Apr
25
Questions leaders ask themselves
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The Febuary issue of the Leadership Wired Newsletter from John Maxwell, had an great article “Questions I Ask Myself” that focuses on the following questions that leaders should be asking themselves:
- Am I investing in myself? This is a personal growth question.
- Am I Genuinely Interested In Others? This is a motive question.
- Am I Doing What I Love and Loving What I Do? - This is a passion question. You will never fulfill your destiny doing work you despise. You are nothing unless it comes from your heart.
- Am I Investing My Time with the Right People? - This is a relationship question. Most people can trace their successes and failures to the relationships in their lives. Be selective about who you join with on the leadership journey. Choose companions with a commitment to personal growth, a healthy attitude, and high potential.
- Am I Staying in My Strength Zone? - This is an effectiveness question. Effective leaders stop working on their weaknesses and diligently develop their strengths.
- Am I Taking Others to a Higher Level? - This is a mission question. My success is determined by the seeds I sow, not the harvest I reap. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said it best: “Life’s most urgent question is: what are you doing for others?”
- Am I Taking Care of Today? - This is a success question. The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda. Are the habits in your life steering your toward success or simply frittering away your time? Be serious about making each day count.
- Am I Taking Time To Think? - This is a leadership question. A minute of thought is greater than an hour of talk. Author your own life by clearing your schedule for thinking.
- Am I Developing Leaders? - This is a legacy question. “The ultimate test for a leader is not whether he or she makes smart decisions and takes decisive action, but whether he or she teaches others to be leaders and builds an organization that can sustain its success even when he or she is not around. True leaders put ego aside and strive to create successors who go beyond them.” ~ Lorin Woolfe
- Am I Pleasing God? - This is an eternity question. As the Roman general, Maximus, exhorts his men in Gladiator, “What we do in life echoes in eternity.”
A great list of question that are worth considering….!
Technorati Tags: Questions, Development, Management, Growth, Leadership
Apr
22
Moving Beyond Debate: Start a Dialogue
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I posted previously about the importance of leading through conversation. Leadership conversations are those difficult conversations we have about exploring who we are, what we value, what we stand for and where we are going. They’re about breaking new ground and exploring together the future that we want to create. Often the staring point for these type of conversations is a clear understanding of our current reality. In my experience seeing current reality as it is as opposed to how we wish is were is, without becoming defensive and rationalizing away what we find, is a very difficult conversation. I believe that effective leadership conversations occur when we learn. When leading conversations, it’s important that as leaders we encourage a specific type of conversation, a conversation that Mark Gerzon refers to as dialogue.
Mark Gerzon author of “Leading Through Conflict: How Successful Leaders Transform Differences into Opportunities” wrote a great article on HBS Working Knowledge titled Moving Beyond Debate: Start a Dialogue which captures the difference between debate and dialogue and provides a good foundation for building great leadership conversations. As Mark points out, people prefer dialogue over powerpoint!
As I worked in more than a hundred organizations or communities over the past decade, I kept track of which form of discourse my clients most often wanted. They did not want more speeches and presentations. They did not want more debates between two know-it-alls, each of whom was sure they were right and the other person was wrong. They did not want yet another “exchange of views” that skirted difficult issues and papered over problems. What they yearned for was deep, honest, inclusive, and respectful dialogue.
Key insight….. effective dialogue is built on trust!
Trust is the foundation of great dialogue. It’s trust that allows people, who each have different world views, beliefs and frames of reference to engage in productive dialogue. Julio Olalla says that ”Trust is the precondition for coordinated action“. Trust makes conversation possible and where there is trust defensiveness is reduced and learning can begin. As highlighted in the article:
“….polarized debate (which is rampant in both corporate and civic life) does not raise the level of trust; conversely, genuine dialogue (which is rare) often does.”
Trust increases a teams creativity. This allows people to explore new territory and bridge different worldviews:
Our goal now is to build the trust necessary to create alliances between adversaries (bridging) so that they can catalyze new approaches to, and potentially breakthroughs in, the conflict (innovation).
