Spiral Dynamics Integral
An explanation of Spiral Dynamics Integral (SDi) courtesy of Clare Graves, Don Beck, & Ken WIlber. A must read for those involved in human development work.
Executive Coaching
NLP Practitioner Training
Leadership Coaching
Coach Training
Showing posts with label leadership coaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label leadership coaching. Show all posts
Monday, June 27, 2011
Friday, March 4, 2011
Leadership & Intentionality - Creating Intentional Leaders
The undiagnosed virus
Most leaders are managing more than leading.
As leadership heats today's leader burns up in details.
Today's leader focuses on the what, rarely on the why (the what is important) and never on the why the why (why the why is important).
If you find yourself or your leaders showing symptoms of the above maybe you are suffering from the 'Intention Deficit Virus'. A seemingly contagious dis-ease that thrives throughout many organisation's culture.
We believe that this virus is a by-product of yesteryear's management efficiency outlook, that most leaders have failed to move through. You may be wondering why leaders struggle with this. Well, let’s take a look...
Have you ever thought or said to someone... ‘You know I think I might have a cold, I’m not sure as I don’t have any obvious symptoms, but I just don’t feel right’. You may also have noticed that your performance at work or maybe in the gym just wasn’t there. Yes? That is exactly how the ‘Intention Deficit Virus’ affects organisations and its leaders. It just goes on undiagnosed.
Diagnosis
The ‘Intention Deficit Virus’ is as it says, a deficit of intention. Suffered by the leader through failing to distinguish between what the leader is attending to and the intention behind the attending.
Yet, here is where it the virus gets smart, as viruses do once we diagnose them, and try to rid ourselves of them. The Intention (at first view) may seem fitting even admirable - The organisation 'needs me to do this' or 'we don’t have the resources to have others doing this, so I will add value by supporting this need'. Though this simply creates a fertile environment for the virus to replicate and grow.
The first step in becoming aware of our intentions is part of the way to ridding ourselves of the deficit virus. However, just knowing our intention is not the cure...
We need to ask:
• What - am I attending too?
• How - is this displaying leading or leadership?
• Why - am I doing this?
This is where we have to jump logical levels, to go meta, above the current line of inquiry, because of course there is intention in all attention.
What we need to ask to be 'healthy' (intentional) leaders is:
• What is the quality of my intention?’
• What do I intend with what I attend to or give my attention to?
• What is the intention of my intention?
The Cure (not the band...)
As you start to ask yourself these questions, you start to become a healthy leader again. You begin to once again see the bigger picture. You have a great big why with which to lead with.
With a big enough why, the what will start to be done by the people tasked with the 'what' namely 'Managers'. In fact as we look at the formula of management and leadership in these terms, we can broadly say:
• Management = Attention
• Leadership = Intention
As managers ask 'what and how?' the leader’s role is to ask or know 'why?' . This is the exploration of intention.
So I ask you as a leader:
• What are you going to apply 'your why' too?
• What are you doing right now that is suffering from the 'Intention Deficit Virus'?
• How much value to the bottom line of your business do you think you could add if you textured your leadership with intentional intentions? Given that - from this perspective - what would you be attending to?
• How much more of an effective leader can you sense yourself as being as you realise you can now rid yourself and eventually your organisation of the 'Intention Deficit Virus'?
Living and Leading with intentionality and on purpose forms a significant part of our leadership coaching and leadership training programs… maybe its time you got a check up with us!
Coaching
Leadership Coaching
Management Coaching
Executive Coaching
Coach Training
Most leaders are managing more than leading.
As leadership heats today's leader burns up in details.
Today's leader focuses on the what, rarely on the why (the what is important) and never on the why the why (why the why is important).
If you find yourself or your leaders showing symptoms of the above maybe you are suffering from the 'Intention Deficit Virus'. A seemingly contagious dis-ease that thrives throughout many organisation's culture.
We believe that this virus is a by-product of yesteryear's management efficiency outlook, that most leaders have failed to move through. You may be wondering why leaders struggle with this. Well, let’s take a look...
Have you ever thought or said to someone... ‘You know I think I might have a cold, I’m not sure as I don’t have any obvious symptoms, but I just don’t feel right’. You may also have noticed that your performance at work or maybe in the gym just wasn’t there. Yes? That is exactly how the ‘Intention Deficit Virus’ affects organisations and its leaders. It just goes on undiagnosed.
Diagnosis
The ‘Intention Deficit Virus’ is as it says, a deficit of intention. Suffered by the leader through failing to distinguish between what the leader is attending to and the intention behind the attending.
Yet, here is where it the virus gets smart, as viruses do once we diagnose them, and try to rid ourselves of them. The Intention (at first view) may seem fitting even admirable - The organisation 'needs me to do this' or 'we don’t have the resources to have others doing this, so I will add value by supporting this need'. Though this simply creates a fertile environment for the virus to replicate and grow.
The first step in becoming aware of our intentions is part of the way to ridding ourselves of the deficit virus. However, just knowing our intention is not the cure...
We need to ask:
• What - am I attending too?
• How - is this displaying leading or leadership?
• Why - am I doing this?
This is where we have to jump logical levels, to go meta, above the current line of inquiry, because of course there is intention in all attention.
What we need to ask to be 'healthy' (intentional) leaders is:
• What is the quality of my intention?’
• What do I intend with what I attend to or give my attention to?
• What is the intention of my intention?
The Cure (not the band...)
As you start to ask yourself these questions, you start to become a healthy leader again. You begin to once again see the bigger picture. You have a great big why with which to lead with.
With a big enough why, the what will start to be done by the people tasked with the 'what' namely 'Managers'. In fact as we look at the formula of management and leadership in these terms, we can broadly say:
• Management = Attention
• Leadership = Intention
As managers ask 'what and how?' the leader’s role is to ask or know 'why?' . This is the exploration of intention.
So I ask you as a leader:
• What are you going to apply 'your why' too?
• What are you doing right now that is suffering from the 'Intention Deficit Virus'?
• How much value to the bottom line of your business do you think you could add if you textured your leadership with intentional intentions? Given that - from this perspective - what would you be attending to?
• How much more of an effective leader can you sense yourself as being as you realise you can now rid yourself and eventually your organisation of the 'Intention Deficit Virus'?
Living and Leading with intentionality and on purpose forms a significant part of our leadership coaching and leadership training programs… maybe its time you got a check up with us!
Coaching
Leadership Coaching
Management Coaching
Executive Coaching
Coach Training
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Cognitive Flexibility - The Stages of Ego Development and Leadership
Cognitive Flexibility - Stages of Ego Development - Adult Development
By Peter Holliday - Integral Executive Coach at The Coaching Room
“What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge bullets?
“No, Neo. I'm trying to tell you that when you're ready, you won't have to”
Neo and Morpheus, The Matrix
Introduction
As a coach I am consistently blessed with the opportunity to work with individuals from varying backgrounds, assisting deep transformation on both personal and professional levels. I firmly believe through this work that separation of these two domains is impossible; your Way of Being in the world is with you both at work and at home. Your Way of Being knows no context except to help you function as best you can inside the world of what can sometimes be your own limiting beliefs and structures. But this functioning can be expanded by developing your cognitive flexibility. In this paper I will be outlining the stages of flexibility, how they are measured and how they can be used in within certain settings and applications.
For the purposes of this article I will be looking at how cognitive flexibility affects the ability of leaders and executives to transform both themselves and their company, and maybe even the world around them. In order to do this I will be framing this concept within the stages and levels of ego development as proposed by Dr Susanne Cook-Greuter (Cook-Greuter, 1985). I have found that the Nine stages of Ego development as measured by her SCT-i (Sentence Completion Test – Integral ) nearly perfectly reflect ad embody the progressive stages of cognitive flexibility as they emerge in human beings. While some people have issues with their whole self being reduced to a certain set of distinctions, (which I can wholeheartedly agree with in some instances); it is remarkable how often the Ego Development framework and client are in complete agreement.
Flexibility by definition
Flexibility is the ability to expand and contract according to a certain set of arising conditions or circumstances, and then resume original shape or form. It is also thought of as being not locked in or rigid, but in some ways malleable, and so it is the same for cognition or functioning in the cognitive domain . In terms of thinking, it is the ability to do a large number of things at one time, and to act in a very situational manner. By this I mean the ability to respond appropriately to the conditions as they arise as opposed to reacting. In another words, other than trying to make the situation fit your map, it’s adjusting yourself to fit the conditional requirements arising around you.
Several studies (Cook-Greuter, 1985) (Torbert & Rooke , 2005) (Rooke, 2001) indicate that cognitive flexibility (also known as ego development) is a major, if not the major, determinate in developing successful leaders that can actually sustainably transform companies. Jim Collins now famous book Good to Great (Collins, 2001) is a fine example of just how much difference a leader with a high degree of mental flexibitly can really make to an organisation . It is of interest to note that ALL of the CEO’s that led their companies to greatness in this book over the length of the study reflected the capacities of the later and more developed stages of ego development, and extremely high levels of cognitive positioning.
Levels of flexibility
To a large degree, an individual’s ability to position themselves into situations in different ways or perspective is limited by their world-view. A person’s world-view is literally their map for navigating the outside world, and often incongruity between this internal navigation system and the outside world is the source of constant tension, as the map is not the territory, and an inability to understand or embody this understanding is what leads leaders and executives into constant trouble. The ability to adapt to situations and be flexible in your interaction with the outside world and the other humans inhabiting it is not a simple you either have it or you don’t affair, it progresses in stages.
Level of flexibility- increasing | Characteristics | Strengths | % of Research Sample
1. Opportunist
- Pre-Conventional
- Egocentric
- Wins any way possible. Self-oriented; manipulative; “might makes right.”
Good in emergencies and in sales opportunities.
- 5 %of research sample
2. Diplomat
- Conventional
- Ethnocentric
- Avoids overt conflict. Wants to belong; obeys group norms; rarely rocks the boat
- Good as supportive glue within an office; helps bring people together.
- 12% of research sample
3. Expert
- Conventional
- Ethno-Centric
- Rules by logic and expertise. Seeks rational efficiency.
Good as an individual contributor
- 38% of research sample
4. Achiever
- Conventional
- Ethno-Centric
- Meets strategic goals. Effectively achieves goals through teams; juggles managerial duties and market demands.Well suited to managerial roles; action and goal oriented.
- 30% of research sample
5. Individualist
- Post-Conventional
- World-Centric
- Interweaves competing personal and company action logics. Creates unique structures to resolve gaps between strategy and performance. Effective in venture and consulting roles.
- 10% of research sample
6. Strategist
- Post-Conventional
- World/Cosmo-Centric Generates organizational and personal transformations.
- Exercises the power of mutual inquiry, vigilance, and vulnerability for both the short and long term. Effective as a transformational leader.
- 4% of research sample
7. Alchemist
- Post-Post Conventional
- Cosmo-Centric
- Generates social transformations. Inte-grates material, spiritual, and societal transformation. Good at leading society-wide transformations.
1% of research sample
Expansion
Each of the stages above represents stages of development that correspond to increasing levels of mental cognition and flexibility. You can see from the chart above, levels of flexibility range greatly, but in general the greater depth, span and degree of flexibility, the better. The greater the altitude of your world-view, the larger your ability to navigate certain situations or problems. The ability to be flexible in various leadership or executive situations is something that does and can be developed over time with the right injunction and or practice.
Although there are seven rough stages listed above correlating to executive positions in which they are most readily found, there are four main or general levels or switch-points that mark a substantial increase in flexibility and world-view. These switch-points mark increases in being able to register or see both inter-connectivity and the ability to hold perspectives of other people as if they are your own, before making a choice or decision. You can see how profoundly this capacity would affect people in leadership positions. The four main switch-points relate directly to the amount of people that an individual’s perspective can hold or relate to in the following ways:
Stage 1 – Ego-Centric – it’s all about me and what I want – A 1st person perspective
Stage 2 – Ethno-Centric – It’s about me and my group and people that I can relate to - Family, Religion, Race – a 2nd person perspective
Stage 3 – World-Centric – What’s good for all of us as a global population - a 3rd person perspective
Stage 4 – Cosmo-Centric – What’s good for all people as a global family and the universe in general - a 4th to 9th person perspective
Each of the stages above builds on the one below it, and some sense provides the foundation for the new, higher reality to emerge, given the right challenges or conditions. Some people grow through all 5 stages during their life, others remain at one stage for their entire life. It seems that a certain amount of the reasons for growth and change are as much nature as they are nurture.
