VERSATILITY 101
Image Credit: Peter Lindberg
… I’ve been figuring out different ways at home that I can be of service to what I would call the singular global community, one that I believe to be kind in nature, one that I believe to be very special to my heart and I believe to the hearts of many.
Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (1986—), known professionally as Lady Gaga, is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She is known for her image reinventions and musical versatility.
Her innate, long-proven versatility in music — pop, disco, jazz, rock, electronica — is only more impressive when one considers her acting in AHS and A Star Is Born. She directed (of Marry the Night), co-founded a mental health foundation, Born This Way, and launched a make-up line, Hauslabs.
She’s recently partnered with Apple to promote her new, sixteen-track, return-to-dance-pop, chart-smashing album, Chromatica—but there’s a dual purpose there as well.
The purpose is to delve into the creative process and the origins behind her work and serve as a platform to promote other artists. Guests like BURNS, Vitaclub, and Tchami—all of whom helped with production—will also present their own DJ mixes. “Gaga Radio” promises to be just that, too. Conversational, deep, and as she has always been with her fans, vulnerable.
Lady Gaga demonstrates versatility not just by the skills of singing, acting, and doing podcasts. She develops versatility by using oppositional forces to her advantage. Gaining fame, she delves into vulnerability. Seeking to shock, she embraces intimacy and connection.
Stephen's wide-ranging conversation with 'A Star Is Born' star Lady Gaga was too long for air, but not too long for the web!
VERSATILITY 101
The state or quality of being useful for or easily adapted to various tasks, styles, fields of endeavor.
To be effective today, leaders need to become effective at seemingly contradictory qualities and skills. When we are ineffective, we either lack skill, or we take something we’re really good at to an extreme.
Bu this either-or way to thinking misses a critical aspect of the ability to hold a balance between a number of skills well. (This is different than multi-tasking, which most admit, is doing a number of things poorly.)
Generally speaking, we lead with a particular bias. We might be forceful or enabling with others. Or, what worked when we were directors no longer works when we find our self a newly minted vice-president. We might be too task-oriented and not sufficiently people-oriented, too tough and not responsive enough to people’s needs, too big-picture-oriented with not enough emphasis on planning and follow-through.
An overused skill looks something like this:
When we are versatile, an imbalance of skills absent. Our ability to hold two opposed ideas in our mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. We can switch gears easily. Versatile leaders are able to continually adjust their behavior, deftly applying the right approach or blend of approaches to the right degree for the circumstances at hand.
How do we increase our versatility?
PRACTICE
Define leadership skills and qualities in terms of paired approaches that may look like opposites but together constitute a balanced whole. The two balances seem to complement each other: The strategic-operational duality describes what we need to work on; the forceful-enabling duality describes how we go about it.
We all know the difference between “command and control” and employee-centered. But competency models most organizations use often consist of long, unmemorable lists of skills and personal qualities not generally grouped in a pairwise fashion. Therefore, we miss the chance to identify lopsidedness, in our view the most common impediment to developing effective leadership. Our position is based on the essentially two-sided nature of leadership: For every truth, there is an equal and opposing truth, and leadership models are more useful for respecting that reality.
Let’s get started.
Identify the one quality you are known for. Use assessments, annual review feedback or a conversation with your boss to identify it. Most people know their core asset.
Then, think of a short list of opposite qualities, ones you can use some work.
Example:
Makes tough calls. —> Opposite: Compassionate
Makes judgments. —> Opposite: Shows appreciation.
Forces issues. —> Opposite: Fosters harmony.
Brainstorm things you can do to work on evening out your skills.
COMMIT
[ ] I commit to myself to increasing my versatility by identifying my core strength and leaning into its opposite.
FURTHER READING/ WATCHING
Channel Kindness: Stories of Kindness and Community: Individually and collectively, these stories prove that kindness not only saves lives but builds community. Kindness is inclusion, it is pride, it is empathy, it is compassion, it is self-respect and it is the guiding light to love. Kindness is always transformational, and its never-ending ripples result in even more kind acts that can change our lives, our communities, and our world.
