COACHING
The art of
self-awareness
Kate Lanz has some advice for leaders on identifying,
and managing, their triggers for unhelpful behaviour
F
lexibility, agility and versatility are
all hallmarks of good leadership,
and self-awareness is the starting
point for leaders to generate a
flexibility of response, achieve the
best results and keep their team engaged and
motivated. However, leaders often default to
unhelpful and habitual patterns of behaviour
that can hold them and their teams back.
In this article, I look at what triggers unhelpful
behaviour and provide advice on how leaders can
identify patterns so that their response can be
more appropriately managed.
Leadership behaviour stems from habitual
neural pathways that
are developed
over time.
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We are creatures of habit and none more so than
leaders, who rely on a clear set of behavioural
habits that helped them reach senior positions
where they lead and influence others. We can
easily identify typical leadership behaviours.
There is the tough gruff leader, don’t catch
them on a bad day. There is the approachable,
warm and engaging leader, but one that might
default on difficult decisions. There is the sparky,
entrepreneurial leader, often described as ‘a bit all
over the place’.
These leaders all have positive habits,
but problems arise when their behaviours
outlive their usefulness as they move up the
organisational hierarchy. Unless a leader can
develop a deep sense of self-
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 COACHING
awareness that gives them access to change, these
neural habits can hinder performance and start
to have the very opposite effect from the desired
outcome. Notably the very aspects that were once
drivers and motivators can become a handbrake
on their ability to get others to deliver. This is
often to the puzzlement of the leader in question,
since these habits are so deeply engrained that
they become very difficult for the leader to
observe in themselves.
Poor behaviours are often identified at
crucial crunch points in a leader’s career such as
promotional opportunities, appraisals or feedback
from the senior leadership team. Equally, L&D
teams might only become aware of them through
response from the leader’s team members during
their own development and reviews. Another
point of identification is when teams begin to
disintegrate or there are low levels of engagement
or support for the leader.
From a leader’s perspective, as he progresses
through an organisation, he extends his behaviour
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patterns to encompass others around him. This is
most commonly seen when a leader believes that
his team should be responding in the same way
he would.
Let’s look at an example of this in practice.
A case in point
Michael is an immensely driven and successful
leader in the digital media sector, where he
has highly specialised knowledge and is greatly
respected. When working with his team, though,
he was prone to intermittent outbursts when
specific deliverables were not up to the standards
he expected, or were slightly late. These outbursts
were not especially frequent but happened often
enough for others to be somewhat on their guard
around him.
His behaviour, and lack of self-awareness to
modify his response, was on the way to blocking
Michael’s career prospects. He was very much
someone the company wanted to have at a more
senior level within the business, given his vision,
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 deep market knowledge and results delivery – on
a good day he was a delight. However, it was felt
that it would be difficult to take him to the next
level within the organisation as his ability to keep
a team motivated on a consistent enough basis
was hampered by the risk of his outbursts.
He certainly had a reputation. He could be
outspoken, and quite tough with those concerned,
sometimes losing his temper with them. It was
never personal, always about the failure of the
task, but bruising nonetheless. This was especially
likely to happen if he felt that he had put time
in, up front, with those concerned. Somehow, at
some level in his mind, the others to whom he
had delegated tasks were treated as if they were
part of him. He would not have tolerated the
output he was receiving from himself, especially
given the amount of preparation and time he
felt he’d personally given to the task. Therefore,
he felt it appropriate to treat others as he would
treat himself.
Michael drove himself hard and had a critical
and demanding inner dialogue if he did not
deliver as he felt he should. He would give
himself the same dressing down that he gave to
others and, once done, he would then move on to
the next thing. So he could not even experience
this as a pattern – it was simply the way things
were. This is much like the adage of the last
one to experience the sea is the fish that swims
in it. Michael did not even realise that these
behaviours were a pattern that he was known for
by others. The pattern sat firmly in his blind spot.
As such, he had no choice or flexibility in his
approach as he was prevented from seeing it as
an issue. He might admit that, on occasion, his
tone was a little harsh and that he did not mean
it to be but this was as far as his self-awareness
went. He was being asked to change behaviour of
which he wasn’t even aware. He was stuck.
This was the only downside in Michael’s
leadership. He was otherwise an approachable
person. He enjoyed developing younger
executives, was generally a good team member
and was certainly known for his excellent
delivery. People liked him, but were wary as he
could suddenly turn on them under certain types
of pressure.
It was only as he started to push the promotion
conversation at a mid-year review that this issue
began to surface as an obstacle.
Four stages of self-awareness
Michael is a typical example of leaders with
low self-awareness. The drive, demands and
expectations that they place on themselves,
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How does one stay one
step ahead of oneself and
stop a limiting default
pattern kicking in?
and have led them to a senior position, have
become so firmly embedded that leaders cease to
recognise them. There are four stages involved
in changing this pattern blindness to raise self-
awareness and create the possibility of consistent
behavioural change.
Stage one – the attention shift
Given that the pattern is in the leader’s blind
spot, there will need to be external intervention.
This involves the leader receiving some kind of
wake-up call that something needs to change.
It might be feedback from the boss, an overt
reaction from a colleague, 360° data or similar.
The key is for the behavioural symptoms to be
called out to the leader in some form.
In Michael’s case, it was the stalling on
potential promotion that came up during a
review. The boss felt that he should raise his
concerns. This conversation came as rather a
shock to Michael. The feedback should have
happened much sooner, but because he was
generally approachable and a decent person
to work with, it had become easy to avoid
mentioning anything.
