When results are the best they’ve ever been, how do you convince your management team that they need to change? Maybe by recognising that the change needs to start with you…

I love when I hear an expression that is succinct and captures an aspect of my leadership evolution I am grappling with. It’s a bonus when it applies to others who are also trying to navigate new aspects of their leadership approaches. I heard such an expression from a member of one of our Peer-to-Peer Leadership forums: Awkward, brave and kind. He used it to summarise his feedback at the end of a case study.

The case study revolved around this business owner trying to get his management team to embrace a new way of leading. He presented his challenge to us thus: his vision over the past year had been to develop a culture of empowerment; however, his efforts were not getting the results he wanted. Some of his managers were persisting in micro managing while others were doing a bit more delegating but not really getting it. What he really wanted to see was his managers becoming coaches for their reports, whereby they would coach them to make more decisions. He hoped that, as a result of this evolution in how they were managed, all his employees would become more aware of what needed to be done and make more informed decisions, rather than waiting for their managers to delegate a task or area of responsibility. He could see, however, that his immediate team was stuck when it came to developing the people below them.

Fixing for the future

This team had helped him grow the business to its most successful point in the past 30 years. Actually, their current approach was still working, but it was the future that was concerning our business owner. He could see that his firm was not attracting the new talent the business needed to excel in a changing employee landscape. In fact, the company had lost a few new bright recruits. Our participant knew deep down that the current good results might be fleeting if he didn’t bring about this management evolution.  

As usual, after presenting his case, he sat at the back of the room and listened to his peers discuss the situation. After hearing their observations, he had a lightbulb moment. He suddenly saw that he too needed to change his management approach. His current style was to be helpful and non-confrontational and this had worked very well for him for the past 15 years in his current role. From the feedback he received at the session, he realised that being helpful was not helping his vision. It was actually a form of micro-managing! It was at this point that one of his peers brought up the phrase, “Awkward, brave and kind”, coined by Brené Brown, American professor, lecturer, author and podcast host.

His understanding of the phrase was that when you try something new you are going to be awkward doing it. This will bring up vulnerability, as your internal critic will judge you as incompetent. However, you need to be brave and have the courage to keep adjusting it until you are more comfortable incorporating it into your current style. And finally, you need to be kind – kind to yourself by understanding that you will continue to get it ‘wrong’ and will only improve with lots of practice, and kind to others around you because they are not used to this new aspect of you. Plus, they are also doing their best with what they currently know and how they view themselves.

Progress report

Our participant reported back two months later. In his facilitation of the leadership change towards a coaching culture, he is changing his own ways. Having realised that his managers needed to hear that their micro managing was not working, he is practising being more honest and direct and less of a micro-manager. For him, that means being less helpful. He is now challenging his team members to solve their own problems by asking more questions about their views and potential solutions – soft confrontation, let’s call it. At the same time, he makes sure to tell them that he highly values their hard work, commitment and past achievements. He also uses his new facilitative style to involve them in coming up with small adjustments to each of their styles.

He told us that, for the first time in over a year, he felt he was making progress and put it down as much to adjusting his style as to the fact that others in his team realised he was prepared to change himself. Did he feel awkward? Yes, but the results were giving him the bravery he needed to keep going with the approach. Kindness to others was in his nature but he was making an effort to be kind to himself too in the transition.

This story totally resonated with my own evolution. Like this forum member, I have been practising being more honest in my feedback rather than avoiding conflict. However, as I reflect on my first few attempts I realise I was very awkward, did not own my vulnerability and was anything but kind to myself and others on whom I took out my frustration. But thanks to my forum participant I now have a template for trying out other aspects of my leadership growth.

What tools do you use to help you develop new approaches to leading those around you and how would it help you to incorporate Brené Brown’s formula into understanding change?