I will miss The Queen, Elizabeth II.
I am not really a monarchist as I believe the best person should fill a role.
The person who wants the role for the morally “right” reasons, with plenty of motivation and energy, sufficient (or great) capabilities, an open-minded worldview, in touch with their own feelings and highly emotional intelligent.
Elizabeth II ticked many of these boxes (and more).
She was a Naturally Successful leader: energised, influential and impactful.
I have deep respect and admiration for how she filled and grew in the role of queen. I admire her as a person: humble, committed, disciplined, great communicator and a good dose of humour.
It could have been very different. Just imagine a ‘Donald Trump’-like character filling the role of queen (or king) for 70 years…don’t dwell on this too long. It’s not a very uplifting activity. The point is that we often forget to differentiate between a role and the person filling the role. Too often, we see it as one.
Understanding the person AND the role of your stakeholders is crucial for any influence.
Here is one way of discovering where to build influence and inspire change.
The person as a human being
We all have an idea of how to get to know a person by exploring their
Motivations and purpose
Capabilities and abilities
Mindset and worldview
Important events in their life and how this might be still impacting them
Explore with curiosity and compassion.
Roles as multi-layered constructs
Roles come with their own energetic charge, definitions and perspectives. They are mainly determined by the system that they belong to and cannot always be changed by the incumbent. Developing system awareness and understanding how systems work on an energetic level will help you to know the rules of the game and how to align with its flow.
Roles often also carry their own history, which can influence the person in the role without them noticing the full extent of this. They might not even know what happened with the person who filled the role before them, but some of the previous actions and results still linger.
For example, your stakeholder might be in a role that was traditionally part of the accounting team, whose leader had the reputation of being a micro-manager. This made previous incumbents quite passive in their approach. They all looked at energy-saving measurements as detailed cost-reduction calculations that they had to justify to their micro-managing boss. That is the current reputation of the role — focused on reducing costs. Imagine if the person currently in the role never questioned this approach — what are their chances for success when proposing a business case that requires a medium-term investment that increases costs? A specific type of mindset might be attached to the role — even when the person in the role is actually thinking very differently.
You have to align your project proposal with the role AND the person — you have to build trust.
Over to you
Have you ever thought about your own role? Where is it supporting you to create change and positive impact and when is it limiting you?
Naturally yours,
Ingrid