Create Your Leadership Platform
A few years ago, while just hanging out in the kitchen with a couple of my kids, one of them mentioned they’d learned about something called ‘aphantasia’ in their psychology class.
Aphantasia, which effects somewhere between 1% and 4% of the population, is the inability for a person to convert words into mental pictures. Here’s how the Cleveland Clinic explains it:
‘Aphantasia is a characteristic some people have related to how their mind and imagination work. Having it means you don't have visual imagination, keeping you from picturing things in your mind. People often don't realize they have it, and it's not a disability or medical condition’
Initially, the rest of us sat there a little stunned by the idea.
How could you not think in pictures? It seemed inconceivable.
Then, as the conversation continued, our youngest son, who had been playing a video game in an adjoining room, peeked around the corner slowly and said:
“You mean I’m not the only one?”
I went from stunned to flabbergasted.
It was one thing to discover that there were people who fundamentally processed the world in a different way than I did, but discovering that my son was, unknowingly, one of them, turned my world upside down.
How could I have been oblivious to something so fundamental?
On the other hand, My son, who had lived with this constant sense of confusion and isolation, suddenly realized that he wasn’t alone.
Just knowing this ‘thing’ had a name and that it was really just one of the many ways people are different, was a weight lifting off his shoulders.
This tiny little fact, a random tidbit of conversation, transformed our worlds.
A little perspective can change everything.
We all tend to assume that most people, including ourselves, see and process our shared world in a similar way. While we all ‘know’ that each individual is different, we don’t do a very good job of actually using that knowledge in constructive ways.
The effect is that many of the conflicts, tensions and workplace frustrations we face are a result of misunderstanding how each individual processes, prioritizes and navigates their way through the world.
Unfortunately, this lack of understanding often starts with a failure understand ourselves.
Why? Partly because it takes a little work and partly because ‘trying to understand ourselves’ can feel a little weird.
We just assume that because we live with ourselves, we understand ourselves.
Talk to any therapist if you want to know the truth.
To help the leaders we work with to address this, we developed a ‘Leadership Platform’ process. It’s a five step process designed to first, create that self awareness and then take it a step further by using those insights to make conscious decisions towards being a more effective leader.
Here are the 5 steps in a nutshell:
Get clearer on your identity. Here you’ll focus on four big areas of identity. Your behavioral styles, values, formative experiences and the people that have influenced you. Exploring just these four aspects of our lives often reveals profound insights about who we are and our unique approach to navigating the world. For our clients, this step often includes some assessments, such as our Cleaver DISC and Motivating Values assessment.
Identify a leadership ‘brand’ for you. Here we want you to identify the three key words you want to define your impact as a leader. The goal is to begin to simplify and streamline how you think, talk and measure yourself as it comes to leadership.
Articulate your superpower. This is the part of leadership where your strengths and passions overlap. We tend to have the most impact when we can maximize our superpowers. Knowing your superpower also can offer some extra courage to explore the blindspots that frequently sit in the shadows our superpowers create.
Create a vision statement. This is where all the awareness you’ve developed in the first three steps starts to take shape as an actual plan. This step is about identifying the challenges and targets you want to address and the people you will need to lead to get there.
Integrate to the Current Context. In this final stage, you will take your vision and begin to integrate it into the current context of your Enterprise, Team and your Individual life (What we call ETI Integration). This as where the rubber meets the road. The points of contact between your vision and today’s reality.
While each of those steps should have a blog post of their own, we’ll leave it there until the next one.