Applications – Theory to Practice
Now that we have explored the stages of flexibility in reference to worldview it seems only reasonable to now explore the application of this in the real world.
Functional Fit – an Integral approach to Human Resourcing
Functional Fit is simply placing a person in a role that fits that person’s level of flexibility or degree of cognitive development. For example I would not employ some one at the Expert level (Stage-3) of consciousness in a leadership role. As leadership is about going outside the boundaries and Experts (Stage-3) rely on the systems and liner thinking as their cognitive map boundaries and they need rules to function. So in this sense there is a certain amount of ethics implied in Functional Fit, as it takes into consideration two or three immediate allowances, such as:
• An Expert placed in this situation would suffer undue anxiety at constantly being in a position requiring work in a sphere outside their developmental capacities
• What they create in this sphere would be bounded by restraint of the conformity, and their deep desire to fit and hold the status quo in the pre-existing frameworks; as opposed to going beyond them
• Experts by nature operate from a craft or linear style logic, and tend not to respond to situations but rather to react. So you could see how having a CEO or leader in this position that reacts to a market without considering the outcome could have undesired results for many companies
Further matching examples for instance would be for a role in sales. Someone at the Achiever (Stage 4) level makes perfect sense, as they thrive on competition and the ability to obtain financial success, and so the job role equals the developmental match, brining about performance in that given role…it is a Functional Fit...
Again Leaders and CEO’s that change the game nearly always test at the higher levels of flexibility,(at least Stage-5 and above-usually Stage-6), and the ones that don’t, do not bring about sustainable transformation; just short term rearrangement for personal gain. Thinking about how their choices impact the world is just not on their radar.
So from these very basic examples we can see how much more efficient it is to employ people to roles that are developmentally specific to the employee’s level of cognitive flexibility . For an extended and far more detailed description of this matching process and the dilemma of incorrect matching please consult: Organisational Transformation requires the presence of leaders that are Strategists and Alchemists (Rooke, 2001).
Applying Levels of Flexibility to Type – Using personality profiling correctly
One of the most common things we hear from HR specialists and employment agencies is “but we do personality testing!”. Personality testing and developmental assessment however are not the same thing.
A useful way to think about this is Vertical vs Horizontal. Personality profiling tools like Myers Briggs or the Enneagram are a horizontal approach to profiling. Developmental stage level is vertical. As an example, you can have an entire room of INFJ’s (Myers Briggs) or any other Myers Briggs type for that matter but all a different stages of development. So even though they are all the same type, depending on their development, they will all behave very differently. A person at the lower stages of the spectrum will be behaving in a way that self serves them in to a position of getting what they want out of the situation. While another person of the same type but at the higher end of the spectrum will be focused on how he can create world peace. Both people are exactly the same type but behave extremely differently.
So with just one simple example you can see the relevance of developmental profiling as an addition to horizontal personality profiling. In my opinion they should always be used in conjunction.
In my work as an Executive Coach I have found the one profiling tool that successfully integrates both horizontal and vertical stages into a more comprehensive overall profile is The Enneagram - specifically the particular type of the Enneagram modelled by Riso and Hudson at the Enneagram Institute (Riso & Hudson , 2010). This specific profile integrates the levels of development into levels of health, which closely correspond or mirror the levels of cognitive flexibility.
This almost seamless integration of both the vertical and horizontal axis of personality typing is why we at The Coaching Room we use the Enneagram in all of our coaching sessions. We find it the easiest and most accurate integrated profile for allowing us access to a client’s world in the shortest amount of time. While the Enneagram doesn’t cover all the bases, it does give you a fantastic starting point without having to combine multiple profiles.
Conclusion
At The Coaching Room one of the most consistent things we are continually asked to facilitate in executives or leaders is a shift in their degree of cognitive flexibility or level of development, “I want to go to the next level”. For a shift in a way of being or level of development we often recommend Integral style Coaching.
Integral Coaching combines the use of a rigorous subject/object theory methodology with ongoing developmental practices; specifically designed and tailored to each client based on their unique AQAL constellation and way of being in the world. Through the ongoing adherence to these practices the client is nurtured and supported into first tasting, then embodying, their New Way of Being in the World, at the next level. Coaching Room Coaches are well-educated tour guides, helping guide clients through the cartography of their new mental landscape.
Bibliography
Wilber, K. (Performer). (2011). Integral Spirituality - A Deeper Cut. S. True.
Wilber, K. (2000). One Taste - daily relfections on integral spirituality . shambhala.
Collins, J. (2001). Good to Great. Harper Business.
Cook-Greuter, S. (1985). Ego Development - The nine levels of increasing embrace . paper , integral Institute , psychology .
Riso, D., & Hudson , R. (2010). The Enneagram Institute. Retrieved from The Enneagram Institute: www.TheEnneagramInstitute.com
Rooke, D. (2001, October ). Organisational Transformation requires the presence of leaders who are alchemists and strategists . Oraganisations and people , 4.3 .
Torbert, W., & Rooke , D. (2005, April ). The seven transformations of leadership. The harvard business review.
Footnotes:
1. The SCT-I is a 36 item unfinished sentence questionnaire, adapted from, what was the pioneering work of Jane Loevinger’s original Washington University Sentence Completion Test.
2. Cognitive is a term that is widely used and for the sake of all involved could use with a firm definition, as it seems to mean different things to different people. In integral theory it is used not in reference to thinking per see but in context to the ability to take perspective of both self and other. A clear distinction between this definition and that of linear deductive thinking could alleviate a lot of the confusion encountered when different people use this term.
3. It is worthy to note that Skills are important as well, and just having a highly flexible mind is not purely enough to make great leaders. I am simply suggesting that at the leadership level of large companies business skills are at about the same general capacity.
4. It is the belief of many of the theorist referenced in this paper that one stage of development or flexibility stage takes about 5 years to pass through. The only thing that has been quantifiably proved to accelerate this process has been mediation, or any form of Subject/Object injunction. Recently Integral Coaching and it’s continual use of metaphors as a way of employing the Subject/Object method during coaching sessions, while focusing on holistic development. This new technique offers a new and as yet un-qualified potential to shorten this developmental time frame.
5. It is worthy of mention that several theorist’s such as Ken Wilber include a possible 6th stage that is referred to as Kosmo-Centric. The K in Kosmo-Centric alludes to the fact that other realities may in fact exist, and takes these into account, the allowance of other energetic realms associated with altered states, such as – Subtle, Causal and Non Dual. A more in depth focus of these possible states of being can be found in (Wilber, 2000) (Wilber, Integral spirituality - A Deeper Cut, 2011)(Wilber, Intergal Spirituality - A Deeper Cut, 2011).
Executive Coaching
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Leadership Coaching
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Coaching For Executives
By Peter Holliday - Integral Executive Coach at The Coaching Room
“What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge bullets?
“No, Neo. I'm trying to tell you that when you're ready, you won't have to”
Neo and Morpheus, The Matrix
Introduction
As a coach I am consistently blessed with the opportunity to work with individuals from varying backgrounds, assisting deep transformation on both personal and professional levels. I firmly believe through this work that separation of these two domains is impossible; your Way of Being in the world is with you both at work and at home. Your Way of Being knows no context except to help you function as best you can inside the world of what can sometimes be your own limiting beliefs and structures. But this functioning can be expanded by developing your cognitive flexibility. In this paper I will be outlining the stages of flexibility, how they are measured and how they can be used in within certain settings and applications.
For the purposes of this article I will be looking at how cognitive flexibility affects the ability of leaders and executives to transform both themselves and their company, and maybe even the world around them. In order to do this I will be framing this concept within the stages and levels of ego development as proposed by Dr Susanne Cook-Greuter (Cook-Greuter, 1985). I have found that the Nine stages of Ego development as measured by her SCT-i (Sentence Completion Test – Integral ) nearly perfectly reflect ad embody the progressive stages of cognitive flexibility as they emerge in human beings. While some people have issues with their whole self being reduced to a certain set of distinctions, (which I can wholeheartedly agree with in some instances); it is remarkable how often the Ego Development framework and client are in complete agreement.
Flexibility by definition
Flexibility is the ability to expand and contract according to a certain set of arising conditions or circumstances, and then resume original shape or form. It is also thought of as being not locked in or rigid, but in some ways malleable, and so it is the same for cognition or functioning in the cognitive domain . In terms of thinking, it is the ability to do a large number of things at one time, and to act in a very situational manner. By this I mean the ability to respond appropriately to the conditions as they arise as opposed to reacting. In another words, other than trying to make the situation fit your map, it’s adjusting yourself to fit the conditional requirements arising around you.
Several studies (Cook-Greuter, 1985) (Torbert & Rooke , 2005) (Rooke, 2001) indicate that cognitive flexibility (also known as ego development) is a major, if not the major, determinate in developing successful leaders that can actually sustainably transform companies. Jim Collins now famous book Good to Great (Collins, 2001) is a fine example of just how much difference a leader with a high degree of mental flexibitly can really make to an organisation . It is of interest to note that ALL of the CEO’s that led their companies to greatness in this book over the length of the study reflected the capacities of the later and more developed stages of ego development, and extremely high levels of cognitive positioning.
Levels of flexibility
To a large degree, an individual’s ability to position themselves into situations in different ways or perspective is limited by their world-view. A person’s world-view is literally their map for navigating the outside world, and often incongruity between this internal navigation system and the outside world is the source of constant tension, as the map is not the territory, and an inability to understand or embody this understanding is what leads leaders and executives into constant trouble. The ability to adapt to situations and be flexible in your interaction with the outside world and the other humans inhabiting it is not a simple you either have it or you don’t affair, it progresses in stages.
Level of flexibility- increasing | Characteristics | Strengths | % of Research Sample
1. Opportunist
- Pre-Conventional
- Egocentric
- Wins any way possible. Self-oriented; manipulative; “might makes right.”
Good in emergencies and in sales opportunities.
- 5 %of research sample
2. Diplomat
- Conventional
- Ethnocentric
- Avoids overt conflict. Wants to belong; obeys group norms; rarely rocks the boat
- Good as supportive glue within an office; helps bring people together.
- 12% of research sample
3. Expert
- Conventional
- Ethno-Centric
- Rules by logic and expertise. Seeks rational efficiency.
Good as an individual contributor
- 38% of research sample
4. Achiever
- Conventional
- Ethno-Centric
- Meets strategic goals. Effectively achieves goals through teams; juggles managerial duties and market demands.Well suited to managerial roles; action and goal oriented.
- 30% of research sample
5. Individualist
- Post-Conventional
- World-Centric
- Interweaves competing personal and company action logics. Creates unique structures to resolve gaps between strategy and performance. Effective in venture and consulting roles.
- 10% of research sample
6. Strategist
- Post-Conventional
- World/Cosmo-Centric Generates organizational and personal transformations.
- Exercises the power of mutual inquiry, vigilance, and vulnerability for both the short and long term. Effective as a transformational leader.
- 4% of research sample
7. Alchemist
- Post-Post Conventional
- Cosmo-Centric
- Generates social transformations. Inte-grates material, spiritual, and societal transformation. Good at leading society-wide transformations.
1% of research sample
Expansion
Each of the stages above represents stages of development that correspond to increasing levels of mental cognition and flexibility. You can see from the chart above, levels of flexibility range greatly, but in general the greater depth, span and degree of flexibility, the better. The greater the altitude of your world-view, the larger your ability to navigate certain situations or problems. The ability to be flexible in various leadership or executive situations is something that does and can be developed over time with the right injunction and or practice.
