Leadership Archives - Nick Robinson

Self-Awareness, Part 1: Getting to Know Yourself

Self-Awareness is the best start for leadership development. But how do you get that? What should you look for; and how?

The ancient Greeks had the phrase “Know thyself” chiselled on the doorway to the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Real knowledge, insight and understanding about important events and people in the world around them wasn’t possible they reckoned, without first having the foundation of self-knowledge.

If that’s still true today, how do you actually go about getting self-awareness? What should you look for; and how do you do it?

I think there’s perhaps three or more important areas to consider and I’ve set out some of those below. These are often used as early as the second or third phase in my coaching approach, as they’re so fundamental to the development work we need to do after that.

This is a fairly long post for me, over 1,200 words, because I wanted to give you a rounded sense of where to be looking, what to be listening for and how it feels to be embarking, in a structured way, on this kind of self-knowledge work. What I’ve written here isn’t the only way to go about it, and even at over 1,200 words this is still only a very quick jog around the park. Anyway, I hope you find it helpful in some way.

1. Your Values

These are the things that, at the moment at least, are intrinsically important to you. They can or might change over time or in a different context. Some may be more important than others, and that also can be fluid but, most of the time, they’re fairly consistent. Here’s my own top 5 Values:

Making a difference / Usefulness / Legacy
Excellence / Strive to be the best / Learn-Apply
Congruence / Authenticity / Be true to yourself
Independence / Self-reliance / Go do it
Balance / Harmony / Wholeness

Note that these are in ‘strings’ of words, separated by “/” because often one word by itself isn’t enough to capture everything about a particular value.

A simple way to start to uncover your own values would be to remember a time, at work or at home, when things felt like they were going great, or just right, or were especially poignant in some way. What were the circumstances of that time? What was going on around you, who was present, how did you feel?

The chances are that during that time several of your values were being quite strongly upheld. People can often begin to identify those values by reflecting on that time and getting curious about what made it so great for them.

2. Your Thought Patterns

This is about how your (mostly unconscious) mind filters out what is useful information and what isn’t and how it then represents that information, so that you can make sense of the world around you.

Since this process happens very fast and mostly unconsciously, one of the best ways to uncover your own patterns is by way of a kind of compare and contrast with other people. Look at the way they do things, and see how it compares with your own way.

Here are two examples of the kinds of things to consider:

Are you motivated into action more by (a) the chance to achieve a goal; or (b) the need to solve or avoid a problem?
Do you prefer (a) to have lots of choice and variety, creating different possibilities in the way you go about things, or (b) do you prefer to stick to a tried and tested process?

Another important pattern became obvious to me when I got a new Satnav. My old one used to show me a map of my whole route when it had finished plotting. Only after you’d seen that ‘big picture’ screen, did it let you start navigating. But my new satnav didn’t give you that overview. Once it’d plotted a route, it just went straight to “Turn left”. I really found it difficult to trust the new satnav and would often ask my wife to just check the ‘big picture’ of the route in our tatty old road atlas, which she hated doing. Turns out, I’ve got a strong preference for thinking in big picture terms and, until I’ve done that, it’s really hard for me to get into the detail, even though I’ve trained myself (I’m an ex-accountant!) to work with detail. And my wife is the opposite, she’s fascinated by the detail, so she hated being asked to check the big picture of the route.

Again, these factors are not immutable, they can change and be changed. It’s important to not ‘adopt’ them as fixed determinants and to not use them to pigeonhole yourself or others, or to excuse bad behaviour.

It’s possible, although I don’t think it’s often that necessary, to go through about 20 or so of those key patterns as part of the coaching process in in easy conversational way with me. I don’t often do that, because I’d rather people take responsibility for their own self-knowledge than have me or some anonymous psychometric test do it for them.

As well as the kind of thought patterns I’ve described here, you could also look at key aspects of personality, such as introversion or extraversion. The important thing is to just look, listen, feel and think your way a little more consciously than normal really. The psychologist Carl Jung said “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

3. Your Fears, Doubts and Limiting Beliefs

What holds you back? What doubts do you have about yourself, your abilities, the kind of person you are, the way others might see you?

What things are you so unconsciously afraid of, that you’ll automatically come out fighting, even when that isn’t the best way to do things?

