Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink

45 - Your Shadow Side

• Leah Fink • Season 1 • Episode 45

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How does your personality help you serve your team?  And how might it be hindering you?   As a leader, you not only take on your team's history with other leaders, but also how they perceive different traits.  Join us as we dive into understanding that history, as well as the unconscious ways that your values and behaviours may be effective your team.  

Are you ready to look at the shadow side of your leadership?

If you want to ensure that you are able to capitalize on your strengths, while not going too far, you should give this a listen!

To have your questions answered on the show, submit your story here: https://allthrive.ca/share-your-story

Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink is live every week at 12:00pm MST.  Please join us to get answers to your leadership questions! https://www.linkedin.com/in/leah-fink-all-thrive/

Speaker 1:

Every action you take as a leader has a ripple effect, starting with your team, going out to the organization and even out into people's personal lives. Here we offer you the chance to learn from real-life stories of leadership so you can gain a deeper understanding and level up your own skills From communication to culture, to power and equity, to feedback, to resolving conflict and more. Join us and make sure you're creating the ripples you want. Welcome to Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink.

Speaker 2:

Hello and welcome to Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink Today on the show, we are going to be talking about the dark side, and I don't just mean a Star Wars thing. I am talking about the shadow side of how we show up for people, how some of our best traits can sometimes become the dark side or the worst traits, and how they can impact people negatively. Sm shares his story. I have a new staff who I've been mentoring in their position. One of the things that I mentioned was that our office will be supporting them doing a DISC personality assessment, as we like to know how to best relate to each other. Everyone does one when they start. She asked me what I was and I said I was a D or dominant personality type. She had a visible reaction and when I asked what was wrong, she said she really doesn't like people who are D personalities. It has shifted the way she reacts to me and I feel like I did nothing wrong. In fact, I'm kind of annoyed that she took this and has decided to judge me unfavorably and unfairly with it. So thank you so much for sharing your story, sm, and I can understand how that would be a little frustrating. No one likes being judged. No one likes feeling like they didn't deserve some sort of negative impact, and, of course, you don't want your relationship with this new staff to be impacted by something that you probably feel you have no control over. And I can also empathize with this staff member, because when I hear something like this, it speaks to some sort of previous bad experience, and she would have had to have something reasonable to get to this place where she's casting that kind of judgment on all people with deep personality types.

Speaker 2:

Let's look at a couple of the things that are happening here, then, and I'm going to start with the reality that whenever you are in a leadership position or you are going to take on the role of impacting and interacting with the history of absolutely everyone that you lead so whether they had good leaders, whether they had bad leaders, that experience is now going to be imposed upon you and your relationship with them, and I think that is a big part of what happened here. Even if that person, the previous people that were deep personalities, weren't in leadership roles, there's something of their past experience that they're bringing forward into this that is now being cast onto you, and it's also helpful when you consider that most people's trauma and really negative experiences come from leadership, specifically either misusing unconsciously or abusing their power. Like I said, it could be unconscious, it could be a bit more intentional. They recognize they're having a bad impact. But when you combine that piece of bad history and there's a power dynamic here and this person's experience, it all comes together and makes things a little more complicated for you as a leader.

Speaker 2:

And we've discussed on the show before how everyone has their own way of dealing with those who have more power than them and that just means more influence over some part of their life. So as a boss, obviously you have more influence than your employees. You can hire them, fire them, decide who gets promotions, all of those kinds of things. And to react to this power, some people people please, some people fight against it. But this is all for a reason, right, they're trying to get their needs met. They're trying to protect themselves when they did not have enough power and influence to do that before, and so again they're bringing this behavior forward to interact with you. And maybe your staff's reaction is a little bit more on that fight against or protect, if you look at their experience before the couple people that had negative traits or bad experiences in that depersonality type. This has made them wary of future interactions.

Speaker 2:

And, like I said, even if this wasn't a person in power, weren't people in power that had this personality type? You're representing not only this personality type that was a negative thing but also this leadership role, where they are more vulnerable, where there is this power dynamic and they have this reaction. So they possibly have taken this step back in order to protect themselves from this dynamic, and that's very understandable. Now that does not mean in any way that you can no longer have a better relationship and a healthy relationship with this person. You can, in fact, now be that person that.

Speaker 2:

Maybe that shows them that people with primary D personality types are not horrible, but it does mean that, with all these kind of factors that might be working against that, you're going to have to be more intentional, more self-aware, more responsive to that person, and I'm going to break this down into two approaches that we can take with this. One is that more direct side of how we can approach them, and then also looking at this self-awareness piece overall, and the first thing you could do is you can talk to your staff member, you can ask them some questions that'll help clarify this. You can ask what previous behaviors they saw from people with depersonality types and what they didn't like about them. What was the challenge? What impacted them negatively? Because, after all, personality types are just a collection of values that express themselves through specific behaviors. Well, personality types are just a collection of values that express themselves through specific behaviors. You don't have to let go of the value that makes you a D personality, but you can change the behaviors around that.

Speaker 2:

Now the challenge with this approach if we come up to this person and we're a D personality type and they've had bad experiences with that, ds tend to be direct. They can come across even aggressive. They can have a lot of energy and that might be your natural way to approach someone and that's not always a bad way to approach someone. But, considering the situation, you maybe want to handle them a little bit more delicately because otherwise this might just reinforce some of those things that they were really struggling with with these other people. So mitigate that as much as you can, and one of the things you can do is you can name that you can recognize.

