The Gap Between Intent and Impact: Becoming the Leader You Think You Are - 135

Welcome to the Proteus Leader Show, a podcast for forward-looking leaders driving transformation in their organizations, within their teams, or for themselves. Your host today is a senior leader at Proteus International, a firm that partners with companies around the world to make true transformation easier through change consulting, leadership development, and executive coaching. If you're looking for fresh perspectives and practical insights you can take back to work today, you're in the right place. Enjoy the episode.

Most leaders have a pretty clear idea of how they want to show up. The harder question is whether that's actually how the people around them experience them. I'm Maria Olive, CEO of Proteus International, and today on the Proteus Leader Show, I'm delighted to welcome Luca Duccio Donati. Luca and I worked together at NBCUniversal International Networks, where we were both leading through significant growth and digital change. Since then, Luca has taken a fascinating second path. He earned a master's degree in psychology and certification as an executive coach, and now he's joined us as Proteus. Luca, it's wonderful to have you here, and I'm especially happy to welcome you to Proteus officially.

Thank you, Marie. It's great to be here with you, and it's great to have joined Proteus as well.

So let's dive in. You've now experienced leadership from both sides, as the executive carrying the P&L and as the coach helping senior leaders understand how they show up. What have you learned about the gap between a leader's intention and the actual impact?

Yeah, so I think the biggest lesson I've learned is that we judge ourselves by our intentions, but people around us judge us by our behavior. And the distance between those two is our real impact, right? And that's the gap. And what I've also realized, and I don't know if you share this view, this gap tends to grow as people become more senior. Because early on, most of us are responsible mainly for our work. So our intention and our impact tends to be very close because what we need to get done is very direct, and it's very directly impacted by our intention, which is what gets us promoted. What happens is, as we get promoted, more of our impact depends on working with others, and therefore. We just keep using the behaviors that have gotten us promoted. And often that tends— starts making us actually ineffective because not everybody has the same approach to work, can hear things the same way. And so rarely that comes from bad intentions, but what happens is out of habit, leaders just judge themselves by what they meant.

Leaders forget that intentions are invisible and that, you know, behaviors, that's really what they see. And as you said, the more you become senior in a position, your behaviors are going to be more noticed and more important because you work through leading others. So I completely agree with you. Now, one of the most interesting things about senior leadership I find is that the more authority we have, the harder it can become to get completely honest feedback. And so that makes the gap even bigger because people stay quiet and, you know, you keep going. You think you're doing right. So how can leaders really understand how they are experienced by the people around them?

That's a great point, Marie. And I think that what happens is once you're senior, honest feedback won't come to you on its own. So you have to go get it deliberately because as you rise, people start filtering what they're telling you because they're managing their careers. They're not sure how you'll react. And also your time with them gets shorter and more formal.

That's right.

So really a big step is to figure out a way to ask the right people, and especially the ones that find you difficult to work with, because often they're the ones that see your patterns, right, that your allies won't mention?

Yeah. Now you can ask them directly, but what I find is that sometimes people still won't tell you what they fully think. So, I mean, what are the ways you've seen effective to kind of get that feedback?

Again, you know what we do at Proteus, and one of the reasons I joined is because I think the way we do 360s is incredibly effective. So 360s are incredibly effective if they're done well. So I can tell you early in my career, I had a 360 that was not done particularly well. It was 150 questions that they gave to my peers, my— yeah, it was brutal. It was brutal because it was 150 questions that they gave to peers, direct reports, and bosses. And then I was just basically given all the answers and—

Oh wow.

And taken through where the delta was between how I saw myself and how they saw me. There was no direction. It was kind of traumatic. It really was. That's a bad way to do a 360.

Yes.

The way that we do it at Proteus, which I really like, is we're then doing the interviews and we're pulling out themes. Because what happens is eventually with the concept of anonymizing feedback, you can really get the strengths and the areas of improvement And the coach gets to listen to people, and you get to filter, right? Because in 360s, my experience is you're going to have all sorts of feedback, and some of it may come from a peer who's jealous. Some of it may come, right? So having that ability to do that, to do it anonymously, and have an outside person who's trained to pick out what is really the consistent areas that that you're hearing is. Incredibly valuable, I think.

Yes. People are not trained to give feedback most of the time. So they might make a statement, oh, this person is not professional. If you fill that in a questionnaire, if it's one of the 150 questions, you know, nobody's going to challenge that statement. And what we do in those interviews is really kind of be curious about a statement like that. Oh, what behaviors make you say that? What did that person do so you came to that conclusion? Right? And we want examples. Obviously, the examples is more to kind of really bring to life the behavior. And those examples then will disappear as we, you know, focus on the themes. But I think this process of, this human process of having an interview and being able to ask follow-up questions, is bringing out a much better quality of the feedback.

Absolutely. Agreed.