Although there are seven rough stages listed above correlating to executive positions in which they are most readily found, there are four main or general levels or switch-points that mark a substantial increase in flexibility and world-view. These switch-points mark increases in being able to register or see both inter-connectivity and the ability to hold perspectives of other people as if they are your own, before making a choice or decision. You can see how profoundly this capacity would affect people in leadership positions. The four main switch-points relate directly to the amount of people that an individual’s perspective can hold or relate to in the following ways:
Stage 1 – Ego-Centric – it’s all about me and what I want – A 1st person perspective
Stage 2 – Ethno-Centric – It’s about me and my group and people that I can relate to - Family, Religion, Race – a 2nd person perspective
Stage 3 – World-Centric – What’s good for all of us as a global population - a 3rd person perspective
Stage 4 – Cosmo-Centric – What’s good for all people as a global family and the universe in general - a 4th to 9th person perspective
Each of the stages above builds on the one below it, and some sense provides the foundation for the new, higher reality to emerge, given the right challenges or conditions. Some people grow through all 5 stages during their life, others remain at one stage for their entire life. It seems that a certain amount of the reasons for growth and change are as much nature as they are nurture.
Applications – Theory to Practice
Now that we have explored the stages of flexibility in reference to worldview it seems only reasonable to now explore the application of this in the real world.
Functional Fit – an Integral approach to Human Resourcing
Functional Fit is simply placing a person in a role that fits that person’s level of flexibility or degree of cognitive development. For example I would not employ some one at the Expert level (Stage-3) of consciousness in a leadership role. As leadership is about going outside the boundaries and Experts (Stage-3) rely on the systems and liner thinking as their cognitive map boundaries and they need rules to function. So in this sense there is a certain amount of ethics implied in Functional Fit, as it takes into consideration two or three immediate allowances, such as:
• An Expert placed in this situation would suffer undue anxiety at constantly being in a position requiring work in a sphere outside their developmental capacities
• What they create in this sphere would be bounded by restraint of the conformity, and their deep desire to fit and hold the status quo in the pre-existing frameworks; as opposed to going beyond them
• Experts by nature operate from a craft or linear style logic, and tend not to respond to situations but rather to react. So you could see how having a CEO or leader in this position that reacts to a market without considering the outcome could have undesired results for many companies
Further matching examples for instance would be for a role in sales. Someone at the Achiever (Stage 4) level makes perfect sense, as they thrive on competition and the ability to obtain financial success, and so the job role equals the developmental match, brining about performance in that given role…it is a Functional Fit...
Again Leaders and CEO’s that change the game nearly always test at the higher levels of flexibility,(at least Stage-5 and above-usually Stage-6), and the ones that don’t, do not bring about sustainable transformation; just short term rearrangement for personal gain. Thinking about how their choices impact the world is just not on their radar.
So from these very basic examples we can see how much more efficient it is to employ people to roles that are developmentally specific to the employee’s level of cognitive flexibility . For an extended and far more detailed description of this matching process and the dilemma of incorrect matching please consult: Organisational Transformation requires the presence of leaders that are Strategists and Alchemists (Rooke, 2001).
Applying Levels of Flexibility to Type – Using personality profiling correctly
One of the most common things we hear from HR specialists and employment agencies is “but we do personality testing!”. Personality testing and developmental assessment however are not the same thing.
A useful way to think about this is Vertical vs Horizontal. Personality profiling tools like Myers Briggs or the Enneagram are a horizontal approach to profiling. Developmental stage level is vertical. As an example, you can have an entire room of INFJ’s (Myers Briggs) or any other Myers Briggs type for that matter but all a different stages of development. So even though they are all the same type, depending on their development, they will all behave very differently. A person at the lower stages of the spectrum will be behaving in a way that self serves them in to a position of getting what they want out of the situation. While another person of the same type but at the higher end of the spectrum will be focused on how he can create world peace. Both people are exactly the same type but behave extremely differently.
So with just one simple example you can see the relevance of developmental profiling as an addition to horizontal personality profiling. In my opinion they should always be used in conjunction.
In my work as an Executive Coach I have found the one profiling tool that successfully integrates both horizontal and vertical stages into a more comprehensive overall profile is The Enneagram - specifically the particular type of the Enneagram modelled by Riso and Hudson at the Enneagram Institute (Riso & Hudson , 2010). This specific profile integrates the levels of development into levels of health, which closely correspond or mirror the levels of cognitive flexibility.
This almost seamless integration of both the vertical and horizontal axis of personality typing is why we at The Coaching Room we use the Enneagram in all of our coaching sessions. We find it the easiest and most accurate integrated profile for allowing us access to a client’s world in the shortest amount of time. While the Enneagram doesn’t cover all the bases, it does give you a fantastic starting point without having to combine multiple profiles.
Conclusion
At The Coaching Room one of the most consistent things we are continually asked to facilitate in executives or leaders is a shift in their degree of cognitive flexibility or level of development, “I want to go to the next level”. For a shift in a way of being or level of development we often recommend Integral style Coaching.
Integral Coaching combines the use of a rigorous subject/object theory methodology with ongoing developmental practices; specifically designed and tailored to each client based on their unique AQAL constellation and way of being in the world. Through the ongoing adherence to these practices the client is nurtured and supported into first tasting, then embodying, their New Way of Being in the World, at the next level. Coaching Room Coaches are well-educated tour guides, helping guide clients through the cartography of their new mental landscape.
Bibliography
Wilber, K. (Performer). (2011). Integral Spirituality - A Deeper Cut. S. True.
Wilber, K. (2000). One Taste - daily relfections on integral spirituality . shambhala.
Collins, J. (2001). Good to Great. Harper Business.
Cook-Greuter, S. (1985). Ego Development - The nine levels of increasing embrace . paper , integral Institute , psychology .
Riso, D., & Hudson , R. (2010). The Enneagram Institute. Retrieved from The Enneagram Institute: www.TheEnneagramInstitute.com
Rooke, D. (2001, October ). Organisational Transformation requires the presence of leaders who are alchemists and strategists . Oraganisations and people , 4.3 .
Torbert, W., & Rooke , D. (2005, April ). The seven transformations of leadership. The harvard business review.
Footnotes:
1. The SCT-I is a 36 item unfinished sentence questionnaire, adapted from, what was the pioneering work of Jane Loevinger’s original Washington University Sentence Completion Test.
2. Cognitive is a term that is widely used and for the sake of all involved could use with a firm definition, as it seems to mean different things to different people. In integral theory it is used not in reference to thinking per see but in context to the ability to take perspective of both self and other. A clear distinction between this definition and that of linear deductive thinking could alleviate a lot of the confusion encountered when different people use this term.
3. It is worthy to note that Skills are important as well, and just having a highly flexible mind is not purely enough to make great leaders. I am simply suggesting that at the leadership level of large companies business skills are at about the same general capacity.
4. It is the belief of many of the theorist referenced in this paper that one stage of development or flexibility stage takes about 5 years to pass through. The only thing that has been quantifiably proved to accelerate this process has been mediation, or any form of Subject/Object injunction. Recently Integral Coaching and it’s continual use of metaphors as a way of employing the Subject/Object method during coaching sessions, while focusing on holistic development. This new technique offers a new and as yet un-qualified potential to shorten this developmental time frame.
5. It is worthy of mention that several theorist’s such as Ken Wilber include a possible 6th stage that is referred to as Kosmo-Centric. The K in Kosmo-Centric alludes to the fact that other realities may in fact exist, and takes these into account, the allowance of other energetic realms associated with altered states, such as – Subtle, Causal and Non Dual. A more in depth focus of these possible states of being can be found in (Wilber, 2000) (Wilber, Integral spirituality - A Deeper Cut, 2011)(Wilber, Intergal Spirituality - A Deeper Cut, 2011).
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Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Leading The Inner Game - Meta Stating & Emotions
If Leadership is about anything - like Coaching, it is about pacing and leading the inner game of the individual and the collective. Dr Michael Hall below writes about the Meta Stating process that a Meta Coach uses to facilitate empowerment. We teach Leaders to do the same as part of our Leader as Coach training program. This a terrific article - Dr Hall has permitted us to reproduce here.
META-STATING AND EMOTIONS
By Dr L.Michael Hall
If the Meta-States Model offers anything, it offers some very powerful processes for detecting your emotions and managing those emotions from a higher level. When most people first experience Meta-States as a Model, the process seems counter-intuitive, it seems paradoxical, and the last thing they would have thought of or utilize for emotional mastery— yet it is the most effective method.
So what does the Meta-States Model say about “emotions?” First that there are levels of emotions; that is, emotions do not occur just at one level, but multiple levels. First there are primary emotions —direct and emotions that are in direct response to a stimulus in the world. Theorists tend to posit that there are anywhere from 7 to perhaps 20 primary emotions. I follow Robert Plutchik (The Emotions) who posited the following primary emotions: joy / sorrow; anger / fear; anticipation / surprise; acceptance / disgust; tension / relaxation; love / apathy. Then, when you begin mixing these primary emotions, you get secondary emotions — similar to how mixing primary colors gives secondary colors.
Then above and beyond primary emotions and various mixtures of those emotions, there are the meta-emotions of your meta-states. These arise due to your self-reflexive consciousness as you associate emotions to emotional states. To detect these and to flush them out, just inquire, “What do you think and feel about X state?”
What do you think and feel about anger? What emotions do you experience when you experience anger? Or fear, sadness, anxiety, guilt, tenderness, love, joy, etc.?
Now generally speaking, when you bring a negative emotion against a previous emotion, you set the second negative emotion as a frame about and over the first emotion. Now you have fear of anger; anger at your fear; shame about your guilt; fear of relaxation; anxiety about anger, and so on. Do this and you construct a “dragon state” within your mind-body system so that you are essentially in self-attack. And the energy of the meta-emotional state has no where to go except against your mind-body system. Then you will pay for this construct by experiencing mental and emotional suffering.
Yet here also begins the processes that seem paradoxical and counter-intuitive. If you bring emotional states as acceptance, observation, interest, curiosity, appreciation, learning, etc. to your negative emotions, your “negative” emotion will change. Typically the intensity level of the energy of the emotion will be reduced so that you’ll be able to handle it much better. Calm anger, acceptance of fear, curiosity about sadness, appreciation of anger, etc. transforms the primary emotional state so that it can be much more useful and resourceful.
When you meta-state your primary emotional state with resourceful emotional states, you are in a position to qualify your emotional states in ways that will transform them into allies that will support you rather than diminish you. So in Neuro-Semantics, we don’t repress emotions, nor do we suppress them as much as we meta-state them and transform them into resources. This creates a new level of emotional intelligence and effectiveness.
So when you next experience a negative state, the first thing to do is to bring a state of calmness to the experience. Step back in your mind for just a moment and appreciate that you just received a signal— a communication signal. And just observe it. What is the signal about? Something “out there” in the world? Something within your mental mapping about something? What?
Next bring states of curiosity, interest, and exploration to your primary state. Curiously explore how you just created that negative emotion. Accepting that the emotion is yours, and that you created it within your mind-body system, you now have an unprecedented opportunity for deepening your self-knowledge and self-control. Wow! And, once you discover the process, then you can meta-state yourself with a strong sense of commitment to yourself and others as you choose the best way to respond to the situation that has triggered the emotion.
This means that you are creating new adjustments to your life-coping maps, making yourself more effective, enriching your relationships, and properly using your emotions, especially your negative ones. And while doing this, meta-state yourself that it is just an emotion (not “you,” don’t identify with the emotion and personalize it). It is just an emotion— a somatic energy response giving you a signal. Now you can choose:
What would be the best response I can now make?
Act on it; explore it some more; notice and ignore it; act against it; etc.?
Is the emotion appropriate, accurate, useful?
What resource would texture and qualify it making it more ecological for me?
Emotions — we all have them, they are a vital and important part of our mind-body system, and like the rest of the system, they are fallible and can easily be mis-used, abused, and become problematic for us. Emotional mastery and intelligence requires awareness, monitoring, managing, meta-stating, and then using them effectively.
