Hello, Trailblazer!

Friday the 13th of this month our local chapter of the International Coach Federation, ICF North Texas, had our monthly luncheon with a training presentation. I was in charge of organizing the presentation this month because it was planned to honor International Coaching Week and I am the member of the board who was responsible for our celebration of ICW.

This situation was a great example of why leadership is such a tricky topic. As a board member I am considered one of the chapter “leaders” right now, but it’s really more of a role as representative. We make decisions on behalf of the members about activities, functions, and expenses for the year. And we’re responsible for doing a lot of things for the chapter like organizing meetings and events and overseeing communications and marketing. We’re more like “staff” than “leaders” in many ways.

With the responsibility for organizing the training event, I was a leader in some ways but not in others. I had latitude to develop and express my own vision, up to a point, but with the purpose and many parameters already decided. I needed help from a few people, especially the amazingly talented Teresa Pool, MCC, who agreed to do the training portion. I was more of a coordinator than a leader, and occasionally a salesman.

Leadership gets confused with responsibility and authority, I believe. When we hire someone for a position and assign responsibility and enough authority to handle the responsibility, we don’t automatically consider that person a leader. But when a nonprofit organization elects a board and assigns them responsibilities and the authority to handle the responsibilities, they are seen as leaders. I think the truth is board members are often chosen because they are able to handle the high responsibility and act in a trustworthy fashion, exercising their authority for the benefit of all as representatives of all.

Leadership is more than authority and responsibility. It’s more than making the challenging decisions. It’s the ability to develop a vision of how things can be; or how individuals, groups, or entire communities can be; and agilely direct resources and abilities to create the vision in reality. It’s a high level of ability across many domains used in service of an idea that brings benefit and improves people’s lives.

In conversations with coaching colleagues, we discuss how important Social and Emotional Intelligence (SEI) is for leadership. It’s so important, in fact, that most challenges people face in their leadership roles relate to SEI.

However, while SEI is foundational to leadership ability within groups and organizations, it’s not the whole picture. SEI is conceptualized in four quadrants of a two-by-two matrix. There are two functions: awareness and management. There are two focus areas: self and others. This produces Self Awareness, Self Management, Awareness of Others, and Management of Relationships with Others. That encompasses a lot of the important functions of leadership, but not all.

This matrix can be expanded to give a broader understanding of Leadership by adding one category, Work, to the focus side; and two functions, Value and Lead, to the interactive style side. I also changed ‘Awareness’ to the verb ‘Know’ to be more active and signify deeper understanding and I changed ‘Management’ to ‘Manage’ to be more active. The result is a three-by-four matrix that helps in understanding the progressive roles on which leadership is built and the progressive development of leadership.

The Leadership Matrix

When you place the four functions along the top and the three categories of focus on the side, you get a matrix like this.

The three categories of focus are distinct but related. A person can have different levels of functioning in the different categories, but increased ability in one may require developing ability in another. The four functions increase in involvement and ability from left to right.

Know Yourself
Being aware of your own psychological processes is the beginning point for Social and Emotional Intelligence. Self knowledge is also called psychological insight or self awareness. Self Knowledge also includes an accurate evaluation of your own strengths, talents, skills, and abilities, and a good ability to predict how you will respond in different situations.

Manage Yourself
But on Self Awareness, Self Management is the ability to choose your own responses in different circumstances by being able to predict how you will be affected, noticing how you want to react, and choosing to suppress a disruptive response and act more productively, or at least appropriately.

Value Yourself (Self Worth)
Knowing yourself well, warts and all, and being able to choose your responses, even in challenging situations, prepares you to value yourself authentically. Self Compassion is an important part of Self Worth, granting yourself grace when you struggle or fall. Self Worth comes in part from recognizing your own humanity as you recognize the value of all people. Individually it also comes from seeing your ability, on the whole, to choose to do things that honor your values and bring benefit to others as well as yourself.

Lead Yourself
This is the ideal parents often have in mind as they are raising their children. They want their children to become fully capable, interdependent and contributing members of society who can care for themselves, participate in caring for others, and balance the demands of life to be successful and happy. Self Leadership is the ability to be guided by a vision of how you want your life to go and how you want to be, making decisions to bring about that future and guide your development to become more and more like that ideal self. It is much more than simply being legally able to make decisions about your life. It means doing so with a vision based in purpose.