In what way do you sell yourself short? Or sabotage your own efforts?

What unwritten rules have you made up about how you have to “be” (e.g. a favourite of mine: “I have to be strong”)?

What shame or hurt are you carrying around about past experiences that made you feel inadequate?

I love working with fears, doubts and limiting beliefs because I see them not as ‘bad’ things, but as really useful data about what’s important to people and about how they might really shine, if they want to.

If you’re ready now to start uncovering some of your own possible fears, doubts and limiting beliefs, try completing some of the sentences below. Do it fast and without too much conscious thought:

I’m often too …………………

I need to be more …………………

I can’t seem to …………………

I should stop (or start) …………………

I mustn’t keep …………………

I shouldn’t always …………………

I must be less …………………

Every time I try to do ………….……., ……………. happens

I want to …………………, but that’s just the way things are

I don’t deserve to …………………

I ought to …………………

If you find anything at all, start celebrating, because that just might be the bit of self-knowledge that opens all the other doors. And if completing the sentences didn’t uncover anything for you, just try going back to those questions I’ve posed at the start of section 3 above and become curious about how any of those might apply to you.

After working through those three key areas, the next level of self-knowledge is to get really clear about what’s even more important to you than your patterns of thinking and your doubts and fears and about how you might apply your values to your life and your work.

Self-Awareness, Part 2: Becoming Your Own Observer

9 Expert Questions and one handy Diagram for Building great Self-Awareness

The best starting point for any development and growth at work, whether as a leader, a team member or just as your individual self, is the place of “self-awareness”.

And I’m talking here of self-awareness in a wide sense.

If you’re looking at self-awareness just as an emotional intelligence tool, then you’ll be focussed too narrowly, just on the awareness of your own feelings. What I want you to get, is a self-awareness about the whole you. That’ll include your drives, flaws, experiences, ambitions, assumptions, patterns of behaviour, values, resourcefulness and more. But also, and maybe more importantly, the big picture of what it’s like to be you. And what’s it like to experience who you are.

This kind of deep self-awareness really is essential to any kind of development. It’ll answer questions right down at a tactical level about what you want to be doing with your time and effort and how best to interact with the world. And it’ll act as a kind of beacon, keeping you heading towards the more important, bigger picture of what you’re about.

Sometimes this kind of self-awareness is forced upon us when something we’re trying to achieve goes wrong. Then we have to re-assess things on a personal level. And at other times, self-awareness comes out of a ‘gap’, a sense that something’s missing or unfulfilled.

Overcoming the uneasiness and discomfort around this kind of self-knowledge is important both to make sense of what’s happened so far and to move forward.

If you wanted to get some more self-awareness without being forced into it by that kind of circumstance, how would you go about it?

One of the best ways is to pretend to be your own observer.
Check out the diagram alongside. (If you click it and then right-click it, you should be able to download a copy.)

First, imagine ‘seeing’ a version of yourself. Get a sense of who this person is, and what’s important to them.

Second, imagine you could observe how this person goes about interacting with the world about them and with other people.

There are many things you could be observing and getting a sense of, but to get you started here’s some of the things I’ll typically be asking my clients about to help them develop their self-awareness. We talk about them as if they were another person, so instead of saying “what’s important to you”, I’ll get them to practice being an impartial observer of themselves by asking, “what’s important to this person?”.

Here’s some of the aspects you might be considering as you pretend to observe yourself. It’s a fairly long and deep list, so don’t feel you have to get all of this straight away:

What kind of things are really important to this person?
What’s the story of how they got to where they are today? And what did they have to overcome, sacrifice or achieve to get here?
What are they like, at their absolute best?
What qualities do they have that make them a resourceful person? What personal attributes, skills and knowledge can they call upon?
What holds them back or keeps them stuck?
As they interact with the world, how clear are they about what outcomes they want?
Thinking of a specific interaction that you want to understand more about, what was their intention at the outset? Did what they wanted to have happen, actually happen?
How wide is the range of choices they have about how they approach things; do they have one typical way of operating or a wider range?
What are some of the assumptions, hidden beliefs or ‘rules’ that they have about the world, about themselves and about others?

The Dark Strategist – Type 2

Some of the most difficult people at work aren’t disruptive or emotional. Instead, they treat others like chess pieces, objects to be moved around in the dark, in service of a grand plan.

