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Leadership Takes Balance

Guest post by: Kerri Salls

Article Overview: The Wheel of Life is a workshop I have taught for years. It’s a personal assessment tool of the balance in your life, and your satisfaction and development in each of eight areas of your life. My eight areas are: Career; Money & Life Planning; Health – Physical, Emotional, Spiritual; Family & Friends; Significant Other; Personal Development & Contribution; Fun & Relaxation; and Physical Environment. The idea is to develop all these areas equitably to meet your needs.

Leadership Takes Balance

The Wheel of Life is a workshop I have taught for years. It’s a personal assessment tool of the balance in your life, and your satisfaction and development in each of eight areas of your life. My eight areas are: Career; Money & Life Planning; Health – Physical, Emotional, Spiritual; Family & Friends; Significant Other; Personal Development & Contribution; Fun & Relaxation; and Physical Environment. The idea is to develop all these areas equitably to meet your needs.

Likewise, in business, you have eight areas of leadership effectiveness. As the leader of your organization, even an organization of one, you need to balance all eight areas, all the time. My eight areas for leadership are: Self-awareness, Managing and Building Relationships, Learning and Developing, Self-Expression and Communication, Mentoring and Coaching, Team Building, Self-Care and Contribution. All leaders excel at some of these areas. I also know leaders who ardently avoid or deny some of these areas.

I heard a Fortune 1000 corporate consultant advocate for balance in leadership. She bundled all the pieces into just three areas. Ginny O’Brien simplified all these areas of leadership development into three categories: Self, Others, Work.

According to studies at major universities here (Harvard, Stanford, Duke) and abroad, Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is far more critical to long term career and business success than IQ in the 21st century. Strong leadership no longer suggests but requires a balance between both traditional masculine and the more inclusive feminine strengths in leadership.

It is like the juggler at the circus trying to keep all those plates spinning on poles. Some you can keep going without much effort. Others you struggle to keep spinning and a plate falls and crashes occasionally. But just like the juggler, you start again in that area. You keep practicing to get better at balancing all the plates at the same time. In your organization and in your own leadership, you must develop a balance between traditional masculine models of leadership on one hand, and the more inclusive feminine models on the other to keep the organization balanced.

Masculine Model Feminine Model

Command & control Relational & empowering

Authoritative style Collaborative style

Competitive Partnerships

Action oriented Process oriented

Rational, linear, objective See the whole picture, make connections

Hierarchical Coach/mentoring/inclusive/sharing power

Top-down management& Intuitive, holistic, subjective

structured communication

Compartmentalized & Leadership integrated at every level

focused on details

Go through both lists. Check off the characteristics you identify with most. Are they all from one column or the other? What are the characteristics you consciously avoid? Why? What is the impact on your business, your success, and your problem-solving abilities? Pick just one more characteristic from your weaker skill set to learn more about and master.

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Article Tags: emotional intelligence, EQ, leadership, leadership effectiveness, problemsolving, wheel of life



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