UpSkill: Scrutiny and Leadership

The leadership journey is a mixed bundle of great and unpleasant experiences. As you elevate yourself, make sure you are intentionally growing a set of skills to deal with the additional scrutiny that comes at higher levels.

Let’s look at the story of Claudine. Claudine had worked for a while in the financial services industry. She was the most senior member of her team, onboarding new members as they came along and creating a community at her workplace. 

A couple years down the road Claudine applied for a promotion and became the Team Lead of her group. Immediately, Claudine noticed that the conversations with her team started to shift and she soon realized the group were resentful of her promotion. Her team became more verbally distanced or aggressive and Claudine wasn’t prepared.

Claudine didn’t prepare herself for the scrutiny of her friends, peers and mentees. She never expected the scrutiny and could not prepare herself for it.

As you venture out and grow yourself, whether that is a career change, a promotion, going back to school etc. this journey can be very challenging and intricate.

At every level, there is a different level of scrutiny.

You will need to grow a set of skills that buffer you from the scrutiny.

Any time you take a step out of a group, you are more exposed. This is perfectly illustrated by the proverb, “The higher the monkey climbs, the more it is exposed.”

Leadership can be lonely. Sometimes we find ourselves alone as a self-preservation strategy, sometimes we find ourselves alone by necessity. The critical eye will notice you more, will scrutinize you more as you separate yourself from the group.

Whether you’re starting over, moving to a new place, whether you’re moving to a new height, be prepared for greater scrutiny and the critical eye.

How exactly do you prepare yourself for more scrutiny?

You will need thicker skin and mental toughness, and developing these two things is often a gradual process that comes with practice.

We discussed emotional awareness and management in our last two posts, and cultivating those traits is key to building mental toughness.

When someone gives feedback that is offensive, unfair, you can use emotional management strategies such as the ABC (Affirm, Breathe, Count) to gather your thoughts and fight impulses.

As you develop more emotional awareness of yourself also apply that skill to identifying emotions in others. Identify people’s triggers, tendencies, body language etc.

Learn to pause. You could get to a stage where your decisions have a direct impact not only on you, but on your team or your organization.

Your response is always a choice. You don’t have to respond to aggressors or triggers. You can press pause. You can respond in ten minutes, an hour, maybe tomorrow.

You will receive a lot of unsolicited feedback as you progress. Make it a habit to press pause.

Let me leave you with a story that I was told many times over.

This is the story of a horse that was no longer following the larger group of horses. There was a perception that the horse was no longer fit.

So the others dug a deep hole and tried to bury the horse. However, the horse wasn’t dead. They kept throwing dirt but the horse continued to shrug it off. Soon enough, there was so much dirt in the hole that the horse was on even ground. The horse then took off.

When people throw dirt at you, remember you can shrug it off and stand on it.