their reactive or creative competence?

Leaders create influence. And there are different kinds of influence. Your question speaks to positional influence, where my role is-  I’m an executive vice president, and therefore I have influence versus a personal influence where it’s earned based on my integrity in the way that I work. So I think one thing to work through is, is it a positional influence or a personal influence. But that’s one of the benefits of coaching and one of the benefits of the 360 assessment. 

Many of us have gotten long in the world, not really knowing how we’re doing. So a 360 allows us to look at these questions that we maybe never thought about before, these research-proven questions, there’s about 124 of them in the leadership circle, and also invite people in whose feedback we care about and hear their perspective, I would say probably half of the leaders I work with who are executive and my age or older, probably half of them are completely surprised at the data. It’s not at all what they would expect. And it’s common to see somebody’s self-score looking one way. And the combined ratings of 10 or 15. Other people look a different way. And that big old gap is like wow, brand new information. That was my experience. So the thought would be one way to measure all this is to do a candid, objective 360.  

Gaurav: My observation is that reactive leaders try to bully creative leaders during open forums, how to handle the situation?

Michael: There are a lot of different ways that we can be reactive. Bullying is one of those 11 strategies. There are others where there any effective contribution is acquiescing or ignoring or disengaging, you’re playing small or something. So there are lots of different ways we might look at this. But if we’re dealing with the bully, let’s see, wow, that’s you. One of the things that are foundational to all of this is just calling things out, naming them that as they are. So if it is appropriate to pull this bully off to the side and help him or her understand the implications, that’s one thing, or it could be setting ground rules or something. There’s a lot to that. But if there’s public bullying, there’s becoming increasingly not okay. In, in forums of people doing their work. So it needs to be addressed one way or the other. And sometimes that’s very challenging because sometimes it is the most senior leaders that are doing that. But it tends to be a common thing for coaching conversations. So that’s one point of view. I’m sure there are Other ways to look at it. So I’d like to hear if there’s anybody else who has a different opinion.

Does TLC provide different norming groups? Or is the norm group static?

Michael: Currently, yes, the norm group is static. And that will change. So if you’ll just know currently, the norm group has the entire leadership circle database across the world. And in time, but not yet. In time, we want you to be able to look at healthcare only, or India only, or executive only. Before we can offer that, again, we’ve turned it off for a few years, we are going through some significant security and data analytic issues, which are making those kinds of things vulnerable. So once we get all that kind of clean up, maybe in the next six months or so, we look forward to being able to offer customer groups again.

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