In this short video, I talk about the Dark Strategist, Type Two in The 9 Types of Difficult People.

Dark Strategists are often insightful and ambitious. They like having a clear plan and working behind the scenes to perfect it.

Problems start when the plan begins to matter more than the people. Colleagues can be moved around without consultation, information may be withheld, and decisions taken quietly without buy-in.

The impact is often people feeling manipulated, excluded, and undervalued.

You’ll also hear what helps. How leaders and coaches can role-model inclusive collaboration, and why remembering that the map is not the territory can make such a difference. I also touch on how to influence a Dark Strategist by speaking their language and engaging with the big picture, the strategy, and the wider business model.

With the right coaching, Dark Strategists can become powerful, insightful leaders that people actually want to follow.

Article: Scary Specialist – Difficult Person Type 1

Some of the most difficult people at work are difficult precisely because they’re so good at what they do. They deliver, they set the standard and they make it very clear when others don’t meet that standard.

In this article I’ll explore the Scary Specialist: type 1 in my 9 Types of Difficult People. I’ll look at:

The core pattern behind the Scary Specialist
The paradox at the heart of their behaviour
Practical ways to respond, whether you lead them or work alongside them

Who the Scary Specialist Is

The Scary Specialist is the expert who really isn’t afraid to let you know that they’re the expert.

These are people with deep knowledge and serious capability. They care about competence, pace, quality, and they set the bar very high for themselves and for everyone else.

At their best, they can really be the engine room of your business; driving results and driving success.

When it Starts to go Wrong

But things get difficult when anything threatens their ability to deliver.

That might be a weak process or a colleague who isn’t pulling their weight. Or a change that threatens their independence or threatens their control over their domain.

And when that happens, they become even more critical and even more demanding, and they will say exactly what they think no matter how brutally honest.

The Impact on Others

So you might notice people starting to tiptoe around them, or that new joiners to their department don’t last very long, and that other people start to leave the organisation because of them.

And this is the paradox, of course.

The Scary Specialist values competence above all else. But under pressure, their behaviour creates fear and silence and withdrawal in others.

And so the overall performance of the organisation, your organisational competency starts to suffer.

Leading a Scary Specialist

So if you are leading a Scary Specialist, you need to be very clear about any negative impacts they’re having.

Vague feedback or hoping they’ll somehow get nicer rarely works.

Above all, as a leader, you need to demand that your Scary Specialist continues to raise their level of competence. But not just their technical skills or their know-how, but also their competence in their own leadership and their competence in how they relate to other people.

Working with a Scary Specialist

If you’re working for, or alongside a Scary Specialist, two things really matter.

Raise your own standards where you genuinely can. Become really good at your job. That’s all they really want from you;
Be clear about your boundaries and be prepared to stand up for your boundaries.

Scary Specialists, respect, drive, and independence. So just tell them directly whenever their behaviour crosses some kind of a line for you. And the more direct you are in this, the more likely you are to get a good result from them.

At Their Best

At their best, Scary Specialists are not really scary at all.

They’re the experts whose drive and standards lift everyone around them.

But that only works, of course, when their expertise serves the whole organisation and not just their small patch of it.

About Me

I’m an executive coach helping leaders and senior teams turn challenging dynamics into great working relationships.

My first full-length book, The 9 Types of Difficult People, published by Pearson, is an Amazon and WHSmith best-seller. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1292726067

My new flagship programme The Shift is a team development experience for senior leadership teams who sense they’re not yet working well enough together, maybe not firing on all cylinders, even if no one has said it out loud. https://www.nickrobinson.org/the-shift-leadership-team-development

The Rock – Type 8

That “stubborn” colleague slowing everything down? They’re not blocking progress – they’re protecting the foundations.

Meet the Rock – Type 8 in The 9 Types of Difficult People

Rocks are the calm, steady figures who keep everything running smoothly… until change threatens the stability they’ve built. Their resistance isn’t negativity – it’s caution born from responsibility.

In this short video, I explain:

🎯 Why Rocks hold back when others want to move fast

🤝 How to earn their trust and turn them into allies

🏗 The leadership moves that make progress possible without breaking what already works.

You’ll learn how to lead through trust, not pressure – and how to build teams that balance safety with change.