Thoughtrave: An Interdimensional Conversation with Lady Gaga: Thoughtrave is a detailed archive of Lady Gaga’s emotional, intellectual, philosophical, and spiritual evolution, a reclaiming of her art (and humanity) from within the center of her celebrity during one of the most difficult transitions of her career: Summer 2013–Fall 2014. Thoughtrave offers insights into the music industry, the personal battles that accompanied her transition from Stefani to Gaga.
In her words…
“In creating Gaga that I was able to create a superhero for myself it was a vision for the me that I wanted to be. I wanted to be confident. I wanted to be filled with self-compassion. I wanted to be filled with compassion for others and I wanted to share my story and my vision of the world with the world.” —Oprah's 2020 Vision Tour Visionaries: Lady Gaga Interview
“I could hyper-focus on being objectified or being in tabloids or being gossiped about but you know? What I'm thinking to myself, “oh the world is watching, and I have something important to say, and I want to change people's lives. Now my mission is different and I have a responsibility to this whole world.” —Oprah's 2020 Vision Tour Visionaries: Lady Gaga Interview
“t's no longer shocking to have pink hair. I think the most shocking thing that I could possibly do is be completely vulnerable and honest with you about my life, what I've been through, the struggles that I've seen that I've also been a part of, and share that with the world so that I can help other people who are suffering and one of those things that I deeply care about is mental health.” —Oprah's 2020 Vision Tour Visionaries: Lady Gaga Interview
“There's a discipline for passion and it's not about how many times you get rejected or you fall down or you've been beaten up it's how many times you stand up and are brave and you keep on going.” —Oprah's 2020 Vision Tour Visionaries: Lady Gaga Interview
“I want impact. I always did. I thought it was just through music. At one point I had some dreams of being an actress and then it really was a spiritual awakening for me. …When I became famous, I thought to myself, “well I could, I will, and I want to continue making music I will and want to help people.” —Oprah's 2020 Vision Tour Visionaries: Lady Gaga Interview
“I am the excuse to explore your identity. To be exactly who you are and to feel unafraid. To not judge yourself, to not hate yourself.”
”I don't need anybody's permission to be remembered. I will be. Whether they like it or not.”
”I am focused on the work. I am constantly creating. I am a busy girl. I live and breathe my work. I love what I do. I believe in the message. There's no stopping. I didn't create the fame, the fame created me.”
“Do not allow people to dim your shine because they are blinded. Tell them to put on some sunglasses, cuz we were born this way, bitch.”
”All that ever holds somebody back, I think, is fear.”
”Fight and push harder for what you believe in, you'd be surprised, you are much stronger than you think.”
What we don’t see on the resumes we review or the job descriptions we want is the litany of emotional entanglements we bring to our roles, uninvited, to the team and organizations we work in. Alongside technical skills, people who can master a range of subjective skills are better able to influence, deal with ambiguity, bounce back from setbacks, think creatively, and manage themselves in the presence of setbacks. In short, those who learn lead.
Observing subjective qualities in others past and present gives us a mental picture for the behaviors we want to practice. Each figure illustrates a quality researched from The Look to Craftsmen Project. When practiced as part of our day-to-day, these qualities will help us develop our mastery in our lives and work.
References:
R. R. Blake and J.S. Mouton, “The Managerial Grid”(San Francisco: Gulf Professional Publishing Co., 1994).
Douglas McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y; D. McGregor and W.G. Bennis, “The Human Side of Enterprise: 25th Anniversary Printing” (New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 1985).
R.E. Quinn, “Beyond Rational Management: Mastering the Paradoxes and Competing Demands of High Performance”(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1991).
B.M. Bass, “Bass and Stogdill’s Handbook of Leadership: Theory, Research, and Managerial Applications,”3rd ed. (New York: Free Press, 1990), 415-543.