From Functional Skills to Self-Awareness: New Foundations of Leadership Confidence

Hi, this is Bobbie LaPorte, back with another week of “Calling the Game,” where I share my own experience and insights while giving you valuable tools you can use to call your own game…and plan the best moves for you and your team.

In recent vlogs, I’ve been sharing what I call “The Three Shifts Leaders Must Make” to successfully navigate continuing uncertainty.  This week, I’ll share the third shift: from a traditional definition of confidence and competence based on functional skillsets to one based on self-awareness, self-knowledge, and deployment of your strengths and assets.

This shift is less about relying on your past experience to deliver results efficiently but more about expanding what you’re capable of to deliver results more effectively, drawing on your strengths and what you already do well.

Because confidence looks different today.

Why Confidence Looks Different Today?

In the past, we were chosen for our functional expertise; we advanced in the organization because we directed people well and we delivered results. We learned over time that we needed to be unfazed by change, confident and purposeful, and in control of our environment.

In our current workplace—where there are competing priorities and more stakeholders to serve than ever before, where information overload is increasing, and where our teams often work virtually—we need to expand beyond our skillset.

We must become more aware, self-reflective, open, and vulnerable. We must shift our definition of confidence from having all the answers ourselves.

I understand that your concept of self-confidence is very personal. In today’s highly competitive workplace, it is normal for us to compare ourselves to others.

But once you make this shift, your confidence will come from deeper self-knowledge and self-awareness, from relying on your internal compass, and from being very clear about how your strengths and assets can be put to use in new ways.

This kind of confidence allows you to move forward when any curveball hits and assures that you will always have a response to challenging situations.

And your peers will most likely continue to rely on past experience, what they know—a strategy that will be short-lived since, increasingly, what they know counts for little in a world of unrelenting uncertainty.

Because, in an increasingly uncertain world, Readiness is an inside job.

Here is how I would summarize The Three Shifts Leaders Must Make Now that we have covered in the last three weeks.

Today’s leaders need:

1. The discipline to stop and consider what you are facing rather than default to autopilot based on what you’ve done in the past.
2. To develop the confidence to accelerate decision-making, accepting that risk-taking and making mistakes is more acceptable now.
3. To recognize that you can no longer rely upon your functional skillsets, your confidence now must come from within.

Okay, that’s it for this week’s “Calling the Game.” Hope this helps you gear up for a great week and navigate any curveballs that may come your way!

Embrace Quick Decisions and Risk in Uncertain Times

Hi, this is Bobbie LaPorte, back with another week of “Calling the Game,” where I share my own experience and insights while giving you valuable tools you can use to call your own game…and plan the best moves for you and your team.

In my book: “When the Curveballs Keep Coming: A Leadership Playbook for an Uncertain World,” I share the three shifts that every leader must make – now. In a previous post, I covered the first shift: that defaulting to autopilot, to old habits that are out of sync with our current environment, limits your ability to see what’s possible in this time of uncertainty.

In this post, I want to focus on the second shift: how leaders need to understand that decision-making timelines have changed.

This means moving quickly from a detailed analysis and exhaustive evaluation of unexpected situations to the possibility of what’s next. And that is uncomfortable for most leaders.

So why is decision dynamics important now?

Because we’ve been trained to approach challenges in a methodical, disciplined way: laying out the pros and cons, gathering data, and creating options and scenarios for consideration.

Then, what follows is usually a prolonged decision-making process that involves appropriate stakeholders, more data and validation, and detailed risk analysis to narrow down the options…and then—hopefully—a decision.

But times have changed. As a leader, you now need to move more quickly through your evaluative and decision-making process.

You can no longer make minimizing risk your primary focus. Increased risk-taking is more acceptable now, as is accepting that mistakes are now part of innovating and trying new things.

Mistakes have less impact now because you can change course quickly if needed, using strategic awareness to move confidently to what is next, what is possible.

Because in a world that’s shifting on a weekly, if not daily, basis, the cost of delay is greater than ever.

Remember: in these times of change and uncertainty, every decision is a good one – until it’s not. 

Okay, that’s it for this week’s “Calling the Game.” Hope this helps you gear up for a great week and navigate any curveballs that may come your way!

Pause to Go Faster: Breaking Free from Autopilot

Hi, this is Bobbie LaPorte, back with another week of “Calling the Game,” where I share my own experience and insights while giving you valuable tools you can use to call your own game…and plan the best moves for you and your team.

How time flies. It’s been four years since I delivered my TEDx talk, “Curveballs and Blind Spots: Navigating Uncertainty,” in which I discussed our tendency to operate on autopilot—that is, the state where we give into the unconscious, habitual responses that we use to guide the hundreds of decisions and choices we make each day.

Why is being on autopilot an issue?

Because when we are faced with “unrelenting uncertainty” – (and that does seem to be the condition under which we live and lead now, doesn’t it?) – our feelings of competence, confidence and being in control disappear. And the sheer cognitive load that results from attempting to navigate this continuing change and disruption can be overwhelming.

Even very experienced leaders internalize the acute stress of such moments—so much so that their judgment and decision-making skills seem insufficient.

The result? Uncertainty leads to falling back on old habits, which, unfortunately, are almost always out of sync with what the current context demands.

So what can leaders do?

My advice: You must move from autopilot to a state of strategic awareness that enables you to evaluate issues and make no-regret decisions. That means stopping to think and creating space for clear judgment, relevant thinking, and purposeful action.

In other words, pausing to go faster.

