Being a Leaders Who is the Source of a Compelling Future

What distinguishes great leadership from those who are leaders in title only is the way great leaders speak to their various constituencies – a way of speaking that generates possibilities and a mood of excitement, and enthusiasm and an itchiness to get into collaborative action to follow and make things happen – yes, even a cult like following. (Think Apple)

It is a speaking that sources, or generates, or brings into existence a bold new future for his or her organization, and everyone the organization touches – and, it is a future the leader really, really, really wants.

It is a speaking that engages and compels - one that redirects the trajectory of the organization’s impact in the market.  

It is a speaking we all have access to in those moments when we are in touch with our purpose, passions, vision and commitments – in those moments when our connection to our purpose passion, vision and commitments is so visceral it has pushed aside conversations about feasibility, practicality, pathways… blah, blah, blah, that, so often derail even our most ambitious intentions.

Great leaders recognize the default mode of most speaking is descriptive. They know the discussion in most meetings, or the exchanges of most commentators is simply the point-of-view, or opinion of the speaker, being spoken as if describing facts.

Leader’s speaking is sourced from the stand they are, independently from how they think/know people will react.

Great leaders have mastered how to respond to peoples’ reactions to the future they want after they speak vs. conditioning their speaking before the fact so as to avoid push back or the clamor for certainty and agreement that follows the, “Yea but…” – they know how to reframe concerns and connect people to shared passions and commitments.

Reflect briefly about the leaders you admire and respect the most – your version of Great Leaders Through History – and check for yourself:

• Were they shaped by circumstances or their commitments? 
• Were they resolute in pursuing their vision or reasonable in the face of resistance?
• Were they shaped by organizing principles or were they practical (political), going along to get along?
• Were setbacks an excuse to change course, even give up, or were setbacks fuel for more imagination and creativity?

Reflect on your own leadership:

What do you see to STOP that gets in the way of you being a great (or just better) leader?
What do you see to START that will contribute to you being a great (or just better) leader?

What do you see to CONTINUE that already contributes to you being a good, but not yet great, leader?

What do you see to DO DIFFERENTLY that will contribute to you being a great (or just better) leader?

Free People to Express Their Full Contribution - The Organizations Vitality Depends On It

Karl Popper the philosopher had a wonderful admonition that leaders would be wise to take to heart. He said, don't confuse clock with clouds. To paraphrase him, he said clocks you can take apart, examine, rebuild, make bigger, more complicated with more features... Clouds, on the other hand, need be dealt with as a whole, they are complex, self-organizing, adaptive systems, not mechanisms. You can't deal with clouds with the same thinking and methods as you deal with clocks.

Any system that includes people needs to be thought of more as clouds than clocks - or, how do we unleash/harness the complex, adaptive, intelligent, human social system to self-organize around the organization's purpose, mission, strategies and values, so that the system is ever expanding to take advantage of opportunities in the market and be self-repairing in the event of loss of key parts of the system – knowing that a clockwork/mechanistic approach won't do it?

I am often in conversations with clients about succession planning. My counsel: don't waste time on these kinds of planning exercises. Instead, create a culture and a set of habits for ongoing talent development so that people are continually growing readying themselves to step into new roles with new accountabilities as the business needs them to.

At Perret Roche Partners our perspective is that we need to think from a different place about talent development, about succession, even about how we organize to get things done day-to-day – here are some examples:

• Have the dominant organizing model be a network of accountabilities - with each person accountable to a specific person(s) to produce specific measurable desired results in time – all cascaded from the leader's accountability – being the source of  the purpose, mission, strategies, and values of the organization
• Functions stay in place as centers of excellence, example, finance, IT, manufacturing
• In a self-organizing, distributed leadership organizing model personal growth is part of everyone's role and that means always getting ready to take on larger accountabilities
• Regular after-action reviews and the practice of giving and receiving feedback is the most effective way of continually preparing people for larger roles and accountabilities.

Here are some cultural perspectives that forward/constrain succession development. For example:

Augmenting knowledge sharing/knowledge management with ignorance management – the practices for surfacing areas of ignorance to be the trigger event for ideation

Distinguishing carelessness from failure – the former to be minimized, the latter to be encouraged 

Manage requests, promises, and offers as part of supporting individuals become more reliable in taking on and delivering ever larger accountabilities.

