English Art/Literary Management

Hello everyone,

From a book about how to become a successful leader:

For example, among the competencies rated as most critical for effective leaders, my survey respondents listed “motivating and inspiring” as the second-most important. Jacob also listed the same, although he was not rated very highly by his team on this capacity. Motivation and inspiration, however, aren’t tools you can select out of a toolbox by, say, increasing your communication to keep people better informed. Instead, the capacity to motivate and inspire depends much more on your ability to infuse the work with meaning and purpose for everyone involved. When this capability doesn’t come naturally, you tend to see it as an exercise in manipulation. Likewise, coming to grips with the political realities of organizational life and managing them effectively and authentically are among the biggest hurdles of transitioning to a bigger leadership role. Although many of the aspiring leaders whom I teach cite the ability to influence without authority as a critical competence, many leaders are not as effective as they might be at it, because they view the exercise of influence as playing politics.

Things like ***stretching outside your stylistic comfort zone*** and reconciling yourself to the inherently political nature of organizational life, in turn, require a more playful approach than what you might adopt if you see it as “working on yourself.” When you’re playing with various self-concepts, you favor exploration, withholding commitment until you know more about where you are going. You focus less on achievement than on learning. If it doesn’t work for you, then you try something else instead.

Does "stretching outside your stylistic comfort zone" mean "do something you don't like when managing people in your organization"?

Thank you.