Guidebook for the Meta-Factors
What, SPECIFICALLY, do great leaders DO differently? We are going to lay it out very precisely over the next four months because our readers want a guide for how to think about leadership performance and we have decided to lay it out a little at a time!
Introduction
FACT: Great leaders have META-Cognitive Capability that others have not developed…..we call those Meta-Factors at Tilt. So, let us explain….
A Meta-Factor is developed when a leader demonstrates a number of specific commendable Traits (habits)…..which combine into Strengths (muscle)….and thus, combine into Proficiencies (performance results). But we must measure them by starting with the most specific traits in order to diagnose what needs to change. And unless a leader has specifics, instead of generalities (competencies)….they don’t really change all that much.
Now, may I Introduce…
LESSON ONE
RESILIENCE
The FIRST Meta-Factor is RESILIENCE and we will be writing about it for the next three posts. In each post we will discuss the three strengths associated with the factor, along with the proficiency it produces.
Definition of Resilience: The ability to quickly catalyze change to adapt and respond to a complex, dynamic environment.
Proficiency #1. An insatiable Curiosity for Learning. (Strength=Receptivity)
The leader who is great at this is interested in IDEAS. They are curious, voracious readers, who are always connecting the dots between IDEAS and how they can be implemented. They take their profession seriously and collect ideas that may improve understanding, mastery or performance by reading about what others have done before them and thinking about how they can expand on these ideas for application in their own company or team. These ideas can come from diverse fields of knowledge and completely different industries. The gift is the ability to see the idea in one domain and be able to translate how that idea can be used in their own.
It is important to note, that they do not for one minute think they have all of the answers and they see the world as a huge plethora of knowledge that can be accessed when they are wrestling with a question. They know that ideas don’t come out of think air, they come from what is stored in our brain and they feed that magical storage container consistently. They have an essential understanding of something called the Dunning-Kruger effect. The more they learn, the more they know that certainty is often a measure of how much we don’t know yet.
Interesting Learning for this lesson:
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which an unskilled person makes poor decisions and reaches erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the meta-cognitive ability to realize their mistakes. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to the perverse situation in which less competent people rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence: because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others. (Wikipedia)
Quote by Bertrand Russell:
“One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.”
What are you doing to feed your brain right now?
NEXT time: Requisite Proficiency # 2.
Pam Boney, Lead Instructor
Tilt Academy for Innovative Leadership
pam@tilt360leaders.com