Jun

24

The importance of context for successful leadership

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Tony Mayo, co-author of "In Their Time: The Greatest Business Leaders of the Twentieth Century", discusses the importance of contextual intelligence for leaders. In his post Tony Mayo describes the importance of context for leaders….

"Yes, business leaders need to have certain personal characteristics to be successful, but it is often the application of those characteristics within a specific context that define great success. It’s not only who you are, but when and where you are."

Too much emphasis is placed on heroic leaders, those special individuals with a unique set of traits, CEO’s who turn-around large organisations and political leaders that free a nation. Tony goes on to note that:

“There is far too much focus on individual characteristics of leadership and far too little focus on the situational context. By placing too much emphasis on the individual, we can easily fall prey to the cult of the CEO and believe that any individual who was successful in one setting would naturally be successful in a new setting. The list of once-successful CEOs who have failed in new business settings is long.”

This focus on heroic leadership traits, leads to a number of dysfunctional behaviours, such as:

  • The tendency to try and become like our leadership hero’s, instead of seeking to become more of who we are, to be original’s and not copies. What traits and factors that made a leader great in the past, will not necessarily make the leader great tomorrow. This is why you cannot blindly emulate successful leaders from the past and expect to get the same results. What made Jack Welch successful, will not make your successful. We need to leader from successful leaders and not to try to emulate or copy them.
  • The tendency to over-estimate the importance of our leaders, and to under-estimate the difference we can make in our daily actions.
  • The tendency to relay on past success and limit ourselves from experimenting and trying new things.

Given the importance of context, it’s important for  leaders to be able to make sense of the changing environment and then adapt their leadership style, approach and behaviour to ensure they’re effective in the new context.

“Clearly, context is important. Business leaders who have been sensitive to context possess what Nitin Nohria and I call contextual intelligence. Not only do these leaders understand the implications of the contextual forces that surround them, they also have the ability to adapt and change their leadership style and approach as environmental conditions evolve. Success in one realm does not always translate into success in another. Indeed, relying on past models of success without being sensitive to the context of the situation has often yielded major disappointments.” - Tony Mayo, Why Do Some Leaders Have More Influence than Others?

Do you have a good understanding of the context in which you are leading?

Do you know what leadership behaviour and traits will be most effective in this context?

 

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Jun

15

The importance of sensemaking in leadership

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One of the critical leadership capabilities required today is sensemaking, which is defined by Wikipedia as:

“..the ability or attempt to make sense of an ambiguous situation. More exactly, sensemaking is the process of creating situational awareness and understanding in situations of high complexity or uncertainty in order to make decisions.”

The MIT Leadership Center published an article that further describes the five major tasks involved in sensemaking titled “Making a Difference by Making Sense”. Sensemaking is also one of the components of the MIT Distributed Leadership Model, one of the best leadership frameworks, which I have discussed in a previous post. As discussed in the article…

“Leaders learn to compete, survive and change by first understanding the context in which an organization and its people operate….. leaders share a common challenge—the need to quickly assess a constantly changing environment and to continually readjust as they take in new information and impressions. How can they make sense of a world where feedback is unclear and inconsistent? Where the ‘correct’ answer is not obvious? Where they must understand and change their environment simultaneously? This important leadership challenge is called sensemaking: discovering new terrain as you invent it.”

Sensemaking consists of five major tasks:

  1. Observe: “Sensemakers ask, ‘What’s the story?’ They pay close attention to their environment and look for hints of change. Because the world does not evolve in linear fashion, sensemakers look for strategic inflection points.”
  2. Question: “… sensemakers ask for help. They are open about problems and gain perspective from outside advisors. Under pressure, people often fall back on their habitual ways of responding. But times of crisis frequently require innovative solutions. That’s why sensemakers must resist snap judgments. When they see similarities to a past situation, they need to step back and think about how the new situation may be different.”
  3. Act: “Sensemakers use early observations to shape decisions. They look for new ways to lay out alternatives and a better way to understand choices. Then, they take action and see what happens. They are like explorers, dropping a pebble into a pond to gauge its depth.”
  4. Reassess: “Sensemaking is grounded in an appreciation of what is. Therefore, every conclusion is open to question. Sensemakers realize that yesterday’s choices may not work today. A static model does not work in a dynamic world. Sensemakers have the courage to let go of prior assumptions. That’s why sensemakers never stop. The environment is always changing, so there is no final answer. Sensemakers continually review and update. Because experience informs action, sensemakers change their plans even as they roll them out.”
  5. Communicate: “Sensemakers are storytellers, and to tell stories they must simplify. Sensemakers help others understand complex situations, enabling the others to act.”

