“Can you train my Labrador to become aggressive?”.
This was the request from a senior HR professional who
was part of a culture change intervention I did for his
organization. As my interest in dog training is known to
most of my participants, I do get one or two dog related
requests after every workshop. “Labs are very loving,
people friendly dogs. Why did you buy a Lab if you
wanted an aggressive dog?” I asked. To this he told me
casually “You see I wanted a black, good looking, heavy
dog that is very intelligentalso ferocious and
aggressive.” Lots of people want to make their Labrador
behave like a Doberman and vice-versa.
If we look at organizations, we can see how each
organization is trying to change Labrador into a
Doberman or vice-versa using their current competency
framework. So what ensues is an employee who almost
started demonstrating the behavioural traits that are
needed to be high potential leader in his organization,
say Doberman, leaves and joins another organization
where they try to make him another dog, say Labrador,
based on their competency framework.
There are enough studies and examples to prove that each
one of us have unique strengths and one could leverage
the strengths to accomplish the task and be successful.
All personality type theories and tools like MBTI and
Enneagram mention that all types have the capability to
be a leader using their own unique strengths.
Gallup consulting and their research have proven that
the best way to develop employees -- and net the
greatest return on investment -- is to identify the ways
in which employees most naturally think, feel, and
behave, then build upon those talents to create
strengths, the ability to provide consistent,
near-perfect performance.
I can really resonate with this. It was in class Four at
the age of Nine, that I realized I love public speaking,
observing people and reading books. I also got lot of
opportunity to observe people and read as I had asthma
that did not allow me to go to school every day and I
could not play any sports due to the asthma. By the time
I was in college I had developed my interest in
psychology and had become a great speaker and editor of
the college magazine. I focused on my strengths and went
to become a teacher in Bhutan instead of becoming a Bank
probationary officer, a test that I wrote due to the
pressure from parents and people around. My journey from
teaching students in a primary school in Bhutan to now
being a visiting faculty for the Transformation
leadership program at ISB (Indian School of Business)
for their executive education has been by focusing and
developing on my strengths.
This is not really rocket science as Bill George,
Harvard Business School professor and former Medtronic
CEO, in his book Authentic Leadership writes“During my
career, I got lots of feedback to modify my leadership
style so as to fit in with organization’s norms. Several
supervisors and human resource specialists urged me to
be a different kind of leader. I listened carefully to
their advice but quietly rejected it. Had I followed
their advice I would have become a plain vanilla manager
or even been seen as a phony”.
Then what is stopping us from focusing on our strengths
and moving on in our leadership journey? I think the
challenge lies in the mindset that only certain kind of
competencies will help an individual move up in the
corporate ladder in his organization even though there
are enough exceptions.
A CEO whom I coach is extremely methodical, practical,
pays attention to detail, is focused on the task,
empower others and collaborates to get things done and
he has been in the organization for the last Fifteen
years. Now the organization wants him to be more
charismatic, outgoing and to have more “executive
presence”- a term that can be defined in several ways.
The fact is that he could be a powerful leader in his
organization and get things done in his current role and
in his future roles using his strengths if others around
him stops bothering about how charismatic he is.
While it is important to have a competency framework
that is unique to the organization and assess people and
give feedback about where they stand in the
organization’s leadership competencies, it is also
important to acknowledge and appreciate the strengths
each one has. More importantly we need to develop a
mindset through out the organization that by leveraging
the strengths, leaders could move to the next role even
if they are not equally excelling in all the leadership
competencies of that organizations. There are enough
examples, research and evidences. A Labrador who is
trained to behave like a Doberman is not a happy dog.
