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Human Resource Management International DigestEmerald Article: Interview with Maggie Craddock, author of Power Genes:Understanding Your Power Persona - and How to Wield it at Work

nterview by William Strange

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To cite this document: Interview by William Strange, (2012),"Interview with Maggie Craddock, author of Power Genes:

Understanding Your Power Persona - and How to Wield it at Work", Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 20ss: 1 pp. 43 - 45

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Interview with Maggie Craddock, author of

Power Genes: Understanding Your Power

Persona and How to Wield it at Work

Interview by William Strange

Maggie Craddock is an executive coach and author of The Authentic Career:

Following the Path of Self-Discovery to Professional Fulfillment. Prior to coaching,

she received two Lipper Awards for managing the top mutual fund in its class

nationwide. She is an Ackerman-certified family therapist.

Could you tell us a little about your professional background and how you came towrite Power Genes?

Absolutely! In terms of my professional background I started my career as a portfolio

manager on Wall Street. I was constantly encountering the importance of the human

dimension in business, because we were running money, dealing with investors and

managing people on a trading floor: and so my first book, The Endemic Career, was really

focused on the power that comes to someones career when theyve been able to make the

distinction between what they would genuinely love to do with their life and career and what

other people had taught them that they should do. As the success of this evolved and I made

the professional transition into running my own executive coaching business and dealing

with people around the world, I began to understand the systems component of power and

how critical that is meaning when youre in a system how do you negotiate power conflicts

(turf wars, competitions for promotions) with other people in a way that actually fortifies yourprofessional integrity rather than diminishing it. Probably one of the most important systems

questions around power is how do we identify an environment where we can truly thrive and

in which our natural strengths can come to the fore?. It was answering those questions that

was pivotal in my own transition and pivotal in writing power genes.

What attracted you to explore the personal side of business over the financial?

This is one of the seminal questions! Many people are successful according to financial

metrics or notoriety etc., but we have to ask ourselves if they are really happy. What I see

over and over again is that you cannot separate who you are as a person from how you

operate as a professional. In terms of coaching, it is not just about helping people think more

strategically. I have had the opportunity to work with some extremely brilliant people and if

they were going to think their way through a problem they wouldnt have needed a lot ofguidance. Really its about helping people when they cant think at all this is when their

conditioned emotional reflexes kick in and they are flooded with emotions which could be

fear or greed or even elation. However, whatever is going on they dont have access to the

brilliance we know theyve got because the emotions are blaring and the brain has flat-lined.

At that point it is the personal conditioning that comes from the first system they have ever

been part of thats the family system that may be kicking in and causing reflex reactions

to take place before the individual even starts thinking. Thats where what is going on

personally becomes critical.

DOI 10.1108/09670731211195981 VOL. 20 NO. 1 2012, pp. 43-45,Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 0967-0734 j HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT INTERNATIONAL DIGEST j PAGE 43

Maggie Craddock

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In your book you discuss how peoples reactions to professional situations areconditioned at an early age within the family unit. How easy is it for an individual tobreak with such internalized behaviors?

It is easier than would you think because a lot of what is going on is unconscious and what is

internalized unconsciously in childhood, however behavior follows awareness if you will.

These things inadvertently dilute our personal power because we are unaware of them, but

by simply inviting yourself to become more conscious using the building blocks that we talk

about in Power Genes of understanding the internal emotional reactions you have (which

can range from trust to fear) and the behavioral preferences you have for influencing others(which can range from dealing with people one-on-one to dealing with people in groups)

along with clarifying what these [emotions] are and the potential for dominant and recessive

powers styles that come out of those the pleaser, the charmer, the commander, the inspirer

this can give people just the awareness they need to be able to play from their strengths.

When they do that they can recondition themselves faster that you can say. It is a very

constructive process.

You explore four main power personas in your book and how these come into playwhen an individual chooses to take up new or different employment. How importantis it, do you think, for a business to identify an employees power style in order toboth support existing staff and improve staff retention?

In terms of improving staff retention, which is a critical thing in supporting staff, the most

powerful application we have seen for Power Geneswith many of our corporate clients has

been in performance reviews. Performance reviews can often get a bit muddy because it

can be difficult for managers to tease out what dimension of an employees success is

coming from their grasp of a tactical skill associated with the job and their agility on the

interpersonal front in terms of dealing with a wide range of personalities and problems. Once

managers are trained in understanding power styles and how that is going to influence the

range of strengths an employee has to draw upon in terms of a specific role, it can go a long

way to helping them evaluate employees in a more balanced manner, create action steps

with the employees and look for the success of those action steps in a way that everybody is

going to feel appreciated and rewarded. Obviously when this starts happening in terms of

performance evaluations this is one of the keys to moving the retention needle with in an

organization.

You provide many fascinating case studies in Power Genesof workers overcomingobstacles through a better understanding of their power personas. Can this sameunderstanding be utilized to bolster existing strengths?

Yes absolutely. A strength based approach is what you want people to focus on. We talk

about behavior following awareness and I would say that when you are talking about a

strength based approach you are talking about learning versus unlearning. When you are

focusing on strengths: in my experience as a coach we can help a client learn a new

strength, practice it on the job and create feedback loops that will reinforce that behavior

and then hopefully there will be cultural enhancements that will reward that behavior going

forward For an individual to learn a new strength it takes about thirty days. To unlearn a badhabit or a blind spot if you will some aspect of the power style that is inadvertently diluting a

persons productivity takes much longer because it is unconscious. You have to be

practicing a strength for a long time until the unconscious habit begins to fall away as a

potential habit when you are under pressure. Focusing on these strengths is the key and it

helps move people to not just be able to master the strengths within their own dominant

power style but to be agile enough to begin to draw on strengths from other power styles

under pressure that might help them have an even more strategic response to a professional

challenge.

PAGE 44 jHUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT INTERNATIONAL DIGEST j VOL. 20 NO. 1 2012

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How can managers identify a conflict of power personas?

There is a really easy way to do this. If you look at what is going on between a couple of

employees and start to see some repetitive behavior creating conflict among them, you can

guarantee there is a power persona conflict going on there. That is difficult for productivity

because you want your employees focused on the job. When you have a power persona

conflict what is going in these two employees minds is that they are renting a

disproportionate amount of space in other peoples heads. You know how you think about

somebody that you work with and you end up thinking about them more than you would like?

There is you first indicator. When this kind of negative condition gets triggered in somebody

they tend to be a little more negative across the business landscape. What you want to do is

be able to identify a style difference so that we can free up the awareness in those

employees to understand what is being triggered so they can get their focus back on the job.

They need to be a little more agile in terms of how they operate with each other and this of

course has ramifications in terms of the entire culture focusing on solutions rather that

being trapped unconsciously in problems and triggers.

Does a self-awareness of internal drives conflict with business instinct?

Not really. In my experience it actually enhances business instinct. I realize, drawing back to

what we said about performance evaluations, that there are two dimensions to every talented

business employee facing a challenge. There is the personal drive and there is the

professional experience that comes from understanding the past, the role the regulatory

requirements etc. In my experience as a coach self-awareness clarifies everything includingthe best way personally to respond to a business situation based on the track record of

experience you have in the industry. I would say they tend to be almost universally

complementary.

Keywords:

Leadership,

Retention,Human resources,

Conflict,

Self-awareness

VOL. 20 NO. 1 2012 jHUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT INTERNATIONAL DIGEST j PAGE 45

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