Trust is built by engaging in dialogue which is described in the article by the following table:
|
Debate |
Dialogue |
| Assuming that there is a right answer, and that you have it | Assuming that many people have pieces of the answer |
| Combative: participants attempt to prove the other side wrong | Collaborative: participants work together toward common understanding |
| About winning | About exploring common ground |
| Listening to find flaws and make counter-arguments | Listening to understand, find meaning and agreement |
| Defending our own assumptions as truth | Revealing our assumptions for reevaluation |
| Seeing two sides of an issue | Seeing all sides of an issue |
| Defending one’s own views against those of others | Admitting that others’ thinking can improve one’s own. |
| Searching for flaws and weaknesses in others’ positions | Searching for strengths and value in others’ positions |
| By creating a winner and a loser, discouraging further discussion | Keeping the topic even after the discussion formally ends |
| Seeking a conclusion or vote that ratifies your position | Discovering new options, not seeking closure |
In discussing the above table Mark makes the following observations:
Notice how debate is a powerful strategy for advocating a fixed position, while dialogue is far better for inquiry, building relationships, and creating innovations……While debate is useful for making decisions and taking votes, dialogue is the key to renewal. The power of debate is that two polarized voices are free to speak. But the power of dialogue is that these voices can actually be heard.
One of the benefits of engage in dialogue is that leaders are able to gain higher levels of commitment those involved in dialogue. As Steven Covey observed “No involvement, no commitment“.
An organization or community can develop the clearest, most inspiring plans. But if those involved do not feel heard and engaged, and if their concerns are not taken into account through genuine dialogue, those plans will not be well executed.
Dialogue is what effective conversation is all about. The interesting part is that there seems to be so little dialogue happen in business today. We’re so busy rushing to get things done that we fail to slow down and make time for meaningful dialogue. The consequences are an increasing lack of meaning and purpose in organisations (see previous posts here and here). We may have gained efficiency, but at what cost? It seems to me that too many businesses have lost their soul in the process!
“I never saw an instance of one or two disputants convincing the other by argument.” —Thomas Jefferson
Technorati Tags: Conversation, Communication, Management, Collaboration, Leadership, Business, Business, Learning
Apr
20
The MIT Leadership Framework…
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The MIT Leadership Center has a great leadership framework, discussed in the article “Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty” by Deborah Ancona, the Director of the MIT Leadership Center. The framework was developed by four MIT Sloan faculty members, Deborah Ancona, Wanda Orlikowski, Peter Senge and Tom Malone and is underpinned by the following four core assumptions:
- Leadership is Distributed. That is, leadership is not solely the purview of the CEO, but can and should permeate all levels of the firm.
- Leadership is Personal and Developmental. There is no single way to lead. The best way to create change is to work with the particular capabilities that you have, while constantly working to improve and expand those capabilities.
- Leadership is a Process to Create Change. Leadership is about making things happen, contingent on a context. Leaders may create change by playing a central role in the actual change process, or by creating an environment in which others are empowered to act.
- Leadership Develops Over Time. It is through practice, reflection, following role models, feedback, and theory that we learn leadership.
SENSEMAKING
Sensemaking is about “making sense of the world around us”. The act of Sensemaking is discovering the new terrain as you are inventing it. In the very process of mapping the new terrain, you are creating it.
Tips for Sensemaking:
- Seek many types and sources of data.
- Involve others in your sensemaking.
- Do not simply apply your existing frameworks and overlay them on the situation.
- Move beyond stereotypes.
- Learn from small experiments.
- Use images, metaphors, or stories to try to capture and communicate critical elements of your map.
RELATING
Relating is about “developing key relationships withint and across organisations” and consists of the following three primary components:
- Inquiry which is the ability to listen and understand what others are thinking and feeling. It also involves trying to understand how the other person has moved from data to interpretation to assessment, rather than simply reacting to the assessment itself.
