Insecure leaders are like fireworks with a lit fuse.  It’s only a matter of time until they explode, and when they do, they hurt everyone close to them.  ~The John Maxwell Company

Confident or insecure—sometimes it can be a fine line between the two.  But once a leader has crossed over from confident to insecure the dominoes begin to fall, quickly.  Over the years of consulting I’ve observed a pattern.  When some people are elevated into leadership positions, their insecurities take over and while they think they are demonstrating confidence, that’s not what those on the receiving end see or feel.

I took a few minutes to research what others have experienced in comparison to my own encounters with leaders who are insecure.  Here are four questions that seem to be a common perspective.

How do you handle conflict?

Are you going to an extreme?  In other words, are you avoiding conflict by being passive aggressive?  Or, are you going to the other extreme and do you see every scenario as a potential conflict?  As Sam Luce said in his blog post 5 Signs You Might Be an Insecure Leader, “They are either too soft and squishy or harsh and uncaring.  Secure leaders handle conflict with truth and grace working together, because relationships matter more than being right.”

Do you overcompensate?

Jeanne Sahadi in CNNMoney said it well, “Insecurity can be disguised by bullying, arrogance or power-mongering.”   Do you believe that you are superior?  Is your own self-importance taking a priority over building relationships?  Is your title more important to you than letting others see your authentic self?  If you said yes to any of these questions, you may be overcompensating.

Are you hiding in your office?

I like this one because it’s kind of obvious.  I’ve seen leaders almost literally circle their wagons by bringing their direct reports as physically close as possible and even putting up physical walls or doors to make it more difficult for employees to physically reach them.  These leaders always seem to have so much work to do that they just don’t have the time to get out of their office and engage with employees.  This question isn’t metaphorical, it’s literal, are you hiding in your office?

Are you respectful of others?

Respect—I love that word because it can cover so much territory.  Everything from not helping others grow, being a know-it-all, surrounding yourself with people you can control, considering anyone who disagrees with you “disloyal,” etc.  Simply put, the word respect means: admiration, high opinion, reverence, value, esteem.  Respect is not the absence of treating people poorly; it’s a word packed full of intentionality and deliberate behavior.   Are you respectful of others?

Is your confidence on solid ground or are you slipping toward insecurity.  We all slip now and then, but catching yourself is the first step to stop the domino effect of insecurity.

Every gap in communication is filled with imagination.  ~Unknown

There are many reasons for gaps in communication.  One reason is simply due to how our brains are wired.  We can think faster than someone else can speak.  Most of us speak at the rate of about 125 words per minute.  However, we have the mental capacity to understand someone speaking at 400 words per minute.  The difference between speaking speed and thought speed means that when we listen to the average speaker, we’re using only 25 percent of our mental capacity.  We still have 75 percent to do something else with, so our minds will wander (Dick Less and Delmar Hatesohl, University of Missouri Extension).

That’s a big gap—75 percent—that can be filled with our imaginations, and our imaginations can be, well, imaginative!

Our minds make assumptions about what someone said, or we infer their intent by imagining why they said what they did.  This happens so naturally that many times (I might even say most of the time) we unconsciously let our imaginations take control of our “understanding.”  Hence, the result: misunderstandings.

So what can we do about it?  Here are four ways that leaders can begin to avoid those all too frequent misunderstandings.

Be fully present!  Shift that percentage from 25 percent listening to a higher number.  It is possible to teach or train your mind to wander less frequently.  That’s the basis of mindfulness.  Pocket Mindfulness suggests six exercises you can try today to become more mindful, i.e., fully present.

Ask yourself if you’re drawing conclusions only from actual statements or are your conclusions based on inferences, assumptions, or outright imagination.   We all have the tendency to read between the lines while someone is speaking.  After all, if we listen with only 25 percent of our capacity then we’ve got lots of time to fill.  When you come to a mental conclusion, stop, ask yourself if the other person really stated that or did they state something not quite as embellished?

Ask clarifying questions.  You realize that there are some gaps that you have taken the liberty to fill with your own imagination.  Great!  Start asking clarifying questions like: What does that mean?  Can you be more specific?  Why do you think that?  How did you reach that conclusion?  Can you share some examples?  So you’re saying…?  Are you saying that…?  What would that look like?

Keep asking questions until you come to a shared understanding.  This is how you’ll know you’ve asked enough clarifying questions.  You’ll have a shared understanding with the other person as to what they said, meant, inferred, implied, and probably felt.  That doesn’t mean you’ve come to an agreement.  But it does mean you understand each other’s viewpoint and that’s the beginning of communication without imagination.

You can’t govern without loving the people and without humility.  ~Pope Francis

This blog is a partial repost from my blog on Pope Francis’ one year anniversary.  It seemed appropriate to repeat The Francis Effect on his first visit to the U.S.

Two years ago, I would dare say that the vast majority of the world would not have recognized the name Jorge Mario Bergoglio.  Jorge, who we now know as Pope Francis, has nearly single-handedly started a revolution not only for the Catholic Church but for all of Christendom.

