The Talent

This chapter highlights Kenna’s leader development journey through coaching. The coaching engagement was sponsored by Kenna’s leader to help ensure strategy and relationship success as a senior-level, female physician leader in a large academic medical center. Kenna readily accepted the coaching opportunity with expressed interest in creating a strategic plan for her relatively new function and managing relationships vertically, horizontally, and diagonally.

For Kenna, stepping into the senior administrative leadership role was a “dream come true” as it aligned with her talents, strengths, and passion. Kenna was enthusiastic and determined to make a difference for her customers, meet role expectations, and demonstrate to her sponsors and stakeholders that they made the right decision by selecting her for the senior administrative leadership role. Her journey to this position included numerous successes in medical practice, contributions on the national and international level, leadership roles in professional organizations, and several honors and awards, along with significant family responsibilities and accomplishments.

In addition to the requisite technical knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for this new leadership responsibility, Kenna was competitive, creative, energetic, and socially active – a high extrovert with high standards. Kenna had many successes under her belt. She was highly driven, and by nature, Kenna was a winner and was focused on the end game.

Leader Identity

A few months after assuming the coveted role, Kenna received feedback from her leader recognizing her many endeavors and top-notch deliverables. There was also a perceived need for Kenna to get on the balcony to view the work environment and the people she interacted with. This remark was offered to help Kenna better facilitate open communication and lead effectively to consensus while designing a strategic plan for endorsement and funding. Although she acknowledged and appreciated the feedback, Kenna was concerned and felt the feedback was evaluative and less than favorable. Her leader’s comments were particularly concerning because Kenna knew interpersonal skills, relationship building, strategy, and execution were pillars of effective leadership, and she thought she was on target. This feedback challenged Kenna’s leader identity – self-perception and self-expression (Skinner, 2015).

Kenna took a three-pronged approach to gaining clarity on her leader identity. First, coaching conversations helped Kenna begin to see feedback as a gift and an opportunity to learn what was helping and hindering her leader identity. Kenna began to take on the role of the actor and observer in her leadership encounters. She integrated communication tips into her day-to-day leadership and was simultaneously very mindful of how others responded to the different behaviors she practiced. Kenna further accepted the idea that developing and refining leader identity is a process of taking on a “learn it all” mindset to continuously bring her best self forward and fully step into her leadership to influence others to add value to teams, organizations, and communities.

Second, Kenna integrated journaling and yoga into her routine. These practices provided greater insight and self-awareness around who she was being and who she wanted to be.

Third, Kenna was very conscientious and made a conscious effort to consider the context of her new department and peers. With the context in mind, she began dialing back some of her strengths in areas that previously were wildly successful yet did not have the desired impact in the new context. To enhance her leadership effectiveness, Kenna began to intentionally create space for others to engage and to adapt her communication approach based on the different audiences and settings. Kenna’s focus on her communication style also addressed her expressed interest in inclusion on the new executive leadership team.

Inclusion

The candid coaching conversations uncovered Kenna’s strong need to bring her authentic self forward and her desire for inclusion – being accepted and valued. Kenna joined the team in the middle of major organizational changes, and there was little time for a full-fledged transition and onboarding plan. These changes presented Kenna and the executive leadership team with new and challenging demands that required a sense of urgency. The combination of changes and the need for quick deliverables from the executive team took priority over executive team development and the new leadership team member integration. Major changes typically challenge leader identity, so this created a layered impact on Kenna.

To address this paradox of identity and inclusion, components of a polarity map were discussed, and a SWOT analysis was conducted. (Corporations often use SWOT analyses to understand internal business strengths and weaknesses along with external industry opportunities and threats. For personal development purposes, SWOT analyses help identify and maximize strengths and opportunities and minimize weaknesses and threats for the best outcomes.) As a result, Kenna concluded that she would own her inclusion by putting her energy into what she could do to be effective at the executive table versus things others were or were not doing. Kenna took responsibility for creating her most preferred working environment. She decided to focus on building credibility and trust by “waiting” before speaking. This allowed her to be heard and to understand the interests and concerns of others by clarifying needs and potential points of intersection.

Kenna realized her decision to adapt her communication style would also facilitate increased credibility and facilitate needed conversations to advance her goals and the collective goals of the executive leadership team. She also knew trust was key to long-term success, so she began in earnest to build trust one person at a time. While she took advantage of public opportunities to acknowledge and appreciate others as appropriate, she also connected with her colleagues one-on-one to share her strategic plan that was being crafted during the coaching engagement. With input from colleagues, Kenna’s strategic plan was further refined to better align with the overall department strategy. These intentional interactions also resulted in strengthened relationships.

The Process

As the coaching engagement matured, Kenna allowed herself to be more vulnerable on her development journey. She continued to fully engage in coaching and was open to a series of assessments to gain insight and awareness about her motivations, styles, skills, abilities, and behaviors that have an impact on leadership effectiveness. During the course of the coaching engagement, Kenna participated in personality assessments and 360° assessments. She identified a map of stakeholders including allies, potential allies, resistors, and potential resistors to get a full perspective of her strengths and opportunities for development in the context of the organization and her new role.

Kenna agreed to the Stakeholder Centered Coaching approach, which included an initial series of one-on-one stakeholder interviews, to provide actionable coaching feedback (versus evaluative feedback that can be an easy identity trigger) (Stone and Heen, 2014). As a result of the anonymous, in-depth qualitative feedback from stakeholders, Kenna determined that her primary coaching goal was to “optimize effectiveness as a leadership team member.” The deeper coaching conversations uncovered the wish to strengthen her leader identity and to be heard at the executive leadership table.

Kenna sent thank you notes to respondents sharing her coaching goal and inviting them to serve as part of her team of coaches by providing periodic impromptu feedback and additional anonymous feedback via an online survey conducted at the beginning and conclusion of the coaching engagement.

The Payoff

Kenna’s commitment to strengthening her leader identity and being included as a member of the leadership team was realized by following through on our coaching agreements and development strategies. Her success was demonstrated in the pre/post-online survey with quantifiable improvement in “effectiveness as a leadership team member” (sign of increased inclusion) and quantifiable improvement in “overall leadership effectiveness” (sign of stronger leader identity).

With increased self-awareness and reflection, Kenna flourished and was able to move her agenda forward with a noble intent to help the next generation of physicians. Kenna secured the executive team support and funding for her strategic program that has been endorsed for enterprise implementation and adopted by other national health care organizations.

The coaching engagement formally concluded after one year, and Kenna indicated that the focused attention on developing her leader identity allowed her to modify her leadership behaviors while being true to herself and better engaging her peers to meet her goal. According to Kenna, pondering the following questions was helpful along the journey:

• What makes you you?
• What is stopping you from expressing your best self?
• What impact would you like to have as a leader?

Summary

Many accomplished leaders find themselves at the crossroads of identity and inclusion – a desire to be a part of a team with a shared purpose while expressing personal inherent capabilities. This paradox of being the person you want to be and being included by the people who want something different can be difficult to manage in certain organizational contexts. It could be particularly perplexing for highly talented female leaders with a solid track record and a drive to succeed. Leaders, particularly women who tend to experience delayed leadership validation, are encouraged to focus on their intentions and personal development as well as the intention and development of others as shown in the Identity–Inclusion Loop (Figure 5.1) for the greatest leadership impact.

References

1. Skinner, S. (2015). Build your leader identity. Haberfield, NSW 2045, Australia: Longueville Media.
2. Stone, D., and Heen, S. (2014). Thanks for the feedback. New York, NY: Penguin Group.