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Herminia Ibarra
March 27, 2015
Everybody loves self-improvement. We want to get smarter, network better, be
connected, balance our lives, and so on. That s why we re such avid consumers
of top 10 lists of things to do to be a more effective, productive,
promotable, mindful you name it leader. We read all the lists, but we have
trouble sticking to the easy steps because while we all want the benefits of
change, we rarely ever want to do the hard work of change.
But what if we didn t think of self-improvement as work? What if we thought of
it as play specifically, as playing with our sense of self?
Let s say an executive we ll call John lacks empathy in his dealings with
people. For example, he s overly blunt when he gives feedback to others and he
s not a very good listener. Thanks to a recent promotion, he needs to be less
of a task-master and more people-oriented. He wants to improve on the
leadership skills he s been told are vital for his future success but,
unfortunately, they are alien to him. What can he do?
John has two options. He can work on himself, committing to do everything in
his power to change his leadership style from model A to model B. Or he can
play with his self-concept by flirting with a diverse array of styles and
approaches and withholding allegiance to a favored result until he is better
informed. The difference between these two approaches is both nuanced and
instructive for anyone striving to transform how they lead.
Let s first imagine John working on himself. The adjectives that come to mind
include diligent, serious, thorough, methodical, reasonable, and disciplined.
The notion of work evokes diligence, efficiency, and duty focusing on what
you should do, especially as others see it, as opposed to what you want to do.
I imagine John making a systematic assessment of his strengths and weaknesses,
collecting feedback on areas for improvement, setting concrete SMART goals,
devising a timetable and strategies for achieving them, possibly engaging a
coach psychologist to dig deeper into the root causes of his poor people
skills, monitoring his progress, and so on. With a clear end in mind, he
proceeds in a logical, step-by-step manner, striving for progress. There is one
right answer. Success or failure is the outcome. We judge ourselves.
Now, let s imagine John being playful with his sense of self. What adjectives
come to mind now? The words lively, good-humored, spirited, irreverent,
divergent, amused, and full of fun and life now spring to mind. The notion of
play evokes an element of fantasy and potential the possible self, as
Stanford psychologist Hazel Markus calls the cacophony of images we all have in
our heads for who we might become. I imagine John saying, I have no idea what
to do, but let s just try something and see where this leads me. If it doesn t
work, he s free to pivot to something completely different because he isn t
invested in his initial approach. Trial and error takes time, but getting to
finish line first isn t the objective, enjoyment is. Many different and
desirable versions of our future self are possible. Learning, not performance
is the outcome. We suspend judgement.
Whatever activity you re engaged in, when you are in work mode, you are
purposeful: you set goals and objectives, are mindful of your time, and seek
efficient resolution. You re not going to deviate from the straight and narrow.
It s all very serious and not whole lot of fun. Worse, each episode becomes a
performance, a test in which you either fail or succeed.
In contrast, no matter what you re up to, when you re in play mode, your
primary drivers are enjoyment and discovery instead of goals and objectives.
You re curious. You lose track of time. You meander. The normal rules of real
life don t apply, so you re free to be inconsistent you welcome deviation
and detour. That s why play increases the likelihood that you will discover
things you might have never thought to look for at the outset.
Much research shows how play fosters creativity and innovation. I ve found that
the same benefits apply when you are playful with your self-concept. Playing
with your own notion of yourself is akin to flirting with future possibilities.
Like in all forms of play, the journey becomes more important than a pre-set
destination. So, we stop evaluating today s self against an unattainable,
heroic, or one-size-fits all ideal of leadership that doesn t really exist. We
also stop trying to will ourselves to commit to becoming something we are not
even sure we want to be what Markus calls the feared self, which is
composed of images of negative role models, for example, a former boss who we
worry we ll come to resemble if we stray too far from our base of technical
expertise. And, we shift direction, from complying with what other people want
us to be to becoming more self-authoring. As a result, when you play, you re
more creative and more open to what you might learn about yourself.
The problem is we don t often get or give ourselves permission to play with
our sense of self. As organizational sociologist James March noted in his
celebrated elegy to playfulness, The Technology of Foolishness, the very
experiences children seek out in play are the ones organizations are designed
to avoid: disequilibrium, novelty, and surprise. We equate playfulness with the
perpetual dilettante, who dabbles in a great variety of possibilities, never
committing to any. We find inconstancy distasteful, so we foreclose on options
that seem too far off from today s authentic self, without ever giving them a
try. This stifles the discontinuous growth that only comes when we surprise
ourselves.
Paradoxically, my research finds that often the most productive way to develop
as a leader is the most seemingly inefficient. It involves adopting a stance of
what I call committed flirtation, fully embracing new possibilities as if
they were plausible and desirable, but limiting our commitment to being that
person to the play mode. I ve found that committed flirtation frees people
like John to do three things that will help him become a better leader:
In pretend play, it s OK to borrow liberally from different sources. A
playful attitude would free John from being himself as he is today. Play
allows him to try out behaviors he has seen in more successful bosses and
peers, perhaps stealing different elements of style from each to form his own
pastiche, as opposed to clinging to a straight-jacketing sense of authenticity.
Playfulness changes your mind-set from a performance focus to a learning
orientation. One of the biggest reasons we don t stretch beyond our current
selves is that we are afraid to suffer a hit to our performance. A playful
posture might help John feel less defensive about his old identity after all,
he s not forever giving up his secret sauce and fountain of past success, he
s just practicing his bad swing.
Play generates variety not consistency. By suspending the cardinal rule of
unswerving, reliable behavior, it allows our shadow, as Carl Jung called the
unexpressed facets of our nature, fuller expression. John might, for example,
sign up for some new projects and extracurricular activities, each a setting in
which he s free to rehearse behaviors that deviate from what people have come
to expect of him. He s not being mercurial; he s just experimenting.
Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips once said, people tend to flirt only with serious
things madness, disaster, other people. Flirting with your self is a serious
endeavor because who we might become is not knowable or predictable at the
outset. That s why it s as inherently dangerous as it is necessary for growth.
Herminia Ibarra is a professor of organizational behavior and the Cora Chaired
Professor of Leadership and Learning at Insead. She is the author of Act Like a
Leader, Think Like a Leader (Harvard Business Review Press, 2015) and Working
Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career (Harvard
Business Review Press, 2003). Follow her on Twitter @HerminiaIbarra and visit
her website.