The Engineering Leader

Chapter 7. Expanding Your Leadership Range

In leadership, as in everything, we all have our defaults: the things we turn to first or just go ahead and do without thinking. Think about the rest of your life. Do you have places you like to go on vacation? The first machine you head toward at the gym? The genre of book or movie or music you turn to when you’ve had a bad day? The restaurants you think of first when planning a night out? Probably. But even if you don’t, even if you turn to novelty each and every time, that too is a habit.

People are relatively predictable. Which makes sense—anything else would be exhausting. The origin of bias, of stereotyping, is our brains taking shortcuts for the purpose of efficiency. But taken too far or applied poorly, this same pattern of thinking becomes harmful, which is why we have to reprogram ourselves to think differently.¹

We’re typically not different people at work than we are in the rest of our lives. Our leadership range reflects who we are, what we value, how we like to show up, how we want to be seen. Like everything, that probably works better in some situations than in others, and if we want things to go differently, we have to change the way we approach them.

In this chapter, we’ll work through identifying your failure modes (which are often overused strengths) and setting up warnings so that you can self-correct. We’ll look at the different leadership styles, when they are effective, and how to expand your range.

Identifying ...