Still or Sparkling a Fine Choice!

A matter of taste, timing or temperament?

No matter your beverage of choice alcoholic or otherwise, your selection may differ based on a pattern of steady choice, the time and type of occasion or your mood.

It is like that with personality, the style you demonstrate and the style you appreciate in others.

Does your natural style tend toward still or sparkling, that is introverted or extroverted?

How does that change with pressure and circumstance?

How does that affect your ability to positively influence?

Do you judge others according to their still or sparkling preference?

It is only when you become aware of how your choice of style affects your ability to influence the outcome for any situation or event that you can be more wise with your selection.

I wonder if you have noticed that your preference for still or sparkling company may depend on the events of the day, which potentially affects your level of emotional resilience and hence your taste, timing and temperament!

As you evolve you begin to learn about how you are wired for stillness or sparkle and how that affects your ability to lead and influence people and situations. You also learn that your style is not absolute, you can and often may be flexible in your style whilst maintaining your authenticity and being true to your values, what is important to you.

Leaders know that they need to make a space for others to demonstrate their skills and talents regardless of his or her bent towards still or sparkling, which affects how each communicates the output of those skills and talents.

In fact, it may be useful for you to notice how you automatically change in the company of others, since that informs you as to your level of flexibility and how you can adjust if you consider it useful to do so.

The wonderful thing for me as a student of unlocking the potential of people, I routinely notice personality and behaviour. I remember a specific 3-way conversation some years ago where I became acutely aware and appreciative of my own flexibility.

Those of you who know me well will choose sparkling for me and still for my husband Ian. In this conversation Ian was in active sparkle, our friend a close second sparkle and me very still allowing and enjoying the sparkle in the space surrounding me. Who would have thought it possible?

The capacity to be flexible is valuable and coupled with responsibility for helping those we lead develop, it helps induce wisdom. However, that flexibility can only be developed once we are aware of how we can flex, a matter of taste, timing and temperament.

Humans are always judging, we judge ourselves and each other, it is how we are wired. Judging, in this context, is nether bad not good it just is. It helps us to continually calibrate elements that affect our surroundings and our response to them. As a result we pick up clues about how our choices for still or sparkling affect our own results as well as others and their results.

Influential leaders know how emotional resilience affects their ability to flex. This helps them to be strong and calm as they are authentically still and sparkling as the situation demands. This flexibility is true for many filters of personality within us all, building these builds leadership.

Until next month celebrate with still or sparkling, it is a fine choice!

Noelene Dawes