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META-STATING AND EMOTIONS
By Dr L.Michael Hall
If the Meta-States Model offers anything, it offers some very powerful processes for detecting your emotions and managing those emotions from a higher level. When most people first experience Meta-States as a Model, the process seems counter-intuitive, it seems paradoxical, and the last thing they would have thought of or utilize for emotional mastery— yet it is the most effective method.
So what does the Meta-States Model say about “emotions?” First that there are levels of emotions; that is, emotions do not occur just at one level, but multiple levels. First there are primary emotions —direct and emotions that are in direct response to a stimulus in the world. Theorists tend to posit that there are anywhere from 7 to perhaps 20 primary emotions. I follow Robert Plutchik (The Emotions) who posited the following primary emotions: joy / sorrow; anger / fear; anticipation / surprise; acceptance / disgust; tension / relaxation; love / apathy. Then, when you begin mixing these primary emotions, you get secondary emotions — similar to how mixing primary colors gives secondary colors.
Then above and beyond primary emotions and various mixtures of those emotions, there are the meta-emotions of your meta-states. These arise due to your self-reflexive consciousness as you associate emotions to emotional states. To detect these and to flush them out, just inquire, “What do you think and feel about X state?”
What do you think and feel about anger? What emotions do you experience when you experience anger? Or fear, sadness, anxiety, guilt, tenderness, love, joy, etc.?
Now generally speaking, when you bring a negative emotion against a previous emotion, you set the second negative emotion as a frame about and over the first emotion. Now you have fear of anger; anger at your fear; shame about your guilt; fear of relaxation; anxiety about anger, and so on. Do this and you construct a “dragon state” within your mind-body system so that you are essentially in self-attack. And the energy of the meta-emotional state has no where to go except against your mind-body system. Then you will pay for this construct by experiencing mental and emotional suffering.
Yet here also begins the processes that seem paradoxical and counter-intuitive. If you bring emotional states as acceptance, observation, interest, curiosity, appreciation, learning, etc. to your negative emotions, your “negative” emotion will change. Typically the intensity level of the energy of the emotion will be reduced so that you’ll be able to handle it much better. Calm anger, acceptance of fear, curiosity about sadness, appreciation of anger, etc. transforms the primary emotional state so that it can be much more useful and resourceful.
When you meta-state your primary emotional state with resourceful emotional states, you are in a position to qualify your emotional states in ways that will transform them into allies that will support you rather than diminish you. So in Neuro-Semantics, we don’t repress emotions, nor do we suppress them as much as we meta-state them and transform them into resources. This creates a new level of emotional intelligence and effectiveness.
So when you next experience a negative state, the first thing to do is to bring a state of calmness to the experience. Step back in your mind for just a moment and appreciate that you just received a signal— a communication signal. And just observe it. What is the signal about? Something “out there” in the world? Something within your mental mapping about something? What?
Next bring states of curiosity, interest, and exploration to your primary state. Curiously explore how you just created that negative emotion. Accepting that the emotion is yours, and that you created it within your mind-body system, you now have an unprecedented opportunity for deepening your self-knowledge and self-control. Wow! And, once you discover the process, then you can meta-state yourself with a strong sense of commitment to yourself and others as you choose the best way to respond to the situation that has triggered the emotion.
This means that you are creating new adjustments to your life-coping maps, making yourself more effective, enriching your relationships, and properly using your emotions, especially your negative ones. And while doing this, meta-state yourself that it is just an emotion (not “you,” don’t identify with the emotion and personalize it). It is just an emotion— a somatic energy response giving you a signal. Now you can choose:
What would be the best response I can now make?
Act on it; explore it some more; notice and ignore it; act against it; etc.?
Is the emotion appropriate, accurate, useful?
What resource would texture and qualify it making it more ecological for me?
Emotions — we all have them, they are a vital and important part of our mind-body system, and like the rest of the system, they are fallible and can easily be mis-used, abused, and become problematic for us. Emotional mastery and intelligence requires awareness, monitoring, managing, meta-stating, and then using them effectively.
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Monday, December 6, 2010
Women in Leadership Sydney (WIL)
The Coaching Room is very proud to promote Women in Leadership in Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart.
Women in Leadership (WIL) is a monthly breakfast meeting, created and sponsored by The Coaching Room.
Having coached Leaders in organisations for almost a decade, our experience of the opportunities (including support and networking opportunities) available to male and female Leaders has often seemed unfairly balanced toward the male Leaders.
It has been a concern at the forefront of The Coaching Room’s mind for quite sometime now, and so this year rather than just thinking about it, we have decided to do something about it.
We have created something that will provide Women in Leadership with a real and genuine space to develop deep and accelerated relationships with other like-minded women (also in Leadership positions), as well as the opportunity to grow, feel supported, learn, make friends and have fun, whilst making a difference for other Women in Leadership.
Add to this the support of our world-class Leadership coaches, and you have a very powerful opportunity for sustained Leadership growth.
Our next WIL breakfast program to be held in Sydney - will be this Friday the 10th of December. We will be releasing the 2011 calendar in the next 2 weeks.
We will be restarting WIL in Hobart next year - and hope to kick off WIL
in Melbourne in February 2011.
If you are in a leadership role and would
like to join one of our Women in Leadership Group - contact
jay@thecoachingroom.com.au
SOME OF THE INTENTIONS OF THIS GROUP AND BREAKFAST ARE:
• To provide a confidential and safe environment to be ourselves
• To recognise and have a voice for our Leadership opinion
• To gain vitality in our way of being as Leaders
• For everyone invited to connect, develop their Leadership capabilities, authenticity and friendship with other female CEOs and senior leaders in Hobart, Melbourne and Sydney (We will also be expanding to Brisbane over the coming months)
• For each of us to give of ourselves to those at the breakfast, in support of our Leadership growth, understanding and challenges
• For each of us to bring our challenges and successes - to share, so that others in the breakfast may celebrate with us and support us
• To have some timeout with like minded people in similar professional situations
• To make a stand for women in Leadership in what is a top heavy male dominated Leadership environment
• To connect us all in pursuit of Leadership excellence
For more information or to join one of our WIL programs, contact jay@thecoachingroom.com.au or call 1300 858 089
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Women in Leadership
Women in Leadership (WIL) is a monthly breakfast meeting, created and sponsored by The Coaching Room.
Having coached Leaders in organisations for almost a decade, our experience of the opportunities (including support and networking opportunities) available to male and female Leaders has often seemed unfairly balanced toward the male Leaders.
It has been a concern at the forefront of The Coaching Room’s mind for quite sometime now, and so this year rather than just thinking about it, we have decided to do something about it.
We have created something that will provide Women in Leadership with a real and genuine space to develop deep and accelerated relationships with other like-minded women (also in Leadership positions), as well as the opportunity to grow, feel supported, learn, make friends and have fun, whilst making a difference for other Women in Leadership.
Add to this the support of our world-class Leadership coaches, and you have a very powerful opportunity for sustained Leadership growth.
Our next WIL breakfast program to be held in Sydney - will be this Friday the 10th of December. We will be releasing the 2011 calendar in the next 2 weeks.
We will be restarting WIL in Hobart next year - and hope to kick off WIL
in Melbourne in February 2011.
If you are in a leadership role and would
like to join one of our Women in Leadership Group - contact
jay@thecoachingroom.com.au
SOME OF THE INTENTIONS OF THIS GROUP AND BREAKFAST ARE:
• To provide a confidential and safe environment to be ourselves
• To recognise and have a voice for our Leadership opinion
• To gain vitality in our way of being as Leaders
• For everyone invited to connect, develop their Leadership capabilities, authenticity and friendship with other female CEOs and senior leaders in Hobart, Melbourne and Sydney (We will also be expanding to Brisbane over the coming months)
• For each of us to give of ourselves to those at the breakfast, in support of our Leadership growth, understanding and challenges
• For each of us to bring our challenges and successes - to share, so that others in the breakfast may celebrate with us and support us
• To have some timeout with like minded people in similar professional situations
• To make a stand for women in Leadership in what is a top heavy male dominated Leadership environment
• To connect us all in pursuit of Leadership excellence
For more information or to join one of our WIL programs, contact jay@thecoachingroom.com.au or call 1300 858 089
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Wednesday, December 1, 2010
5 Principles For Unlimited Motivation in 2013
By Joseph Scott & Jay Hedley of The Coaching Room
In life we need energy to live, to exist and to do things (with our life and with others). Yet sometimes we can miss life by simply talking ourselves out of it. Just like this:
• I just can’t be bothered…
• It’s just too much effort, I’m tired…
• It’s not worth it, who cares?
• Sure, one of these days…
• Yes, I know that I should, but…
Sound familiar?
If this sounds like you, and you are saying this to yourself and or to others, you are lacking one of the key ingredients in the recipe of life; motivation:
MOTIVATION; a psychological process that arouses the individual into action, toward a desired outcome or goal; the reason for the action.
So, we can define motivation but does that help? Usually not enough! What is this thing called ‘motivation’? Where do you find it? How can we take responsibility for our own motivation?
The 1st Principle is ‘motivation is not a thing, it’s a process’, it is not a real noun. You will never trip over a hunk of motivation that someone has left in the bathroom, nor will you find a chunk of it in the fridge! Has anyone ever bought a kilo of motivation from the shop? I think not!
If that is the case, then what is motivation, how can we be motivated and more importantly how can we motivate ourselves?
Would you like unlimited motivation, does this interest you? If so, read on because that is the design of this article.
Motivation is a set of thinking strategies or processes that we run for ourselves... Did you notice what you just read? ‘...That we run ourselves!
What does this mean? It means that we are responsible for how motivated or not we are in every moment of every day! It means there is no point looking to someone outside of ourselves to provide motivation for us; in fact it is impossible for another person to motivate us, only we can decide what is or is not motivational to us.
Principle No.2 to unlimited motivation is that ‘we are responsible for the amount of motivation we have’. Can you start to sense the power you have over yourself when you take responsibility for you?
You are responsible for yourself—what you say and do, what you think and feel, the way you structure and frame what you want.
Have you ever felt empowered? On top of your game? When and where? In what context?
How empowered did you feel? So now, as you remember that state, allow yourself to become aware of your two private inner powers of:
• Thinking: representing, believing, valuing, understanding, reasoning
• Emoting: feeling, somatising, emoting, valuing
In the context of that experience of empowerment, also notice your two public or outer powers by which you can influence yourself and the world:
• Speaking: languaging, using symbols, asserting
• Behaving: acting, responding, relating, etc.
How does it feel as you just notice and enjoy these powers? How fully do you feel them now? Access them so that you begin to feel these powers. What do you need to do to amplify them? Do you appreciate these powers?
What else is it that drives us to feel motivated? What drives motivation? Further, how does motivation drive us toward what we want, need or believe? What is this fuel?
The answer brings us to Principle No. 3, ‘emotions are the fuel of motivation’ and ultimately are what drive us! Let us take a look at how emotions ‘drive or move us to action; the best place to start may be with the word ‘emotion’.
E-motion, as we look more closely at this word we can see its structure.
‘E-nergy in motion’;(e motion). Our emotions are our energy. Typically we can put emotions’ into three distinctive categories:
• Positive
• Neutral
• Negative
As we can define our emotions into these three simple types, then what does that also say about our energy? Well, we can make the same distinctions for our types of energy; positive, neutral and negative energy.
This leads us to Principle No.4, that ‘People are motivated and can motivate themselves using these 3 different types of energy’.
The affect of positive emotion often gives us the energy to move toward what we want or need, we somehow feel pulled or drawn (motivated). As we experience neutral emotions we can ‘take it or leave it’ and with negative emotions we experience discomfort, a form of pain and we (are motivated) try to get or move away from the cause of such. We can represent this with a diagram:
The Axis of Motivation
Whether we move away from the pain and consequences or toward the good feelings or outcomes in our life, both create energy that we put into motion to do something. This is motivation (propulsion). Now what this gives us is a strategy for developing unlimited motivation for anything we want to do or have in life.
