ACTivity/ The Sharing Habit

Photo by Beth Macdonald on Unsplash.

Manila, 10 March 2021 — Where are you withholding yourself from others?

Story

It happened in 2013, when Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at Harvard, gave a TEDx talk called Six Keys to Leading Positive Change. She had distilled these six keys from her long experience working with leaders in the US and countries around the world. In my experience, this talk is a leadership classic that you shouldn’t miss. It’s one of my all-time favorites because it offers six essential leadership behaviors in a way that is easy to remember. Please do watch it. And if you have already, it won’t hurt to watch it again and see what you take away from it is this time. As announced, they really are keys that you and I can use to lead positive change.

However, it’s not just the six keys that matter. There is more to it. Woven into Kanter’s list of six behaviors, there’s a hidden message that I’d like you to discover. While each of the six keys will, at the right time and place, do wonders to transform you and your leadership practice, it is the hidden message that captures what leadership is really all about. Have an idea what it is? 

Well, here is a clue. In essence, it’s not so much about you at all. So what then, is it about? Well, here it is: leading positive change is about sharing your experience with others. Let me repeat that: with others. It starts with thinking less about yourself and more about Others.

Challenge

To unpack this, let’s take a closer look at each of the six keys. Kanter’s first key to lead positive change, Show Up, means to be there with others, rather than staying by yourself. The second key, Speak Up, is about reaching out to others, and finding and using your voice to do so. The third key, Look Up, is about seeing the bigger purpose for helping others. The fourth key, Team Up, is to start collaborating with others. Fifth, Never Give Up, is to persist in serving others, especially when your project can feel like a failure ‘in the middle.’ And finally, the sixth key, Lift Others Up, is to become known for acknowledging others in a way that makes them feel recognized with a sense of belonging and fulfillment.

As you can see now, each of the six keys is about adopting a leadership behavior with which you serve others. Albert Einstein, the renowned scientist, put it like this: “Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.” Kanter’s six keys will help you accomplish, in specific ways, to live your life for others. To be known as a giver. However, rather than telling and advising others what to do, research has shown that you can serve them better when you build a habit of sharing your experience with them, and let them take it from there. That’s the secret that several of my best mentors have shared with me, and that I share with you now.

You might say that you already have a habit of sharing your experiences with others and that you are frequently applying Kanter’s six keys in your behavior with others. If so, congrats, and well done! On the other hand, if you are like me and there is some room for improvement, then I found from my experience that you might be withholding yourself from sharing with others, possibly for any of these three reasons. The first is a lack of confidence. The second is a lack of trust. And the third is a lack of curiosity. Thankfully, each of these three obstacles can be overcome when you work on growing your leadership.

Question

Having read this far, let’s get into action. My question for you is to find out where you, as a leader, can improve in your sharing more of yourself with others. Where are you withholding yourself from others? When and where do you not show up for others, speak up to others, or team up with others when you know, deep down, that you should? When do you not trust others enough to keep working together when the going gets tough? And when are you not doing enough, or not in the right way, to be known for lifting others up?

Withholding yourself from sharing with others is like a curse of staying silent and by yourself. It means you deny yourself the use of your voice. And deny yourself to create new possibilities and live and lead with all your potential. Because, and that can look strange and feel counterintuitive, all that potential in you only comes out when you share what you have with others and learn to grow together. Not by yourself. 

Last week, I read the words of a social researcher in my family who wrote that speaking is golden and keeping silent hurts. How right she was, I thought. From my own experience, I know how it feels to be withholding yourself from others. I used to do that too. And, more recently, I found in my coaching work that many others can experience this too. Some from introversion or shyness, some from fear and lack of trust, and others because they have yet to discover what a miracle our life is, with so much to discover. That discovery, however, only happens, as Einstein and many other leaders found out, when you give and share more of yourself with others. That’s the secret message woven through Kanter’s six keys to leading positive change. It's why you need to transform yourself and your habits first. To help you go on that journey, I'm happy to meet you to hear about the kind of leader you want to become, and the sharing habit you want to build.