Managing People Makes Them Stupid

Some Things We All Know Instinctively

1. MWe – (Me and We) are intelligent. Mostly, in any given circumstance we either know what to do, or we can figure out what to do. That is what's got us this far
2. The more autonomous we are the quicker we figure out what's next, regardless of the novelty of the circumstances
3. The more context we have the easier it is for us to figure out the most useful actions to take to get the outcomes we want. Even when the context changes our actions will change too
4. We are naturally responsible – response-able, pretty much a natural reflex
5. Our bias is to look good and avoid looking bad, so the approval of others figures in our decision-making, just as much as producing desired outcomes. Good to be aware of this one
6. We are survival mechanisms. Survival is programmed into our DNA. The fight, flight and freeze mechanism is what has kept our species evolving. We need it to keep us safe. We don't need it to keep us scared and stuck which is also part of the survival design
7. We are extraordinary when we connect our actions to our values, when we are passionate about what we are doing, when we are working with people we admire and respect
8. We are purpose-driven even when we not able to say what our purpose is in a neat sentence or two, we are purposeful nonetheless.

We Don't Need To Be Managed

When we are "managed" we naturally surrender our own intelligence and defer to the intelligence of our "manager"

Occasionally deferring to someone else is smart, after all, we all have blind spots. However, it is when we surrender our autonomy when deferring to someone else that we risk becoming stupid. 

Paradoxically in those moments of surrendering our autonomy, we are seen to become stupid, so we are "managed" as if we are stupid, and thus the vicious cycle begins.

What We Need Is To Be Called Into Action

We are at our best following a pied piper of our choosing. That's what the best leaders are

We need a cause, a purpose, bigger than ourselves – a possibility that excites us

We need the freedom to "not know", to run experiments, to try out new ideas, do new things

We need it to be safe to fail, to mess up, fess up, clean up, learn and move on

We need our work to mean something. We need feedback, to know we are making a difference.

People Are Doing Their Very Best

People Are Doing Their Very Best

Yes, have the point of view that people at work are doing their very best. 

If they are not meeting expectations then in all likelihood the cause may be one of these:

1. They are working two jobs: the one they are being paid for and the exhausting unpaid one of lying to cover up they don't know certain things
2. They are hiding to avoid making mistakes 
3. They are faking engagement and alignment because it is not safe to speak what is true for them.

Ask, How Can I Help You? 

What Support Do You Need?

And, really mean it. Keep looking for ways to help people speak up and share their background conversations make it safe for them to say what is going on with them.

Catch them failing and acknowledge the effort. And then do an after action review with them so they can learn from the experience.

People really are doing their very best...and with your help, they will learn, and grow, and do even better.

The Conversations We Have With Ourselves

We Pay a Lot of Attention to What We Speak

We pay a lot of attention to what we speak, and how we speak, and very little to how we listen. 

When we are in conversations with others we think that we and they are a blank slate that are simply ready to receive any communication from us fully…

Nothing is further from the truth! While a conversation is going on in the foreground, i.e., what is actually being said out loud between people, we are engaged in an on-going conversation with ourselves in the background. In the background, there is always speaking with and to ourselves. 

The speaking is constant and, at times, very loud, commenting on everything. 

This "conversation with ourselves" is automatic and unstoppable. We don't have it, "it has us". 

The Good News...

If we start paying attention to our background conversations when we are on our own we will begin to discover an enormous amount of very useful stuff about ourselves. Stuff that we can build on, and stuff we can delete, just like we update our data files...yes, keep this, and scrap that...all so as to get more of what we want for ourselves out of life.

We will hear all the obvious stuff, by that I mean the stuff we already know about ourselves: our likes and dislikes, our opinions, our beliefs, our fears, our biases, and also what makes us happy, gives us joy, and gives us a sense of meaning.

What We Will Also Hear...

What we will also hear are a lot of conversations, and fragments of conversations, that are simply not true, and need to be corrected, or even eliminated.