Now, you and I work together in a very demanding global business, and you've since studied psychology and spent many hours coaching leaders. Now, looking back, you know, at that time together, more than 12, 15 years ago, are there leadership behaviors you now understand differently than you did when you were an executive yourself?

Yeah, I would just say I think the fundamental— one of the fundamentals of psychology that just ties really well into anything, and especially leadership, is that the work lies in recognizing for us the behaviors that once served us but no longer do, and then building new habits to create a new impact. And so I can give you a very specific example from my leadership because I don't want to talk about other leaders that we've had, but I will talk about my leadership, right? And what I've learned. So as an executive, I grew through the sales side of business. So I drove myself really hard. And when I got promoted, I drove other people really hard because that's how I Operated. Approached. Yes, that was my, my, my leadership style for myself. And it was natural that I translated that leadership style to those below me. And eventually, and I have to say that while that 360 was traumatic, luckily I'm very much a, okay, what can I learn? Everything that is an obstacle, I'm like, what can I learn from this? And I really dove into like, okay, what's happening? What do I need to change? And eventually I came up, and I still have this posted on my screen that says, be a filter, not an amplifier, right? I really learned, hey, my approach isn't going to work for everybody. And for me, I need to take a beat. So what I've understood is that many times when I see leaders that maybe are having their challenge is usually that the job changed underneath them, but they didn't really fully change with the job. And so if you can really come and understand, like, which of my strengths maybe am I overusing, and the fact that adapting to the people around you isn't inauthentic, it's just choosing— going back to intention and behavior, right? It's choosing behaviors so that your behaviors reflect your intentions.

Yes. So be a filter, not an amplifier. I really like this quote. How did it manifest itself on a day-to-day, right? You know, someone on your team is not performing, for example. What did you say to that person?

Well, first of all, I looked at who was across from me. I took— be a filter for me means stop, breathe, don't react. So You use a word that I really, really, really liked, which is curiosity. And for me, right, it is always about stop and get curious. What is happening with somebody who isn't performing? Because there's— I like to say there's 3 reasons somebody isn't performing. 3 basic reasons. One is they haven't gotten clear direction on what their goals are. And that's a leadership responsibility. The second is they need additional support of some kind— resources, training. And the third is they can't do the job. No matter what, it's still your responsibility as a leader to understand where and how you need to support this person and how best to support the person. So for me, being the filter is who is sitting across from me. And again, at Proteus, we have a very good— with the social styles, that gives you a bit of a shortcut to understand that. And once you understand that, you can be better at understanding, OK, how do I have a conversation with this person in a way that actually is effective?

Yes. How do they want to be talked to? And I guess so that filtering is the pausing, and getting curious in a way that will be received well by the person. Now, when you were more of the amplifier, what would have been the default?

The default would have been what's for me, right? Because everybody has different defaults. So some people would just shut down. It also depends on the leader. For me, it would have been walk into their office,

Yeah.

And be like, why are we short on the numbers? Or why is it like— I would start with, why is this happening? Which is, you know, now if you have somebody like me, if I had had somebody exactly like me in the past, right, I'm actually motivated by that. I'd be like, because I'm me, because that's how I want to be spoken to, right? Let's get down to it. You want to know why the numbers are short? I'll give you 5 reasons why the numbers are short. Right. But that's not everybody. And that's certainly not the most effective approach.

Yes. And we know in coaching that the question starting with why is usually not well received because there is blame in it. At least it's perceived as that. And I think, you know, in those examples, we're talking about pressure. When you're under pressure, it brings out behaviors that we may not even realize we have. You know, so more control, as you said, you know, more shouting, less listening, impatience. Now, what have you seen happens to leaders under pressure? And how can they keep their strengths from becoming liabilities?

Yes. And I think that's exactly what you're saying. What I've seen consistently, and you've seen consistently, is you fall back to whatever has worked best for you in the past, and you just overuse it. That's just— it's the same. It's like being right-handed. You're always going to pick things up with your right hand, right? It's just how it is. And the more you're under pressure, usually there's some level of— you stop listening, you stop being receptive to— you lose your— you become pigeonholed in your view, right? It's just your aperture. I like to say your aperture just shuts down in some way. Yeah.

And what gets you somewhere doesn't get you to the next level. No. I mean, you make me reflect on, you know, one of the things I learned as a young leader. One of my strengths was to stay calm under pressure, right? And so when I became a manager, I felt that it was a very important thing not to show that I was under pressure, that, you know, things were difficult, and to always stay calm, positive. And it sounds great as I'm telling you, but the impact on the team was that they felt I was disconnected from the crisis we were in. Like, we should be in real panic mode right now. You know, they felt disconnected from the leader.

Yeah.

