On Friday, a late cancellation afforded me the opportunity to have a late breakfast, watching Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic at the beginning of the men’s singles semi-finals in the Australian Open. After finishing an assessment report I returned over lunch to watch the end of the match. It was tantalisingly close. At times Djokovic – currently world number 1 – was clearly the better player. Even so, there were moments when Murray’s performance had me thinking it might be possible, just possible, that he might steal the match.
Coming on the back of so many assessments – interviewing men and women on their path to greater seniority at work – I found myself wondering about Murray’s self image at this stage in his career. Because – as W. Timothy Gallwey pointed out in his book The Inner Game of Tennis, winning at tennis depends significantly on what is going on in the player’s head. The same is true for the leader, so that perhaps it should come as no surprise that Gallwey’s book has been an enduring hit with men and women in business since it was first published in 1974.
What do I mean by “self image”? The following comments are adapted from Wikipedia:
A person’s self image is a mental picture, generally of a kind that is quite resistant to change, that depicts not only details that are potentially available to objective investigation by others (height, weight, hair colour etc.) but also items that have been learned by the person about him or herself, either from personal experiences or by internalising the judgements of others. A more technical term for self image is self-schema. Like any schemas, self-schemas store information and influence the way we think and remember. For example, research indicates that information which refers to the self is preferentially encoded and recalled in memory tests.
Thinking of Andy Murray I wonder, does he think of himself as a world number 1 in the making? This is important because it will influence many choices that he makes both off the court and on: choices that, in time, may lead him towards – or block his path to – his first Grand Slam title.
Men and women in leadership roles face the same issue. Each new promotion brings with it a new set of responsibilities which may challenge their self image. Perhaps the newly promoted leader asks “am I really up to this?” or “is this really me?” Perhaps s/he seeks to play down the change by imagining that no promotion or other change makes any difference because “I am who I am”.
A successful transition includes the integration into the leader’s self image of beliefs which support success and which also have a basis in reality. Such a belief might be “I can engage others in a common vision and work with and through others to achieve our goals”. Of course, the newly promoted leader needs to show that this is actually true – hence my phrase “a basis in reality”. And there may need to be some interim belief such as “I can learn to engage others in a common vision and to work with and through others to achieve our goals”.
Paradoxically, individuals who are confident in themselves are often better able to integrate new concepts, precisely because they have a strong self image and are not afraid of losing themselves in the midst of changes and adjustments. Of course, it also helps if they have a clear understanding of what’s needed in their new role, so that the adjustments they make support their success. In some ways, as we adjust our self image we are like scientists, observing ourselves and identifying what is working for us and what is not as well as studying the differences between our previous role and the new role we have taken on or to which we aspire.
And of course, the need to adjust and adapt our self image is a constant through life as we meet many changes – moving from adolescence to adulthood, from being single to being married, to being a parent, to being old. These and many other changes demand that we revisit our self image.