George Kohlrieser High Performance Leadership Takeaways 4-6

1. Language matters, words matter.
2. Secure bases come in the form of people and goals. Being consciously aware of your secure bases will help you keep focused and in balance.
3. A secure base is like a trampoline that catches you when you fall and helps you bounce back to higher levels.
4. As a leader, understand and be clear on the impact you have as a secure base.
5. Know and reflect on your own secure bases.
6. Secure bases give you the security to be who you are, to be your best, to give more, to push yourself towards goals.
7. Seek support and feedback from your secure bases; they are anchors and a safe haven.

Let’s zoom in on Takeaway 5.a.: Language matters, words matter.

“Psychological safety is an extension of secure base. The definition of psychological safety is this: It’s a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes. You feel safe and this shuts down the brain’s orientation to look for danger. The brain hates pain, but high performers teach themselves to go through the pain for the benefit. And psychological safety helps make that possible, to shut down the brain’s overreaction to pain. Google was the real leader in studying psychological safety and did a lot of research. Their finding was that psychological safety is key to a high-performing team—it’s that simple. Looking at what came out of the ‘Care to Dare’ research, we identified nine characteristics of leaders who provide psychological safety:

1. Remain calm and composed even in stressful situations. Too many leaders pass their stress, their conflict, their anxiety on to others. You have to be able to contain that and hold it within yourself and still remain emotionally available and authentic.
2. Direct the Mind’s Eye towards the positive, not the negative.
3. Emotional reliable and available. This means to be able to show emotions: emotional availability is essential for bonding.
4. Accept and value the individual; they can accept disagreement as opposed to demanding agreement. We live in a society where, if you don’t agree with me, you are against me. The whole idea behind acceptance is: I can listen to any perception, I can listen to any kind of garbage, but I don’t have to agree with it. We have to distinguish between ‘agreeing’ and ‘listening and accepting’ a particular concept. This is what hostage negotiators are trained to do: we can accept junk, conspiracy theories, paranoia, but we don’t necessarily have to agree with it.
5. See potential in the individual. They’re talent hunters.
6. Create bull’s eye transactions’ like ‘Nothing is impossible, ‘The gunshot sets you free.’ These are these single-sentence statements that get wired in the brain and when you’re a leader you have to be able to give those to people: ‘I believe in you.’
7. Use listening and inquiry and dialogue as opposed to telling people how they should think.
8. Encourage opportunities to take risk and stretch oneself. If you’re not daring, you’re not a full secure base leader.
9. Motivate by intrinsic motivation as opposed to just extrinsic. Extrinsic being career, bonus and so forth. A secure base leader will help promote the idea that you are doing something meaningful and valuable and you find value in just doing the very act of what you’re doing.” – George Kohlrieser PhD, IMD Lausanne

Another life lesson George’s X-over session reinforced was the importance of ‘turning conflict into a constructive solution’. He emphasized that as leaders we shouldn’t be afraid of conflict, we shouldn’t let it rot under the table because it makes us uncomfortable. We need to deal with it head-on, but respectfully and caringly. Find out the pain point and then try to see eye to eye. You can agree to disagree, as long as you can keep working on your common goal. It’s all part of being a secure base. Let’s take a closer look at takeaway 6: Conflict Resolution