It's my first coaching session with Steven, a senior executive whose aggressive style has been cited as a key reason that his firm is starting to lose some of its top talent to competitors.
Steven is blissfully unaware of any problems with his style. To protect himself from uncomfortable feelings, Steven has mastered the art of focusing on a swift and decisive course of retribution against anyone who tells him what he would prefer not to know.
"Why do you think I'm here?" I ventured.
"It's bloody HR and their obsession that I need charm school or some such nonsense!" Steven bellowed. "Why do you think you are here? Aren't you supposed to be the professional in these matters?" he demanded.
"I think that if being aggressive with people didn't get you what you wanted, you wouldn't do it," I told him frankly. "Your problem seems to be that you have only one note on your emotional keyboard that you hit under stress, and your colleagues tell me that that note is anger."
"So you think I have a problem with anger?" Steven asked me, with a tinge of defensiveness in his voice.
One of the things you learn as a coach is that some of the most aggressive personalities in business serve as a mask for some of the most sensitive people. "That's too easy, and it's only about you," I replied.
"Then how would you describe the problem?" he demanded.
"Steven, let's talk about what it means to be tone deaf."
To
An individual's tone will create a sympathetic resonance with others that will influence their sense of themselves. Individuals who set a positive tone inspire others to express themselves more fully. People who set a negative tone often leave the people they interact with feeling anxious or even erased.
When your inner world is a nervous buzz, your behavior toward others is often far from harmonious. While correcting this may seem simple, learning to listen to your own mind more objectively can be tricky. This is because many people are secretly nervous about what they might hear if they took the time to listen to themselves more carefully.
Learning to focus not only on the conversations you are having with others but also on the conversations you are having with yourself is critical to cultivating a more positive tone. This is because when you are able to put your own mental dialogue into perspective, you will be more fully aware of the relational nuances taking place around you.
We've isolated four predominant styles of tone deafness through four creatures: the predator, the peacock, the clam and the mother hen. Each of these creatures demonstrates the link between an individual's thought process and his or her outer behavior. Many people are a composite of more than one of these types, so some of the more colorful crossbreeds are described as well.
Understanding tone increases involvement. Once you have made the decision to consider how your tone is affecting others, you have implicitly made the decision to become more genuinely present to the people and situations around you. This is an important step toward becoming an effective leader.
Maggie Craddock is the president of Workplace Relationships, an executive coaching firm in New York www.workplacerelationships.com, and author of The Authentic Career (New World Library, 2004).
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