Chapter 8
The Deliberate Leader
Deliberate leaders do their homework. They get to the bottom of problems before they propose solutions. And because they take such care to ensure quality, they’re able to provide direction that’s reliable and well-organized. We’ll elaborate on the value of the Deliberate leader in Chapter 16, but in this chapter we want to make a more careful study of this dimension. More specifically, we want to help Deliberate leaders understand some of the subtle and sometimes elusive psychological mechanisms that can hold them back.
If you’re a Deliberate leader, you probably have a strong analytical side. Although you tend to be quiet, people have immense respect for your commitment to accuracy. But clearly, underneath this exterior there are deeper motivations, needs, and assumptions that drive you to act the way you do. The more you understand these drivers, the more you’ll be able to consciously control and shape your leadership style.
Based on our research and experience talking to Deliberate leaders, the qualities listed below may have a significant impact on how you lead.
A desire for freedom and privacy
A reluctance to show emotions
An innate skepticism of others’ ideas
A distaste for vulnerability
A desire for objectivity
A desire for a comfort zone of personal space
Certainly, many of these qualities are directly responsible for your greatest strengths as a leader. As we look at these qualities in more depth, however, we’ll be paying a little more attention to some of the ways that they can limit your leadership performance. While you might not identify with all of these qualities, our experience has shown that a number of them probably describe you better than you may initially think.
A Desire for Freedom and Privacy
Many Deliberate leaders don’t spend much energy trying to understand the emotional dynamics within the group. In fact, this may feel like a distraction from what you see as your real responsibilities. What makes Deliberate leaders shy away from the emotional aspects of leadership? They tend to be private people who like to maintain a bit of personal space, literally and figuratively. Others sometimes describe Deliberate leaders as detached, aloof, or private. Leaders with your approach have a fundamental desire for freedom, both for yourself and others. You may respond poorly to being pressured or coerced into doing something you don’t want to do, and you also avoid pressuring other people. To you, that sort of influence feels like showing blatant disrespect for others. However, as a leader, there are many times when it’s necessary to put the squeeze on internal and external parties or to simply ask for a favor. Because you hate to bother people, you often avoid such intrusions, and in a competitive world, this can be a liability.
In general, Deliberate leaders aren’t the most social people, and this is because social situations tend to be quite unpredictable. You can never guarantee that you’ll come across the way you want to when interacting with others—particularly when speaking to new people. You may spend a lot of mental energy focusing your efforts on trying to come across as appropriate. In fact, when other people behave in ways that seem inappropriate to you, you may become embarrassed for them. Whether you know it or not, you probably use a very strong filter when speaking—an effort to maintain your self-control—and this constant monitoring can be exhausting. As a result, you’re inclined to minimize the importance of networking and consulting outside your immediate social circle.
A Reluctance to Show Emotions
Another driver that often prevents Deliberate leaders from attending to the emotional aspects of leadership is that they tend to be quite matter-of-fact. Though you’re normally reserved, you probably don’t have a problem speaking up when you see or hear something that seems illogical to you. In fact, half-baked ideas may strike you as a personal assault, and you may call attention to them in ways that seem insensitive to others. Your mind is very attuned to getting the job done and remaining objective. It may take you by surprise when you learn that you’ve hurt someone’s feelings. You make sure that everyone is treated fairly, but you’re not often able to put yourself in the emotional shoes of other people.
Deliberate leaders often have trouble recognizing other people’s emotional needs, and as a result of this, they don’t give praise readily. They may not realize it, but some people probably interpret their silence as disapproval. Most Deliberate leaders simply don’t grasp that some people have a high need for praise. Rather, you may believe that being correct or doing a good job is its own reward. Subconsciously, you may feel that delivering praise creates a level of intimacy that makes you uncomfortable. With the exception of your close friends and family, you’d often rather keep some emotional distance from others. The idea of showering people with praise and compliments may even make you feel a little squeamish.
Because leaders like you tend to be matter-of-fact, you may struggle with emotional appeals, both in terms of making them and being on the receiving end. You’re much more concerned with logic, and you want to be sure that the idea is a good one, not just that the pitch is a good one. Doing anything other than following the most logical course of action feels dishonest to Deliberate leaders. Their credibility is very important to them, so when other people come to them with emotional appeals, they’re likely to take a skeptical stance. When you’re in a position to sell an idea to a group, you’d probably be hard-pressed to come up with a compelling emotional argument for something that you didn’t believe in.
An Innate Skepticism of Others’ Ideas
Why, exactly, do good ideas sometimes scare leaders like you? Simply put, you want to have control. Other leadership dimensions revolve around control, but in a different sense. Commanding leaders seek to control the environment and to be recognized as being in control. You’re more likely to want to control the quality of your work. You have a core belief that you should not be wrong—it’s almost a moral imperative to leaders like you that you be right. Being associated with shoddy work or bad ideas is probably your worst nightmare as a leader. It’s natural, then, that you bring a good deal of skepticism to the table when you hear other people’s ideas. If you’re going to put your good name on an idea, a service, or a product, it must be of the highest quality.
Not only are Deliberate leaders skeptical of other people’s ideas, but they can also be quite stubborn. Expertise is extremely important to them—in fact, it plays a huge part in how they develop and maintain their feelings of self-worth—so admitting that they’re wrong is extremely difficult. Showing expertise gives leaders like you the chance to be on the offensive rather than the defensive. It’s a chance to have a sense of pride. Whereas others have their pride needs met by winning or getting attention, Deliberate leaders have them met through credibility. They often assume that their logic is best, and it may be difficult for them to realize that two logical people can reach very different conclusions. They may underestimate the role that values, experience, and self-interest play as people—themselves included—form opinions.
