Ken Norton: preference

Transcript context

…Yeah. So you're kind of like the heart type. It's sometimes called move toward other people. A lot of that came from my environment. I was coming up with product management. No one necessarily knew what the job even was. I had no authority and most people could just ignore me if they wanted to. And so, I had to meet other people's expectations, please them, want to be accepted by them, seek their approval. It was this what we call a complying approach. Here, this is why this is so vexing is it actually worked really well. It was pretty effective. Other people liked working with me. I listened to them and I considered everyone's needs and made sure everyone felt heard. But there came a point where I gave away so much power that it was hurting me when it came to purpose and execution and decisiveness. And so, again, these aren't bad. There's usually underlying tendencies that are very good. It just starts to have a cost as you become more senior. It's like the gears start to grind to a halt a little bit. Another way is more of a needing to be right head type, protecting one's own ideas, sometimes called a move away from type, distance, arrogance, criticism, retreating into your own ideas and head. Then the other will not be a surprise, is the more controlling, my way or the highway, autocratic will move against wanting to win, wanting to be number one, wanting to excel, wanting dominance, wanting control, this would be another tendency. Often one of those feels natural to you and another one feels just so incredibly distasteful that you can't imagine possibly operating that way. This goes into the underlying beliefs part. If you had told me early in my career, when you saw me being passive and people-pleasing like that, "You've just got to stop caring what other people think, Ken. You've got to be more pushy." People did say that to me. That was pretty common probably in my performance review. It was very common. Even people who worked for me were like, "You need to push back." My only archetype for doing that was the autocratic, controlling type. I was like, "I don't want to be like that. That guy's a jerk. That's a fascist. I don't want to be a fascist. I do care about other people." And so, many of our examples and archetypes are these equally ineffective reactive ways of being. And so, no wonder I didn't want to be like that, because that's also not very effective either. But there was a sense for me of redefining ... This is where coaching is powerful is this what are the underlying assumptions and beliefs that you have that are causing you to fall back on some of these fundamental ways of operating and not let go of them? Because the answer for me wasn't stop caring about other people. I wasn't going to do that. That's a value of mine. It's part of who I am. f these fundamental ways of operating and not let go of them? Because the answer for me wasn't stop caring about other people. I wasn't going to do that. That's a value of mine. It's part of who I am. But take the caring about other people, the empathy, the connection, and direct it in a more creative way where you're operating now from a place of purpose and vision and not reacting and protecting and defending and wanting to be. For me, the key to that was letting go of needing to be liked and redefining it as an admiration that takes place over time. So rather than I want to leave this room with everyone liking me, I started to realize I want to be the type of leader where, a decade later, people say, "I would work with that guy again in a heartbeat. " That was part of the unlock for me. Again, I care about other people. That's a natural gift that underlines it. But it's a redefinition of how that serves me, if that makes sense. Say someone's in that first bucket ... And I was definitely in that first bucket. I still want people to like me and I still probably have flaws there. But say you're a PM and you're like, "Oh, man. That's exactly how I am acting right now." It sounds like is the core of it just a mindset shift, going from I need people to like me to what you just talked about of, okay, I'm going to shift to I just want them to respect me over time? Is that the core of it? I know it's probably not that easy, but how should someone behave during that bucket right now?…

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