Are you a Roy Kent or a Ted Lasso?

Hello again, friends—thanks for joining me.

As we look toward July, I want to explore a concept that’s become central in our work at PotentialSquared (it’s also highlighted in my book, Be More Wrong: How Failure Makes You an Outstanding Leader). That is:

Leadership Impact Styles.

Our unique style of leadership includes our strengths and natural tendencies, and it highlights how we respond to challenges and inspire others. It’s okay if you don’t know your style yet; we’ll explore the four styles together, and I’ll share with you the “Leadership Impact Assessment” developed by P2.

I’m so glad you’re here. Welcome back to the Leader’s Playground. Let’s dive in!

Resource of the Week

Take the Leadership Impact Assessment from PotentialSquared to identify and measure your Individual, Team, and Leadership impact. It takes a few minutes to complete, and you’ll receive your results—with specific insights and guidance based on your style—at the end.

Lessons in Leadership: The Pi2 Leadership Development Model

We take quizzes about our love languages, our personality type, our Hogwarts House, and even what color suits us best.

Perhaps it’s a bit fun to “see” ourselves reflected back clearly, but it’s also quite useful.

Knowing ourselves enables us to address deficits and optimize strengths—all in the service of being happier, healthier, and more successful partners, friends, and people.

And sometimes these assessments—and the information gleaned from them—can be quite complex! But each piece of the puzzle shows us a meaningful part of who are and how we exist in the world.

Don’t we want the same in our leadership?

The Leadership Development model from PotentialSquared gives in-depth analysis and 360’ insight into your leadership styles.

We begin with Purpose, Identity, and Presence—the three drivers of leaders’ actions. These fuel our ability to be one of four major styles: Host, Energizer, Disruptor, and Catalyst.

Let’s look at one of my favorite shows—Ted Lasso—to explore each of the styles.

THE HOST – Ted, of course! The Host has the ability to bring people together, break down barriers, and engage them to build psychological safety. This one speaks for itself, doesn’t it? Ted is the ultimate host. Charismatic, kind, thoughtful, and always going out of his way to ensure those he cares about are taken care of.

THE ENERGIZER – Rebecca, the fiery, determined football team owner. Through compelling stories and personal energy, the Energizer leads others towards a vision. Rebecca embodies the Energizer with her resilient spirit and determined attitude. She charges forward and energizes those around her to get behind the mission.

THE DISRUPTOR – Roy Kent (if you’ve seen the episode where he uses yarn in a terrifyingly odd way, to encourage body awareness among the team, you know why!). The Disruptor delivers fresh new ideas that have an impact through experiments and challenge. Roy is a total Disruptor; he builds his career on being, well, different.

THE CATALYST – None other than Coach Beard. The Catalyst raises performance and potential through coaching and mentoring. Coach Beard’s story is a tear-jerker. He becomes a Catalyst because of the way Ted supports him early on, and goes on to spark change and inspire many throughout the show with his wisdom and wit.

Each of these characters have unique personality traits and strengths they lean on to guide the UFC Richmond team to success, navigating hurdles and losses along the way.

And while you’ll naturally gravitate toward one style in particular, your growth opportunities lie in exploring all the styles—each one for a different purpose and situation.

There are times when you will need to engage your team and connect them with a shared sense of purpose. At other times, you will need to challenge them to take risks and experiment.

When your teams return with the results of an experiment, you can coach and mentor them to help transform their learnings into new capabilities. On the other hand, you could be setting a fire under their backsides, inspiring and driving them to embrace new experiments and challenges.

The key is knowing which style is your natural one, which ones to lean into and practice as areas of growth, and when to utilize each of them.

Ted had to stretch his comfort zone in order to push his team to victory. He expanded his natural “Host” style to include qualities of the Catalyst (tough love with the young men) and and the Disruptor (implementing Total Football), and that’s when the breakthroughs began.

Know thyself, take risks, fail, learn, and grow.

The Leadership Tales Podcast

How do we build sustainable organizations that make real, lasting impact?

My guest this week on the Leadership Tales Podcast, Daniel Barker, is the Managing Director of the Halcyon Incubator in Washington DC. Halcyon is an incubator for businesses focused on social impact, an area that I am passionate about. Through Halcyon, Dan is making a lot of headway for women and people of color in entrepreneurship.

Dan has a fascinating background, beginning in foreign relations and moving on to hold a variety of titles at prominent financial and professional services firms. Through all of this, he’s consistently had his gaze set on impact and social change. We discuss the role of ego, and how learning from mentors’ rough patches has a huge impact on our journey as a leader.

You can check it out and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts—and if you can, please leave a review. Each review helps put our show in front of more listeners, which means more opportunities for those who need them.

And if you know of someone you think would be a great guest on the show, reply and let me know about them. I want to share stories from leaders making a positive difference in the world—and the more tales we tell, the better.

Until next time...

I hope you’ll take the Pi2 Leadership Assessment, and let me know your results.

Thanks again for joining me, and please do forward this on to a friend who may enjoy it—the best way to gain wisdom is in community. The more, the merrier!

And if you have questions or thoughts to share, please don’t hesitate to respond to this email. I’d love to chat with you.

See you in two weeks!

Cheers,

Colin

To learn more about my book, Be More Wrong: How Failure Makes You an Outstanding Leader, click here.