 

In summary …. “Sensemaking means acting in order to think. Sensemaking (where we are) spawns visioning (where we could be). By understanding their environment, the leaders described here learned how to compete, survive, and change.”

Sensemaking is a skill that all leaders need to develop and hone. Leaders need to be aware of the changing context in which they lead. How aware are you of your changing context?

 

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Mar

24

Leader as social architect…

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The need for effective "social architectures" within organisation is critical if we are too ensure that we develop future leaders, to drive innovation and to create an organisation that has a great legacy. If we examine our leadership, I’m sure we’ll find that meetings are where we do much, if not most, of our leading.

Peter Block in his book “The Answer to How is Yes” discusses the importance of the leaders’ role as social architect which he describes as follows:

"Where the architect designs physical space, the social architect designs social space….. the role of the social architect is to create service-orientated organisations, businesses, governments, and schools that meet their institutional objectives in a way that gives those involved space to act on what matters to them…. The social architect’s task is to create the space for people to act on what matters to them."

Social architecture is about leading in a way that creates space for what matters! To focus on creating the necessary conditions for acting on what matters is one of the most urgent needs of organisations today. Peter Block goes on to say that "Acting on what matters is an act of leadership, it is not dependent on the leadership of others." This means we all need to take responsibility for our choices and our actions. Leadership is a choice, it’s a decision we make to act on what matters. Issues such as integrity, responsibility, and authenticity are all issues that matter.

 

The five capabilities of the social architect

Peter Block describe the following five capabilities as being necessary for the social architect to be effective. Paradoxically much on these ‘capabilities’ seem to get lost in the organisation we work in today…

  1. Convening: "Social architecture is fundamentally, a convening function, giving particular attention to all aspects of how people gather. The future is created as a collective act…… The fundamental tenet of social architecture is that the way people gather is critical to the way the system functions." In many organisations meetings are seen as a ‘necessary evil’, something to be tolerated, in between more important events. The consideration of how people gather and meet is of secondary importance.
  2. Naming the question: "The social architect has an obligation to define the context, or the playing field, and then define the right questions, at least to start with". Too many people dive into the how, selling solutions and describing best practices. Not enough people lead by taking the time to understand the quest that matters.
  3. Initiating new conversations for learning: "To sustain the habitability of a social system we must initiate new conversations and manage the airspace so that all voices stay engaged with each other." Too many conversations in organisations are initiated to ‘align’ people to lead them towards a predetermined answer, with not enough learning happening.
  4. Sticking with strategies of engagement and consent: "…dialogue itself is part of the solution…. Commitment and accountability cannot be sold. They have to be evoked, and evocation comes through conversation." Organisations change through effective conversation.
  5. Designing strategies that support local choice: "If our intent is to create a social system that people want to inhabit then the social architect’s job is to demand that the inhabitants join in designing the system."

Looking at the above list it seems that organisations are failing in their ability to create social systems that encourage people to act on what matters. Instead organisation are creating systems of compliance. What has been the result of your leadership?

 

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Aug

11

Leading for the Next Act

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The article titled “Leading for the Next Act: Why CEOs Must Evolve or Step Aside“ published in Knowledge@Wharton provides an interesting discussion concerning the need for leaders to change their leadership style to fit that challenges facing their organisations.