Typically, human beings have a preference to which end of the motivational axis they become or get motivated by. We can ask ourselves some questions to identify our own preference for getting motivated. Ask yourself the following questions and notice if you are motivated toward what you want or away from what you don’t want:
I get out of bed in the morning
• Because I have to (away from)
• Because I want to start the day (toward)
I take my eat well and regularly
• Because I want to be well and live life as fully as I can (toward)
• Because if I don’t I will become unhealthy or possibly ill (away from)
When asked I will go out and socialise with others
• Because I like to meet and be with other people (toward)
• Because it is rude not too and I don’t want to upset anyone (away from)
I keep my home clean
• Because I like it like that (toward)
• Because I get moaned at if I don’t, or someone unexpected may come round (away from)
I go to the gym/exercise
• Because I want to get the health benefits from it (toward)
• Because if I don’t my health may get worse (away from)
I do generally things
• Because I can
• Because I have to
How many ‘towards’ or ‘away from’ did you identify with? Most people will find themselves using motivation at just one end of the axis, either mainly toward or mainly away from.
Now that you have this understanding on how YOU are typically motivated, we can move to Principle No.5. This final principle is the one that brings all the other principles together, and will show you how to get unlimited amounts of motivation for the rest of your life!
Principle No.5 is ‘Combine both away from and toward energies at the same time, and you will create a personal motivation system that propels you into action!’
By becoming more aware of the other energy available to you, at the other end of the motivation axis, you can ramp up the emotional motivation to get you to take action, to feel motivated and finally in control of you!
Either now or later, take 5 minutes to take yourself through the unlimited motivation pattern below. These 5 simple questions can be applied to anything that you need more motivation for, any time, anywhere. After you have used this pattern a couple of times you will be motivating yourself and possibly other like an expert!
THE UNLIMITED MOTIVATION PATTERN
Identify something in your life you want to have or be more motivated about (this can be anything, getting out more, going to the gym, or doing the housework, anything...)
Once you have identified something, write it down so you have a record to remind you of what you are working on.
Notice your current motivation style associated with this activity. Are you motivated away from or toward? If you are away from read and ask yourself part A, if you are toward, read and ask yourself part B (below).
Part A. You are moving away from the pain or consequences, but you can put up with it for a while. First notice how real the discomfort is, what else could be a problem or even more painful if you don’t take action on this. To add even more energy to your motivation notice what you will get that is good or pleasurable once you have taken the action or started the activity. Notice how good it feels and how good it will feel when you have completed this activity... So as you experience all of this about that activity, notice just how much energy you have for taking the step to be doing it... Go do it then!
Part B. You are moving toward the activity, but it doesn’t pull on you enough to take any action. First notice just what attracts or pulls you toward it in the first place, that’s right, now as you think about that, ask yourself, what is important to me about this... What does the importance of this mean to you, how do you feel about it now, knowing this? Just imagine what it would mean if you never did this, you would never realise this meaning and its importance. It could be the start of procrastinating on other important and meaningful things in life, you wouldn’t want that to be true, would you? Be with this awareness, notice the heightened pleasure and possible pain if you don’t act on this as soon as you can... Just now, notice HOW much energy and motivation you know have for this... Get on with it then!
Congratulate yourself on doing or starting the activity, notice how well you can motivate yourself to take the actions that are important to you. Notice the sense of independence and pride you have for yourself as you read this and start to take the first steps to becoming expert at developing your own motivation, imagine the possibilities you now have for your life...now.
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In life we need energy to live, to exist and to do things (with our life and with others). Yet sometimes we can miss life by simply talking ourselves out of it. Just like this:
• I just can’t be bothered…
• It’s just too much effort, I’m tired…
• It’s not worth it, who cares?
• Sure, one of these days…
• Yes, I know that I should, but…
Sound familiar?
If this sounds like you, and you are saying this to yourself and or to others, you are lacking one of the key ingredients in the recipe of life; motivation:
MOTIVATION; a psychological process that arouses the individual into action, toward a desired outcome or goal; the reason for the action.
So, we can define motivation but does that help? Usually not enough! What is this thing called ‘motivation’? Where do you find it? How can we take responsibility for our own motivation?
The 1st Principle is ‘motivation is not a thing, it’s a process’, it is not a real noun. You will never trip over a hunk of motivation that someone has left in the bathroom, nor will you find a chunk of it in the fridge! Has anyone ever bought a kilo of motivation from the shop? I think not!
If that is the case, then what is motivation, how can we be motivated and more importantly how can we motivate ourselves?
Would you like unlimited motivation, does this interest you? If so, read on because that is the design of this article.
Motivation is a set of thinking strategies or processes that we run for ourselves... Did you notice what you just read? ‘...That we run ourselves!
What does this mean? It means that we are responsible for how motivated or not we are in every moment of every day! It means there is no point looking to someone outside of ourselves to provide motivation for us; in fact it is impossible for another person to motivate us, only we can decide what is or is not motivational to us.
Principle No.2 to unlimited motivation is that ‘we are responsible for the amount of motivation we have’. Can you start to sense the power you have over yourself when you take responsibility for you?
You are responsible for yourself—what you say and do, what you think and feel, the way you structure and frame what you want.
Have you ever felt empowered? On top of your game? When and where? In what context?
How empowered did you feel? So now, as you remember that state, allow yourself to become aware of your two private inner powers of:
• Thinking: representing, believing, valuing, understanding, reasoning
• Emoting: feeling, somatising, emoting, valuing
In the context of that experience of empowerment, also notice your two public or outer powers by which you can influence yourself and the world:
• Speaking: languaging, using symbols, asserting
• Behaving: acting, responding, relating, etc.
How does it feel as you just notice and enjoy these powers? How fully do you feel them now? Access them so that you begin to feel these powers. What do you need to do to amplify them? Do you appreciate these powers?
What else is it that drives us to feel motivated? What drives motivation? Further, how does motivation drive us toward what we want, need or believe? What is this fuel?
The answer brings us to Principle No. 3, ‘emotions are the fuel of motivation’ and ultimately are what drive us! Let us take a look at how emotions ‘drive or move us to action; the best place to start may be with the word ‘emotion’.
E-motion, as we look more closely at this word we can see its structure.
‘E-nergy in motion’;(e motion). Our emotions are our energy. Typically we can put emotions’ into three distinctive categories:
• Positive
• Neutral
• Negative
As we can define our emotions into these three simple types, then what does that also say about our energy? Well, we can make the same distinctions for our types of energy; positive, neutral and negative energy.
This leads us to Principle No.4, that ‘People are motivated and can motivate themselves using these 3 different types of energy’.
The affect of positive emotion often gives us the energy to move toward what we want or need, we somehow feel pulled or drawn (motivated). As we experience neutral emotions we can ‘take it or leave it’ and with negative emotions we experience discomfort, a form of pain and we (are motivated) try to get or move away from the cause of such. We can represent this with a diagram:
The Axis of Motivation
Whether we move away from the pain and consequences or toward the good feelings or outcomes in our life, both create energy that we put into motion to do something. This is motivation (propulsion). Now what this gives us is a strategy for developing unlimited motivation for anything we want to do or have in life.
Typically, human beings have a preference to which end of the motivational axis they become or get motivated by. We can ask ourselves some questions to identify our own preference for getting motivated. Ask yourself the following questions and notice if you are motivated toward what you want or away from what you don’t want:
I get out of bed in the morning
• Because I have to (away from)
• Because I want to start the day (toward)
I take my eat well and regularly
• Because I want to be well and live life as fully as I can (toward)
• Because if I don’t I will become unhealthy or possibly ill (away from)
When asked I will go out and socialise with others
• Because I like to meet and be with other people (toward)
• Because it is rude not too and I don’t want to upset anyone (away from)
I keep my home clean
• Because I like it like that (toward)
• Because I get moaned at if I don’t, or someone unexpected may come round (away from)
I go to the gym/exercise
• Because I want to get the health benefits from it (toward)
• Because if I don’t my health may get worse (away from)
I do generally things
• Because I can
• Because I have to
How many ‘towards’ or ‘away from’ did you identify with? Most people will find themselves using motivation at just one end of the axis, either mainly toward or mainly away from.
Now that you have this understanding on how YOU are typically motivated, we can move to Principle No.5. This final principle is the one that brings all the other principles together, and will show you how to get unlimited amounts of motivation for the rest of your life!
Principle No.5 is ‘Combine both away from and toward energies at the same time, and you will create a personal motivation system that propels you into action!’
By becoming more aware of the other energy available to you, at the other end of the motivation axis, you can ramp up the emotional motivation to get you to take action, to feel motivated and finally in control of you!
Either now or later, take 5 minutes to take yourself through the unlimited motivation pattern below. These 5 simple questions can be applied to anything that you need more motivation for, any time, anywhere. After you have used this pattern a couple of times you will be motivating yourself and possibly other like an expert!
THE UNLIMITED MOTIVATION PATTERN
Identify something in your life you want to have or be more motivated about (this can be anything, getting out more, going to the gym, or doing the housework, anything...)
Once you have identified something, write it down so you have a record to remind you of what you are working on.
Notice your current motivation style associated with this activity. Are you motivated away from or toward? If you are away from read and ask yourself part A, if you are toward, read and ask yourself part B (below).
Part A. You are moving away from the pain or consequences, but you can put up with it for a while. First notice how real the discomfort is, what else could be a problem or even more painful if you don’t take action on this. To add even more energy to your motivation notice what you will get that is good or pleasurable once you have taken the action or started the activity. Notice how good it feels and how good it will feel when you have completed this activity... So as you experience all of this about that activity, notice just how much energy you have for taking the step to be doing it... Go do it then!
Part B. You are moving toward the activity, but it doesn’t pull on you enough to take any action. First notice just what attracts or pulls you toward it in the first place, that’s right, now as you think about that, ask yourself, what is important to me about this... What does the importance of this mean to you, how do you feel about it now, knowing this? Just imagine what it would mean if you never did this, you would never realise this meaning and its importance. It could be the start of procrastinating on other important and meaningful things in life, you wouldn’t want that to be true, would you? Be with this awareness, notice the heightened pleasure and possible pain if you don’t act on this as soon as you can... Just now, notice HOW much energy and motivation you know have for this... Get on with it then!
Congratulate yourself on doing or starting the activity, notice how well you can motivate yourself to take the actions that are important to you. Notice the sense of independence and pride you have for yourself as you read this and start to take the first steps to becoming expert at developing your own motivation, imagine the possibilities you now have for your life...now.
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Friday, November 5, 2010
The Coaching Relationship
The Executive Coaching Relationship
By Joseph Scott of The Coaching Room
Coaching is often misunderstood, most often! To this end, I am aiming to give a rambling, yet comprehensive, overview of the coaching relationship (between coach and coachee), its functionality and purpose.
The coaching relationship is designed to be an intimate one, based on trust, honesty, equality and love, though for some, you may prefer the label, unconditional positive regard.
The coaching relationship is about the coachee, it is also about the coach and it is also about the organisation that the coachee works for. All of this sounds fundamental as I write this - yet it is most often overlooked.
Coaching is a mutual commitment to the coaching process in service of the coachee. Coaching is a safe space where coach and coachee share together, individual and collective interiors. From here coach and coachee co-create, share and explore the coaching needs and objectives as they hold a rare and authentic ‘we’ space, in service of the coachee's desired outcomes and their New Way of Being (NWOB).
Next, we'll look at the functionality of the coaching relationship.
There are several functions for coaching; the primary one is having conversations that enables coach and coachee to meet each other at the very heart of the coachee's Current Way of Being (CWOB) and doing. We explore their thinking, feeling, understandings and perspectives; We call this your way of ‘seeing’. Of yourself, others and the world.
The functionality of coaching is also about looking at the coachee's current behaviours and communicating around specific or general experiences (out there); their way of ‘going’ through the world.
Thirdly, the functionality of coaching is about how the coachee shows up with ‘others’ and their ‘environments’ physically and emotionally. It is about their shared actual interactions and collective connections. We call this your way of ‘checking’ - how you check out yourself and your results.