From my book The 9 Types of Difficult People – helping leaders and teams turn challenging dynamics into great working relationships.

The Rock: Difficult Person Type 8

If you have a colleague who is not moving a project forward and it feels as if you have hit solid granite, nothing budging no matter how hard you push, that is a Rock. Type 8 in my 9 Types of Difficult People.

On the surface, a Rock is usually calm, dependable and unshakeable. Underneath, they’re gripping the foundation so tightly that nothing can shift until they are convinced it is safe.

And this is where the problems start. Progress slows, deadlines slide, and everyone else wonders why everything takes so long!

What’s Really Going On

Rocks have an instinct for how everything fits together. They see the invisible plumbing of an organisation: all the connections and dependencies.

They worry that if one valve is turned too quickly, something somewhere else will burst. Their resistance is not laziness and it’s not awkwardness. It’s fear that something important will break.

Good Foundations – But No Building

I once worked with a Rock who was responsible for a key operational system. Whenever the leadership team launched a new project, he would nod, take the papers and then disappear for weeks.

When I asked how things were going, he would say: “Oh, it’s all fine; we’re tidying up the old database first.”

What he really meant was: I am making sure the foundations are solid before I build on top. The problem was that no one else knew progress wasn’t happening!

If You’re Leading or Coaching a Rock

The worst thing you can do is treat their caution as negativity. Instead:

Show that you understand the risks they are guarding against
Demonstrate your own sense of responsibility; that you’ve also thought through the consequences of what’s going on
Involve them early in the planning process, so that you can ask them what they think could go wrong; and
Make sure you listen properly to their concerns

Once they know you value their foresight, they will shift from blocker to ally.

When You’re Working with a Rock

Persuasion works best when it is framed as problem avoidance.

Don’t say: “We need to do this to innovate.”
Do say: “We need to do this now, so it doesn’t cause bigger problems later on.”

If you speak their language of prevention and continuity, they will often quickly get on board.

If You Report to a Rock

Remember that Rocks often hold themselves and their teams to very high standards. They will put in long hours keeping everything running smoothly and will expect the same from you.

It helps to:

Set clear boundaries early, at the same time as …
Showing you are dependable
Making sure you don’t let their workload quietly swallow yours.

When Rocks Are at Their Best

They are the calm centre of the storm: solid, consistent, trusted by everyone.

They:

See how the moving parts connect
Anticipate problems before they appear
Give organisations the stability that allows real progress to happen

When you recognise that and include them properly, Rocks stop being barriers and become the foundation of lasting success.

About me

I am an executive coach helping leaders and senior teams turn challenging dynamics into great working relationships. I coach and write about how senior leadership teams can fulfil their potential and how leaders and managers can deal with difficult relationships and people at work. My first full-length book, The 9 Types of Difficult People, published by Pearson, is an Amazon and WHSmith best-seller.

If you or your team might need coaching support, please get in touch.

The Scary Specialist – Type 1

Ever worked with someone who gets results, but people keep leaving because of them?

This video looks at the Scary Specialist: the expert whose constant criticism and blunt honesty drive capable people out of the organisation.

In this video, I explore:

How their relentless criticism creates fear and silence
Why good people stop speaking up, disengage, or leave
The hidden cost of “brilliant but brutal” behaviour
What leaders must confront when expertise comes with a human price

Scary Specialists care deeply about standards. The irony is that their behaviour often destroys the very competency they value most!

For more on how to turn challenging dynamics into great working relationships, look out for my book The 9 Types of Difficult People, follow me here, or get in touch for more coaching and support.

The Revolutionary – Type 5

If you’re working with someone and it feels like you’ve grabbed a tiger by the tail, you might have a Revolutionary on your hands.

The Revolutionary is Type 5 of my 9 Types of Difficult People.

Revolutionaries bring passion and audacity in big doses. They know that to change one thing you often need to change three others first, and that you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs.

Revolutionaries bring passion and audacity in big doses. They know that to change one thing, you often have to change three others first, and that you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.

But that drive to change everything, and to do it fast, can cause problems at work:

They often go too far and end up treading on people’s toes.
They can move so quickly that they risk burning themselves—and their allies—out.
They grasp new systems and connections at speed, but don’t always see that others need time to build consensus.

