There are hundreds of assessments for leaders. The content and quality of these assessments vary greatly. You can spend a lot of time and money taking surveys to tell you the quality of your leadership.
There are a few leading indicators that can be used to give a pretty good picture of the overall quality of your leadership. These are not good for diagnosing problems or specifying corrective action, but they can tell you where you stand quickly. Here is one of my favorite measures.
Builds an Inclusive Culture
Organizations where people at all levels feel a part of the action and are appreciated for the diversity of talents they bring to the organization are run by enlightened leaders. You can observe the leader going out of her way to include as many people as possible in discussions about issues and decisions in the organization.
When I discuss diversity and inclusion, please understand that it includes racial and gender differences, and it also goes way beyond those dimensions. It includes age, ethnicity, background, religion, sexual orientation, different abilities, and a host of other variables.
True diversity is inclusive to all people because the benefits of diversity are obtained when all people in the organization give their best every day.
Less talented leaders surround themselves with a small clique of insiders who guide the fate of the rest of the organization. I visualize a shell around the anointed people on the inner circle. It is hard to communicate through the shell, and people who try to penetrate it are often repelled and scorned.
If you have a leader who operates from a small command and control type style, you can see the bunker mentality in most activities. This exclusivity leads to lower empowerment throughout the organization.
Having an inner circle of leaders may feel like an efficient way to make decisions, but it leaves so much useful muscle and energy off the table.
The bunker mentality means that if you are not on the inside then you are on the outside, by definition. You will comply with the rules, but you will not be engaged in making good things happen. The organization will suffer because of this impact.
To be a winning organization, all of the talents of everyone are required fully aligned behind the vision of the organization. Good leaders know this and instinctively get people involved as much as possible.
Oh sure, there are occasions when it is necessary to operate behind closed doors while decisions are being cast. That is no reason for the normal daily routine to mimic the College of Cardinals who have to send a smoke signal out to the masses when their deliberations are over.
Most activities can be visible, transparent, and inclusive of the general population. In return, people will give their best to accomplish the goals of the organization.
Bob Whipple is CEO of Leadergrow Inc., a company dedicated to growing leaders. He speaks and conducts seminars on building trust in organizations.
Leadership Barometer 66 Builds an Inclusive Culture
September 29, 2020
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Body Language 89 Clusters
August 3, 2020
I have been studying body language since my wife bought me a book on it in 1979.
There is still much to learn, and I will never can know it all.
We sometimes get fooled when observing another person’s body language. That can happen for a number of reasons. Here are a few of them:
1. The person may be from a different culture or background from us.
2. We fail to take into account what is happening around the BL signal – the context.
3. We rely on a single gesture to imply full meaning rather than clusters.
4. The gestures we are seeing are not consistent with the words the person is using.
The third point is the topic of this article. Looking at a single gesture and applying meaning has a significant danger for misinterpretation.
If you are observing another person making three or more gestures that are all consistent, then your chances of accurately decoding the emotion being conveyed are greatly increased.
For example, If I see a person with raised eyebrows, I might interpret it as worry or anxiety. That may or may not be true. People raise their eyebrows for a number of reasons.
However, if I witness a person who is shuffling weight from one foot to the other while putting a finger in his collar and moving it back and forth while simultaneously showing a frown with the mouth and raised eyebrows, I can be quite certain this person is experiencing anxiety.
Let’s look at another example. Suppose I see a woman whose eyebrows are furrowed. I may assume she is angry, and that could be the case. But, if I also witness her with flared nostrils, hands on her hips, shoulders back, chin jutting forward, I had better get ready to do some serious groveling.
Another trick is to observe the fleeting gestures, also called “micro expressions.” These gestures happen so quickly we might miss them if we are not on the alert.
A micro expression may be as short as 1/30th of a second. Observing a series of micro expressions that all point in the same direction is a great way to improve the accuracy of reading the body language signals.
I will share an example of a micro expression using myself as the guinea pig. Here is a link to a short (10 minute) video I once did on “Planting a Seed of Trust in the First 10 Seconds.”
Note: The material on shaking hands in this video no longer applies until conditions with COVID-19 change, but you can see a great example of a micro expression at 4 minutes and 46 seconds into the video.
At that point in the video, I am talking about ways to show your eagerness to meet the other person.
I first describe your body language if you are really positive and have a good feeling when approaching the other person. I then go on to explain the negative side, if you are not particularly happy about meeting this person.
Just before going with the negative side, I pull my mouth tight and to the side. It is only for a fraction of a second, but that gesture is a micro expression that signals that I am moving from a positive frame of mind to a negative one.
When I was making the video, I had no knowledge that I was making a micro expression. It was only when I reviewed the video later that I saw the gesture.
It is typical that we are conscious of only a tiny fraction of the body language signals we are sending to others. Observing all of the body language signals that are coming in, including the micro expressions will enhance your ability to detect a cluster.
You also need to consider that a person can be experiencing multiple emotions at the same time. For example, a person may be feeling embarrassed with a hint or regret or even grief. That would allow for multiple signals to be sent simultaneously. The permutations are countless.
Get in the habit of looking for auxiliary clues when witnessing emotions expressed through body language. If you make a conscious effort to look for multiple signals, you will gain strength in this important life skill.
This is a part in a series of articles on “Body Language” by Bob Whipple “The Trust Ambassador.”
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