In our work with leaders and CEOs, as executive and performance coaches, a recurring theme is the importance of understanding one’s roots. We have found it to be vital for optimal leadership.
One of the most common questions we hear from leaders is “What kind of leader do I want to be?” To answer that question, we must first understand this leader as a whole human. A leadership style is rooted in one’s authenticity. Because this doesn’t require the leader to perform or to be someone they’re not. It comes down to recognizing one’s unique strengths and amplifying them, as well as becoming aware of one’s weaknesses.
Sabrina comes from a line of hardworking women in China. One of her earliest influences was her grandmother, who was a seamstress who supported her entire family by selling hats to her neighbors. Her mother was an entrepreneur who successfully created a brick-and-mortar business named “Sabrina’s Country Store” in Chengdu, China. She learned from a young age that women are intelligent, resourceful, and bold.
Kevin grew up in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. His father, a strength and conditioning coach and his mother, a prevention specialist, taught him the importance of living in moderation and asking good questions. Before his first job interview, his mother suggested that he ask people, “What is it like to work for the boss?” This question has yielded some of his most valuable insights into how organizations work, and it continues to serve as a reminder that often, when working with individuals or teams, courage is saying the thing you don’t think you can say.
As we move away from our families of origin, we start to find homes in chosen places. These roots may be friends, ideas, newfound favorite locations, values, philosophies, and so on. We can spend as much time as possible in these current roots and still feel nourished. These current roots remind us of ourselves.
Since an individual human has roots, so does a business. When a business is rooted, it has a strong set of cultural values that proliferates in everything that it does. As the business expands, its roots expand to its products, employees, processes, leaders, and so on.
When you see companies with a strong set of roots, it makes their presence scalable and memorable. Think of companies like Stripe, which is well known for its ability to build the best products and retain the highest caliber employees. They take effort into implementing their operating principles down to their customer service representatives, whom Sabrina recently had the pleasure of working with. It was easy and secure to speak to support in less than two minutes. Not only did they know exactly how to help on the phone, they quickly followed up with links in an instructional email after the call. It was clear to Sabrina that Stripe showed the same level of excellence in their product design as well as the way they train their customer support.
It’s worth noting: Any organization can claim that customer service matters. That’s the easy part. Identifying an action plan and deploying it well takes a lot of consistent tending. After all, Enron’s core values were: Respect, Integrity, Communication, and Excellence.
When customers, like those at Stripe, have the experience you say they will have, consistently across time, then your organization’s roots are running deep.
What does it look like when your personal and business roots fortify one another?
Sometimes, high-performing clients will ask if it’s okay to bring a “personal” dilemma into coaching. This usually happens when they realize that their personal life is interfering with their professional performance, or vice versa. The short answer here is, “Of course.”
As coaches, we welcome opportunities to get into these connecting root structures – all that subsurface magic. Humans are complex, and one leader’s definition of “work-life balance” can vary dramatically to the next. A few years ago, Forbes offered an edit: A work-life “blend”, from Ultimate Software, that we think fits much better.
When there is symbiosis between personal and professional roots – when they are able to coexist in harmony – leaders flourish. One of Kevin’s clients, Rachel McClusky, founder of Recharge Wellness Co., nourishes the personal root of care for others alongside the professional root of focus on the client experience. She started seeking client feedback about retreat locations and began hosting them in locations customers requested – not necessarily those she envisioned – and they started selling out in minutes.
The most effective leaders think deeply about who they want to be. Answering this question isn’t possible without first going back into your roots.
We all have roots that shape us – personally and professionally. When these root systems are mutually reinforcing, then we get the healthiest, most capable version of ourselves.
When we understand our values and the roots that they come from, then we are in a much better position to lead ourselves, our team, and our organization.
When our values at home and at work communicate with each other, they strengthen one another and we enable ourselves to lead most authentically and effectively.
Imagine you get an email today from someone you don’t know. They introduce themselves as an “objective third party,” and they’ve been hired to shadow you for a week. They will watch you organize your to-do lists, engage in conversations, troubleshoot issues, and prioritize people and tasks.
At the end of the week, after they’ve collected all this data, they’ll submit a report to you on your values. More specifically, they’ll make educated guesses about what matters most to you, personally and professionally.
What would you like that report to say, ideally?
More realistically, what do you think it’s going to say?
Let’s imagine a mantra of yours is “Family First,'' yet this report reveals you postpone or cancel family events for work opportunities frequently. A stronger root structure in this example might look like prioritizing family, or perhaps owning that business is first.
The Right Question Institute (RQI) is an organization devoted to helping individuals and teams ask better questions. The RQI argues, like Paul Graham in his piece “The Lesson To Unlearn”, that too often, folks spend their precious time and energy answering questions that other people have asked.
If more organizations (and schools) encouraged people to develop their own question first, individuals would be more motivated to pursue answers, and more likely to arrive at better ones when they do.
It’s with this caveat that we offer here a list of questions intended to provoke greater awareness about your roots. Use them as a starting point – and feel free to riff, or develop your own questions as the spirit moves you.
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