TRAPS PREVENTING SELF-ACTUALIZING LEADERSHIP

I talked with a senior manager this past week about self-actualizing leadership and he said, “Well, that sounds easy.”

I was shocked. Really! My thoughts were, “How could he have heard the presentation I made and all of the discussion that shook people up, and walk away thinking that?!” So we talked. We talked for a long time, and as I slowly got through his over-confident, over-optimistic, and impulsive filters, he finally began to “count the cost” of what it would mean to becoming a self- actualizing leader. That’s when he asked for a list, a complete list of all of the traps that typically sabotage leaders and prevent them from becoming fully a self-actualizing leader.

Well, I did not and still do not have a complete list. But I have a beginning one. So what are the traps that catch, defeat, and undermine leaders from becoming self-actualizing leaders? What thought viruses infect leaders so that they get stuck at a particular level of leadership and do not develop fully as a self-actualizing leader?

The Power Trap Self-actualization is not about getting power but using it and empowering others as you help them find their basic personality powers and developing them fully. And so the goal of self- actualizing leaders is not to gain power, but to push power and decision-making down to the touch-points of a business. This means giving up “power” and “control” and ceding it to others. (I told you self-actualizing leadership is far more radical than I knew and that most people suspect! Meta Reflection #14).

Self-actualizing “power” is not power over others, it is power with others and power through others. The joy of such a leader is in seeing people grow, develop, find their gifts, express their gifts, and excel. But of course, that requires a grown-upness, a maturity, and a secure sense of self. Those who are insecure can’t do that; those who’s ego is ill-formed and always in the way can’t do that. Those who are insecurely competitive cannot do that. It takes a mature leader who is him or herself living a self-actualizing life.

Nor can a fearful leader do that. The fearful or paranoid leader who thinks, “If you give your power away, the employees will take over!” will not be able to support the development of another and groom others to be leaders.

The Ego Trap

The distortion of toxic leadership is best seen in the so-called “leader”who is self-absorbed, who is driven solely by self-interest, who misunderstands and thinks that leadership is about them, their brilliance, their charm, their charisma; who acts like a prima donna and wants to get his or her way regardless. But leadership is not about the leader. It is about the vision. It is about the people who are enriched and benefitted by the vision and mission. It is about what value that the leader can give.

The self-focused leader thinks that leadership means having people serve them instead of the privilege of serving people. This leads to dictatorial leadership, to leaders becoming little demi- gods, to leaders abusing people and using it for their own self-aggrandizement.

Some of the “leaders” in AIG come to my mind as I write this. They drove their company to bankruptcy and they still want million-dollar bonuses?? They want a million-dollar reward? For what? For their business failures? What were they thinking? And to justify it by saying that the 160 million is just a fraction of 700 billion— what are we talking about? The percentage is irrelevant. It’s not their money in the first place (but tax payers) and if anything, perhaps they should take no bonus and a pay cut for their poor performance. Isn’t that they way a meritocracy is supposed to work? Do they given outrageous bonuses to their employees?

The radical paradigm shift regarding a self-actualizing leader is that the ego has to be completely out of the way. The leader leads to a desired outcome or experience by activating the powers of his or her people for the purpose of a group success in creating and giving value that creates monetary value in a society. Again we see the importance of the leader’s own self-actualization and personal development. Without that, the leader is a dangerous wild-card likely to use people for his or her own agendas.

The Time / Speed Trap Then there is the trap of being busy— busy, busy, busy. Too busy. It’s an occupational hazard for high performers, for intelligent and creative people, and people of vision. We take on too much. We fill up our calendars and desks and then prioritize between all of the good things drives up our stress and makes us ineffective, indecisive, and incapable of healthy reflection.

As a result, leaders tend to fall back on taking back the power and control that they “say” they have given to people and in a rush to get things done use command-and-control methods, dis- empowering those below them. As a result, they rush around in their busyness and fail to bring many things to completion or closure. As a result, they listen with half-an-ear, cut people off, and leave conversations hanging. As a result, their stress rises and they have less and less time to step back to refresh the big picture and keep the vision before themselves and their company.

All of that prevents self-actualization in both individuals and organizations. Self-actualizing leaders prioritize, make hard decisions between good choices and great ones saying “no” to good choices so that they can say “yes” to great ones, and control their contexts so that they can maintain a calm reflective mind about the choices that they make.

There’s many other traps, but these three are some of the biggest traps to watch for. If you are a leader, CEO, senior manager, entrepreneur in your own business, or if you train and coach leaders — developing self-actualizing leaders means, in part, identifying the traps so that they can be avoided. And how do we do that? By facilitating the unleashing of potentials in people so they can self-actualize.

To your self-actualizing!