Hello, Thriving Leader

Today I am headed to a camp setting to join fellow coaches at the leadership retreat for the ICF Southeast Regional Advisory Council. I attended the inaugural retreat last October and had a fantastic time. ICF coaches share values and principles about kindness and connection. That’s exactly the kind of people you want in a group!

One of the special things about the experience was how leadership was shared so things were decided collaboratively. That’s because of another shared value among ICF coaches, appreciating and bringing in different viewpoints to create a better result.

The values and priorities of each person were welcome in the conversation and added to the perspective of the rest of the group. The emphasis was on including everyone’s thoughts and opinions instead of one person or a few choosing the priorities. It was refreshingly different from the unfortunately common situations where most people are trying to fit in with the crowd or impress those with a lot of power and status.

The path of personal growth from focusing on pleasing or impressing others to focusing on honoring your own values and priorities is long and challenging. But it’s also very rewarding to be freed from chasing the acceptance and approval of others. There are some pitfalls along the way, but if you are aware of them you can navigate them successfully.

Who Are You Trying To Please?

One of the hallmarks of Whole Life Leaders is that they choose their definition of success based on their values and carefully considered priorities. Then they choose actions that align with their values and priorities. They aren’t trying to impress or please others for acceptance or external validation. That feels inauthentic to them. Their aim is to meet or exceed their own standards.

When You Are Clear About Your Values And Priorities
Ideally, as you develop as a Whole Life Leader, you take the time to consider what you really value in life. You think through the principles you hold to be true and get clear about why you believe they are right. You approach moral and ethical guidelines from a critical thinking perspective to understand them fully before you embrace them as your own.

However, this can be a lifelong process, and it’s definitely an ongoing process. We usually start out with definitions of success we have absorbed from other people, as part of a family, in conversations with friends, and even just by living in and interacting with a particular community. We also learn what things other people think we should value and what they believe we should think about moral and ethical guidelines. Our ongoing task is not so much learning as it is unlearning, letting go of the absorbed beliefs and expectations in favor of our personally considered, meaningful values and guidelines.

Getting clear about your own values and principles can be difficult. There are a few potential detours on this part of your self-leadership path.

When Other People’s Standards Feel Like Part of Your Lifelong Identity
Values and priorities we learned when we were young probably went directly into our sense of identity as we got older. The earliest development of identify, that sense of “me” vs. “not me,” comes from identifying with your family. “Who I am” is understood as being a member of your family, so it’s actually more like “Who we are.” Whether you had a more authoritarian parent who said “This is how you should do things” or a more enlightened parent who said “This is how we do things in our family,” your identity absorbed the values and priorities you were given.

When there is a lot of conflict within your family, or when you have a lot of conflict with your family, or when you have interests, strengths, and talents very different from most of the people in your family, it’s easy to start seeing yourself as separate from your family. But when you share a lot in common with the people in your family, your sense of identity will be more strongly connected to those similarities.

The risk is that the family’s values and priorities feel comfortable to you, as well as being part of how you view yourself, so you don’t have a reason to challenge them. You assume they’re right for you because they were right for everyone in the family. You may automatically discount ideas, thinking “That’s not for me” when you really mean “That’s not what people in my family do.” Doing the thing that interests you might feel like pushing away from your family or changing your identity. That’s a very unsettling experience. But it may actually be true to who you really are, so it may enrich your life.

When You Learned Them From a Powerful Authority Figure
In general, we tend to identify with powerful authority figures in our lives. Since they have power, we want to be like them. Since they are central in our lives, we tend to believe they are right, unless their behavior is so disruptive or destructive that it causes us to question them. Generally, admiration mixed with a little fear is the recipe for granting someone high status.

One or both parents will often be the powerful authority figure in a child’s life. But the most powerful figure may be a grandparent, especially if they hold a powerful role in the family. Or it may be a religious leader at your place of worship or spiritual training. It can even be an athletic coach or a director of a program you attend in your youth if that activity is central in your life.

Since you want to identify yourself with this powerful authority figure, you embrace their standards as your own. Acting against their standards can feel in a way like betraying them. Having your own standards, different from theirs, can feel like not being similar to them in ways that are important to you. You risk losing the connection that comes from identifying with their importance and power. But defaulting to their standards can prevent you from discovering and acting in alignment with your own authentic standards.

When Group Standards Don’t All Match Your Standards
We are all familiar with lessons for adolescents about the power of peer pressure. We warn teenagers that they will feel compelled to fit in with their peers and be seen as “cool,” and that this desire can distort their judgment. We warn them that their friends may encourage them to engage in risky behavior around alcohol, drugs, sex, and thrill-seeking.

What we don’t realize is that peer pressure may be strongest for adolescents, but it isn’t strong only for adolescents. We adults struggle with it, too. Being accepted in a group is a powerful human need. Feeling connected to others is another powerful human need. Unless the people we are around are clearly foolish, hostile, or strange to us, we want to be accepted and be part of the group.

