Leveraging Leadership

Avoiding Overcorrection in Personal Growth - Balancing Leadership Strengths

• Emily Sander • Season 1 • Episode 152

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Emily Sander discusses the importance of not losing your strengths while trying to fix your weaknesses. She shares examples like someone being too aggressive in communication and someone being too timid. Emily emphasizes that being direct can be a strength if balanced, just as listening can be, and encourages self-awareness and using feedback to improve leadership skills.


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Who Am I?

If we haven’t yet before - Hi👋 I’m Emily, Chief of Staff turned Executive Leadership Coach. After a thrilling ride up the corporate ladder, I’m focusing on what I love - working with people to realize their professional and personal goals. Through my videos here on this channel, books, podcast guest spots, and newsletter, I share new ideas and practical and tactical tools to help you be more productive and build the career and life you want. 


Time Stamps:

01:18 Example 1: Managing Aggressiveness
03:19 Example 2: Overcoming Timidity
05:26 Personal Example: Impatience
08:16 Key Takeaways: Self-Improvement

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Welcome back to Leveraging Leadership. In this episode, I want to talk about not throwing out the baby with the bath water. And the context for this is I get a lot of people coming to me saying, Hey, Emily, I'm too much of this or too much of that. Can you help me with this? So I'm too aggressive and direct in my communication. Can you help me? Or I'm too timid. I'm too shy. I don't speak up enough. Can you help me? And of course I say yes. And we have these, right? Conversations about what's behind that and how they're showing up and how they would like to show up, et cetera. Almost every time, almost every one of these series of conversations at some point, I'll say, look, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Don't swing the pendulum so far this way. Don't try to over correct so far that you lose all sense of the good things about what you are able to do. So let's go into some of these examples. So someone comes and says, Emily, I'm too aggressive. I'm too direct. I'm too gruff. I, you know, I'm like a bull in a China shop. I am rough around the edges. I blow people up. I smash people. It's not a good situation. They've noticed this or they've gotten feedback from other people about this and they've come to me about it. Okay, great. So we talk all about that. and in the parts of the conversation where they're talking about it, like I have to, I have to fix this. And I have to, it's almost like some people talk about it and I get this sense. They're trying to like amputate their arm. It's just like, I want to get this part off of me. And it's like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, hold on. So, you know, on the whole for you right now, would being a little more nuanced in your communication benefit you and get you outcomes you want? Yes. Okay, great. So let's add some more tools to your tool belt. As I've said on this podcast before, if everything is a nail, all you have is a hammer, then everything is a nail. And if the nail is a person and you just keep smashing people, that's not a good answer. So let's put some more tools in the tool belt. Let's figure out how you can tap them lighter with the hammer, if you want to go with that analogy. But let's put some more nuance in your communication. And let's keep the good parts of your ability to be direct and be decisive because that's an advantage. I don't want them to throw the baby out with the bathwater because a lot of teams and a lot of people would kill to be that direct. They would love to be able to be that direct and speak their mind. A lot of teams would be thrilled to have someone like that on their team. They need that on their team. so a more balanced or fair or complete approach to this? Yes, yes, yes. But that complete approach Includes the ability to be direct and sometimes aggressive, like a small portion, like you might need to have a little oomph to what you're saying and be aggressive under control with intention. But that's one aspect of leadership is to be able to do that. Are there many, many, many, many, many other aspects? Absolutely. So building that range up is, is helpful. The second example is the opposite direction. Let's say I have a lot of people come to me saying, You know, Emily, I sit in this room, there's all these people and, uh, I, I think I know what we're trying to do, what we should be thinking about, but I don't want to speak up in case it's wrong. And all these people have opinions. I'm trying to listen to figure out where people are coming from and I'm watching everyone. And then I think of something to say, and then I don't say it. Someone else does. And I said, I think I probably should have said that. All that stuff goes on. Okay. Uh, Emily, like help me. Like, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to be this person anymore. Okay, so we talk about that and have rounds and rounds of conversations on that, and then at some point it, it inevitably comes up. You know, the fact that you're able to observe and take in what people are saying and what they're not saying, and to actively listen to people and understand where they're coming from is a huge strength. Right? Teams would kill for that. People would love, I like hanging out