What is psychological size?
If your expressed opinions, your body language and sometimes just your presence limits how people engage with you, you have Psychological Size. Being conscious of your interpersonal dynamics with your team helps to increase innovation and creativity.
If you are interested in optimal self-accountability, innovation, and participation in creative conversations on your team , there are a few things you can do to ease the limits your psychological size creates; in essence, you can actually manage your psychological size to get the best out of your team. You will not be able to entirely get rid of it, it’s part of your presence as a leader. Paying attention to and purposefully managing its effect, requires first that you acknowledge the existence of it.
Psychological Size and Strategic Presence
To manage it, work on your strategic presence by:
- Being radically curious – When others express opinions or ideas, work on being curious about the roots of their opinions and their vision for their ideas. Your curiosity should be genuine. Asking questions that guide (such as, “Have you thought about this?”) is simply another way of expressing your own opinions.
- Investing in others’ development – When opportunities arise to lead an initiative, let others take up the work while you act as a mentor. Your purpose is to watch for breakdowns and opportunities. You are there to help them build the muscle of architecting their own ideas into valuable and attainable plans.
Psychological Size and Tactical Presence
Tactically, you can act in meetings to minimize the impact of your psychological size by:
- Allowing others to speak first
- Watching your body language as others speak (be open, curious)
Musings and Guidance on Managing Psychological Size
A client recently shared with me that her husband referred to his boss’ use of Psychological Size as “The Golden Hammer”. What she explained to me was that her husband’s boss would USE his psychological size not manage it. His boss would position himself to be first in conversation, to not only present a vision for the team to live into but to tell them how to live into it.
This style of leadership looks a lot like leading with a stick, leading with certainty, leading with control. If you feel this way about how you lead, it’s not likely you’ll want to learn how to manage your psychological size, you’ll plan to USE it.
If you lead more with a carrot, lead by giving control of HOW things get done to your people, encourage new thinking, or lead by giving the vision and guiding the team to innovative thinking, you’ll get something out of observing your way with your own psychological size.
I’m curious, how do you all think about this dynamic in your leadership style? Or how do you experience this in your client’s leadership style? Please comment. Seriously, I’m curious.
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M. Miche Rayment is the Founder and CEO for The Hire Effect™. The Hire Effect clients learn how to identify, organize, and get the most out of their Unconventional Hiring Teams. TheHireEffect.com