160. Express yourself (Condition #9: personal style)

Before sitting down to start writing the scripts for this season, I wrote a list of the conditions I wanted to cover. Clearly, personal style is a condition that matters when we’re making decisions, but that doesn’t mean I really know how to define it. It’s not the same as personality, exactly. Or is it? It’s also obviously not about fashion sense, but maybe fashion sense is a *result* of our personal style? Maybe what I mean by style is the intentional expression of personality. Like if personality is someone’s intrinsic character, then style is how they choose to express it. It might be a feature of someone’s personality, for example, to feel confident expressing their feelings and opinions. The style in which they choose to do so might be through humour or sincerity or song or a combination of the above or something completely different. Some people may dress a certain way to express elements of their personality, and others might prefer more subtle signals. In any case, a boardroom is a room full of people, each with their own style. It can be a place where some people feel safe expressing their style, while others don’t. It can be a place where we encourage styles that are inclusive, or fail to discourage styles that are toxic. It can be a place of inspiration, or a place of convention. When you walk into the room, how will you choose to express the features of your personality? How interested are you in how that choice might affect the others in the room? If the answer is “not really interested at all,” then you might want to review our working definition of good governance.