Leading Change: Target v Tactic?
Where are You Heading?
I was with a client today who was telling me about a colleague who had a single track approach to everything. We’ve all encountered them, maybe even been that person (I know I feel like that person sometimes!).
But what was obvious was that her colleague really believed in the approach she was recommending. It was a ‘tactic’, the only tactic in the toolkit seemingly.
It’s easy to see when it’s someone else, that the tactic-driven approach is the one that is less likely to land, or more likely to get us lost—we Brits sometimes laugh about just talking louder when someone doesn’t speak English. If the other person doesn’t speak English, then volume won’t help the connection. We need to stop, listen, and re-assess.
Stay With the Feeling
If we know what kind of ‘feeling’ result we’re aiming for then it’s really easy to know when that’s been achieved.
The person on my zoom screen wanted to be in a particular kind of relationship with the external clients—and, knowing that wasn’t the case right now, the place to look is whether or not they are getting warmer or colder with every interaction.
Some tactics may work better than others, but we try everything we know how to do and then some things we don’t in order to move closer to what feels good.
This is quite different to the ‘tactical’ approach, where the colleague has one tool, and believes in it so strongly that she doesn’t stop to check whether or not it’s working.
We might find, in the course of our experience and understanding of humans that some approaches work better than others, but when we are agnostic about the what (and even about the ‘where’), we have way more leeway to experiment with what feels good and seems to be working.
If we only have one tool in our leadership toolkit, we can become blinded to its effectiveness or otherwise. Versus having a good understanding of what we’re aiming for, that ‘feeling’ in a relationship for example. And that, combined with the freedom of mind to pull anything from our infinite toolkit is more likely a winning approach.
Enjoy experimenting!
With love,
Cathy