Leadership is an art. We are pulling together teams of people who have different experiences, personalities, outlooks, and values. What is often not talked about is cognitive abilities, specifically the speed at which individuals can process information.
In my coaching practice, I use the ProfileXT Select assessment by Wiley to determine where leaders fall on the bell curve of cognitive processing. This insight has proven invaluable because leaders with higher processing abilities don’t always realize that others simply cannot keep up with them.
When Your Brain Moves Faster Than Your Team
If you’re a high-speed processor, your behaviors in meetings might include:
- Giving answers before others have fully considered the question
- Moving rapidly from one topic to the next
- Finishing people’s sentences
- Assuming everyone has grasped concepts you presented briefly
These behaviors can be annoying or frustrating to others and often cause relationship issues around trust and collaboration. A more significant concern arises when this type of leader is in charge of moving a strategy forward. Team members might feel their ideas aren’t being listened to or incorporated, when in fact, the leader has already processed their input and moved on to the next thing.
Have you ever turned around as a leader and found nobody behind you? Or thought you clearly explained expectations only to discover groups doing something completely different? Your high cognitive capabilities might have “smoked” everyone else.
The Bell Curve Reality
For self-awareness, it’s crucial for leaders to understand their own abilities in this area. Leaders in the top 4% of cognitive processing speed will only effectively reach about 50% of the population when communicating at their natural pace. Their position on the far right side of the bell curve places them in a cognitive elite that can inadvertently leave many behind.
By contrast, leaders with high-average processing abilities can reach approximately 90% of the population. I fall into this high-average range myself. When working with executives who possess extremely high processing speeds, I make sure to have an espresso and thoroughly prepare for our sessions, anticipating their questions so I can keep up with them better. Typically, they’ll ask me a question and finish my sentences—often better than I would have done myself!
Adapting Your Communication Style
The reality is we can slow down but not speed up. For leaders with exceptionally high processing speeds, I recommend several approaches:
- Use visuals to complement verbal explanations
- Deliberately slow your pace of communication
- Provide explicit context for everything you present
What does providing context look like? It means telling your audience what they’re looking at in a visual before explaining what it means. If you’re sharing a new spreadsheet, first explain what the x and y axes represent before describing the meaning: “On the x-axis we’re looking at numbers of clients, on the y-axis we’re looking at number of projects, showing an upward trend with larger clients.” Pictures are another excellent way to explain complex concepts.
Strategic Leadership at Different Speeds
When leading strategy development, high-speed processors must remember to:
- Take time to slow down
- Spend quality time with people
- Actively solicit feedback
- Practice active listening to demonstrate they’re truly hearing input
- Circle back regularly as the strategy develops to ensure alignment
Strategies are designed and implemented by groups, so it’s essential to secure buy-in from those impacted. Without this careful attention to inclusion, implementation could be derailed or delayed.
A Critical Distinction
It’s important to note that processing speed is not related to intelligence or IQ. This means you could have team members with exceptionally high IQs who simply need more time to think and respond. These valuable contributors can get left behind in conversations, and their ideas might not be considered if the leader is fixated on moving faster.
By recognizing and adapting to the cognitive processing diversity within your team, you can create an environment where everyone’s strengths contribute to collective success—regardless of the speed at which their minds operate.