What fascinates me most is that his effect on us has not been because of his title, his title has merely introduced us to the man.  It’s the man that has taken us by storm.  Borrowing from Chris Lowney, author of Pope Francis: Why He Leads the Way He Leads, quoted in the Chicago Tribune, said, “In Bergogilo’s first days as pope, we were not watching someone trying to act like a pope.  We were watching a person unafraid to be who he was.”

Lowney describes a Jesuits’ years long training, “much of which revolves around self-examination and working among the people they seek to lead.  It’s ‘dirty-footed leadership’ with a focus on understanding other people and their circumstances and putting their needs ahead of one’s own.”

Tribune journalist, Rex Huppke, said, “The issue here is not one of religion or faith, but of encouraging people to look outside themselves.  I would argue that’s the right thing to do on a moral basis, but in the workplace, it’s also the right thing to do pragmatically.”

Lowney boils down Pope Francis’ leadership to this: “Commit to yourself deeply, including your frailties, and come to some peaceful acceptance of yourself and your calling to lead.  Then, commit to ‘get over yourself’ to serve a purpose greater than self.”

The Francis Effect: We can’t lead well without loving the people.

Enough is a wide and stable plateau.  It is a place of alertness, creativity, and freedom.  ~Vicki Robin & Joe Dominguez

We’ve been trained, or maybe programmed, to believe that organizations must always be in a state of “growth.”  Organizations espouse visions of grander size, grander revenues, grander market share, anything and everything “grander.”  But to what end?

I was rereading a book that has nothing to do with organizations entitled Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin & Joe Dominguez and came across the statement that I used for today’s quote. “Enough is a wide and stable plateau.  It is a place of alertness, creativity, and freedom.”

When I read that quote it occurred to me that most organizations I work with would love to be at a place of “alertness, creativity, and freedom.”  But most organizations are trying to get to that place by growth, not by recognizing when they have reached enough.

Robin and Dominguez continue with these thoughts about growth and limits.

There are limits in nature.  At a physical level, nothing grows forever.  Every plant and every animal reaches an optimal size and then begins mature function, participating in life—leafing, fruiting, responding to stimuli and providing nourishment and competition for other forms of life around it.  There always comes a point where the individual or the specific population either collapses or dies off due to lack of resources, or stabilizes at a level that the environment can handle.

Imagine an organization’s vision that sounded something like, “to stabilize at a level that the environment can handle.”  In other words, champion a vision to sustain a wide and stable plateau for many years.

Now and then I truly believe that some organizational leaders turn to growth as a vision out of fear.  Fear that “enough” is a proposition fraught with more risk than growth.  After all, how can growth be risky?  Well, I think that Robin and Dominguez’ statement holds true for organizations.  That “there always comes a point where the [organization] either collapses or dies off due to lack of resources [which in this case could be customers or capital], or stabilizes at a level that the environment can handle.”

Enough as an organizational vision: a vision that results in alertness, creativity, and freedom—sounds awfully appealing to me.

No matter how you view yourself, your profile as a leader will be constructed for you by those with whom you work and interact.  ~Jordan Tinney

This past week I was working with a group of individuals who all hold the same position.  One of a number of tasks was to identify two new supervisors/managers for this group.  The basic qualifications for the position would have been met by all of the individuals currently in the group.

I was meeting with them and working through all of their questions, one by one, about the process to select supervisors, and was asked, “Will the new supervisors be selected based on impression or on fact”?  I responded with, “In this case, impression is fact.”  I wasn’t trying to be flippant, but truthful.

First, number of years of experience, tenure, and so on, gets you in the pool of candidates, but it doesn’t dictate the final decision.  Second, the real determining factor, as in this case, is how you are perceived to handle supervisory or management challenges.  As an example, here are the criteria for this position:

• Recognizes and considers multiple sides of a supervisory challenge.
• Makes objective and unbiased decisions about a supervisory challenge.
• Provides feedback (up and down) with candor and kindness.
• Demonstrates willingness and capacity to improvise to meet changing priorities.
• Goes above and beyond the tasks assigned to enhance the department’s work. Examples could include: jumping in when needed; maintaining a good attitude no matter what; building relationships, trust, and an information network; staying out of politics; being a good follower when the situation dictates it; and learns others’ styles and adjusts their own to meet them.

In a 2011 article in the Journal of Leadership Education Donna Jackson wrote about how capturing your essence as a leader extends beyond “title, length of time with your school system, and paycheck stubs.”  She said that “your own understanding of leadership must include a grasp of how you interact with the environment around you.  No matter how we view our personal abilities or profile, authenticity is measured when others working with you are open and willing to stand behind or with you.”

In other words, impression is fact.

I’m often surprised how frequently leaders forget that how their behavior impacts others is paramount to their success as a leader.  No matter the number of diplomas and awards on the wall, years of tenure, or digits in your pay stub, it’s whether others working with you are open and willing to stand behind or with you that will determine your success as a leader.  And the majority of the time, that is based upon impression.

What impression are you making?