This enables us to fully understand the coachee's integrated current way of dealing (or thinking/feeling, interacting and moving) with and through their personal and professional life. (yes, we get personal!)
Along with the functionality of coaching, are the types of conversations that are available to you to help you actualise the very best 'you' - in your chosen coaching topic.
There are numerous contexts or coaching conversations that you can have, we’d like to share just six of the most utilised conversations from our experience.
We can have a coaching conversation for the exploration of clarity. To explore, discover, causes, drivers, symptoms etc.(that arise internally) with regards to an external event. This allows you time to think out loud, to help you really see the reality of your situation.
We can have a coaching conversation for making decisions and or commitments. This conversation is about exploring the pros and cons with a focus on motivation and usually leads to some form of decision and commitment being realised.
We can have a coaching conversation about planning and implementation, to help you co-create and take effective action on a strategy or game plan, in line with your desired way of being and doing, seeing and checking.
We can have a conversation that helps you to embody, feel and incorporate into your neurology a new skill or role. We can have a conversation that helps you translate the knowing into your body - this is called a mind to muscle conversation for accelerated ‘doing’.
We can have a coaching conversation about transformation. This is an extremely powerful conversation, one that can alter, add or eliminate toxic and unhealthy thinking and doing, it can also change and empower your thinking, beliefs and even your sense of identity.
The last (sixth type of conversation) type of conversation we can have is the confrontation for accountability conversation, which offers a space to address an unpleasant or challenging issue. This tuype of conversation will enable you to be held accountable for doing what you say you are going to do, or to enable you to hold others in this space. It is about resolving conflict internally or out there, with others.
Finally, the purpose of coaching.
There is a widely held corporate theory (or unspoken assumption) that if you are in coaching, then you need fixing, you are falling behind or not good enough.
The actual truth of it is the exact opposite. Coaching is for health people that are not broken! Coaching is premium octane fuel for a high performance output.
Coaching is about unleashing and actualising your greatest and highest potentials, it is about supporting you as you reach further and father than you have ever reached before.
So, if coaching is for you, make sure you hold your coach accountable to being clear about the coaching relationship (between coach and coachee), its functionality and purpose.
Radiantly, Joseph
By Joseph Scott of The Coaching Room
Coaching is often misunderstood, most often! To this end, I am aiming to give a rambling, yet comprehensive, overview of the coaching relationship (between coach and coachee), its functionality and purpose.
The coaching relationship is designed to be an intimate one, based on trust, honesty, equality and love, though for some, you may prefer the label, unconditional positive regard.
The coaching relationship is about the coachee, it is also about the coach and it is also about the organisation that the coachee works for. All of this sounds fundamental as I write this - yet it is most often overlooked.
Coaching is a mutual commitment to the coaching process in service of the coachee. Coaching is a safe space where coach and coachee share together, individual and collective interiors. From here coach and coachee co-create, share and explore the coaching needs and objectives as they hold a rare and authentic ‘we’ space, in service of the coachee's desired outcomes and their New Way of Being (NWOB).
Next, we'll look at the functionality of the coaching relationship.
There are several functions for coaching; the primary one is having conversations that enables coach and coachee to meet each other at the very heart of the coachee's Current Way of Being (CWOB) and doing. We explore their thinking, feeling, understandings and perspectives; We call this your way of ‘seeing’. Of yourself, others and the world.
The functionality of coaching is also about looking at the coachee's current behaviours and communicating around specific or general experiences (out there); their way of ‘going’ through the world.
Thirdly, the functionality of coaching is about how the coachee shows up with ‘others’ and their ‘environments’ physically and emotionally. It is about their shared actual interactions and collective connections. We call this your way of ‘checking’ - how you check out yourself and your results.
This enables us to fully understand the coachee's integrated current way of dealing (or thinking/feeling, interacting and moving) with and through their personal and professional life. (yes, we get personal!)
Along with the functionality of coaching, are the types of conversations that are available to you to help you actualise the very best 'you' - in your chosen coaching topic.
There are numerous contexts or coaching conversations that you can have, we’d like to share just six of the most utilised conversations from our experience.
We can have a coaching conversation for the exploration of clarity. To explore, discover, causes, drivers, symptoms etc.(that arise internally) with regards to an external event. This allows you time to think out loud, to help you really see the reality of your situation.
We can have a coaching conversation for making decisions and or commitments. This conversation is about exploring the pros and cons with a focus on motivation and usually leads to some form of decision and commitment being realised.
We can have a coaching conversation about planning and implementation, to help you co-create and take effective action on a strategy or game plan, in line with your desired way of being and doing, seeing and checking.
We can have a conversation that helps you to embody, feel and incorporate into your neurology a new skill or role. We can have a conversation that helps you translate the knowing into your body - this is called a mind to muscle conversation for accelerated ‘doing’.
We can have a coaching conversation about transformation. This is an extremely powerful conversation, one that can alter, add or eliminate toxic and unhealthy thinking and doing, it can also change and empower your thinking, beliefs and even your sense of identity.
The last (sixth type of conversation) type of conversation we can have is the confrontation for accountability conversation, which offers a space to address an unpleasant or challenging issue. This tuype of conversation will enable you to be held accountable for doing what you say you are going to do, or to enable you to hold others in this space. It is about resolving conflict internally or out there, with others.
Finally, the purpose of coaching.
There is a widely held corporate theory (or unspoken assumption) that if you are in coaching, then you need fixing, you are falling behind or not good enough.
The actual truth of it is the exact opposite. Coaching is for health people that are not broken! Coaching is premium octane fuel for a high performance output.
Coaching is about unleashing and actualising your greatest and highest potentials, it is about supporting you as you reach further and father than you have ever reached before.
So, if coaching is for you, make sure you hold your coach accountable to being clear about the coaching relationship (between coach and coachee), its functionality and purpose.
Radiantly, Joseph
Monday, April 5, 2010
Do you need a Leadership or Executive Coach?
Do you really need a coach?
By Joseph Scott of The Coaching Room
The 'why work with a coach?' question is most often (in my view) driven by the frame of reference of 'what can a coach do that I can’t do by myself?'.
Well, my view is this, if you can be and do the following 7 things with and by yourself, you don't need a coach.
However, if you cannot do all of the following, and you want to ‘be or do’ things differently, be better, move to a higher place or move faster etc. Then I suggest you get yourself a coach. Take a look!
The 7 things a coach can facilitate that you my not currently be able to do, be or see. Can you:
1. Hear and detect your own limiting beliefs? These are the beliefs that hold you back from achieving your potential. Can you hear and understand the distortions in your own self talk that leash you to your current reality?
2. See and understand your own (self-reflexive) consciousness as you create (positive and) toxic frames of mind from which you deal with reality? Can you master them so that you can self-author your own life story, over the one you’ve inherited from others?
3. Apply actual change to your life that is systemic and lasting?
4. Hold yourself fully accountable to empirical benchmarks of performance and development?
5. Engage yourself in actualising your own development, across recognised psychological aspects of self, to live and operate at better states and stages of being?
6. Perform your meanings and mean your performances, as you realise and release your innate propulsion (motivation) system toward achieving your fullest potentials?
7. Ask yourself a range of simple questions that allow you to live beyond scarcity & deficiency, into a place of giving and abundance?
If you can say yes to the above, YOU DON’T NEED A COACH.
If you cannot say yes to all the above, and self development, transformation and performance both personally and professionally are important to you and you intend this… Then my advice is to GET A COACH!.
If you already have a coach and with your coach, you are not experiencing the above, GET A DIFFERENT COACH.
For more information on how The Coaching Room can help you, your team or your organisation, call us on 1300 858 089 or use our handy contact form. We’ll call you back quickly, listen to your needs and together work through what we can do to help you get what you need or want.
By Joseph Scott of The Coaching Room
The 'why work with a coach?' question is most often (in my view) driven by the frame of reference of 'what can a coach do that I can’t do by myself?'.
Well, my view is this, if you can be and do the following 7 things with and by yourself, you don't need a coach.
However, if you cannot do all of the following, and you want to ‘be or do’ things differently, be better, move to a higher place or move faster etc. Then I suggest you get yourself a coach. Take a look!
The 7 things a coach can facilitate that you my not currently be able to do, be or see. Can you:
1. Hear and detect your own limiting beliefs? These are the beliefs that hold you back from achieving your potential. Can you hear and understand the distortions in your own self talk that leash you to your current reality?
2. See and understand your own (self-reflexive) consciousness as you create (positive and) toxic frames of mind from which you deal with reality? Can you master them so that you can self-author your own life story, over the one you’ve inherited from others?
3. Apply actual change to your life that is systemic and lasting?
4. Hold yourself fully accountable to empirical benchmarks of performance and development?
5. Engage yourself in actualising your own development, across recognised psychological aspects of self, to live and operate at better states and stages of being?
6. Perform your meanings and mean your performances, as you realise and release your innate propulsion (motivation) system toward achieving your fullest potentials?
7. Ask yourself a range of simple questions that allow you to live beyond scarcity & deficiency, into a place of giving and abundance?
If you can say yes to the above, YOU DON’T NEED A COACH.
If you cannot say yes to all the above, and self development, transformation and performance both personally and professionally are important to you and you intend this… Then my advice is to GET A COACH!.
If you already have a coach and with your coach, you are not experiencing the above, GET A DIFFERENT COACH.
For more information on how The Coaching Room can help you, your team or your organisation, call us on 1300 858 089 or use our handy contact form. We’ll call you back quickly, listen to your needs and together work through what we can do to help you get what you need or want.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Leadership, Corporate Culture and Paradox
Leadership, Corporate Culture, and Paradox
by Dr. Mike Armour
One of the most unheralded roles of leadership is paradox management. Odds are, you've never heard this term before. Few texts on leadership even mention it.
Nevertheless, paradox is at the heart of every dynamic organization. Not just a single paradox. But a set of them. And each paradox creates tension (and frequently conflict) in corporate culture.
The tension arises from the very nature of paradox. Paradoxes center on a quandary that defies solution. The quandary presents itself as though we must choose between path A and path B (or between truth A and truth B). However, reality dictates that we must choose both A and B simultaneously.
The Structure of Paradoxes
Viewed another way, all paradoxes have three qualities:
1. A paradox pairs two elements, expressed in the form or statements, principles, or values.
2. The two elements seem to exclude one another. They appear contradictory.
3. Yet, in spite of the apparent contradiction, neither element may be excluded. We must embrace both of them.
Paradoxes are commonplace in business. Here are some familiar examples:
Our customers demand products of high quality and detailed craftsmanship.
To remain competitive, we must minimize production costs.
Under our labor contract, we assure workers of exceptional benefits and job security.
Payroll expenses are squeezing our margins and leaving us unprofitable.
Our culture is built around collaborative decision-making.
Fast-changing markets demand swift, almost instantaneous responses.
Non-profit organizations face paradoxes of their own.
To make the wisest use of our funds, we need a quality management team.
High management salaries threaten the loss of donor support.
Our founder's passion is what drives this organization's growth.
Our organization's growth is limited by the founder's management skills.
New realities are forcing us to change our mission.
Our donor support was built around excitement for our mission.
Balance Points
Each of these paradoxes presents two forces that contend with each other. And both elements of the paradox raise concerns about near-term or long-term survival. As a result, leadership cannot afford to ignore or dismiss either element. To do so is to court calamity. Instead, leadership must maintain a balancing act between the two.
Whatever the balance point, someone is likely to second-guess it. Since both elements of the paradox represent legitimate concerns, each element is likely to attract ardent advocates who view their concerns as paramount. To these partisans the chosen balance point may not adequately accommodate their concerns. If not, they will press and politick to relocate the balance point and give their concerns more leverage.
To illustrate, let's look at a widespread paradox at the moment. Due to the prolonged economic downturn, businesses need to preserve capital. On the other hand, they need to invest strategically to position themselves for an eventual turnaround.
