Leadership Lessons: Head, Heart or Groin
One of my favorite leadership speakers is Michael Allosso. Michael is an actor, director and public speaker who has addressed more than 500 leadership and business peer groups. The title of his talk is “You on Your Best Day.”
The goal of Michael’s talk is to make us better communicators. One of the things he shares is that actors play roles from the head, heart or groin. As leaders, we must do the same. When we work from our head, we’re being logical, pragmatic. Working from our heart means using emotion. Groin is where we go when we must have a “fierce” conversation, when we must be tough. As a coach, I’d say most of us don’t do groin very well.
Michael’s insight has led me to three conclusions:
- We all have a role we play best, and this is the role we draw on most often. For most of us, it’s head or heart. For a few, it’s groin.
- We need to be effective in all three roles. Using the role we’re best at or most comfortable with when another role would get better results is a mistake. To be strong leaders, we need to take risks and get comfortable playing all three roles.
- Sometime, we use a role to hide the person we really are; we use the role as a mask. I think this is usually the case among people who come across as all groin. Under the gruff surface, I usually find a reluctant heart.
I noted above that most of us don’t do groin very well; when a response from the groin is appropriate, we tend to sugar coat it and do a poor job of communicating what we intended. Or, we respond emotionally by losing our temper. Responding aggressively is not the same as responding assertively. An emotionally intelligent, assertive response means being able to express our feelings, take stands on issues, and disagree without projecting aggression. It’s difficult for most of use to do this, but necessary if we’re to become better leaders.
How do we apply these three roles to our work? The existential psychologist Rollo May said, “True freedom lies in the ability to pause between stimulus and response and in that pause, choose.” Each of us has an opportunity to pause and choose the role that best fits a situation. We can choose to respond from the head, the heart or the groin.
When I’m coaching and people ask me about a course of action they intend to take, I ask two questions. First, I ask, “Will this action get you the results you want?” And second, I ask, “At what cost?”
These are two of the best questions a leader can ask himself or herself. They apply to the roles we play as well as the decisions we make.