- Advocacy which involves taking a stand and trying to influence others of its merits while also being open to alternative views.
- Connecting which is the ability to build collaborative relationships with others and to create coalitions for change.
Tips for effective connecting are:
- Understand the perspective of others within the organization and withhold judgment while listening to them.
- Encourage others to voice their opinions.
- Be clear about your stand and how you reached it.
- Think about how others might react to your idea and how you might best explain it to them.
- Think about your connections.
VISIONING
While sensemaking creates a map of what is, visioning is a map of what could be. Visions are important because they provide the motivation for people to give up their current views and ways of working in order to change. Perhaps most importantly, visioning provides people with a sense of meaning about their work. It answers the question “why am I doing this?” Thus good leaders are able to frame visions in a way that emphasizes their importance along some key value dimensions.
Tips for effective Visioning are:
- Develop a vision about something that excites you or that you think is important.
- Frame the vision with an ideological goal.
- Use stories, metaphors and analogies to paint a vivid picture of what the vision will accomplish.
- Practice creating a vision in many arenas.
- Enable co-workers by pointing out that they have the skills and capabilities needed to realize the vision.
- Embody the key values and ideas contained in the vision - “walk the talk.”
INVENTING
Creating is about the creation of new ways of woking together. Inventing entails creating the processes and structures needed to make the vision a reality. It involves implementing the steps needed to achieve our vision of the future.
Tips for effective inventing include:
- Maintain focus on improving the ways that people work together in your team and organization.
- When a new task or change effort emerges, think through how it will get done—who will do what, by when, and in what configuration.
- Play with new and different ways of organizing work—examine alternative ways of grouping people together, organizing their internal interaction, and linking across different groups.
- Blend sensemaking and inventing.
An interesting point mentioned in the artcile is the role that polarity or paradox plays in leadership, which the author refers to as tensions:
These capabilities can also create tensions that need to be managed. It is difficult to hold an image of the future and the present simultaneously. Balancing people and processes, action and understanding, individual and collective aspirations, can be challenging. Yet it is inherent in the framework that managing these very tensions is the essence of leadership.
Signature Style
The last component in the framework is the individual leader’s “signature style” which is “It is the change signature that determines how and what the tool is used for. While the capabilities focus on what leaders do, the change signature is about who a leader is. It develops slowly based on experience and skills. It is a key part of the leadership model because it represents who we are as leaders.”
I share this as I think this is a great leadership framework which we can use to shape our thinking and approach to leadership.
Technorati Tags: Purpose, Relating, Management, Vision, Leadership, Business, Inventing, Sensemaking, Framework, Future
Apr
15
Leading through conversation
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Leaders shape the world through the conversations they initiate and engage in. The amazing thing is how often we forget the power of conversation in shaping how we see the world. Organisations consist of conversations, conversations with teams, employees and customers. Conversation affects how we think, which in turn affects how we act.
“…its through language that we create the world, because it is nothing until we describe it. And when we describe it, we create distinctions that govern our actions. To put it another way, we do not describe the world we see, but we see the world we describe. - Joseph Jaworski, Synchronicity: the Inner Path of Leadership
Organisations consist of human beings, not only structures, processes, systems and resources. As such, they require open, honest and effective communication to become successful. This means that communication is an important leadership practice. Unless people are aware of what’s going on around them they’re unable to engage in driving the organisations’ strategy. Given the powerful role that conversations play in guiding and directing an organisation, it’s amazing how often conversation is overlooked as a leadership tool. Successful leaders recognize the importance of shaping an organisation’s conversation.
“A leader’s job is to engineer epiphanies one conversation at a time.” - Susan Scott
The purpose of strategic conversation is to focus and inspire a team and an organisation. When leaders talk about the right issues, in the right way - extraordinary things begin to happen. But if you get the conversation wrong, people become passive, unmotivated, negative and cynical.