And actually what was happening inside of you, see, I was feeling the pressure, I was feeling the crisis, but I didn't share Because I felt that being vulnerable would make me weak. Yeah. And thank God I got the feedback and I realized that actually in some moments it was very important to share the struggles. You could be strong and, you know, the pillar, and in some moments also to show that you're also feeling it makes you more human and connected to the team. And then you can move forward as a team. So

absolutely,

that was— her strengths had become a liability, basically.

Absolutely, absolutely. And I think the good example that you make is how, once again, we all play towards our strengths. And for me, it's being very direct. For you, it's maybe not wanting to show vulnerability. Everybody— and understanding that about yourself is such an incredible It becomes a superpower, really.

Yes, because we have good intentions.

That's the thing. I would say 99.9% of the time, the intentions are good intentions, right?

Yes. I love this. As a leader, always assume best intentions in your people. And when things are not working, you know, get curious, as we were saying. So then you can really understand what the root cause is.

Agreed, 100%.

Now, I'm sure we have many leaders listening who want to close the gap between the leader they intend to be and the way others actually experience them. So can you maybe summarize 2, 3 practical things that they can start doing right now?

Sure. Well, besides getting a coach, and no, I really do think It's a joke, but it's not a joke. If you think of even the greatest basketball players, you just everywhere, there's a reason coaches exist. And you were talking about pressure. Think about what they do even in the military, right? They just train you until you can just react under pressure, become second nature. It's very hard to do that yourself. Let's just start with that. And I'm—

Even the best athletes, I mean, they don't have one coach, they have 10.

Yes, exactly.

Every specific skill.

So that's exactly it, right? So there is— it is true, this is hard work to do on your own because it's hard to find the consistency. It's also very— even as a coach, you know it, I have a coach as a coach because I

do.

I'm the worst person to tell myself where I need to see my blind spots because they're blind spots, right? If not, they wouldn't be called blind spots. Having said that, I would say even without a coach, the first thing is ask yourself What are my strengths? And think of, okay, how do I overuse my strengths when I am under pressure?

Yes.

So that's the first thing. If you want to do an informal feedback, ask your partner, your kids, ask people who live with you, right? Of like, how do I show up when I'm not at my best? I think that is because, you know, you were saying you can't do a 360 on your own. Yes, you can ask, but It's very hard to get honest feedback from your team by you asking. So I would say the first piece is know your strengths and think, how do I overuse my strengths when I'm under pressure?

I love the question you mentioned. How do I show up under pressure? And asking people you trust and that will tell you the truth, right?

Yeah. Yes. And yes. And if you have a partner, if you have Kids that are old enough to tell you the truth, they will always tell you the truth.

They'll be blunt.

Whoever's living with you will tell you the truth, you know. And if you want an easy, an easy question is, what makes me hard to live with? That's, that's an easy question. But it does give you insight because you're going to show up that in some piece of that is going to show up in your professional life as well. So I would definitely say those 2 things. And then it is useful to sit down with your team and say, what do I do that helps you? And what do I do that gets in your way? Or do a start, stop, continue, right? I always, when I work with leaders, I do always like to say, and you have one-on-ones. First of all, if you're not having one-on-ones with your team, you should be. And, you know, it's always good to say, How can I support you? What do you need from

me

at the end of a one-on-one? And just let that question sit.

Yes. And maybe back to what we were saying earlier about preferences, social style, you can always, you know, even if you don't do those tests, et cetera, but you can always ask a team member, how do you want to be treated? What works for you? What is important to you in my communication, in the way I give feedback, in the way I support you on this task? So It's just getting curious again, right? And then they can ask you to do the same because we all have different preferences in the way we work, in the way we like to be communicated to. So having those honest and constructive conversations, especially early as you kind of build a relationship with the team member, I think is crucial.

Yeah. And I love, again, we keep using this word curious, right? And I do find that one thing for me is when I'm in judgment, of myself or others, I am in a place just where my aperture is shrinking. The bigger the judgment, the more my aperture is shrinking, right? And that's when I'm like, oh, I can feel that.

Thank you, Luca. You know, what really stands out for me is that leadership effectiveness isn't defined by our intentions. Ultimately, it's experienced through our behaviors, and particularly through how we behave when things become difficult, when we're under pressure. So, for those of us listening, perhaps the question to take away is, if I could experience myself as a leader through the eyes of the people around me, what might I discover? So, thank you. Thank you, Luca, for sharing both your executive experience and the perspective you've gained through psychology and coaching. And personally, I'm delighted that this next chapter of your journey now includes Proteus and me. I'm so excited. So to learn more about how Proteus helps leaders strengthen their effectiveness and become ready for the future they want to create, visit proteus-international.com. Thank you for tuning in, and until next time, Here's to creating the leadership impact you truly want.

Thanks for listening to the Proteus Leader Show. We hope you're leaving with ideas you can put to use on your team, in your organization, or in your own career. To learn more about how we support true transformation through change consulting, leadership development, and executive coaching, visit us at proteus-international.com. Until next time.