Behavior, Mindset, and Leadership

This year, members of Tacoma Power’s Senior Leadership Team (SLT) were asked to contribute blog posts with the theme, “My Behavior Style and how it benefits me as a leader,” and “My Behavior Style and areas I am growing into.”

The core Outward Mindset idea is Mindset —> Behavior —> Results.

The blogging assignment got me to reflect on where – and how – the behavior styles we learned about in leadership training fit into that equation?

Here’s my story.

Myers Briggs Type Indicator

Once upon a time, many years ago, I completed my first Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment. I was thrilled when I learned I was an ENFP, and loved the descriptions I read, including:

ENFP – Impassioned Catalyst

Outgoing, friendly, and accepting. Exuberant lovers of life, people, and material comforts. Enjoy working with others to make things happen. Bring common sense and a realist approach to their work, and make work fun. Flexible and spontaneous, adapt readily to new people and environments. Learn best by trying a new skill with other people.

And this:

Where ENFPs do not shine is in systems of strict regimentation and hierarchy, such as military service. ENFPs thrive on the ability to question the status quo and explore the alternatives, and if this is a quality that is not just unappreciated but actually frowned upon, this will not only make them unhappy, but it may even threaten their emotional stability.

All of that resonated with me. I’ve now completed the MBTI ten or fifteen times over the years, always with the same results. I love being an ENFP (even if my penchant for new ideas drives my colleagues crazy) and would freak out if an assessment showed something different. Yes, I’m an ENFP for life!

Birkman Assessments

When I joined our organization in 2012, one of my first tasks was to meet our team-building coach and take the Birkman Assessment. I found it a kind of MBTI-on-steroids. Much more detailed and hard to interpret without professional assistance. It was an accurate reflection of my behavioral style and came with some things to think about and improve.

We continued to use Birkman on the Senior Leadership Team for a while, and I used it with the team I lead. In 2017, we used Birkman for an upcoming team retreat, and I decided to retake the test. Here’s a comparison of my 2012 and 2017 Birkman’s:

Do you notice anything different? The diamond (⬦) symbols indicate my usual behavior shifted to be much more people-oriented and towards a more indirect communication style. There are other changes as well. Maybe it’s just how I answered the questions differently five-years apart?

LEAD/DiSC Behavior Styles

In our leadership training, we learned all about behavioral styles, our own and others. We learned how to lean into our styles and work with people different than ourselves. These behavioral styles are based on DiSC Styles, another self-assessment I’ve experienced over the years. Again, my results have been similar to my MBTI as described above and were consistent over time. I took the DiSC assessment in 2018 and 2019 and summarized the results in the image below.

This time a surprising change occurred. The black dot summarizing my behavioral style shifted from the Dominance quadrant (and close to influence) squarely in the Support or Steadiness quadrant. I was surprised by the magnitude of the change and the fact it occurred in such a short time.

Some Takeaways

• We Can Change Our Style: When describing my ENFP MBTI type, I mentioned that I’d freak out if it changed. These behavioral styles all represent who I am, and I like being me. However, the Birkman and DiSC results demonstrate that behavioral style isn’t immutable.

• Our behavioral styles can change. The “E” in ENFP says I’m extraverted, but I’ve become more introverted over time. And my colleague Julie has shown me that I do some things in an extraverted way (think out loud, for example), and others in a much more introverted way (like test ideas against my philosophy or principles).

• What explains how my Birkman and DiSC styles changed? In Arbinger’s Developing and Implementing an Outward Mindset (DIOM) workshop, we learn that our behaviors, collective and individual, produce our business and personal results. We also understand that Mindset drives behavior and that organizations that focus on changing mindset first are much more likely to achieve improved organizational results than those focusing only on behavior.

  I think the change in these results (especially DiSC) may mean my work on Outward Mindset (through facilitating workshops for my team and others and trying to implement the tools we learn in DIOM) has helped me shift my mindset and my behaviors. While I’m frequently in the box, I’ve learned to apply tools and ideas that help me be more self-aware and get out of the box I’m in.

• Behavior Styles as Justification. In DIOM, we learn that when we betray our sense to help someone, we instantly develop a list of excuses that justify our not doing what we know is right. The justifications may be reasons why the other person doesn’t deserve our help or ways they’ve mistreated us in the past. And the justifications frequently elevate our sense of ourselves, as in we’re too busy, etc.

  I can use my behavior styles as justification. I can use my status as an ENFP to focus on me, on making my ideas happen, in a way that runs roughshod over others. And my behavior styles can hamper my self-awareness that anything like this is even happening.