“What gets talked about in a company and how it gets talked about determines what will happen. Or won’t happen. Conversations provide clarity or confusion. Invite cross-boundary collaboration and cooperation or add concertina wire to the walls between well-defended fiefdoms. Inspire us to tackle our toughest challenges or stop us dead in our tracks wondering why we bothered to get out of bed this morning.” - Susan Scott
Conversation is the begining of change…. It’s through conversation that our thinking begins to change, and changed thinking results in changed behaviour. Conversation, when carefully crafted and managed is a powerful means of influencing the heart and minds of others……. as in the end only people can change.
- Groups don’t change……
- Teams don’t change……
- Organisations don’t change………
Organisations change, when people change…. and … people change one conversation at a time…..
It’s the role of leadership to focus an organisation’s conversation…
How conscious have your been in shaping your “system of conversation”?
Technorati Tags: Conversation, Communication, Management, Collaboration, Leadership, Business, Business, Learning
Apr
15
Here is a list of 30 books that the Regional Leadership Forum’s (RLF) suggest that Can Make You a Better Leader. The underlying premise behind this list of 30 books is that although “a single book might not help you discover your inner leader, but 30 books can change your life.” The books in their list include the following:
- Adler: How to Read a Book
- Boyatzis & McKee: Resonant Leadership: Renewing Yourself and Connecting with Others through Mindfulness, Hope and Compassion
- Kotter: Heart of Change
- Bridges: Managing Transitions
- Buckingham: First Break all the Rules
- Dotlich, Noel and Walker: Leadership Passages
- Conger: Winning ‘Em Over
- DePree: Leadership is an Art
- Frankl: Man’s Search for Meaning
- Friedman: The World is Flat
- George: Authentic Leadership
- Ghandi: the video
- Goleman: Working with Emotional Intelligence
- Hammerschlag: The Theft of the Spirit
- Jamison: Nibble Theory
- Katzenbach: The Wisdom of Teams
- Lencioni: Death by Meeting: A Leadership Problem about Solving the most Painful Problem in Business
- Machiavelli: The Prince
- Mackenzie: Orbiting the Giant Hairball
- Marquardt: Leading with Questions: How Leaders Find the Right Solutions by Knowing What to Ask
- O’Toole: Creating the Good Life
- Patterson: Crucial Conversations
- Rousseau & Cranston: The Social Contract
- Shafir: The Zen of Listening
- Jaworski: Synchronicity
- Useem: Leadership Moment
- Wallis: Two Old Women
- Whyte: The Heart Aroused
- Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go
- Michalko: Thinkertoys
If you’re looking for something to read on leadership this is a good starting list. One great book that stands out to me as missing from this list is “The Leadership Challenge” by Kouzes and Posner. Overall it’s a great list, some of the books I’ve not heard and will be checking out soon…
Technorati Tags: Books, Reading, Management, Personal Development, Leadership, Business, Business
Apr
15
Are you executing on your highest priorities?
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An article on Forbes.com by Steven Covey entitled Work-Life Balance: A Different Cut provides some interesting findings on the inability of organisations to focus and execute on their highest priorities. The research is conducted by Harris Interactive and FranklinCovey consisting of 23,000 U.S. residents employed full time within key industries and in key functional areas. A few of their finding are that:
- Only 37% said they have a clear understanding of what their organization is trying to achieve and why.
- Only 1 in 5 were enthusiastic about their team’s and organization’s goals.
- Only 1 in 5 workers said they have a clear “line of sight” between their tasks and their team’s and organization’s goals.
- Only half were satisfied with the work they have accomplished at the end of the week.
- Only 15% felt that their organization fully enables them to execute key goals.
- Only 15% felt they worked in a high-trust environment.
- Only 17% felt their organization fosters open communication that is respectful of differing opinions and that results in new and better ideas.
- Only 10% felt that their organization holds people accountable for results.
- Only 20% fully trusted the organization they work for.