One other benefit of this approach is that being on autopilot doesn’t build capacity to deal with future issues. It favors past practices that are no longer relevant and keeps you—and your team—stuck in the past. And autopilot limits choice at a time when having a possibilities mindset is so important.

So the next time a curveball hits, take a few seconds to pause, consider the emergent possibilities available to you in that situation, and then act.

Okay, that’s it for this week’s “Calling the Game.” Hope this helps you gear up for a great week and navigate any curveballs that may come your way!

Instead of relying on your past experience to efficiently deliver results, this shift requires you to draw on what you already do well—and then expand on those capabilities so you can more effectively deliver results.

To make this shift, you must understand your strengths. That’s the only way to see how you can expand what you are capable of and move beyond what you’ve done in the past to what you can do now.

Here is a great example of how one of my clients used one of his personal strengths to create a successful outcome for a major challenge he and his team were facing. As the leader of a real estate management department in a large company, he was having challenges getting his staff on board with a company-wide change initiative. They were reticent to embrace the change, “stuck” in their old ways of doing things, unable to see the possibilities that this change could bring to their work and their own professional paths.

I encouraged him to discover his strengths, to tap into his innate talents and gifts, and unleash the dormant talents he already had to become a more effective leader and inspire his team.

When we determined that his top Signature Strength was creativity, we thought: How could he use that strength in a formal, structured function like real estate and facilities management? (Let’s face it: real estate and facilities might not be the most exciting and dynamic area to work in.) He developed a fun competition that helped the teams see how they could collaborate and compete at the same time to achieve their goals. In the end, they exceeded their goals—and everyone had fun in the process.

As my client demonstrated, making this shift requires you to develop deeper self-knowledge and self-awareness. By knowing what you are capable of, you can expand on that to see what’s possible—so you can do even more in the face of change and uncertainty.

In a certain world, we were trained to approach challenges in a methodical, disciplined way: lay out the pros and cons, gather data, create different scenarios, and consider all of our options. Then came a prolonged decision-making process that involved gathering input from all the appropriate stakeholders for input, evaluating more data, conducting a detailed risk analysis to narrow down the best options, and then and only then (hopefully!) making a decision.

However, when we are faced with an unexpected situation in today’s uncertain world, we can’t afford all of this time. Under pressure, we tend to default to our natural reaction to pause, which makes us feel “stuck” and unsure.

Here is an example of how one of my clients dealt with an unexpected situation.

As part of her company’s annual planning process, this executive would normally use the prolonged, detailed, data-driven approach we have all come to know as part of strategic planning, a process that most executive teams do not enjoy or look forward to. As part of their executive offsite where planning was featured, they would normally have completed some level of detailed analysis prior to the offsite.

But then the “unexpected” happened. A major company reorganization was announced just before their planning meeting. The easy option would be to stop, hit the virtual “pause” button, and wait for clarity on the potential impact of this change before proceeding with their planning exercise. But instead, she opted to see this unexpected change from a place of “what can be”, not a place of resignation or uncertainty.

Adopting a more positive mindset, the executive team members modified their process to include possible new scenarios, acknowledging that there might be more risk involved than they would normally tolerate. Most importantly, they used this as an opportunity to revisit their assumptions and open up the possibility of how a new organization could actually eliminate prior blockers and accelerate their progress.

We have all been taught to minimize risk and avoid the potential consequences of making mistakes. But in this environment, risk-taking is more acceptable now. And mistakes are part of this process of innovation and trying different approaches to expand what is possible.

With the pace at which things are moving and changing in our world, we need to recognize that the cost of delay is much greater now than it was before. We also need to accept that we no longer have the answers. I know that is a tough admission for leaders to make, but let’s be honest: we can’t even see around the corner to what tomorrow may bring, never mind the next quarter.

Let me share an example of how one of my clients handled this challenge.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, she was faced with making some tough decisions about her department’s strategy. She asked her team for input, but they seemed reluctant to offer concrete ideas. At first, she felt frustrated with what she perceived was their lack of interest and participation. But then she realized that they were afraid and feeling stuck—just as she was. They were searching for some certainty and relying on what they know worked in the past. But we all know that certainty is no longer there.

Instead of pressing them further, or giving up and making the decision on her own, she shared that she was also afraid, anxious, and unsure. That opened up a whole new conversation, and together they carved out a new path forward, one that wasn’t visible before they tapped into the collective ideas of the team.

The path forward means taking intentional action and developing the confidence to make no-regret decisions. Changing course is better than resorting to what’s been reasonable in the past—or, even worse, waiting, becoming paralyzed, and fearing the ripple effects of what could go wrong.

Every decision is a good decision—until it is not.

All of these changes represent three major shifts each leader must be prepared to make – now:

1. Shift from operating on autopilot to a state of strategic awareness, where you can confidently make no-regret decisions in a highly-accelerated time-frame
2. Shift from exhaustive evaluation of unexpected situations and potential loss to quickly moving to the possibility of “what’s next”
3. Shift from a traditional definition of confidence based on functional skillsets to one based on self-awareness, self-knowledge and deployment of your strengths

At first glance, you may think achieving these sounds nearly impossible. After all, these are probably very different ways of thinking and operating than you are using today.

But the good news is that they are science-based, largely intuitive, and completely achievable. These shifts draw on your natural talents and instincts and build critical capacity in yourself and your team in handle future issues more effectively.

In the follow-up series on these three major shifts, I will share guidance to begin making these important shifts on your own—so that you can gain the confidence to know what to do when you don’t know what to do.