Chapter 10
Results of Using the 4 Ps Process
This book has addressed many ways to apply the 4 Ps Process. Now it’s time to highlight key results from applying the 4 Ps and discover
• The wins for you.
• The wins for your organization.
• Overuse of the 4 Ps Process.
The Wins for You
Prepare
Raj stared down at the “1,000-pound phone receiver.” His consulting firm had imposed a sales quota, and he felt pressure to call Michelle, a former client, to touch base and uncover her current business needs.
As he pressed the numbers on his handset, Raj reviewed his prepared questions and visualized a successful call by closing his eyes for two minutes. He pictured a calm, focused exchange between them. As the phone rang, he took a deep breath and stood up. Michelle picked up. After 10 minutes of give and take, he summarized the challenges she had described, and they set a time to meet the following week. Raj felt energized and optimistic about future business opportunities with Michelle and her company.
Presence
When you convey presence, as Raj did, you are perceived as a good listener and people will share valuable information with you. In her first 30 days in a new role, Laurie Nichols, an introverted CEO of a nonprofit, met all her direct reports to understand their needs and challenges. It was demanding, she said, and it would have been easier not to have done it. “But the real value was, by the time I was finished, I gained a level of trust that maybe the extrovert wouldn’t have.”
Push
What is a key payoff of push? Testing your limits helps you discover your capabilities and increases your confidence. It can open opportunities you never thought possible.
When author Heather Schulz was exploring management consulting as a career, she decided to push herself and contact “the absolutely best person in the field.”62 She reached out to Tom Peters, author of the mega hit In Search of Excellence. Fast-forward to several years later, and Heather was running his company as CEO and president!
Practice
Practice is the one step that addresses all six challenges of being an introverted leader: people exhaustion, a fast pace, getting interrupted, pressure to self-promote, an emphasis on teams, and negative impressions. When you practice, you can figure out which behaviors work for your authentic self. For instance, you decide to become visible by taking a specific role on a volunteer project. You don’t have to be the project lead, but you can contribute as a key player and gain credibility by creating a strong track record in that role.
As you practice, you become more comfortable with new behaviors. While it might not ever feel totally natural for you as an introvert to engage in rapport building, after a while it will become easier. Likewise, if you are an extrovert you may realize that though it is not natural to stay silent, practicing being quiet has benefits and the more you do it, the easier it gets.
The Wins for Your Organization
You are not the only one who stands to win when you adopt the 4 Ps. Your organization also reaps benefits as you share your contributions with others. Let’s step back and look at how building upon your quiet strengths creates specific wins for your organization.
Prepare
Introverted leaders who prepare for conversations and research their stakeholders’ needs build trust and commitment with employees, customers, and managers.
Rosanna attended several of my leadership training programs. I knew that company budgets were tight, so I asked how she had secured approval for so many of these classes. She had prepared a business case for each program, laying out detailed outcomes and explaining how investing in these courses would help her achieve departmental and individual goals. In addition to the careful analysis, her preparation included observing the best times to approach her boss. She also offered to share her learning with the staff. Preparation was Rosanna’s key to securing results. She continues to be a valuable player and has been promoted several times in the last few years because of that.
Presence
There is a strong business case for acting with presence. Authors Bev Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans emphasize that how bosses treat their employees is a key factor in employees’ decisions to stay with a company.63 Leaders with presence create a climate in which people are appreciated for their contributions. Companies that are populated with managers who have presence attract and retain employees.
Push
Companies benefit when all leaders—not just extroverts—are able to contribute ideas. In my research on quiet influencers, the leaders who create change, inspire others, provoke new ideas, and challenge the status quo make a difference not by changing into extroverts, but by relying on their strengths. They push themselves to leverage what comes naturally—prepare, listen in an engaged way, have focused conversations, write, and thoughtfully use social media.
In another example, I observed 30 introverted senior leaders take a class in storytelling. This was not a natural skill for most of the participants, and they clearly were pushing themselves. After the class, most shared that stretching into this new skill had resulted in positive results back at work.
Those results included increased visibility with senior management and positive responses from peers about their improved presentation style. Their storytelling skills, with continued practice, will likely make future presentations to their teams and customers much more effective.
Practice
Introverted leaders who practice their strengths, garner respect from others. Their leadership impacts the culture in a positive way.
Doug Conant makes it a practice to model authentic behavior. The CEO of Conant Leadership and former president and CEO of Campbell Soup Company, Doug’s practice includes building trust. He honestly and openly communicates with his teams about his own way of getting things done. (He describes how more fully in the foreword to this book.)
By practicing purpose-driven dialogues, he engages in problem solving, selling ideas, and working through conflicts with his team. Doug’s style eliminates employees’ guesswork in getting to know him, and it keeps him accountable. He tells new hires, “If I behave consistently with this [his values statement], then I guess you can trust me. If I don’t, I guess you can’t. But at least you will know.”64
Look for the opportunities that allow you to push yourself. Facilitate a meeting when the CEO is traveling. The account manager is out when a customer stops in? Step up and meet with the customer. Did you discover a new software functionality? Offer to do a lunchtime training session for the staff. Your organization benefits by having a fluid array of employees who can step into new roles at a moment’s notice. When employees take initiative by consciously stepping up and practicing, companies increase their bench strength and talent capacity.
Personal and organizational payoffs spring from using the 4 Ps Process to enhance your leadership skills. Beware, though, that in your efforts, you can also try too hard to change.
Overuse of the 4 Ps
Jungian psychology has a concept called the shadow self or dark side. This aspect of ourselves emerges when we are under stress. Trying too hard and pushing yourself too far out of your authentic self can produce negative results. Let’s look at how this overuse manifests in the 4 Ps.
Prepare
You can over prepare. You may remember being unsure of material for a test you studied for back in school. Didn’t you find that often the more you studied, the more confusing it became? It is the same with prepping for a meeting, conversation, or networking event. Preparation reaches a point of no return, and you can feel anxious and start to second-guess yourself.
Presence
It is also possible to go overboard on presence. As I have said, it is very common for introverts to act the role of being more sociable than they feel. This can work to a point, but you can put so much energy into pretending that it exhausts you or comes off as inauthentic.
Push
You can also push yourself too hard. I taught a series of three-day leadership skills seminars for technically oriented managers. It was a jam-packed program with lots of skill practice, role plays, and interaction. The introverted participants were stretching in many ways to learn new behaviors. We had to take breaks and opportunities for quiet reflection. If I had kept pushing the class to engage in extroverted activities, they would have turned into a burnt-out group that was overwhelmed.
Practice
You can also over practice a strength. That can lead to you ignoring important tasks you need to accomplish as leader. Dale, one of my clients, had encouraged her team to drop by her work area, but few people were acting on her suggestion. She decided to practice walking around (a suggestion in Chapter 6, Leading and Participating in Meetings). Dale started stopping by her team’s work areas to chat.
She was getting to know her team and was feeling more comfortable with this skill, but before she realized it, Dale was chatting more frequently then she had intended and had begun neglecting some important activities. Together, we worked out a plan with more realistic time frames for these spontaneous conversations, and she planned her schedule more thoughtfully.
With planning and conscious attention, you can build on your natural introverted leadership strengths to get results. These accomplishments will impact your own personal development and your organization’s performance. At the same time, be aware that you can succeed without pushing yourself so hard that you overuse your strengths and they become weaknesses.
In the last chapter, let’s look at a practical way to meet some of the challenges you face as an introverted leader and a way to track your progress with the 4 Ps.