Leadership Profile
Based on this principle, it is understood that the key to success is not in the person’s Leadership Profile itself. The key to success lies not in the individuals’ profile or natural and own characteristics of their behavioral style; it rather lies in their flexibility and ability to adapt. It is the ability to adapt one’s profile, to adjust it according to the different persons with whom they interact and the situations they live. This characteristic or competence can be referred to as Ability to adapt which, itself, implies three essential and key aspects:
Openness
The ability to be alert, attentive to perceive; to be sensitive and interpret situations or individuals and which is the more adequate style and profile to display.
Self-Criticism Or Questioning
To have the necessary strength to question one’s perspective, a way of interpreting and understanding situations and, thus, question one’s logical way of responding to situations or reacting to others’ attitudes.
Flexibility
To be able to modify one’s response, adapt one’s profile and display natural tendencies according to what the situation or person requires. It is important to clarify that the Ability to adapt does not mean that people must stop being themselves, it is simply to be alert to one’s environment in order to make certain adjustments, changes that will allow them to adapt and adjust more adequately to situations and other people. We understand this as a social behavior, since it implies, to a large extent, to be more at the disposal of others or of the environment, letting one’s ego aside, in order to moderate some of one’s own natural characteristics and strengthen others, with the simple purpose of achieving a better and more effective interaction, better relationships and, thus, better results.
Avoid Hustle Culture And Burnout Risk
How To Start Fixing Hustle Culture
Let’s talk hustle culture for a second. Hustle culture broadly defined is a culture and movement focused on succeed through working as much as possible. People in it celebrate their accomplishments as well as how much they work, foregoing things like meals and sleep as much as possible. Why is this a problem? Isn’t success what we’re all after, in one form or another?
It is, but hustle culture comes with some inherent challenges. It tends to create a toxic environment where, if you’re not working insanely hard, you’re perceived as a failure - and you start to perceive yourself as a failure for not working hard enough, making you susceptible to work burnout. The bigger problem with hustle culture is that it’s an single-objective optimization problem. Hustle culture is all about focusing on a single objective, usually financial success. Single-objective optimization problems are very straightforward to solve, which is one of the appeals of hustle culture. You focus relentlessly on a single objective; there’s no need to debate trade-offs because every resource you have is singularly focused. It also rewards the part of our brains that look for success, those dopamine hits when we advance a level in a video game or fit a piece into a jigsaw puzzle.
Single-objective optimization is also very effective for short periods of time - focusing down a problem until you’ve solved it. So why, if it’s got all these positives, is hustle culture in need of repair? Simple. Our lives are not single-objective optimization problems. Humans are complex and messy. We have lots of needs. Think of the things people typically associate with happiness: Art and self expression Finance and material wealth Loved ones and friends all provide balance in your life help to avoid burning out from work.
Personal Fulfillment And Work-Life Balance
If you had a stack of 100 coins and had to invest in each of these objectives, you’d have to give some serious thought to how many pennies each category needed. However, very few people, when looking at the big picture, would simply put all their coins onto one objective only - and that’s what hustle culture encourages us to do. Hustle culture optimizes for 1 of the 5 areas outlined above, taking away resources from the other 4, and most people need resources in all 5 to some degree.
So how do you fix hustle culture? For the people who participate in it, ask them how they’ve allocated their 100 coins, and ask them how important the other areas are to them. More important, ask yourself these questions, and then compare how you live your life to what your allocation of coins looks like. If you say you value health and wellness but allocated no resources to working out and eating well, then you have a disconnect. If you say self expression is important but you never do it, then you have a disconnect.
Multi-objective optimization is difficult, which is why I emphasize the exercise of allocating coins to each objective. Do this in the real world - write out the five areas, pool a pile of 100 actual coins, and move them around as you think about the areas of your life.
Simple Goal Setting
Set some kind of tangible, measurable goal in each of the 5 areas and see how your coin allocations change. You may find a goal so inspiring that you’re willing to move a few more coins from another pile to allocate time and effort towards that goal. To be clear, there’s nothing inherently wrong with pursuing financial success. One of my colleagues once said, “Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it sure as heck helps.” Just ensure that as you pursue it that you’re allocating resources to the other areas as well, optimizing for more than one goal at a time, and avoiding burnout for overly hustling.
Lead The Way In Business Without Burning Out
In today's ultra-competitive global economy, you need to lead the way fearlessly. Just make sure you don't do it at the expense of your persona life and health, although some sacrifices are required at least temporarily for achieving success.
