One of my favorite Vistage speakers is Michael Allosso; he spoke to my key group in 2008 and came back to Indy twice this month to address my CEO group and share Part Deux with my key group. Michael is an actor, director and 2007 Vistage Speaker of the Year; he’s presented to Vistage groups almost 600 times.

The goal of Michael’s talk is to make us better communicators; he maintains that the things an actor must do to be successful are the same things a leader must do. One of the ideas 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 an executive coach, I’d say most of us don’t do groin very well.

Michael’s insight has led me to three conclusions:

1. 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 of us, it’s groin.
2. We need to be good at 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 in all three roles.
3. Sometime, we use a role to hide the person we really are, using the role as a mask, or cover. I think this is usually the case with people who come across as all groin. Under the gruff surface, you might be surprised to know I usually find a lot of heart.

Because most of us don’t do groin very well; when this response is appropriate, we tend to sugar coat and do a poor job of communicating what is 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 follow, 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.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 11:25 am and is filed under Leadership Lessons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.