with people who are like, clearly, you are actually listening to me. Like you are actually interested and curious and you want to know why this is important to me or why this has upset me or why I'm, why I'm so excited or energetic about this thing. Like you really care. Like that's huge. People pick up on that for sure. Now, if that's the only thing you do, just listen. And just observe and never share your thoughts, opinions, or ideas. Is there a more full scope of leadership you want to espouse? Yes, sure. Okay. And we can certainly work on that, but don't throw that one out. Don't throw that one out. So keep that one and just apply it in the relevant, appropriate ways. So don't throw the baby out with the bath water and getting a full picture and getting an outside objective perspective. Super helpful, super, super helpful. We're all in this, right? We're like in it. And we have tunnel vision. Sometimes everyone has blind spots. So someone to come and say, Hey, You know, here's what I'm seeing about this, or when you describe these situations, it sounds like this and it sounds like that. because it's so hard for us to see ourselves objectively or fairly, a lot of the times is super, super helpful. So all that's good. Um, one more example is my personal one is I. tend to be impatient. So if you ask, um, if you ask anyone, especially my dad, he will rattle off the phrase, you know, uh, patience has never been Emily's strong suit or, you know, patience has never been your strong suit. M just reminding me of this, of my tendencies and inclination. He says it lovingly and kind of jokingly now, but, um, it used to be not like a problem, but Like I was, I wanted, I wanted it now. Like I want this and I want it now. No, like right now, not, I'm not waiting. Like not two minutes, not two seconds. I want it right now. And this would carry over into different areas of my life to outcomes that were not the best for me or people around me. so I went through this process of talking to colleagues that were that, you know, noticed this and said something, but were for me who like wanted me to do well. So talking to those colleagues, the mentors, coaches, uh, family and friends who were able and willing to talk about it and just saying, okay, let me get some. More tools in my tool belt here. And I got to where, um, they say in NFL football, like when the game slows down for quarterbacks, meaning like everything happens so fast and it's like all of a sudden, but when the game slows down, people can kind of start seeing, okay, this person's going over here. This person's in this position. I probably want to move my offense this way. I probably want to look for this type of pass instead of this one, all that stuff just slows down and they're able to see it. And I remember. Having that sensation where like things weren't like knee jerk, like, uh, got to go, got to go. It was, okay, I can see this unfolding and I can apply different things, parts of my leadership, aspects of my leadership in different places. That was awesome, by the way, when that happened, you're like, Oh, it's the matrix. Like things are moving slowly or I can see the game now. So that happened. Was I perfect 100 percent of the time? Absolutely not. Ask anyone. Anyone who has met me. Ask anyone who's ever interacted with me or certainly worked with me. Was I perfect every time? Absolutely not. But did I get better over time? Yes. And in all of this, are there times where in a group. Or in a team, someone needs to add a sense of urgency. Someone needs to say, Hey, look, we have discussed this and discussed this and brainstormed and workshop this and let people take time with it and come together and ask more questions, um, and had breakout groups and talked about it as a group again. Now it's time to do something. Now it's time to decide and move this thing forward. that's my natural kind of inclination and default mode. Is that a strength for the team in some situations? Absolutely. Absolutely. And I'm able to do that very well. Okay. So in all of this, a couple takeaways for you, first of all, first takeaway is if you are even thinking about these things, self improvement, personal growth, Hey, let me kind of be self aware and figure out what I need to do better. Give yourself a lot of credit for that. Like seriously, like pause. Not a lot of people do that. You are in the very small minority. Even if you are just thinking about this, you are in the very small minority. So don't breeze over that. Like pause, like give yourself credit, acknowledge yourself. I acknowledge you. I give you credit for that. That's huge. That's huge. Second takeaway would be identifying these default modes or your just natural inclinations or tendencies right now, where you go like, yeah, okay. Like, okay. That one kind of has taken it too far and it's not getting me the outcomes I want. It's kind of burning people around me or whatever. Take that. And then ask yourself, what about this helps me and my team pause and actually go through that exercise. And what about this? is unhelpful to me and my team. And then what would help me go in a different direction, go in a more positive, helpful, relevant direction, and then work towards that. Um, ask, ask friends, ask colleagues, ask mentors, ask coaches, um, do the work because it's awesome when you get to that point where you feel like the game is slowed down so those are some takeaways for you. Hopefully they help. And I will catch you next week on leveraging leadership.