It’s Complicated

Behavioral styles represent the unique characteristics we bring along in our roles as a leader, manager, supervisor, and individual contributor. We can be more successful in all of those roles if we can shift our mindsets to be more outward and change our behaviors to be more helpful.

Resources

1. Books. Two Arbinger books, Leadership and Self-Deception and The Anatomy of Peace explain what mindset is, why it’s so important, and how mindset can hurt – or help – our efforts at work and at home. They’re both written as fables, one in a business setting, the other more personal. And if made-up stories are not your thing, read The Outward Mindset, also by Arbinger. I can’t recommend them highly enough.
2. Workshops. The City of Tacoma continues to offer Developing and Implementing an Outward Mindset and Outward Leadership workshops to City employees. A virtual DIOM workshop (four half-day sessions) kicks off this week and will happen monthly. A virtual Outward Leadership workshop (two half-day sessions about a month apart) open to DIOM graduates begins on March 1. With supervisor approval, you can sign up through your training representative.
3. Outward Mindset Sustainment Check-ins. We held two eight-week rounds of video sustainment last year. In each 45 minute session, where we checked in with each other, processed an Outward Mindset-related video together, and helped with challenges we might be facing. Feedback was excellent and led us to convene a weekly check-in. They’ll be Mondays at 8 am beginning on February 1 and open to all across the City who’d like to participate. We hope these will help all of us #TurnTacomaMoreOutward.
4. Practice. Practice. Practice. For those of you who haven’t seen it, here’s a video about a guy who learned a demanding new skill by practicing in small bites until it kicked in. The mindset and leadership behaviors take a while to learn, and we sometimes give up trying before we see the benefit. This video is an example of what can happen if we keep going and give ourselves time to learn and grow.

What do you think?

Charlie Haden's Solo on 'Take the Coltrane'

Provided to YouTube by Universal Music Group Take The Coltrane (Instrumental) · Kenny Barron · Charlie Haden · Roy Haynes Wanton Spirit With Charlie Haden And Roy Haynes ℗ 1994 Decca Records France Released on: 1994-01-01 Composer Lyricist: Duke Ellington Auto-generated by YouTube.

I love Charlie Haden’s solo and walking bass line on this song. I really need to study it because I have absolutely no idea what he’s playing. I think that’s what made him unique, what made him Charlie Haden. He was playing his own thing in his own way, not following anyone else.

He once said you should play every note as if it’s your last. Sadly, we’re all going to play that last note, even Charlie. But can you imagine the weight that would get put on every note if we thought of it that way? Every. Single. Note. They’d all have to be perfect, just right.

Yeah, I need to study Charlie. And practice. With intention and clarity.

Thank you Charlie!

More here: Charlie Haden: 'Risk Your Life for Every Note'

Toni Morrison: “We do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”

I just reread Toni Morrison’s Nobel Lecture in Literature, 1993. It is so elegantly stated, deeply meaningful, and prophetic. Read the passages I quote below and think about the path we’ve taken to our current time.

"She is convinced that when language dies, out of carelessness, disuse, indifference and absence of esteem, or killed by fiat, not only she herself, but all users and makers are accountable for its demise. In her country children have bitten their tongues off and use bullets instead to iterate the voice of speechlessness, of disabled and disabling language, of language adults have abandoned altogether as a device for grappling with meaning, providing guidance, or expressing love. But she knows tongue-suicide is not only the choice of children. It is common among the infantile heads of state and power merchants whose evacuated language leaves them with no access to what is left of their human instincts for they speak only to those who obey, or in order to force obedience.

"The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek – it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language – all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas."

Better yet, read the entire lecture, perhaps right along with YouTube audio of Morrison’s actual lecture.

How do I want to be when I go back?

When you're on vacation, do you ever find yourself thinking, "how do I want to be when I go back to work?" It's a great question to ask from time-to-time. Six years ago, that question led to a couple of small, seemingly imperceptible, tweaks that helped make a huge difference.

I'm on vacation right now in the same place - déjà vu all over again? – but the question hasn't really presented itself so far. Maybe because I'm still just vacating?

What's my biggest challenge at work right now? It's one we all face: time or the lack of it. We don't know how much time we really have (probably less than we assume), and it's the one thing we can't create more of.

Anyway, I'm sitting on my little Lanai by the Sea, thinking random thoughts about jazz, poetry, art, beauty, doing nothing, and how all that connects to my roles as a manager and leader.

Wish me luck when the question finally demands an answer. Should be any day now!