Playing the inner game, to master the outer game

Mastering Leadership: The Inner Game Explained

In this video, I delve deep into a concept that often goes unnoticed in many leadership discussions: the 'inner game.' While most leadership books and strategies focus extensively on the 'outer game' – managing resources, leading teams, and creating strategies – true mastery comes from understanding and mastering the inner game. Drawing inspiration from Robert Ellison's groundbreaking book, 'Coaching from Essence,' 

I explore the critical components that shape our inner game: capabilities, values, beliefs, and identity. These elements form the bedrock of our behavior and profoundly influence how we interact with the world around us, particularly in leadership roles. 

If you are a leader looking to elevate your effectiveness and truly transform your organization's culture, this video is a must-watch. Stay tuned as I also preview what’s in store for next week, where we'll dive even further into techniques for mastering your inner game.

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Transcript

0:02

Hi there today. I'm going to talk to you about the inner game. So what is the inner game? Well, before we can understand the inner game, we need to look and define what the outer game is. Now the outer game is the thing that we're all very familiar with in business. Okay. It is leadership CEO 101. All right? This is looking at the resources that are under your control, the humans who you report to you and work with you. The time you've got available to you, the strategies that you enact, the very environment that surrounds you, that is the outer game. And the reality of modern leadership. Um, certainly in terms of the leadership books that are out there is all the leadership books are written about the outer game. All about writing strategy, all about managing resources, all about getting the most from your team, all about being master of your time. Getting to inbox zero, creating time from nothing. Uh, everything is always about the outer game. And the reality from what I've learned in working with the CEOs that I work with, the true mastery comes. When you look at the inner game. Now I didn't come up with this concept. This is a fantastic concept that I've taken from Robert Ellison, his great book coaching from essence. Now in that, but Robert talks a lot about the inner game and mastering of that inner game. So let's talk about the inner game. What does that mean? What does that relate to. The elements of this really are in four parts and that's work from the bottom to the top. The first of these is the capabilities. These are the things that you can do. Alright, maybe you're a fantastic public speaker. Maybe you're in incredible visionary leader. Maybe you're amazing app. Finances at numbers at data, maybe we're a subject matter expert in marketing or sales or product or technology. Maybe you're incredible at writing, whatever it is. You've got these capabilities that form the core skill set of you. Above that then you have things like your values, right? What do you stand for? What you prepared to do? Um, these often come from your parents from the experiences you've had in life. This is how you relate to and see other people. It's really what makes you, you in terms of what you're prepared to do and not to do. The next one, above that then his beliefs. When you talk about beliefs, we talk about the things that you. Have experienced in your life. I suppose, truce that, you know, let's talk about one of these for an exam. As an example, would be working long hours equals success. Or being an expert in something like product or go to market with technology leads to success. Or maybe when I sell my business, I can finally relax and reengage with my family and get back to life again in five years when I've made all that money. Maybe a belief is it's all about the team. Maybe the belief is it's all about the vision. Maybe the belief is it's all about the numbers, whatever this is, this is learned behavior you've got from the experiences you've had in your life. You've learned that from your mentors, from people you've you value over time. Uh, building a bond, the capabilities, values, and beliefs at the very top. Then we have your identity and that's formed of all of these elements below. Right? You might identify yourself as a visionary, as a founder, as a hustler, you know, working long hours, doing deals, whatever it is. You identify yourself in this particular way and that's built upon. Your beliefs, your values and your capabilities. And so there's in a game. Really then interfaces with the outer gate in terms of your behavior, the two of them fit together with behavior in the center there, right? The way you behave, influences how the outer game is played, right? How you lead on stage, how you lead in a meeting, how you talk to your team. Of obviously impacts how those folks perform, how you build a strategy, how you think about the future, the inner game. Really defines the outer game for your organization, especially if you're the CEO, right. In reality, it shapes the whole culture of the business. And I don't want to talk about the article because honestly I find that stuff boring. Right? It's not the stuff that's really going to have an effect. You're treating symptoms of something. That's. Going to have a much more dramatic effect. If you have a look at the inner game. And challenges can start to rise, especially looking at the inner game when you have. So you can see that the parts of the inner game create your behavior, how you interface with the world, how you turn up in the world, how you talk act, right? Your very essence is defined by the inner game. Now questioning this essence can be challenging at points and can be very difficult. Once you start to look at open that lid and look at your beliefs and your values and your very identity. We see that when you know, there's a, there's a challenge to your, to. To a belief or to a value like people saying to things like, no, I don't have to work in the office. Five days a week. I can still get as much done worked on elsewhere when you've seen before that no people need to be in the office five days a week for work to, to happen. Right. That's a belief that you have versus a belief that they have. And often that can be quite triggering because they're actually questioning you. Believe you're. Your identity when the question, the belief that strongly, that you can find yourself reacting emotionally on both sides of that. Right? And so the challenge can come when both your beliefs and your values and your identity challenged, that's when you can emotionally react to a situation. Right? So maybe an employee isn't performing. And what parts of your belief about yourself? Is there anybody who's coachable? That anybody's saveable that, you know, you can coach anybody to be great. And they're not, it's not working immediately. You're questioning your inner. Belief and capabilities. You start to question yourself as a leader, you can start to get emotional and angry at these things. So by mastering this inner game, you can truly master the outer game. So a lot of what I do and what I will share next week. And the followup to this is all about mastering that inner game. How do you comfortably. Look at your identity, your beliefs and your values, and start to update, edit them to be more in service of you. So you could, again, pave differently and have more of a dramatic effect on that outer game. If you want to stay in touch, you'll be prepared for that next episode. Hit the little bell icon up there. That means you'll get all the updates from me, either on LinkedIn or YouTube. Thanks very much for your time. And I'm looking forward to talking more on the inner game with you next week.