This means we tend to place a lot of value on the standards the group talks about. We may minimize how important our own values and priorities are because we amplify the values and priorities of a group we are part of. We may default to the group’s opinion on things, especially if we haven’t carefully evaluated our own values and priorities so don’t know them very well. When group standards are strong, we’re more likely to embrace them and consider them our own without evaluating them. This natural tendency leaves behind the things we value and the things that are our true priorities for us that are not expressed by the group, or that are in conflict with the group.

When It’s Time To Please But You Don’t Want To
There’s a potential detour on the other side of sorting out and honoring your own values and priorities. Instead of confusing other people’s standards with your own, you go too far in the other direction. You are clear about what you value and what your priorities are, and you’re not willing to compromise at all when someone in authority has expectations of you that don’t align perfectly with your own expectations. You see only one side of freedom, the freedom to say “no” to people in authority so you can be your own boss. You forgot that freedom also means being able to commit yourself to uncomfortable or unpleasant things that ultimately serve you.

When the other person’s expectations clearly violate your principles or put your ability to honor your values and priorities at risk, it’s definitely reasonable, and probably even necessary, to back away and not do what is expected. But when the expectations don’t violate your principles and don’t cause you harm, but instead may cause boredom or frustration or unpleasantness, the right choice could be to comply with the expectations. It depends on how important the goal is that is being guarded by the person with expectations you don’t want to meet.

The Whole Life Leadership Approach
The best approach when someone else sets the expectations you have to follow to get something you want is to start by knowing yourself well. Be clear about what you value, what your priorities are, and why they matter to you. Commit to acting in line with your values and priorities. Compare the expectations of the gatekeeper with your own values and priorities. From that perspective you can ask some important questions.

Do the requirements violate your principles? If so, you would go forward only in an exceptional circumstance, when some level of survival is at stake. But if not, it’s time to consider a compromise. Take the long view. Look at the importance and desirability of the goal long-term compared to the challenges and demands of achieving it near-term.

Whole Life Leadership includes the concept of delaying gratification, meaning understanding that freedom includes enduring unpleasant experiences now for future gain. If the long-term outcome is worth the near-term struggle, the leadership approach is to endure the struggle. In fact, the leadership view is to find a way to boost your agility and motivation to make the struggle less challenging!

Your Vision Depends On Your Values And Priorities
When we make choices, especially big choices, based on values and priorities we absorbed from others, there’s risk that reaching the goal won’t be meaningful to us. That could mean either losing motivation along the way or feeling empty and disappointed instead of thrilled when finally achieving the goal. When you follow other people’s expectations that are in conflict with your own, you’re planting the seeds of resentment in your own heart and watering them through your committed effort to having what you don’t want.

You can only have a clear vision of what you really want to create in the world when you have a clear understanding of your own values and priorities and why they matter to you. Otherwise, ‘your vision’ is likely to be someone else’s vision that you think you’re supposed to support. It will only motivate you to the degree it aligns with your core self. And it will create uncertainty and unease for you if it conflicts with your core self.

The powerful Whole Life Leadership position is to know and express your own values and priorities, in service of your vision of improving things for others as wells as yourself, and to partner with others who support your vision and share your values and priorities.

Lead it forward: Help those you mentor or lead explore their values and priorities. Listen for them expressing their guiding principles and ask questions to help them deepen their awareness of what matters to them. If you hear a comment that sounds like, “That’s what everyone else does so I think that’s what I’m supposed to do,” ask them what value they will be honoring or what they will enjoy about that choice. If they frame their motivation in terms of what other people expect or encourage them to do, ask them what it will mean to them, not to those other people. Nudge them towards separating their own values and priorities from those they have absorbed from others.

May you be well, may you do well, and may you Thrive!

Take Care,

Stephen Coxsey, MA, PCC, CMC
Whole Life Leadership Strategist
Development and Performance Coach

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About Steve Coxsey

Steve collaborates with people to design and implement a customized plan for success, fulfillment, and well-being for themselves and the people they lead. They thrive on a personally meaningful path and promote a culture of thriving wherever they are in charge, from families to professions, from small businesses to organizations.

Steve is a supportive ally. His typical clients are people in charge who have to juggle competing responsibilities in a variety of roles. They have a compelling vision of what they would like to create or accomplish as leaders in their families, careers, or businesses and are committed to turning their vision into reality. To make that happen, they develop the agilities of leadership to be able to empower and direct themselves, design and guide meaningful work, and inspire others.

Would you like that to be you?

Are you ready for a creative, dynamic, collaborative partnership focused on turning your vision into results?

Get started with a no-risk 30-40 minute consultation. It’s complimentary, so all it will cost you is a little bit of time. You can schedule the complimentary call using this online tool. You can also call 817-416-8971 or e-mail Steve@SteveCoxsey.com to set up the call.

Click here for more information than you could possibly ever want to know about Steve.

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