Confidence or Arrogance: Using Power Responsibly As A Technology Leader

The question he asked was, “how do I prove that I’m worthy of this job?”

A senior engineering leader has had the VP job for a year, temporarily. His title is technically Interim VP of Engineering. The idea is that if he can prove himself worthy of the job, the CEO will offer it to him permanently.

Many of us have heard feedback from our senior leaders about our leadership ability that seemed frustratingly vague and impossible. Something like, “you don’t quite have it yet, but I’ll know when I see it.”

What is this elusive elixir they describe? How can you possibly find it? With such vague language it seems like either they are just leading you on until they find someone better, or they don’t simply know what they’re talking about.

But they do know. And I’ll tell you precisely what they really mean.

It all comes down to how you wield power. And when you choose not to.

There is a delicate balance between expressing confidence and displaying arrogance. There is also one between taking feedback seriously and taking it too personally. Striking both balances simultaneously is key to wielding power successfully as a senior leader.

And most can’t do it very well. It’s like spinning a basketball on your finger while playing the harmonica. Both take skill, but doing them together takes talent. And a ton of practice.

Let me explain.

Confidence Is A Balancing Act

Confidence is an important characteristic in leadership, to be sure. A leader who lacks confidence finds it difficult to inspire anyone to follow them.

People follow leaders because they themselves are unsure about what to do. It has nothing to do with intelligence. Very smart people who are good at their jobs will still need leadership to make the big decisions and point the way.

Leaders who fail to make big decisions make people nervous. It’s like having a parent who is too permissive. Sure, the kids may love having cake for breakfast, but as they grow older children with overly permissive parents tend to have weaker boundaries and more anxiety.

The trick is knowing what decisions are the big ones that you should make yourself, and learning not to sweat the small stuff. Much of that knowledge comes from intuition and experience.

You must know your own mind and master your feelings in order to inspire confidence and a sense of security in others. A leader must develop the ability to listen to their intuition.

Learn To Trust Your Intuition

Intuition is typically defined as “the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.” How can that be possible? Shouldn’t we in a civilized science-based world use our reasoning for everything?

Well, no. That isn’t how the brain works. It’s been well established that we process a lot more information subconsciously than we do with our rational conscious mind.

You store all kinds of important stuff in there that can help you make decisions. As learning happens throughout your life, certain key elements that had emotional significance for you are stored in memory that you can access directly. But there is also a vast range of context and nuance that you don’t store consciously.

Your intuition is your brain’s way of making those subconscious patterns available to you for use in evaluating new situations. It is a very powerful tool, and you can learn how to use it.

But how do you use intuition?

Your Body As Data

Intuition is not directly accessible to the conscious mind. In fact, it lives largely in the body, or at least the part you can access does. And yes I mean that literally. The evidence suggests that our subconscious patterns are “stored” if you will in our tissues, musculature, and the like, not just in the brain. Lessons learned in early childhood and experiences throughout our life are regularly encoded in our physiology. Lessons about how we want to be treated, and how things around us need to be in order for us to be comfortable, are waiting to be accessed.

On top of that core “knowing” is layered a vast library of rules and procedures that you pick up as you grow into adulthood, the “shoulds” I call them. Some of these “shoulds'' are helpful, like “don’t play in traffic” or “the stove is hot.” Others are not so helpful, like “your ideas aren’t very good,” or “don’t speak unless spoken to.”

The “shoulds” tend to block the way to your intuition. Intuition may tell you that you don’t like an idea being proposed by the boss, even if you’re not entirely sure why. It just doesn’t seem right. The “shoulds” tell you that they’re probably right because they are the boss, and who are you to question them anyway?

The leaders I work with are often surprised to discover just how much influence their experiences as children and how they were parented drive their current leadership style. But it does, and quite profoundly.

So, intuition lives in the body and it communicates with you using physical feedback signals. Tapping into those physical signals, learning how to consider an option and really feel your body’s reaction to it, takes time and practice to master. But this is what they mean by a “gut feeling.” It’s often literally a feeling in your gut!

