Competency Trap #1:
The Hypnosis of Behavior
by Lorne Armstrong
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Competencies are dangerously over-sold and tragically misunderstood by managers and executives trying to improve the performance of their people and their organization - especially in the area of leadership. There are three hidden traps in implementing competencies: the assumption that behaviors are a good indicator of fitting and powerful leadership, that knowing what to do is paramount and that getting everyone to lead the same way would be better. It is easy to fall into any or all of these traps and the more emphasis you place on them, the worse performance will get.
We will examine the hypnosis of behavior first and get to the others later. Here's how the faulty logic goes. As the managers and executives of this organization, we want good leadership here. It seems logical that if we are going to have good leadership, we have to tell people what we think good leadership is, and how we expect them to lead. So we describe what we think good leadership looks like, and then run some training programs to get people to lead like that.
That seems to make sense - except it is dead wrong. The small part of real leadership that can be seen - that can be described by behavior - makes the least difference.
Just because you can imitate someone else's behavior doesn't make you an effective leader. Descriptions of leadership behaviors hide several essential aspects of leadership and our hypnosis with behaviors blinds you to the hidden dimensions - the critically important dimensions!
What leadership looks like from the "outside" and what it looks like from the "inside" are very different. Describing behaviors simply makes it easier to imitate others' behavior. A clear description of how someone else does it may work well for gutting fish but not for an area as complex and nuanced as leadership.
Behavioral descriptions hide the subtle and complex considerations that determine the appropriate action to take. A description of desired behaviors hides the environment and circumstances in which the leadership occurred. For example, it doesn't consider the nature of the particular opportunity or crisis that was facing the organization, team and leader. It doesn't include what was known, unknown and unknowable about the particular issue or circumstance. It obscures the relationship between the leader and his or her group; between members of the group and between the group and the rest of the organization. Behavioral descriptions fail to consider peoples' experience in working together or working on these particular kinds of issues or challenges.
Even when the environment and circumstances are known, behavioral description are blind to the particular cues and indicators in that environment and those particular circumstances that were important for that particular leader, given his or her unique strengths, constellation of relationships and experience. The described behaviors give no insight into how that particular leader interpreted the environmental cues and circumstandes in determining what action to take.
It diminishes the complexity and richness of leadership conversations and substitutes a simple action to take for the messiness of reality. Trying to imitate some "desired" behavior does not warn that that behavior is appropriate to a particular relationship between the leader, his or her unique strengths, the people they are working with and their circumstances. It doesn't warn that another person may well have done it another way with equal or greater success.
The view from the "outside" (what leaders look like in action) is not the same as the view from the "inside" (what they are paying attention to, and what they're not; how they are interpreting those cues and what courage is being mustered). Real leadership happens on the inside.
Assuming that great leadership will come from a description of what you see on the "outside" makes as much sense as assuming that beautiful sculpture will result from telling someone to "chip off all the unwanted rock".
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Who you are speaks so loudly I can't hear what you're saying.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Getting real is the essence of powerful and effective leadership. Leading real conversation with real people - based on your strengths; not someone else's. Trying to imitate someone else, or some imagined ideal, turns you into a pretender, a charlatan, a fake. Pretending, or trying, to be like someone you're not is the kiss of death to real communication.
Real communication starts with you being authentically you; recognizing and contributing your strengths; recognizing and orchestrating the strengths of others.
Fundamental to real communication is both who you see yourself to be and who you are for others. Do you think you need to have the right answer or are you willing to engage with others to discover what the situation calls for? Are others real people with both human foibles and unique strengths to be developed or do they occur for you more like bubble gum cards with players, pictures and names - to be discarded or traded whenever you get a better offer? Are you willing to become a powerful developmental partner?
Develop and contribute your unique gifts. Resolve for yourself any doubts you have about your own leadership and identify what you are out to fulfill - for you, for others and for the organization. Stop trying to imitate others!