Which is the proper thing to do? Conserve resources? Or invest strategically? The answer, of course, is that leadership must do both. But to the degree that we spend money we cannot conserve it. So what is the proper balance point between maximizing reserves and investing strategically?
Those with a more cautious nature will press hard for conserving cash. Those of a more entrepreneurial bent will argue for the opposite priority. And both sides will stake out their position with conviction. Hence the prospect for conflict.
Harnessing Tension
This is why paradox management is vital to successful leadership. Not only does paradox management address survival issues, it also forestalls unhealthy conflict. Proper paradox management maintains creative tension between contending concerns, rather than allowing the tension to degenerate into destructive conflict.
About 15 years ago I came across a thought-provoking book by Charles M. Hampden-Turner entitled Creating Corporate Culture: From Discord to Harmony. He argued that the role of leadership is to identify the most critical paradoxes at work within their organization, then manage these paradoxes adroitly and artfully.
I think his counsel is spot on. And his counsel is just as valid for non-profits, churches, government agencies, educational institutions, and military organizations as it is for companies in the for-profit sector.
Nor is paradox management a challenge merely for managers at the top of an organization. Sub-units of the organization contend with their own set of paradoxes.
Here are some examples:
IT departments struggle with the balance between maximizing network security and optimizing employee access to needed data.
Sales departments struggle between stroking current customers to keep them happy and expanding into new markets.
HR departments struggle between standardizing personnel practices and giving managers latitude over personnel matters.
Priorities for Leadership
So let me conclude with a suggested exercise. Take some time to identify the paradoxes that run through your organization. You might do this by yourself, or as a team exercise with your colleagues, peers, or direct reports.
If you discover more than five paradoxes, highlight the five that you consider most critical. (You don't want to ignore any paradox, of course. But in terms of focused management, it's difficult to concentrate on more than a handful of corporate paradoxes at the same time.)
As a leader, no priority is more important than attending to the critical paradoxes you've identified. What are you doing on a consistent basis to manage the natural tension within the paradox? Is the balance point slipping (through inattention) so that it is no longer where it needs to be? If so, what can you do to nudge things back toward a more appropriate balance point? How do you keep your team's priorities aligned properly to sustain this balance point? These are all essential questions for paradox management.
And just a couple of thoughts in closing. We have centered this discussion on paradoxes which pose threats to survival. There can also be paradoxes of opportunity, i.e., two wonderful prospects which, at first glance, look mutually exclusive. But with creativity, imagination, and innovation, perhaps both are possibilities. As you look for paradoxes in your organization, don't overlook paradoxes of opportunity that may be there.
Second, great spiritual teachers and philosophers often use paradoxical statements to convey key concepts. The very tension within the paradox forces the listener to reflect deeply on the teacher's words. In the same way, simply spending time to reflect unhurriedly on the paradoxes within your corporate culture can yield invigorating perspectives and insights.
Identify corporate paradoxes. Reflect on them. Tackle them. That's your task as a leader.
Used with permission of Dr. Mike Armour
Copyright 2010
MCA Professional Services Group, LLC
The Coaching Room
OUR SERVICES INCLUDE
Executive coaching and training – C-Suite, Executives & Managers
Leadership coaching and training – C-Suite & Executives
Management coaching and training - Managers
HR coaching & consulting (recruitment support, employee relations, performance management consulting, etc.)
Life coaching for professionals
Sales coaching & training – including in-house training & licensing of our facilitative methodology
Leadership, team and organisational diagnostic solutions and support services
Organisational development and change management consulting
by Dr. Mike Armour
One of the most unheralded roles of leadership is paradox management. Odds are, you've never heard this term before. Few texts on leadership even mention it.
Nevertheless, paradox is at the heart of every dynamic organization. Not just a single paradox. But a set of them. And each paradox creates tension (and frequently conflict) in corporate culture.
The tension arises from the very nature of paradox. Paradoxes center on a quandary that defies solution. The quandary presents itself as though we must choose between path A and path B (or between truth A and truth B). However, reality dictates that we must choose both A and B simultaneously.
The Structure of Paradoxes
Viewed another way, all paradoxes have three qualities:
1. A paradox pairs two elements, expressed in the form or statements, principles, or values.
2. The two elements seem to exclude one another. They appear contradictory.
3. Yet, in spite of the apparent contradiction, neither element may be excluded. We must embrace both of them.
Paradoxes are commonplace in business. Here are some familiar examples:
Our customers demand products of high quality and detailed craftsmanship.
To remain competitive, we must minimize production costs.
Under our labor contract, we assure workers of exceptional benefits and job security.
Payroll expenses are squeezing our margins and leaving us unprofitable.
Our culture is built around collaborative decision-making.
Fast-changing markets demand swift, almost instantaneous responses.
Non-profit organizations face paradoxes of their own.
To make the wisest use of our funds, we need a quality management team.
High management salaries threaten the loss of donor support.
Our founder's passion is what drives this organization's growth.
Our organization's growth is limited by the founder's management skills.
New realities are forcing us to change our mission.
Our donor support was built around excitement for our mission.
Balance Points
Each of these paradoxes presents two forces that contend with each other. And both elements of the paradox raise concerns about near-term or long-term survival. As a result, leadership cannot afford to ignore or dismiss either element. To do so is to court calamity. Instead, leadership must maintain a balancing act between the two.
Whatever the balance point, someone is likely to second-guess it. Since both elements of the paradox represent legitimate concerns, each element is likely to attract ardent advocates who view their concerns as paramount. To these partisans the chosen balance point may not adequately accommodate their concerns. If not, they will press and politick to relocate the balance point and give their concerns more leverage.
To illustrate, let's look at a widespread paradox at the moment. Due to the prolonged economic downturn, businesses need to preserve capital. On the other hand, they need to invest strategically to position themselves for an eventual turnaround.
Which is the proper thing to do? Conserve resources? Or invest strategically? The answer, of course, is that leadership must do both. But to the degree that we spend money we cannot conserve it. So what is the proper balance point between maximizing reserves and investing strategically?
Those with a more cautious nature will press hard for conserving cash. Those of a more entrepreneurial bent will argue for the opposite priority. And both sides will stake out their position with conviction. Hence the prospect for conflict.
Harnessing Tension
This is why paradox management is vital to successful leadership. Not only does paradox management address survival issues, it also forestalls unhealthy conflict. Proper paradox management maintains creative tension between contending concerns, rather than allowing the tension to degenerate into destructive conflict.
About 15 years ago I came across a thought-provoking book by Charles M. Hampden-Turner entitled Creating Corporate Culture: From Discord to Harmony. He argued that the role of leadership is to identify the most critical paradoxes at work within their organization, then manage these paradoxes adroitly and artfully.
I think his counsel is spot on. And his counsel is just as valid for non-profits, churches, government agencies, educational institutions, and military organizations as it is for companies in the for-profit sector.
Nor is paradox management a challenge merely for managers at the top of an organization. Sub-units of the organization contend with their own set of paradoxes.
Here are some examples:
IT departments struggle with the balance between maximizing network security and optimizing employee access to needed data.
Sales departments struggle between stroking current customers to keep them happy and expanding into new markets.
HR departments struggle between standardizing personnel practices and giving managers latitude over personnel matters.
Priorities for Leadership
So let me conclude with a suggested exercise. Take some time to identify the paradoxes that run through your organization. You might do this by yourself, or as a team exercise with your colleagues, peers, or direct reports.
If you discover more than five paradoxes, highlight the five that you consider most critical. (You don't want to ignore any paradox, of course. But in terms of focused management, it's difficult to concentrate on more than a handful of corporate paradoxes at the same time.)
As a leader, no priority is more important than attending to the critical paradoxes you've identified. What are you doing on a consistent basis to manage the natural tension within the paradox? Is the balance point slipping (through inattention) so that it is no longer where it needs to be? If so, what can you do to nudge things back toward a more appropriate balance point? How do you keep your team's priorities aligned properly to sustain this balance point? These are all essential questions for paradox management.
And just a couple of thoughts in closing. We have centered this discussion on paradoxes which pose threats to survival. There can also be paradoxes of opportunity, i.e., two wonderful prospects which, at first glance, look mutually exclusive. But with creativity, imagination, and innovation, perhaps both are possibilities. As you look for paradoxes in your organization, don't overlook paradoxes of opportunity that may be there.
Second, great spiritual teachers and philosophers often use paradoxical statements to convey key concepts. The very tension within the paradox forces the listener to reflect deeply on the teacher's words. In the same way, simply spending time to reflect unhurriedly on the paradoxes within your corporate culture can yield invigorating perspectives and insights.
Identify corporate paradoxes. Reflect on them. Tackle them. That's your task as a leader.
Used with permission of Dr. Mike Armour
Copyright 2010
MCA Professional Services Group, LLC
The Coaching Room
OUR SERVICES INCLUDE
Executive coaching and training – C-Suite, Executives & Managers
Leadership coaching and training – C-Suite & Executives
Management coaching and training - Managers
HR coaching & consulting (recruitment support, employee relations, performance management consulting, etc.)
Life coaching for professionals
Sales coaching & training – including in-house training & licensing of our facilitative methodology
Leadership, team and organisational diagnostic solutions and support services
Organisational development and change management consulting
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
3 minute Leadership Coaching Video
It's not what you expect!
It's about Leadership and how you lead.
Cheers Jay
It's about Leadership and how you lead.
Cheers Jay
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Wil Smith on Leadership, Talent and Success
The video below is a powerful, yet simple expose on Leadership, Talent and Success by Wil Smith (actor).
For me this is Leadership.
Jay
For me this is Leadership.
Jay
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
How New Leaders Build Trust
How New Leaders Build Trust - A Leadership Coaching article
by Dr. Mike Armour
In 2007 I was introduced to an informal initiative at Microsoft called 42Projects. Formed largely by word-of-mouth, 42Projects is a grassroots community with a singular purpose: to find practical ways to increase innovation by enhancing team trust.
The group is coordinated by Ross Smith, an imaginative leader and a master of collaboration. Since I first addressed the 42Projects team two years ago, they have launched Trust 2.0, an experiment in using wikis, blogs, and productivity games to expand trust within an organization.
Trust-Building Priorities
This month I was back in Redmond to speak to them again. We met at noon over pizza in a spacious multi-media center, with others around Microsoft joining through a video feed. The topic, as you might expect, was trust-building. In particular, we talked about building trust when you move into new management or leadership positions.
During the question-and-answer period, one person observed, "When you step into a new position like this, it's vital to become trusted by both your team and by those above you. Which of these should be your priority in the first months on a job?"
That's an intriguing question. No one had ever put it to me quite that way before. Yet the question is universally relevant to managers and leaders. How would you answer?
Some might argue that you should build trust first and foremost with those above you. After all, they control your funding. And need we mention their clout in making or breaking your career?
But I took the opposite stance. I argued that your first priority as a new manager or leader is to build your team's trust in you and to strengthen trust within the team itself.
Here's my rationale. Those above you already have a certain degree of trust in you. Otherwise they would have never placed you in this new role. The team you are leading, however, probably had little or no voice in your selection. They might not even know you, especially if you were hired from the outside.
Yet your success in the eyes of those above you will largely be measured by how well your team performs. And every study on the subject shows that teams perform at their best in settings of high, mutual trust. To the degree that you build productive, high-trust relationships with your team and within your team, you make their success all the more likely. And in the process, you gain greater trust from those to whom you report.
Engendering Trust
Someone then followed up with a second question: what should I do in the first months on a job to engender trust within the team? This was a more familiar question for me. It comes up frequently in Q&A sessions or radio interviews. And I've boiled my response down to a simple three-point approach.
First, you use your initial weeks in a new leadership or management role to establish your "likeability." I'm not talking about launching a charm offensive. Or setting out to win a popularity contest. But your new team is watching from day one to see if you are truly a likeable person.
Are you approachable?
Are you friendly?
Are you courteous and well-mannered?
Are you thoughtful and considerate of others?
If your team quickly decides that you are likeable, it becomes easier for them to trust you. Or to put it another way, we don't readily trust unlikeable people.
