Course 2: Becoming a 7 Cups Leader - (Discussion #1) Welcome to Course 2!
Please note: In order to successfully complete Course 2, you must respond to this post. Your comment/response should answer the questions/shows that you completed the given activity (if any). Read the post carefully and follow the instructions given. Save your responses to a document that you can later refer to. You will need to copy/paste your response in the course evaluation form at the end of each course to show that you have done the work and to refresh your memory.
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Congrats! You made it the second course in the LDP! In this course, we focus on the specific interpersonal skills needed to be a strong leader on 7 Cups, including mastery of communication skills, time management, conflict resolution, stress management and empowering new leaders.
I know if you are here, you have read our values and culture guide. I would like to start off by further emphasizing one value that's required for a leader to be successful here, and that is balancing High Expectations & High Warmth.
Work environments with high expectations and minimal warmth tend to result in companies that are very driven, rule-oriented and risk-averse. The people do not tend to grow as much personally or professionally. On the other hand, workplaces that are high in warmth, but have minimal expectations, tend to struggle. Everyone is happy and feels loved, but not a lot of effective or focused work gets done.
7 Cups is high expectations AND high warmth. We expect a lot from you. You might feel like we think you are more capable than other people have suggested or maybe even more capable than how you see yourself. That is okay. Every person on the team has outperformed and done better than they expected. This is largely because warmth, patience, and trust help people make much more progress than they have in other environments. We have high expectations, but we will provide plenty of encouragement and guidance to help you get there.
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Question: What do you think happens if you, a 7 Cups leader, have an imbalance of expectations and warmth? How do you think having too low of expectations, or too little warmth, will impact 1.) the community, and 2.) impact how you work with your fellow leaders?
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What do you think happens if you, a 7 Cups leader, have an imbalance of these? How do you think having too low of expectations, or too little warmth, will impact 1.) the community, and 2.) impact how you work with your fellow leaders?
If I had an imbalance of high warmth and low expectations, I would be the fun leader, but not confront others, or feel the pressure to complete tasks by the goal date and allow the chat rooms to get out of control. If I had high expectations and low warmth, I would be the leader people would avoid and feared.
With high warmth and low expectations, it can lead to the community to being nice and friendly, lots of fun, people but unable/unwilling to set boundaries, or have crucial conversations in fear of upsetting others. This can lead to an imbalance of work that gets done on the site, some fellow leaders having to pick up the work of their fellow leaders because often times work gets done as a group and everyone needs to do their part of the work. The community as a whole would not grow because we often like to stay in our comfort zones and without being challenged, we often will not move out of our comfort zone…we become complacent.
Having little warmth, and high expectations can cause the community to lack empathy and compassion for each other which can cause a lot of hostility, anger, and lack of empathy. Leaders would be unwilling to reach out and help one another and focus on climbing their way to the top and getting recognized by the top leaders, even at the expense of other leaders in the group project.
When there is an imbalance of anything there is no homeostasis. Without balance of both, the community would be divided, people would feel unwelcomed, and people would not stay a part of the community and/or not want to be part of the leadership.
@Containedchaos
I totally agree with your detailed insight into it.
Thanks a lot for sharing.
Have a great weekend.
@Containedchaos
I think this is an amazing response! Great job!
@Containedchaos
Very detailed response, I think you did great with explaining this.
@Containedchaos
Thank you for sharing such an in-depth reply. 
@Containedchaos
Loads of detail, great response
@Heather225
What do you think happens if you, a 7 Cups leader, have an imbalance of these? How do you think having too low of expectations, or too little warmth, will impact 1.) the community,
I believe that if a leader is having too low expectations/low warmth it would create chaos in the community because others would be working to reach a goal of high expectation. If the community's work is not matching with one another leaders, 7 Cups would not be able to reach the benchmark that it has set to serve people better. Therefore, it is immensely required that all the leaders & the rest of the people work together to bring the change required.
and 2.) impact how you work with your fellow leaders?
It would impact my work and the rest of the leaders too because, in order to have high warmth & high expectations on 7 Cups, it is essential that we all work hand-in-hand. Lacking enthusiasm in any of the leaders in the form of low expectation or low warmth would hamper all of our performances.
@lyricalAngel70
I really like the specification of how lack of high expectation causes chaos — I hadn't thought about it in those terms before and I think that's a really good way to connect it all!
Hey dear, thank you so much for taking out time to read my response.
I wish you a great year ahead. Take care! ❤
well said and I agree with all the points you brought up. @lyricalAngel70
@Colorfulcatsofhope
Hey, thank you so much for stopping by. How are you? ❤
@lyricalAngel70
I agree with the fact that having low warmth and low expectations does hamper the performances of everyone involved
Good job in answering the question!
@cuteOrange213
Hey, thanks a lot for your kind words. ❤
How are you?
I wish you a great year ahead in life.
@lyricalAngel70
Thank you for the insight <3
@MyNameIsNicole
Thanks a lot, have a great yeah ahead! ❤
Year*
@lyricalAngel70
I found your answer clean and concise and I agree with your points. I appreciated how you formatted the answer bc it helped me segregate the information in my mind and I thought you clearly described the difference between the impact and community.
Thank you for your share and bes of luck on your LDP journey! :)
@Heather225
Too low expectations: 1) The community will be impacted because the people within it will not be working to such a high quality. Without reasonably high expectations there will be things that are left to slip below the quality bar we would like to keep and hence, can make the community a less safe, productive and constructive place. The community would be impacted because community functions best when everyone does their best to the best of their ability (note, their ability, not the ability of someone else; expectations can be high and also individually catered) without expectations this cannot happen. 2) Working with fellow leaders will be impacted in two directions. Firstly, if I don't have reasonably high expectations for my fellow leaders it may be that they don't put in the same amount of effort that they otherwise would with someone helping them to push a little further. If I didn't have high expectations of myself however, then it would mean that I would be incredibly difficult to work with because it would be other people holding me up, rather than a community where we work together.
