Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
Despite good intentions, prioritizing and promising to change,1 leaders often fail to achieve their personal or professional development objectives, and the changes they desire. Drawing upon academic research, executive development practices and our field research, we advocate an approach to deepen self-awareness, combined with a more integrated development process, that together offer a better chance of accomplishing the development objectives leaders set for themselves. Like other scholars (e.g. Allen & Hartman, 2008; Collingwood, 2001; Hall, 2004; Mayo, Kakarika, Pastor, & Brutus, 2012; Petriglieri, Wood, & Petriglieri, 2011; Yammarino & Atwater, 1993), we see self-awareness as the critical underpinning of effective leadership development.
We argue that profound levels of self-awareness (part of what might be called a leaderâs âinsightful awarenessâ of self, others, context and purpose2) (Woodward & Shaffakat, 2016) can be achieved when leaders understand the influence of conscious and unconscious forces that could promote or impede their efforts to change. It is the psychodynamic approach that most consistently emphasizes the role of these forces as major hurdles to an individualâs development (Lee, 2010). Our research reviews these different psychological forcesâwhich we call drivers and blockersâin depth. We promote a leadership development approach that includes exploring and understanding drivers and blockers to deepen leadersâ self-awareness and help them take actions for change. Insights from this deeper level of self-awareness are then integrated into the overall development activities platform for that leader, and supported by other development initiatives such as reflection, coaching, feedback and a change support system.
Derived from our literature review and field research, we also provide a tool developed for exploring drivers and blockers designed to help leaders (and development practitioners) uncover and turn these to advantage. We found that the âDrivers and Blockers Exploration Toolâ is an effective diagnostic tool involving a surfacing and discovery process for leaders. The tool helps them seek insights for change or transformation as part of a scenario-building approach and assists them to envision a better future, recasting their situation in a positive light by overcoming potential blockers. By putting a positive spin on their situation, leaders can leverage their drivers to their advantage. Likewise, the tool helps leaders envision situations where blockers can be used as opportunitiesâturning them into drivers (transforming weaknesses into strengths), as well as avoiding situations where drivers become counterproductive blockers.
1.1 What Are Drivers and Blockers?
Drivers are those âassumptionsâ and âforcesâ in individuals that create and power activity and give impetus and desire to their actions. These assumptions and forces initiate, guide and sustain peopleâs objectives and goal-directed behaviors. Blockers, on the other hand, are those assumptions and forces in people that obstruct making a change by screening out, or standing in the way of change, even when individuals are consciously or rationally determined to make a change. So, in making any change in ourselves, we are waging an unknown warâessentially a competition between our different conscious and unconscious facetsâand this conflict presents both a dilemma and an opportunity for an individualâs development.
We note that previous research in this field has largely focused on exploring the role of either the drivers or blockers but has paid limited attention to how the same factors can act as both drivers and blockers, which we address in our research. Following Aspinwall & Staudinger (2003), we believe that ââŠa psychology of human strengths should not be the study of how negative experience [or factors*] may be avoided or ignored, but rather how positive and negative experience [or factors*] may be inter-relatedâ (pp. 14â15)âhence leading us to explore the combination of exploring drivers and blockers.
This combination of looking at both the positive and negative factors or drivers and blockers is also hinted at in the work on executive derailment by McCall (2009) where he argues that âpeople can and do change in profound ways, even to the point of rewiring the brain, and therefore can develop new strengths as well as correct perceived weaknessesâ (p. 44). McCall (2009) is also critical of the assumption that âa strength is a strength is a strengthâ (p. 44) and that weaknesses can be ignored because an individualâs strength is adequate enough to compensate for his or her shortcomings, or because an individual can steer clear of situations where his or her dark side can lead to serious problems. With a change in situation or context, individuals may require different strengths to sustain success. In addition, strengths can be overexploited and used ineffectively in situations which donât require them, or they can turn into flaws in situations that need different strengths (McCall, 2009). The same holds true for drivers, as well as for blockers that can disguise themselves as drivers.
These drivers and blockers and their underlying assumptions and forces arise from different factors (which we call reservoirs or sources), such as worldviews, emotions, personality traits and dispositional variables, as well as values and motivators which shape and are shaped by our experiences. We argue that allowing a person to explore both the conscious and unconscious sides and attributes of these drivers and blockers deepens awareness, creates profound insights and increases the chances that meaningful change can occur.
1.2 Overview of the Chapters
In Chap. 2, we address the relationship of self-awareness to leadership development, and the interrelationship of drivers and blockers. Using a systems psychodynamic approach, we also build upon different pedagogical and psychological approaches such as Boyatzisâs (2006) âIntentional Change Theoryâ, âPositive Psychology and Positive Leadershipâ (Diener, 2000; Peterson, 2000; Seligman, 1998a, 1998b; Snyder, 2000), Bachkirovaâs (2011) âdevelopmental coachingâ as well as Kegan (1994) and Kegan & Laheyâs (2001a) work on âadult mind development stagesâ and the âimmunity to changeâ process, respectively. Kegan and Laheyâs work provides the largest foundation for grounding our work on drivers and blockers.
Across Chaps. 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, we then present our literature review of the reservoirs and sources of conscious and unconscious drivers and blockers, which informs and underpins the âDrivers and Blockers Exploration Toolâ. In this review, we also present relevant and directly related examples from our own research and field work3 to demonstrate the efficacy of the concept of exploring different drivers and blockers such as mini-selves, possible-selves, worldviews, emotions, the Big Five personality traits, dispositional variables, values, and extrinsic and intrinsic motivators. Understanding there are different kinds of drivers and blockers is a first step in making decisions on oneâs personal developmental objective.
Exploring the drivers and blockers allows the leader ...