Know About Others (Empathy)
Understanding that people are different, with different values, strengths, talents, and preferences, leads to understanding between people. Cultivating your ability to imagine what is meaningful and important to a person who is different develops your Empathy. When you can clearly hear what a situation is like for another person, not what it would be like for you, your ability to Know About Others is strong.

Manage Interactions with Others
In the world of Social and Emotional Intelligence, there is a focus on personal responsibility for one’s actions through awareness and choice. This makes it clear you can’t really manage another person; they have to manage themselves. You can be aware and choose your responses to other people, based on knowing yourself and using Empathy to understand the other person or people. Anything more coercive would be manipulative or oppressive.

Value and Appreciate Others
Developing the abilities of Empathy and Compassion, you see that we all have a lot in common and value the humanity of other people. You also come to respect and appreciate differences and uniqueness and value people as individuals. These two separate perspectives build acceptance and connection.

Develop, Inspire, and Lead Others
When you are able to understand different people, manage whatever that brings up in you and how you interact with them, and value both their differences and their common humanity. You are ready to lead. Leading others means seeing both who they are in the moment and having a vision of who they are potentially capable of being and calling them to become their best self. It means committing to making choices that benefit others and guiding them to make choices that challenge them to grow and become more capable.

Know About Workflow Processes
From a simple chore to a complex production process, this is the level of understanding what needs to happen for something to get done. A person who handles all components of a task has this knowledge. Someone who handles part of a complex tax may understand that part very well and have a general awareness of what other people in the process do; or they may understand the whole process.

Manage Workflow Processes
At this level, a person knows the details of what needs to happen to create, produce, or complete something. They know what the required materials and resources are and how to make sure they are available. They understand setting the stage so the work can happen. This is separate from managing other people’s work. The ability is with overseeing processes, not people.

Value the Act of Work: Creativity, Agency, and Achievement
At this level a person sees the big picture as well as the meaningful details. They understand and appreciate the human drive to create and to shape the environment, bending it to their vision. They understand and appreciate that the thrill of achievement can be a deeply moving and meaningful experience. They specifically respect and appreciate the details of the work they are involved with.

Lead Work: Design, Process, Resources, Outcome
At this level a person can envision a work process in their mind and create the opportunity for it to happen. They translate the vision into reality by understanding in depth all the components, resources, tools, and details of the work setting that have to be brought together. They can design the order and flow of the work to create the desired outcome.

This Produces a Much More Nuanced Approach to Leadership
Things start to get interesting when you realize someone can be fantastic at leading people in terms of seeing their uniqueness and promoting their development, but only be managing the work. Or someone can be a true visionary in terms of leading work, seeing the entire process for a complex project and knowing what needs to be done, but be lacking in the ability even to be aware of others, much less understand them.

Someone may be great at managing a workflow but not managing the people, or great at managing the people but not the workflow. This is a handy way to conceptualize the requirements of different roles and understand where mismatches occur. This is helpful with a variety of roles but can be especially useful for the self-employed.

Apply it: Consider what level of function is required of you in various roles in your life. Compare that to the level you’re functioning at. This applies in personal life and volunteer situations as well as work settings. It is especially relevant for self-employed people and those starting small businesses. Determine where you need to develop your abilities or bring in someone with those abilities. Be brave with yourself in your assessment.

May you grow as a leader on your trail.

Take Care,

Stephen Coxsey, MA, PCC
Professional Certified Coach (ICF)
Self Development and Leadership Development

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About Steve Coxsey

Steve collaborates with his clients to design and implement a customized plan for success, fulfillment, and well-being for themselves and the people they lead. They thrive on a personally meaningful path and promote a culture of thriving wherever they are in charge.

Steve is a supportive ally to his clients. They are people in charge who have to juggle competing responsibilities in a variety of roles. They have a compelling vision of what they would like to create or accomplish as leaders in their businesses, work lives, or personal lives and are committed to turning their vision into reality. To make that happen, they develop the agilities of leadership to be able to empower and direct themselves, design and guide meaningful work, and inspire others.

Would you like that to be you?

Are you ready for a creative, dynamic, collaborative partnership focused on turning your vision into results?

Get started with a no-risk 30-40 minute consultation. It’s complimentary, so all it will cost you is a little bit of time. You can schedule the complimentary call using this online tool. You can also call 817-416-8971 or e-mail Steve@SteveCoxsey.com to set up the call.

Click here for more information than you could possibly ever want to know about Steve.

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