Too little warmth: 1) Having too little warmth would make the community a much less inviting place. Without the warmth in our community, it would be cold and likely clinical, perhaps it would seem like it was treating people like problems to solve rather than people to help. This would make the space seem unsafe and uninviting, this is obviously an issue as the whole point of 7 Cups is to help people and make them feel heard and cared for. Without warmth, this is not possible for the community as a whole. 2) When working with fellow leaders a lack of warmth may lead to my being impatient or indifferent to what is going on. Without warmth, people work together ineffectively which would defeat the purpose of having leaders at all. It would be very difficult to work with anyone who didn't have some degree of warmth or care for the person they were working with, and also, the cause that they were working for.
@GlitteringNights
Amazing answer. I agree with all the points that you stated!
@Heather225
What do you think happens if you, a 7 Cups leader, have an imbalance of these? How do you think having too low of expectations, or too little warmth, will impact
1.) the community - Having low expectations/ little warmth would decrease the amount of actual interaction being done and will create a comfort zone that won't be productive at all for the community to grow.
2.) impact how you work with your fellow leaders? - Low expectations or low warmth sets the fellow leaders to misunderstand each other & could give rise to arguments which are to be avoided in order to maintain a healthy relationship with all our fellow leaders in order to make the team grow.
@She13
wonderful post! i agree with everything mentioned, especially when you mentioned that the community wouldn't be productive and wouldn't be able to grow with low expectations and little warmth. keep up the great work! :)
@She13
Yes! lack of communication and miscommunication leads to frustration and arguments
@She13
I like how you point out people would get stuck in their own comfort zone without trying new things and achieve new things. Having a high expectation and high warmth definitely gives people the confidence to try out things they wouldn't otherwise.
Having low expectation but high warmth would result in a very friendly and comfortable surrounding but real progress won't be achieved in a community because of very little or no contribution.
Having high expectations but low warmth would result in progress but at the same time it wont help in a friendly and comfortable surrounding. It will create less understanding, less empathy and less trust which is very harmful for the growth of a community.
You got both right on point well done @sia1325
I think a team with high warmth and low expectations will have its own set of problems. The members of the team will not know what is expected of them and who would do which work that can lead to work not getting done or work been turned in late . It could also lead to some members doing more than thier share of work or some members not doing any work at all. I think there would still be trust and repect though out the team,
With a team with high expectations and low warmth would have the opposite. Set of problems. They would know what is expected of each team teammates and the work would be eqaul define among team mates. The work will be on time. I think the members will have hard time getting along and there would be a lot of Communication problems. I think it would be a toxic and stressful place that leads to burn out.
If I lack either of thoses thing team members will not be able trust me I would bring the team down. I would not have a good reputation on the team
@Heather225
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(Question: What do you think happens if you, a 7 Cups leader, have an imbalance of these? How do you think having too low of expectations, or too little warmth, will impact 1.) the community, and 2.) impact how you work with your fellow leaders?)
1. Impact on the community
I think that as soon as the warmth and the expectations reduce in the community, the organisational powers of the community will reduce drastically. This means that when there is less warmth when working together, an organisation would fall apart as no one would have the compassion to help one another. When the is fewer expectations set, an organisation would end up not moving forward as there is no goal to reach and there is no improvement will be made to improve the conditions.
2 Impact on how I work with my fellow leaders
When we have less warmth when working together, no effective communications would occur between the teammates of a certain organisation. I think less warmth would hamper the communication skills and collaborative work as we won't have enough patience to help another out. When there are fewer expectations is set, no self-progress would be seen as there is no goal in mind. We would end up wandering lifelessly without an end result set in mind
(I hope my answers are not confusing, haha.)
But I wanted to end it by saying, low expectations and low warmth would severely affect the performance of an organisation.
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What do you think happens if you, a 7 Cups leader, have an imbalance of these?
Most likely either burnout, or feeling disconnected from your role and not wanting to continue.
How do you think having too low of expectations, or too little warmth, will impact 1.) the community, and 2.) impact how you work with your fellow leaders?
The community can be impacted by these because they won’t be getting the best leadership, and therefore support, that they could be getting. Stressed out and unsupported leaders leads to little warmth given in return to the community, but leaders without many expectations leave the community with little impact and not much being done. Fellow leaders are impacted in a similar way, if everyone is feeling little warmth and a lot of expectations, negative feelings and stress grow, but if everyone is super nice but no one is holding any expectations, it can feel like a mess and as if there’s not much leadership at all.
Growing up, I have felt a personal imbalance between high expectations and high warmth. The people around me either had high expectations and low warmth or low expectations and high warmth. I hope to find the right balance.
Too Low Expectations:
Community impact: �There wouldnt be a lot of motivation from the community Very little involvement. No one would know what they should be working on. There would be no progress.
Relationships with other leaders: The relationship with other leaders might be strained because they may feel like Im not pulling my weight or doing my part. They may also ultimately decide that they dont want to work with me.
Too Low Warmth:
Community impact: Other listeners may feel intimidated by me and not want to come to me for support or feedback. There also might lack structure and there wouldnt be a lot of progress made.
Relationships with other leaders: The relationships with fellow leaders would lack professionalism, and there wouldnt be any accountability. People would feel good and connected, but not a lot would get done.