Speaker 2:

Hey, I want to ask you some questions and I recognize that this is my personality type. I don't want that to continue to impact our relationship in a negative way. What are some ways we could communicate around this? I would keep this as soft as you can. I would give them some space and time to consider this Really, watch for cues of how comfortable they are and if they don't accept that invitation right away, that's okay. Don't badger them about it. Don't keep asking questions about it. Just give them some time and space, respect that and recognize that this whole process might take a little while. That is okay.

Speaker 2:

And this is the other piece that kind of leads into the reflection that I hope everyone is going to take from this is, when we look at these personality pieces, when we look at how people interact and the kind of impact that we have on others, there's going to be both positive and negative. I can guarantee you, and almost guarantee at least, that in some of those interactions that that person had with some people who are primary D personalities, there were some good things too, not everything that they hated. Not everything was perfect, obviously, but there are some pieces to this, and the challenge is when we're not aware of this kind of shadow side that can come up about these things that we value and care about, the things that we need in our lives. So there is no such thing as a good personality type or bad personality type, but there are two reasons that people often perceive them as such as good or bad things. Now I know that SM used DISC. I use True Color, so I'm going to talk a little bit more to that, just so I can use my own expertise.

Speaker 2:

Then I'll loop it back around, and the first challenge that we see is people can have conflicting values, and this is, in every case, not just personality types. But, for example, someone who really values organization and someone who really values spontaneity might see that opposing thing as negative because it limits what they value. And of course, this can happen between people. That's why we see disagreements, because people value different things. But they can even often happen with ourselves. You can have multiple values and needs that don't always align perfectly with each other and can feel a bit in conflict. I know I've experienced this. I can be both very logical and very emotional. Sometimes that part of me that's more logical judges the piece that's emotional or vice versa, and have to kind of contend with that, and that's the same thing we need to do in our relationships not focusing on judging one or the other, but recognizing we could have different needs, different values. In this moment doesn't make one good or bad, but recognizing it allows us to work together. Now, that's nice to say, that's a great thing to be aware of.

Speaker 2:

But the second reason and I think what comes up even more often that people can be judgmental about different personality types is because we don't, of course, always display the best traits of our personality, the best behavior around our values. From when we're nice and calm and regulated, we are showing the true strengths of the personality, of the values, of the behavior that we have. So the person who values relationship and communication, checks in on people, sees how they're doing in a really genuine way and makes them feel very cared for, that person who values structure can make plans that really support everyone and lead to successful outcomes. That person who values research can find the absolute best solution to a problem. Or someone who values fun can really raise the energy of the whole environment, of everyone around them. But we're not always nice and calm and regulated.

Speaker 2:

We are often under stress and for most people, unfortunately, the workplace is a stressful environment. It increases our stress. Now, when we are stressed, all those lovely traits that are helpful and supportive for others can become the reverse. That person that values relationship and connection can quickly become smothering as they're seeking this connection and understanding just need to be close to that person. Someone who values structure and is now stressed is becoming this micromanaging taskmaster as they're seeking control of the situation to feel better. Someone who values research might become cold and uncaring as they focus on having that answer because that answer will make them less stressed. Or someone who values fun can start to disrupt anything they see as constraining that fun from happening, including structure and other people. They can just try to push that to the side.

Speaker 2:

Coming back to DISC SM, you can consider what are some of those shadow sides of depersonality types. We already know that some people may already have a challenge with, say, the directness because they have opposing values. But on top of that, what does direct look like when you're stressed? Is it as healthy? Or are there some things that you notice that show up that could be those challenging behaviors. And once again, this is all logical. This is all how people are trying to meet their needs. This is all related to our values, what we care about, but we can really be having quite an unintended negative impact on people. Once again, nothing is bad, but you are literally showing people the worst side of how you're expressing that value, and even beyond personality.

Speaker 2:

If you've listened to the show before, you know we talk a lot about spectrums of behavior and how, when you're calm and conscious and responsive, you can move along those spectrums and really make the best possible decision for the situation, for the person and it's not affected by that stress piece. You can really be responsive in that moment, not reactive. And if you look at those spectrums, really what they are is different values that might be opposing each other. Right, being more firm with boundaries, being more flexible with boundaries you can think of some of those values that come from that. Be more focused on task, being more focused on relationship you can see the different values behind that. So, once again, not good or bad, just different places on the spectrum to move. And in the same way, when we're stressed, we tend to get stuck on those spectrums. Right, if we prefer task, we might get stressed. We have to really finish tasks. We ignore all those relationship pieces and, again, that doesn't become a helpful situation that becomes a situation where you're showing almost a negative trait of that task focusedness, SM.

Speaker 2:

I hope you're able to recognize and maybe take less personally the ways that the staff is reacting towards you, because it isn't all on you that this has happened before, but you really do have a great ability and this opportunity to now interact with them in this new way that you can be really intentional, really supportive and help them reconnect with you in an even stronger way. And hopefully you also gained a little bit more awareness and had a chance to reflect over some of those pieces that you might see as your strengths and also recognizing. Sometimes they might be coming across in a way that could potentially even be very harmful based on the state you're in. I look forward very much to our conversation.

Speaker 2:

As a reminder to our listeners, if you have a story to share or a question, we would love to hear it and you can do that by clicking the link in the description and as a thank you then I'll do a follow up with you to make sure your questions fully answered and as a thank you for supporting us in the show, and I just want to thank you so much for listening and learning Shadow work. When we do this, looking at some of those negative things can be hard, can feel icky and we don't want to face it. So kudos to you for listening to this, considering some of these pieces and applying them to your own leadership. Thank you so much for listening and, as we close, remember to ask yourself what ripples are you going to create this week?

Speaker 1:

We hope you enjoyed the episode. Make sure to subscribe, comment and connect with Leah at meetleahca.