“The secret to long-term CEO success, suggests David Nadler, a consultant to boards and senior executives, is conceiving of a CEO’s tenure as a performance with a series of distinct acts. ‘Each act requires the CEO to lead, think and behave in fundamentally different ways. The successful ones are those who are able to make the transitions,’ Nadler said during his presentation at the 11th annual Wharton Leadership Conference, sponsored by the Center for Leadership and Change Management, the Center for Human Resources and Wharton Executive Education…… “The problem comes after the CEO solves that first issue; then it is act two and something else is needed,” he says. Many CEOs fail because of what Nadler terms ’success syndrome,’ that is, codifying a certain way of doing things, and then charging ahead with the old game plan no matter how the context has changed…… What leaders who successfully transition from one act to the next share is an awareness of what kind of leadership is required at the right moment — and they don’t rest on their laurels.”

This is a common leadership challenge, success can be a leaders worst enemy. Success often deceives leaders, causing them to think they have it “all figured out”, it creates pride and fuels ego’s, creating the perfect cocktail for future failure….

“‘They fail to recognize that things are changing, and often, they are unable to assess their own capabilities.’ With these blind spots in place, the CEOs continue to press ahead, widening the gap between their vision and the company’s reality. ‘We call that ‘the death spiral,’ said Nadler…. Feeding into this negative cycle is the hard fact that CEOs may not hear frank words from their insular circle of advisors — or care to listen when the truth is spoken. ‘Normally we think of learning-disabled kids, but I see learning-disable executives, who lack the ability to take in new information and determine the insider implications for it.’”

When leaders are not open to feedback from the business environment and people around them, they cannot adapt to the changing business context, resulting in failure. I’ve often observed how executive will choose to rationalize and defend deteriorating results, rather than looking inward to examine the appropriateness of their leadership style…..

“Part of the CEO’s task, then, is to ruthlessly assess him or herself as the business context changes. ‘Do I have an understanding of what’s needed now in terms of new leadership requirements? Do I have a sense of my own leadership capabilities? Can I understand the gap between what’s required by the new situation and what I’m capable of doing?’”

For successful leaders this is a whole lot more difficult than it seems! A critical leadership capability is the ability to face reality. As Jack Welch says “face reality as it is, not as it was nor as you wish it were“. To me, facing reality means having NO ILLUSIONS, to focus on outcomes and to become more self-aware.

 

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Mar

11

Why context matters

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The Functioning Form blog has a post Lessons From The Tipping Point that really got me thinking about the leader’s role in setting and shaping the organisational context. The post provides a very good summary of Malcolm Gladwell’s book “The Tipping Point“. The post summarises from the book “The Power of Context” as follows:

  • The Power of Context says that human beings are a lot more sensitive to their environment than they seem.
  • Context says you don’t have to solve the big problems to enact change. Little things can make a big difference.
  • When people are in a group, responsibility for acting is diffused. They assume someone else will make take action or that no action is needed.
  • In smaller groups people are a lot closer. They’re knit together which is important if you want to be successful at community life.
  • We are actually profoundly influenced by our surroundings, our immediate context, and the personalities of those around us.
  • Merely by manipulating the size of a group we can dramatically improve its receptivity to new ideas.

The last thing a fish is likely to discover is the water it’s swimming in. Like the fish, we take context for granted, even though context has a huge impact on our world. Leaders set the organisational context in which action takes place. Like fish many of people in organisation don’t see the context in which they act. Leaders have the role of setting and shapeing a context that encourages initiative and right action by followers.

“Hay Group research has shown up to 30 per cent of variance in business results can be explained by differences in the work climate created by managers. “Managers who are able to create an all-around engaging work climate can have an invaluable effect on an employee’s commitment to a company and the productivity a group of employees can generate” - Management-Issues

Without a proper context people fail to act. Take for example time when an organisation is planning to re-structure. How do the people respond? In my experience, as employees are anticipating structural changes, they become passive, failing to make important decisions resulting in postponed action. In this case passivity is the result of an uncertain context! Context shapes behaviour…

Like fish, People may not consciously be aware of their context, but if you remove it the effects are clear. The bottom line is that people need an appropriate context in which to act. Context matters! So what type of context is being created by your leadership? Are you creating a context that:

  • Moves people towards a shared vision?
  • Do people know what’s important?
  • Is your example guiding people’s behaviour?
  • Do your conversations focusing people on what matters?

If you don’t actively shape your organisations context someone else will….!

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