Are you playing not to lose or playing to win? How well do you understand your triggers? What’s your inner game when pressure moves in?
Clients often approach coaching with a clear agenda: they have a list of skills and competencies they wish to develop in order to bridge the gap between their current position and their next promotion. The individuals I work with are typically high-potential leaders or senior executives, already recognized by their organizations for their capabilities. Companies invest in their development because they see the potential for even greater contributions.
The areas of focus for development typically fall into several key skill sets:
Leading Self: This includes emotional intelligence, resilience, decision-making, and innovative thinking.
Leading Others: Skills in communication, motivation, engagement, collaboration, building trust and relationships, influencing others, nurturing talent, and managing conflict.
Leading the Organization: Competencies such as accountability and achievement, customer focus, leading change, shaping strategy, strategic talent management, and commercial acumen.
Time and Resource Management: This encompasses prioritization, effective performance conversations, delegation, resource allocation, task management, and goal setting.
Career Development: Areas such as networking, work-life balance, managing expectations, and articulating career ambitions.
We collaborate to create an individualized leadership development plan focusing on one or two areas for improvement. However, skill enhancement alone is not enough to ensure success. In his book Playing to Win, Larry Wilson highlights the concept of two distinct games in leadership. Are you caught in the "Play-Not-To-Lose" game? In this defensive mindset, the focus is on avoiding failure rather than actively pursuing success. Conversely, the "Play-To-Win" game encourages a bold approach, where leaders operate as if nothing is at stake. This mindset emerges when we recognize our triggers—those stress points that can lead to overreactions.
True leadership encompasses both an outer game, centered on skills, knowledge, and competencies, and an inner game, focused on self-awareness, emotional intelligence, values, and beliefs. The inner game acts as your operating system, influencing how you perceive and respond to challenges. Enhancing the inner game can profoundly impact the outer game, making both aspects essential for effective leadership. This journey may require reflecting on how your leadership style has been shaped by family dynamics, community influences, institutions, and personal beliefs. Everyone carries some form of emotional "scar tissue," and cultivating awareness of these wounds allows for more thoughtful responses rather than reactive ones. By acknowledging and facing your emotional triggers, you create the necessary distance to manage your reactions better. As you enhance your presence and awareness, you become a more effective leader and human being.
Understanding your triggers leads to developing a plan to navigate them with intention and poise.