A Distaste for Vulnerability
Deliberate leaders have a fundamental fear of being vulnerable, and this can cause them to shy away from seemingly risky ideas. You probably don’t like to put yourself out there. You’re inherently cautious, and this allows you to ensure accuracy as much as possible. You often want to have a potentially unrealistic level of certainty before you make a decision. Sure, everyone wants some certainty of success before taking a chance, but this threshold is particularly high for Deliberate leaders. This often causes you to avoid risks altogether, or even to fail to acknowledge opportunities. Whether it’s in a social setting or in a professional setting, you’re unlikely to stick your neck out unless you’re quite sure of the outcome.
Where does this hesitancy come from? Deliberate leaders like you tend to be anxious about flaws—a base fear that someone might see the real you with all your imperfections. You may push these fears out of your mind, but subconsciously, they’re always there. Below the surface, you’re afraid of being exposed, of having horrible flaws spill out that will humiliate you or make you unlovable. Most Deliberate leaders hide these insecurities, even to themselves, because they see them as a mark against their competency. They’re careful not to show weakness to others, especially in areas that they think matter. If they find themselves in a vulnerable position, they’re likely to go off on their own to do research or try to solve the problem. Leaders like you want to have a high degree of self-control. You can’t always control your environment, but you can control yourself. In this way, you can avoid making a fool of yourself.
A Desire for Objectivity
What makes Deliberate leaders so sure of their own logic? You probably consider yourself objective—and you often are—but everyone brings their own biases to the table. In fact, you may have a bias toward things that are logical and predictable. For example, you may think that emotional considerations don’t matter in a leadership context. Sure, emotions are a natural part of life, but you probably don’t see them as a valid part of the decision-making process. Likewise, you may be disgusted when people’s political motives influence the course of events. Many Deliberate leaders refuse to get involved in organizational politics, which they consider silly, irrational, or manipulative. You may get frustrated when people seem swayed by politics or emotion over reason, and you’re very unlikely to use these tactics yourself.
Because leaders like you find beauty and elegance in logical arguments, problem solving may be highly emotionally satisfying to you. You may enjoy sorting through chaos to find an elegant order or working through a process to find the correct answer. In the same way that socializing is gratifying to Energizing leaders, your brain is wired to find gratification in solving problems. When you’re fully immersed in the game of figuring out a problem, the pleasure centers of your brain light up and you can taste the reward—the answer—hiding just around the corner.
As a Deliberate leader, you may have trouble seeing beyond your own logic, and as a result, you may often stay on a path that makes sense on paper, even when it doesn’t align with more dynamic, unpredictable variables of the real world. The danger in this, of course, is leading a team or an organization that doesn’t keep up with the demands of the fast-moving world. When dealing with other people, you may fail to recognize that alternative streams of logic can be every bit as valid as yours. Rather, you may assume that people whose opinions differ from your own simply don’t get it.
A Desire for a Comfort Zone of Personal Space
Deliberate leaders often isolate themselves. We’ve mentioned that leaders like you tend to stay in their comfort zones, and you may even create a protective bubble around yourself. When other people try to invade your space, you may feel some discomfort, if only subconsciously. It may require a lot of energy for you to let other people have access to your space, whether it be physical, intellectual, or emotional. For leaders who are more people-oriented, this requires very little emotional energy. In fact, they find it energizing. Because making interpersonal connections can be a lot of work for you, you may come across as standoffish or distant. Your desire to stay in your bubble has important implications for where you take—or don’t take—groups that you lead. In general, many Deliberate leaders keep their groups in familiar territory, limiting opportunities that involve stretching beyond the group’s known competencies.
Why this isolation? Deliberate leaders enjoy getting immersed in solving a problem so much that they create the space they need to avoid interference from the outside world. Social tasks like making phone calls often get put off. Now, we’re not saying that you don’t sometimes like to have people around, because we’re sure that you do, but compared to other leaders, you require more personal space. Individual tasks that require a lot of analytical brainpower are really fun for you, and you may easily get lost in activities such as working on a spreadsheet, playing a computer game, figuring out a puzzle, or crafting an essay. When you’re engaged in an activity like this, you may tune other people out, and even if you get stuck, you’re unlikely to ask for help. Not only do you not want to bother people, but you like the challenge of trying to master a problem on your own. There’s nothing wrong with independence, but when you isolate yourself too much, you fail to take stock of what’s happening in the world around you.
Further, Deliberate leaders gravitate toward stable environments where there’s plenty of time to gather information and make well-informed decisions. Of course, stability has its own merits, but if it’s not balanced with some element of risk-taking, it’s tough for an organization to be competitive. Because Deliberate leaders have a strong need to control the variables, they tend to keep their group within known, comfortable parameters. Sure, they’re sometimes willing to learn new things and take on tough challenges, but it’s usually within domains that they’re confident they can conquer. Wildcard variables make them nervous—they’re much more comfortable building slowly on what’s been done in the past. So Deliberate leaders do move forward, but only when they can see for themselves how every dot connects with the others.
How to Navigate the Rest of the Book
You’ve had a chance to read about some of the psychological drivers that may hold you back as a leader, but what about the good stuff? What about the areas where you naturally thrive? Chapter 16 in Part 3 is designed to highlight just that: the strengths that Deliberate leaders bring to the group. There you’ll find the three lessons that everyone else can learn from leaders like you.
But, of course, other leaders have things to teach you as well. Looking at the model, you may have noticed that the Deliberate Dimension is opposite the Energizing Dimension. Chances are that you may need to focus on this dimension, but depending on your individual situation, there may be others that are more important. Next, go to Part 3, where you’ll explore the lessons that are most important for you right now.