For years, when I spoke with CEOs or senior leaders, it was because they were interested in how my consulting firm could help their employees become more engaged, or innovative, or sustainably high-performing. During the past year – and especially the past six months – I’ve been hearing a different and much more personal initial question: “Can you help me better manage my own life?”

Consider the challenges that modern corporate leaders — and especially CEOs — now face, in addition to running their companies every day:

A high likelihood that the company they run has a business model that is being seriously disrupted, most often as a result of technology.
A far more vocal and influential group of stakeholders, including employees, customers, and the public at large, all emboldened by their access to social media and by the speed at which their opinions can go viral.
A highly volatile political climate that has prompted fear and uncertainty both inside and outside companies.
Ambivalence about how to best attract, manage, and retain Millennials, who now represent the largest generation in the workforce, expect more flexibility in the way they work, and prefer to work for employers with a mission that goes beyond maximizing profit.
How can leaders balance these complex and often competing demands? The core challenge for modern leaders, I believe, is to become more wholly human – to actively develop a wider range of capabilities and to more deeply understand themselves.

Consider the following qualities:

Self-control
Tenacity
Boldness
Honesty
Focus on results
Confidence
Pragmatism
Decisiveness

Is there any doubt these are desirable strengths for any leader? Most of us think in binary terms. What’s good is absolutely good, and the alternative is bad. Given a choice between an employee with the profile on the left, and the one on the right, it’s a no-brainer, isn’t it?


STRENGTH

Self-control
Tenacity
Boldness
Honesty
Focus on results
Confidence
Pragmatism
Decisiveness
NEGATIVE OPPOSITE

Impulsivity
Laziness
Hesitancy
Deceitfulness
Aimlessness
Insecurity
Impracticality
Wishy-washiness

Common as it is to see the world through an either-or lens, it’s more limiting than we recognize. And relying on one set of relatively fixed strengths turns out to be insufficient to manage the complex environment leaders must now navigate.

Here’s what happens, for example, when we overuse or rely too exclusively on the strengths on the left.

STRENGTH

Self-control
Tenacity
Courage
Honesty
Focus on results
Confidence
Pragmatism
decisiveness


STRENGTH OVERUSED

Rigidity
Ruthlessness
Recklessness
Cruelty
Narrowness
Arrogance
Unimaginativeness
Dogmatism