Human beings are like seeds: when nurtured their potential can materialise into a beautiful plant. I have progressively become aware of my own seed composition so I can bring what makes me who I am and re-balance places or situations that I am involved with through a unique leadership blend.
Everyone makes an impact, whether they like it or not, whether they are aware of it or not, the question being whether it really is the impact they want to make.
The word impact has always had a brutal, harsh connotation in me. Certainly because it is synonymous with shock, I receive it more like the impact of a meteorite on the earth's crust than a controlled soft landing! Yet I have learned to give meaning to this word in all aspects of my life.
I first became interested in the impact as what is received by someone. Growing up in a large family of 9 children, going through the ups and downs of life, for example the accidental death of a sister I didn't know, who left before she could even walk, which caused a lot of pain in the family and observing the impact of the flow of life on my parents, on my elders (I am the "youngest" of the siblings and the many cousins on the paternal or maternal side), all this was part of my childhood and naturally led me to observe human dynamics and to take into account the notion of impact as an illustration of the natural law of cause and effect.
While I have always been aware of the importance of learning to master the impact I produce, it is through varied and intense experiences over several decades that I have really worked on this with the objective of achieving a certain mastery, at least mastery of what I control.
Because that's what is so interesting and often confusing about analysing one's own impact is that it is the result and consequence of a number of factors and causes that in some part we don't control. The process of identifying, analyzing and choosing one's own impact therefore begins with a dive into oneself from which more questions than answers arise, or rather, where each new answer provided triggers a new question.
Personally, I find this fascinating and I have always dedicated a good part of my life to this quest, whether through concrete experiences allowing me to test myself, to discover myself or by allowing me time in my daily life completely dedicated to personal introspection and reflection. Learning to put words to all my feelings (keeping a diary or discussing them with family and friends, for example) has also helped me a lot in this process and with hindsight over the years, I can clearly identify my path of evolution. Here are some of the lessons I have learned along the way as for me it's been about taking into account contexts, finding the necessary balance, controlled and uncontrolled factors, and the test of time.
Not taking into account the variety of contexts in which we live our lives can create significant differences, tensions within ourselves and even friction with others.
On the same day, we go through very different contexts and living environments where the expected impact can vary from one to the other. While professional contexts require us to produce a certain type of results within a certain time frame where creating impact is part of the expected capacities, private life situations are often the opposite, where we are rather asked to learn to let go of any type of expectation with regard to others, to learn to neutralize our intervention on others. This is practically the opposite of what is demanded and recognized in the world of work and by the way who has never got confused trying to apply what works in the workplace in our personal life? Not saying that it has to always be different but looking at the current questioning and sometimes deep confusion in people's mind about their own life, it shows that something does not work well. Therefore, defining and analysing its impact without taking into account the variety of contexts in which we live our lives can create significant differences that will generate tensions within ourselves that is very energy consuming or even generate friction with others.
Mastering our own impact requires the right balance at several levels.
The balance of 'what' and 'how': impact is defined not only by what we create but also by how we do it. Too often the 'how' is put aside or under the carpet, on the understanding that what matters is the visible result. However, an essential factor of impact is the 'how' that will determine the evolution over time. Whether in my personal or professional life, I don't neglect the 'how' to estimate my own contribution to the world, the mere consideration of what is created is for me insufficient to estimate my own impact.
Conversely, I have experienced a professional environment where so much attention was paid to the 'how' that the result itself was either not realistic or took too much time to be produced as one became so caught up in the principles. This adds up to a lot of direct and indirect costs and a difficulty to execute, which in a business environment with profitability at stake is a dysfunction that needs to be corrected.
The balance in oneself is also very important: generating a measured impact requires knowing how to balance the different polarities within us, such as positive and negative or masculine and feminine. Finding one's balance through these polarities is specific to each person and requires taking the time to get to know and listen to each other. Because this balance is not fixed and evolves throughout life: the balance that worked for me 20 years ago is not necessarily valid 20 years later.
Finding and maintaining a balance within oneself, in relation to others and in relation to what one has achieved is therefore essential in the implementation of a fair and measured impact.
Impact is the synthesis of factors that we control and factors that we do not control.
Being lucid and realistic about what is and is not under our control is very important, not only to clearly define our role and our intervention in everything we do, but also in the honest evaluation of our real contribution.