Designing the life you really want starts with amplifying and editing our background conversations.

Many of the conversations we have with ourselves are simply not true. We told ourselves something, or more often, someone else told us something, which we believed and it is shaping us. Here are some typical examples:

• I'm not good enough...I am always falling short, screwing up, making mistakes
• I'll never get what I want, so what's the point of hoping and trying
• I am just not very good at...[fill in the blank]

Do An Inventory of Your Background Conversation

The deal then is is build on the conversations that serve you...they forward what you want to accomplish...your vision for yourself. And, eliminate the ones that don't serve you. The ones that don't make you happy, or even make you sad or depressed.

In subsequent posts we'll explore how to edit and rescript your background conversations. Your first job is to observe them and make notes...then we'll get to action editing, amplifying and re-scripting.

We All Have Background Conversations...But What Are They?

What's Your Background Conversation?

That is a useful question to start the process of encouraging people to be aware that they have a background conversation that, without prompting, they may not  think to share. 

And, if open, honest, and direct communications is our goal, we need to find ways to make it safe for people to say what's on their mind.

We have to be mindful though that we don't cross a threshold into being interrogators, after all, we are all entitled to our private thoughts...we don't have to share everything we think.

Having someone willing to share with us what they think...what they really think...is a function of our genuine curiosity to know what's on their mind when we ask.  Being willing to be completely open is a function of the level of affinity we share, and the level of trust that exists between us. 

When Background Conversations Naturally Become Foreground Conversations

When the relationships are good colleagues, friends, and family will share their background conversations with us in lots of different ways. For example we'll naturally ask:

• What do you think of the idea?
• What's on your mind...?
• You haven't said very much...anything you want to say?
• Any questions or reservations you'd like to share?
• Any feedback you'd like to give me?
• ...

And, when we are speaking...from an intention to be open, direct and unexpurgated...it becomes superfluous to announce what your background conversation is, because by virtue of the fact you are speaking, without prompting, it is not a background conversation anymore.

 As one person put it, "I noticed myself cringing when people announce that their "background conversation is...". "If the idea is to tell people what we are really thinking, perhaps the next evolutionary step in our communications with each other should be... to remove the boundary between our internal and external monologue."

Sharing Our Background Conversations a Prerequisite For Great Communications

How Familiar Is This Scene For You

You are in the middle of a conversation with someone, or even in a meeting with several people, and your background conversation kicks in...you know that conversation you have with yourself: 

• I wonder what she meant by...? 
• Oops, that idea didn't go over very well
• Why does he always want to debate every detail?
• I am wasting my time sitting in this meeting...

Yet you say nothing. And the uncertainties and nagging questions persist. You may even have a "meeting after the meeting" with colleagues and share opinions and assessments about your background conversations...each of you trying to figure out how accurate they were.

Yet, the only people who can tell you for sure aren't in the conversation.

How Come We Don't Just Ask?

• Anita, what did you mean exactly when you said...?
• Did my idea just bomb with all of you?
• Joe, what exactly is your concern with my proposal, it seems to me you have a lot of reservations?
• I don't see why I have been invited to this meeting...any objections if I leave?

Mostly We Are Not Paying Attention To Our Background Conversations As We Do To The Foreground Conversations

If we did we would be able to share our background conversations and, we would be able to ask others what their background conversations are...given we now know they have them.

We could even take a stab at speculation what they are. For example, instead of wondering what she meant, you could speculate and test what you think she meant. "So, are you saying we should cancel the project?" She will either validate your speculation or, she might reply, "No, I was thinking if we don't put more resources on the project we'll fail."

If We Want Conversations That Matter, That Make A Difference We Have To Share Our Background Conversations

How else will people know what we really think and feel. How will they know our expectations, our aspirations, or our concerns. 

And how else will we know what others think and feel, what their expectations are, what their aspirations or concerns are?

Absent this knowledge our conversations are shallow. I even go so far as to say they are inauthentic. We are not being completely truthful if we are withholding part of ourselves.

This withholding goes a long way in explaining why so many attempts at communication with people don't work out well. Why relationships don't work as well as they could. Why teams don't trust each other, and don't function as well as they could