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

This is where power comes in. As a leader, you have the authority to make certain decisions, the power to decide. It’s a choice, however, when and where to use that decision making power. Using power in every case is not compulsory and it is not constructive.

If the team wants to do A and your gut is telling you we should do B instead, you need to decide whether this is a time to use your power and make the “right call,” or to let the team have their way, and possibly fail, because it’s part of their learning process.

That doesn’t mean the leader has to have all the answers buried inside them just waiting to be accessed. You don’t know everything, either consciously or subconsciously. 

Too much confidence risks endangering the very people you lead. Relying solely on intuition leaves you vulnerable to hidden cognitive bias. The refusal to consider evidence that you may be wrong is even worse than having no idea of what to do at all. At least if you have no idea what to do, someone else might be able to step in and make the decision.

Steadfastly refusing input simply because it “should be” your decision locks out that possibility. That’s an abuse of power, using your authority to get your way even if the evidence says you might be wrong. It’s likely to end in disaster unless you are some kind of super genius who is never wrong. And if that’s true you wouldn’t be reading this.

Not All Feedback Is Useful

Then there is the matter of feedback, and power is critical here too.

Taking feedback gracefully is a learnable skill. It’s a balance as we said before. It’s another side of wielding power. When do you listen to feedback and when do you use your privilege as a leader to disregard it? Well, technically you should probably listen to all feedback. But don’t take all of it seriously.

Not all feedback is good or helpful. You need to decide whether the feedback can help you and your team or not. That requires intuition as well.

On one side is the sheer rock face of stout denial, disregarding feedback on the basis that it is too embarrassing or hurtful to be told you have some improvement to do. On the other side is the steep drop of taking things too personally, the chasm of internalizing other people’s criticism. Balance requires staying on the narrow path between these two extremes.

There are leaders who are resistant to accepting feedback. No doubt you’ve encountered them. They are obvious in their stance and style. These leaders are often stuck in their current position, unable to grow into something more.

But there are also leaders who are too open to feedback. They don’t seem to be dysfunctional at first glance, but they lack an inner cohesion that allows them to project a sense of confidence. Each piece of feedback fills them with the subconscious urge to please the person giving it to them, and they immediately embark on a project to improve in that particular area. Leaders like this are also unable to grow out of their current roles as they lack an inner sense of direction and purpose.

Both of these types of leaders have difficulty wielding power. The first case tries to seize it and hoard it to themselves, being closed off to feedback from others. The other cedes power too easily, and allows themselves to be swayed by every incoming remark.

Your intuition can help you decide whether feedback is useful or not. Leaders should ask for feedback frequently, both from their boss, and from their reports and peers. But feedback should be evaluated against an internal barometer that tells you whether or not it feels right. Is this feedback pushing us in a direction we actually want to grow?

Intuition Can Be Developed

Fortunately, you have a dashboard full of data that shows whether the feedback you get is constructive or just a distraction. It’s called your body, and you can learn to read its signals.

Your physical stance, or body language, such as eye contact, breathing, and so on, all affect your emotional state and how your communication is received by those listening to you.

There is a two-way communication channel here at your disposal. Using your body, you can “listen” to signals from your subconscious in order to evaluate feedback coming from others. You can also send signals using your body language into your brain and generate the kind of emotional stance that is most effective for the situation.

The implications of this are massive. That secret elixir that senior leaders seek, the key that will tell our Interim VP of Engineering’s CEO that he is indeed worthy, is locked into his physical presence. Everything he needs to clinch the job is right there under his skin.

The first pillar of Mindful Leadership, which we call the “Grounded Self”, includes the practice of becoming better tuned to your intuition, and using it to discover which “shoulds” you carry around that are no longer serving you. The second pillar, “Effective Communication”, shows you how to wield personal power effectively in conversations with colleagues at work. The third pillar, “Tipping the Organization”, includes a section on leading by influence where these two practices come together.

If you want to learn more about the Three Pillars, reach out to us and we’ll bring you up to speed.

References

Feldman Barrett, Lisa. “How Emotions Are Made”, Mariner Books, 2017.

Damasio, Antonio. “Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, And The Human Brain”, Penguin Books, 2005.

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