Indeed, it is very common to observe situations where the results obtained are associated with a particular person, attitude or behaviour. I am thinking in particular of all professional contexts where the notion of individual performance will have a direct impact on decisions such as salary increases, the awarding of a bonus or obtaining a promotion. This cause-and-effect relationship can bias the neutral and objective evaluation of the real factors that led to the achievement of results. What exactly happens to achieve such results? Is it identifiable? And how is it measured? Just because you don't control something doesn't mean it doesn't happen or doesn't exist. The impact is generated by our own interventions and by other interventions that we do not control and that we are sometimes not even aware of. This is what is at stake in the debate between collective and individual performance, and the part each individual plays in the overall evaluation. Setting up a mechanism for identifying and measuring the impact generated that is just is constantly being researched and new methods or solutions are regularly proposed. This is a complex question that does not have a ready-made answer and requires deep collective reflection on many parameters within the organization concerned.
At the individual level, I have already found myself generating an impact that I did not expect at all, whether it be in the sense of 'good surprise' or in the opposite direction 'oops, what did I do?’. Honesty and humility are required to decipher the situation with lucidity and gradually understand what really happened.
A logical strategy to generate more impact is to want to expand the scope of what you control: how do you do it and how far are you willing to go to get more control? What strategies will we deploy to do this? Are we going to allow ourselves to use manipulation? Are we going to implement the famous rule of 'divide and conquer' that I once have received from my hierarchy as an inescapable magic formula, in order to remain in control and in power?
Over time, I have formulated an answer that is a point of reference to which I return when I feel confused: I control myself, I do not control the other. I control my way of thinking, the space I give to this or that thought or idea in me, I control my intentions, the decisions I make, the behaviors I have and the actions I take, I control the time I spend on this or that activity.
I do not control external events, global circumstances and above all I do not control the other and I will not put strategies in place to control him/her (let me specify here that this is a general principle valid in a context where the observed behaviour of the other does not require intervention on my part, that is to say that there is no objective risk of danger or insecurity. If the observed behaviour objectively requires an intervention, then it is different - knowing that being objective about all this is quite a learning process for anyone!).
It's very clear: respect for the free will of others is fundamental to the way I navigate and move forward in life at all levels and in all contexts, and I have experienced this principle enough to conclude that seeing things this way has not diminished my ability to achieve results and generate a measured impact at all, quite the contrary.
Time plays a key role in the evolution of impact.
This is the last lesson I wish to address here (there is still a lot more to be said...), namely that there are several times in the sense several stages of maturation of impact. This is not to say that immediate impact has no value, but it is not sufficient in itself which can be confirmed in any type of situation.
Let's take a very common example of a life situation: a discussion between two people in which positions are exchanged.
The words exchanged, the tone of voice, the emotions expressed during the discussion have an impact on the moment, which fuel the discussion. But it doesn't stop there. Afterwards, what has been expressed will continue to make the other person think, perhaps even changing his or her position or angle of view on an issue. Here we clearly see two distinct stages of impact, and it is the effect of time that allows this to happen.
In a world where decision cycles have become shorter, where looking at 6 months is increasingly seen as a long term perspective, giving oneself the means to measure the impact over time and not just at the moment, requires asserting one's willingness as a leader to make actions sustainable. What decisions will be made and what resources will be mobilized to ensure good measurement both in the moment and over time?
So, does the question of the impact generated challenge you on a regular basis?
For me, it has become a systematic questioning in all aspects of my life: in daily life decisions, in the education of my children, with people I meet, in the professional roles I occupy especially when they involve important responsibilities and will directly impact people's lives.
These are essential issues to be addressed in a team, for example a management team, not only by clarifying the team's intentions at the beginning of a cycle, but also and above all as the cycle progresses through the behaviors observed within the team itself. Are these behaviors really aligned with the starting principles? As a team leader, do I implicitly and explicitly authorize my team to call upon my colleague or myself in case of non-alignment in order to discuss and realign?
In my experience, I have not always seen enough time and energy devoted to this indispensable personal or team reflection, as the tangible and quantifiable result is the main and sometimes the only point of attention. For me, this reflects a lack of maturity and when I am called upon to intervene with a team in this context, I do not fail to steer the collective reflection in this direction. For me, producing an impact also means contributing to the group with which I interact to help it become a better version of itself and to build an open and mature dialogue, whatever the role played by each one.
The question of the impact that I generate has always challenged me and I am far from having finished learning about the subject, as it arises at the level of both the individual microcosm and the collective macrocosm, as shown by the evolution of today's world, which reflects the increasing number of questions about the real impact our way of life generates.
Visual design: Opal
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