- Only 13% have high-trust, highly cooperative working relationships with other groups or departments.
Commenting on these findings Steven Covey states that:
“The bottom line is, when people are crystal clear about the most important priorities of the organization and team they work with and prioritized their work around those top priorities, not only are they many times more productive, they discover they have the time they need to have a whole life.”
The article provides the following four key disciplines that can go some way to addressing
- Discipline 1: Focus on the Wildly Important. This means you need to narrow your focus down to the one, two or three most important goals you must achieve. These goals are so important that if you don’t achieve them, nothing else you achieve really matters much.
- Discipline 2: Act on the Lead Measures. After you’ve narrowed your focus to the few key goals you must accomplish, you need to select the few key activities that are predictive of goal achievement and that you can influence on a weekly basis. These are called “lead measures.” These lead measures are 80/20 activities–that is, 80% of the results come from 20% of these activities. The 80/20 rule is also known as the Pareto principle.
- Discipline 3: Keep a Compelling Scoreboard. Once you’ve defined your goals and measures, you need to put them on a scoreboard so everyone knows all the time whether you’re winning or losing.
- Discipline 4: Create a Cadence of Accountability—a rhythm of team-based engagement and accountability.
As always, some great insights from Steven Covey….
Technorati Tags: Purpose, Meaning, Management, Vision, Leadership, Business, Research
Apr
10
Leader as the facilitators of meaning and purpose
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I have previous posted on The Importance of ‘Know Why’ over ‘Know How’ talking about the need for organisations to focus on creating shared meaning and purpose, rather than focusing primarily on creating know-how. Tom Peters has posted an article by Chris Nel who has a similar concern for the lack of purpose in organisations, he says:
“As the father of a three-year-old boy, I dread the day he announces that he wants to invest his talent, time, and energy into—a large corporation. I believe that ‘large’ is doomed to mediocrity not due to size, but because of the inherent inability of ‘large’ to generate a strong sense of common purpose in the organisation beyond making money for its stakeholders.
I believe that we as humans search for a meaningful purpose in everything we do. We are at our very best when we find it. My simple business hypothesis is based on the fact that when humans are at their best (i.e., are purposeful) they run/work in extraordinarily successful businesses. So it turns out that the leader’s primary job is not to be a clever strategist or a brilliant technician (let alone control freak) but to help people find a clear sense of purpose (not revenue targets!) in the work that they do. Profit will follow from this, not lead it”
I agree with Tom’s view that “we as humans search for a meaningful purpose in everything we do“. This belief was strongly presented by Victor Frankl, who spent many years as a Jew in German concentration camps, such as Auschwitz and wrote about his experience psychologist in his ground breaking book “Man’s Search for Meaning“, where he argues that “man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or avoid pain but rather to see meaning in his life.” Victor Frankl was able to find meaning, even in the setting of a German concentration camp! How much more should we be able to find meaning in our organisations?
Leaders as facilitators of meaning and purpose
Chris goes on to discuss the responsibility of leaders to create meaning and purpose…
“As a leader you have to be a self-starter on purpose. Finding meaning where none is apparent. You can’t inspire unless you are inspired. So, if you are not inspired it’s your duty as a leader to discover it or disappear.
If you can’t/won’t do this, the vacuum of purpose caused by your poor leadership will be rapidly filled with the self-interested behaviour of those around you. Their purpose at work becomes self-promotion by playing the corporate game. Winning looks like promotion/pay raises. Their colleagues become “the enemy.” Their boss (you) becomes a gatekeeper to be manipulated. (When did you last hear the unvarnished truth from them?) Talking a good game, burying the truth, diverting blame, not making the decision, exercising the power of the org chart, etc., etc.”
Consider your leadership, are you creating sufficient meaning and purpose within your sphere of influence? Are you talking responsibility to ‘be a self-starter on purpose’?
Technorati Tags: Purpose, Meaning, Management, Vision, Leadership, Business
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