If you are leading a Revolutionary, be sure you really want that tiger by the tail, and be ready to clear the path for them and repair relationships along the way. With the right leadership they can become truly transformational – watch this video to find out how.

Mastering the Challenge of the Scary Specialist

The scariest person I ever worked for was a former UK table-tennis champion, then my regional GM.

She had a habit of giving you the hair-drier treatment at the same time as eating a crusty cheese roll. And I was struggling with a new appointment to an under-performing division.

We both knew what needed to be done. But the problem for me was how far and how fast that could happen. Not far or fast enough I realised, in between dodging the crumbs!

Nowadays I really like working with scary specialists like her.
🚀 Why NOT focus on being competent and driven and delivering the best that you can.

🛑 But what I also know now that I didn’t know back then, is that the hair-dryer approach isn’t always the best way of GETTING to that high-delivery place.

And there can also be a lot of collateral damage around a scary specialist. Good people won’t tolerate feeling threatened, belittled or locked-out for long – and will leave. Leading to a spiral of declining performance.

❓Who is or was the scariest person that you ever worked with?

❓And what should you do if you’ve got a scary specialist in your organisation?

Collateral damage is happening and performance isn’t improving. You might be tiptoeing around their threats while being told, “Go away; I’ll sort it!”

Focus on these three points:

Sometimes, leaders of a scary specialist might find that their skills and competences are so essential that you need to ensure they only ever have the best people and the slickest of support functions around them.
But more often, leaders will need to also become a little scarier themselves in this situation. To demand that this person develop new ways of managing – or else.
Use their desire for competence to help. Demand that they develop skills which can also take their people from zero to 100. Not just manage well with an already high-functioning team.

If you’re working alongside or below a scary specialist, it can be an interesting experience! In my next article, I’ll look at issues around defending boundaries, raising your own game, and not becoming isolated in the process.

📚 For more insights into dealing with a scary specialist, please check out my book, The 9 Types of Difficult People. See the links below or in the sidebar.

And in the meantime – keep dodging those crumbs!

Resistance is Futile – Four Lessons from the Borg for Leaders on Great Organisational Change

Leadership has got way too soft and it’s time to challenge that. And make resistance to change futile!

It’s time to challenge the soft, human-centric leadership models that have come to dominate the corporate world. And make resistance to change futile!

This iconic line from Star Trek’s Borg isn’t just for sci-fi fans like me; it offers a radical perspective on leadership and organisational change.

Are you brave enough to consider that the Borg, often vilified as the epitome of oppressive conformity, might just have it right?

Here are four lessons all leaders could learn from the Borg on how to do great organisational change:

🔵 Collective Conformity instead of Emphasis on Individuality

Traditional wisdom tells us to celebrate individual strengths. But what if, like the Borg, we focused on collective goals? A united team can often navigate change more effectively than a group of individual stars.

How to Do It: Align team objectives with organisational goals and encourage collaboration over competition. Regular team meetings can help synchronise efforts and ensure everyone is contributing to the collective objective.

🔵 Centralised Command instead of Democratic Leadership

Democratic leadership is praised, but it can slow down decision-making. The Borg’s centralised command ensures quick, decisive action, a crucial advantage during organisational shifts.

How to Do It: Streamline decision-making processes and clearly define roles and responsibilities. A centralised communication channel can help disseminate decisions quickly and efficiently.

🔵 Rational Efficiency instead of Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is vital, but it can sometimes cloud judgment. The Borg’s rational, efficiency-driven approach eliminates emotional bias, making for more effective change management.

How to Do It: Use data-driven metrics to evaluate the impact of changes and make adjustments accordingly. Encourage team members to focus on outcomes rather than emotional attachments to previous ways of working.

🔵 Unified Obedience instead of Employee Autonomy

Autonomy is empowering, but during significant changes, a unified approach may be more effective. Like the Borg, consider the value of a team moving in lockstep toward a common goal.

How to Do It: Establish clear guidelines and expectations, and ensure everyone is on the same page through regular communication. Use team-building exercises to foster a sense of unity and shared purpose.

Embrace the Opportunity!
Are you ready to assimilate these Borg-like qualities into your leadership style?

Share your thoughts and let’s start a conversation on redefining effective leadership during organisational change!

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