A second example is Sandra, who had a pattern
of being enormously friendly and open. However,
she would opt out of any conflict if she ever had
to defend her own turf. Unwittingly, she allowed
others to encroach on her role on the basis that
she was ‘not one to play politics’. It was only
when a fellow board member commented directly
to her that he could see her losing an entire work
area with significant knock-on effects that she sat
up, took notice and decided to get some
coaching help.
Stage two –
post-interaction awareness
The second stage is helping the leader to better
read the impact of his behaviours. He needs to
begin to separate out, and distinguish, his own
pattern from the other person and situation. This
is where effective coaching comes in.
Michael first needed to process his reaction
to the feedback and coaching allowed him the
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 COACHING
space to do this in private. He felt upset that this
was the first he had heard about the issue, he
was angry, he was ashamed to have been called
out in this way. He had to work through his own
reaction first in order to be able to engage with
changing behaviours.
During coaching, questions were raised about
what he might notice in himself first when he
was personally unhappy about something. His
own anger reaction became his cue to really
notice how the other person was responding.
Learning how to distinguish the pattern ‘in the
moment’ was beginning. This step was critical.
Michael came up with examples where he could
identify that the other person started to shut
down. Perhaps they were polite, passive and
subdued, but probably keeping the score for later.
Others bristled and, while they might not have
openly pushed back, he could see that there was a
more defensive ‘fight’ reaction visible.
This was all news to him. He had previously
never paid deep attention to others’ responses
when the pressure was on, as the conversation
was about task delivery. Why would he, if he
had previously experienced them as an extension
of talking to himself ? He could handle it and
indeed would expect it, so why wouldn’t they?
Identifying how people respond post-
interaction is necessary, but does not yet offer
flexibility in a choice of response. At this stage,
the leader can reflect on the impact of his
behaviour but has not yet identified the triggers
or change in his behaviour in the moment.
In Sandra’s case, she did notice that people
were actively making a pitch for her area. Her
project was leading-edge and multi-disciplined
and therefore attracted people’s attention,
including the attention of the senior team. Unlike
Michael, she could actually notice the difference
in her response when others encroached on
her turf but, at the point of noticing, she
became highly inactive and did nothing. Her
The very aspects that
were once drivers and
motivators can become
a handbrake on their
ability to get others
to deliver
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65-69 TJ.indd 68
interpretation was that she was above all that. At
this point, the underlying triggers had not been
uncovered but she could start to use the moment
of inactivity as her prompt to pay attention and
start doing something different.
Stage three – identifying the triggers
Identifying what causes reactions will only
happen when the leader has become able to
read the impact he is having on others. With
coaching, Michael learned to look out for the
triggers that provoked his strong responses. He
detected that, if he felt that his own competence
was reflected poorly in the work of others, he
would default into an angry response and become
overly directive. He lost the ability to tune in to
the other’s world.
Another trigger was his relationship with
control. If his subordinate’s delivery started to
put him too out of touch with his own sense
of control of the task, he would lose the ability
to relate to the subordinate as an individual. It
would become about him and how this might
make him look. With coaching, he began to be
able to read the degrees of loss of competence
and control that he experienced and see how
these triggered the unproductive responses.
In Sandra’s case, two beliefs triggered what
was hampering her. One was that others should
respect work boundaries in the same way that
she did and the other was that it was not classy
behaviour to engage in what she called politics.
Both of these beliefs held her in a very passive
pattern, which also meant she avoided the stress
of dealing with potential conflict, but they were
unrealistic in a corporate and high
profile position.
Stage four – self-management
under pressure
This is the final and most challenging part of
the process. This is the stage where the real
change occurs – or not. How does one stay one
step ahead of oneself and stop a limiting default
pattern kicking in? Going back to the opening
observations – we are creatures of habit. Making
behavioural change involves changing a habitual
response and this takes practice, in the moment,
on a consistent basis.
Michael worked on developing a personalised
set of practices that he could deploy when he
started to feel his frustration rising. They allowed
him to make the final, critical step for responding
differently in the moment. Again this is where
coaching has real impact. The practices have to
be tailored to the individual to work.
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 In Sandra’s case, she needed to distinguish the
boundaries between hers and others’ project areas.
She became able to articulate this very clearly
and quickly in her own mind so there were no
grey areas where she should give others the
benefit of the doubt.
She then worked on getting into a highly
active mode around these boundaries. A plan
was made for each individual in relation to
project boundaries. The coaching task work was
to keep her in active mode at every point where
a boundary issue came into play. This involved
conversations with the person making the play
and asking questions that demonstrated her
own superior knowledge of the area. Her aim
was to keep peers engaged and on side while, at
the same time, being very clear about what she
was leading and owning in terms of the work.
In some instances she had to have an assertive
exchange in which she made it clear she was not
happy about colleagues overstepping boundaries.
She formed some broader alliances with senior
stakeholders, demonstrating her knowledge and
competence in the project area.
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Flexibility, agility, versatility
When a leader has mastered these four steps, and
particularly self-management under pressure, he
has the flexibility to change his response with
his team and his peers. Indeed, self-awareness
is the starting block for generating flexibility in
response. We can all default to our habitual and
typical response patterns, but we have to know
what these are and what triggers them in order to
change them.
Agility and versatility come with practice.
Once we have well understood the triggers
for particular behavioural patterns, catching Kate Lanz
unhelpful patterns early, or even circumventing is the owner
them from occurrence, the leader is able to of Lanz
choose different behavioural responses in the Executive
actual moment. This enables him to utilise the Coaching.
most appropriate behaviour to maintain and She can be
increase the loyalty and engagement of his team, contacted
on +44(0)20
develop his own career and position, and achieve
3086 7678
the desired results for the organisation. or at kate@
lanzexecu
tivecoaching.
co.uk
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permission.