The Magic Triangle
“There is so much to learn! I want to be sure I understand everything before I try to change things.” This is not uncommon among leaders new to an organization, like Rebecca, who three months in, is still in total observation mode. Is she being respectful, avoidant, or both?
Rebecca’s statement reveals her operating assumption and a limiting (and probably unconscious) belief: she can only safely offer value after quietly observing for a long time. That leads to a compensating strategy, which is to keep in the background and not say much, take no risk. While her strategy protects her from suggesting bad ideas, it also makes it impossible for her to actively lead and contribute.
Executive coaching focuses precisely here, shining a light on operating assumptions, compensating strategies, and the possible outcomes they allow and prevent, so that you can make fully conscious choices and commitments. I call these three factors the “magic triangle.”
For Rebecca, consciously committing to an empowered assumption that sharing her early observations and fresh ideas offers great value, would be a game changer for her and her organization.
1. What is your most fundamental assumption about leadership?
2. What is your most fundamental assumption about you?
3. How is the world responding to those assumptions?
5 Amare Steps For Choosing Assumptions and Strategies That Get Better Results
1. Identify a limiting belief and compensating strategy. List one core assumption related to your role, e.g. you need to always be available to your team for big questions. Note the compensating strategy required, you’re on call 24/7 and they need you. Now identify what that strategy makes impossible, like having a balanced life and empowering your people to solve problems without you.
2. Now shake things up. Play with different assumptions and strategies. One assumption might be that most things can wait, so your strategy is to limit your availability to regular work hours, excepting emergencies, and to trust your team more. No after hours messaging. Now imagine what these changes make possible for you and your team.
3. Take it up a level. Starting with less loaded issues like availability or meetings, repeat steps 1 and 2 with your team, identifying limiting assumptions and compensating strategies that your team abides by. Call out what becomes impossible, and assess if that’s acceptable or not. Expand to find organization-wide patterns too.
4. Release judgment. Know that your operating assumptions and beliefs developed to serve you in some way. Likely to keep you safe, even if they limited you. So release and replace them with that acknowledgment and a whisper of gratitude.
5. Be brave. Make it safe for you and others to courageously subject all your practices to this magic triangle examination: The sequence is: a) operating assumption, b) strategy to compensate for assumption, and c) outcomes that strategy makes possible and impossible.
We often don’t realize how our assumptions and beliefs limit us. Take a look inside yourself. This is what Amare love-powered leaders excel at: openness, risk-taking, and self-discovery. A new assumption makes possible a better magic triangle including a whole different set of outcomes. It can change everything about how you lead and what results you get.
Help Create the Amare Leadership Handbook!
I’m creating a how-to handbook for love-powered leaders based on the last three years of this newsletter, and am now building a team of co-creaters and reviewers. Requirements: passion, honesty, commitment, a little time (not much). Interested? Contact me here.
Today’s Amare Wave Wednesday Quote
“Begin challenging your assumptions. Your assumptions are the windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile or the light won’t come in.”
―Alan Alda
Acknowledgments: The inimitable executive coach Kathy Fleming and transformational voice coach Katie Wise.
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