But it's vital to keep a key distinction in mind here. Being "likeable" and having people like all of your decisions are two entirely different matters. People want leaders whom they like. But they also want leaders who can make tough, timely decisions. If you become known for putting off critical decisions, hoping to find a solution to everyone's liking, you will soon lose your team's respect.
Which leads us to the second point. We tend to withhold trust from people whom we don't respect. Therefore, in the opening weeks of your new role, you must work daily to build respect for yourself. Here I'm not talking so much about respect for your authority. I'm talking about respect for you, personally.
This is not to downplay the importance of respect for authority. It's clearly important. And in military-type organizations it's paramount. For them success in the thick of battle depends on respect for authority, whether you happen to like the person in authority or not.
Outside of military-type organizations, however, effective leaders today rely far more on personal influence than on command and control. And personal influence depends directly on the level of respect that others have for you as a person.
How, then, do you gain people's respect? You begin by respecting them. When someone treats us with respect, we find it easy to reciprocate in kind.
Building Respect
In your opening weeks in a new leadership or management role, therefore, you must work daily to show your team – collectively and individually – that you respect them.
Do you seem genuinely interested in their ideas?
Are you responsive to their emails and inquiries?
Do you openly commend them for a job well done?
Do you share the credit for success with them?
Do you actively discourage jokes, sarcasm, or derisive statements that demean people or treat them dismissively?
Treating your team with respect, however, is merely the first step in gaining their respect. Equally important is acting in ways that merit respect.
Are you truthful?
Do you keep promises?
Do you meet deadlines?
Do you refrain from vulgarities and off-color jokes?
Do you avoid favoritism?
Do you hold yourself to the same standards that you expect of others?
If not, the team may appreciate you for respecting them, but they will not give you their full respect.
Consistency
The third key in transitioning to a new position of leadership or management is consistency. The team will be watching to see if you are consistently trustworthy. Absolute perfection is not necessary. Slip-ups now and then are to be expected. But overall the team is looking for consistent, trustworthy behavior over the long haul.
In the sequence of three priorities, I purposefully put respect ahead of consistency. Once the team genuinely respects you, they will be more willing to overlook an occasional lapse in consistency. Because of their respect for you, slip-ups now and then are not as likely to cost you their overall trust. But if they neither like you nor respect you, even the slightest inconsistency will serve to jeopardize trust.
Used with Permission of Dr. Mike Armour - Leader Perfect.
by Dr. Mike Armour
In 2007 I was introduced to an informal initiative at Microsoft called 42Projects. Formed largely by word-of-mouth, 42Projects is a grassroots community with a singular purpose: to find practical ways to increase innovation by enhancing team trust.
The group is coordinated by Ross Smith, an imaginative leader and a master of collaboration. Since I first addressed the 42Projects team two years ago, they have launched Trust 2.0, an experiment in using wikis, blogs, and productivity games to expand trust within an organization.
Trust-Building Priorities
This month I was back in Redmond to speak to them again. We met at noon over pizza in a spacious multi-media center, with others around Microsoft joining through a video feed. The topic, as you might expect, was trust-building. In particular, we talked about building trust when you move into new management or leadership positions.
During the question-and-answer period, one person observed, "When you step into a new position like this, it's vital to become trusted by both your team and by those above you. Which of these should be your priority in the first months on a job?"
That's an intriguing question. No one had ever put it to me quite that way before. Yet the question is universally relevant to managers and leaders. How would you answer?
Some might argue that you should build trust first and foremost with those above you. After all, they control your funding. And need we mention their clout in making or breaking your career?
But I took the opposite stance. I argued that your first priority as a new manager or leader is to build your team's trust in you and to strengthen trust within the team itself.
Here's my rationale. Those above you already have a certain degree of trust in you. Otherwise they would have never placed you in this new role. The team you are leading, however, probably had little or no voice in your selection. They might not even know you, especially if you were hired from the outside.
Yet your success in the eyes of those above you will largely be measured by how well your team performs. And every study on the subject shows that teams perform at their best in settings of high, mutual trust. To the degree that you build productive, high-trust relationships with your team and within your team, you make their success all the more likely. And in the process, you gain greater trust from those to whom you report.
Engendering Trust
Someone then followed up with a second question: what should I do in the first months on a job to engender trust within the team? This was a more familiar question for me. It comes up frequently in Q&A sessions or radio interviews. And I've boiled my response down to a simple three-point approach.
First, you use your initial weeks in a new leadership or management role to establish your "likeability." I'm not talking about launching a charm offensive. Or setting out to win a popularity contest. But your new team is watching from day one to see if you are truly a likeable person.
Are you approachable?
Are you friendly?
Are you courteous and well-mannered?
Are you thoughtful and considerate of others?
If your team quickly decides that you are likeable, it becomes easier for them to trust you. Or to put it another way, we don't readily trust unlikeable people.
But it's vital to keep a key distinction in mind here. Being "likeable" and having people like all of your decisions are two entirely different matters. People want leaders whom they like. But they also want leaders who can make tough, timely decisions. If you become known for putting off critical decisions, hoping to find a solution to everyone's liking, you will soon lose your team's respect.
Which leads us to the second point. We tend to withhold trust from people whom we don't respect. Therefore, in the opening weeks of your new role, you must work daily to build respect for yourself. Here I'm not talking so much about respect for your authority. I'm talking about respect for you, personally.
This is not to downplay the importance of respect for authority. It's clearly important. And in military-type organizations it's paramount. For them success in the thick of battle depends on respect for authority, whether you happen to like the person in authority or not.
Outside of military-type organizations, however, effective leaders today rely far more on personal influence than on command and control. And personal influence depends directly on the level of respect that others have for you as a person.
How, then, do you gain people's respect? You begin by respecting them. When someone treats us with respect, we find it easy to reciprocate in kind.
Building Respect
In your opening weeks in a new leadership or management role, therefore, you must work daily to show your team – collectively and individually – that you respect them.
Do you seem genuinely interested in their ideas?
Are you responsive to their emails and inquiries?
Do you openly commend them for a job well done?
Do you share the credit for success with them?
Do you actively discourage jokes, sarcasm, or derisive statements that demean people or treat them dismissively?
Treating your team with respect, however, is merely the first step in gaining their respect. Equally important is acting in ways that merit respect.
Are you truthful?
Do you keep promises?
Do you meet deadlines?
Do you refrain from vulgarities and off-color jokes?
Do you avoid favoritism?
Do you hold yourself to the same standards that you expect of others?
If not, the team may appreciate you for respecting them, but they will not give you their full respect.
Consistency
The third key in transitioning to a new position of leadership or management is consistency. The team will be watching to see if you are consistently trustworthy. Absolute perfection is not necessary. Slip-ups now and then are to be expected. But overall the team is looking for consistent, trustworthy behavior over the long haul.
In the sequence of three priorities, I purposefully put respect ahead of consistency. Once the team genuinely respects you, they will be more willing to overlook an occasional lapse in consistency. Because of their respect for you, slip-ups now and then are not as likely to cost you their overall trust. But if they neither like you nor respect you, even the slightest inconsistency will serve to jeopardize trust.
Used with Permission of Dr. Mike Armour - Leader Perfect.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Women in Leadership Breakfasts - WIL You Lead
Hey Jay here,
Recently I took on a new partner in The Coaching Room business. I did this because I realised some time ago that I couldn't build a world class business on my own. I would, will and do need help from others. I found a meeting of the minds when I met Joseph Scott years ago and after working together for the past 6 months, over the recent Xmas break, we decided to take The Coaching Room to next Level.
In our conversations (during that time) we discussed who we would 'love' to work with going forward as we built the business. What came out of our conversation was the birth of an idea, of a passion, that resides deep within both of us. We love working with Women Leaders!
70% of our preferred clients are women. Women make more personable, powerful, insightful and elegant leaders.
There is an imbalance of women to men in the role of Leader in the business world.
So from those thoughts and buoyed on by our existing clients, we developed the WIL breakfasts - in Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart (and soon to be Brisbane).
If this excites you too - read on!
WIL YOU LEAD
Women in Leadership Breakfasts (Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart)
Women in Leadership (WIL) is a monthly breakfast meeting in Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart created and sponsored by The Coaching Room.
Having coached Leaders in organisations for almost a decade, our experience of the opportunities (including support and networking opportunities) available to male and female Leaders has often seemed unfairly balanced toward the male Leaders.
It has been a concern at the forefront of The Coaching Room’s mind for quite sometime now, and so this year rather than just thinking about it, we have decided to do something about it.
We have created something that will provide Women in Leadership with a real and genuine space to develop deep and accelerated relationships with other like-minded women (also in Leadership positions), as well as the opportunity to grow, feel supported, learn, make friends and have fun, whilst making a difference for other Women in Leadership.
Add to this the support of our world-class Leadership coaches, and you have a very powerful opportunity for sustained Leadership growth.
Some of the intentions of the breakfast are:
· To provide a confidential and safe environment to be ourselves
· To recognise and have a voice for our Leadership opinion
· To gain vitality in our way of being as Leaders
· For everyone invited to connect, develop their Leadership capabilities, authenticity and friendship with other female CEOs and senior leaders in Hobart, Melbourne and Sydney (We will also be expanding to Brisbane over the coming months)
· For each of us to give of ourselves to those at the breakfast, in support of our Leadership growth, understanding and challenges
· For each of us to bring our challenges and successes - to share, so that others in the breakfast may celebrate with us and support us
· To have some timeout with like minded people in similar professional situations
· To make a stand for women in Leadership in what is a top heavy male dominated Leadership environment
· To connect us all in pursuit of Leadership excellence
This means:
· An opportunity to grow, to learn, share, smile and have fun in knowing and growing each other
· A sense of shared order and structure in our Leading
· That you will have the opportunity to actualize your leadership value as a human being
· That you get time in an informal setting with world-class leadership coaches aiming to give and add value to you
· You will learn from each other and we from you
· It will ultimately mean you will have a space in which to give and receive honour and dignity with leading colleagues
Timing and place:
· The breakfast will run once per month (on or close to) the same day each month
· Our first breakfast meeting in Sydney will be at 9:30 - 11am on Friday the 5th of March, 2010 at our offices at MLC - Level 57, MLC Centre, 19-29 Martin Place, Sydney.
· Our first breakfast meeting in Melbourne will be at 9:30 - 11am on Friday the 19th of February, 2010 at our offices in Collins St – Level 27, 101 Collins St Melbourne.
· Our second breakfast meeting in Hobart will be at 9:30 - 11am on the 17th February, at T42, Elizabeth Street Pier, Hobart Tasmania.
· This is a breakfast exclusively for Women in Leadership positions, those invited or that join us in the future will be mainly in the role of CEO of their company, in the process of becoming a CEO, or are in an explicit Leadership role within their organisation.
Energy:
Does the opportunity to be apart of this growing and exclusive group generate energy, motivation and intention within you?
If it does, and you are prepared to commit to being apart of this monthly breakfast meeting, we would love to have you join us. Our vision is to have 24 of us in the breakfast by mid 2010 (or sooner) and for those in the 'Women in Leadership' breakfast to significantly grow and show, develop and demonstrate what world-class Leading can achieve!
The Cost:
Your time and your commitment to 'give and to take' from this group.
The Coaching Room will be picking up the bill for your breakfast!
Next Steps:
The first WIL session will be intentionally small. We are doing this so that we can successfully set a positive framework to help us move forward more effectively.
To be part of this exclusive group, please reply by email to Jay Hedley (jay@thecoachingroom.com.au) or Joseph Scott (joseph.scott@thecoachingroom.com.au
Thanks, Jay
Recently I took on a new partner in The Coaching Room business. I did this because I realised some time ago that I couldn't build a world class business on my own. I would, will and do need help from others. I found a meeting of the minds when I met Joseph Scott years ago and after working together for the past 6 months, over the recent Xmas break, we decided to take The Coaching Room to next Level.
In our conversations (during that time) we discussed who we would 'love' to work with going forward as we built the business. What came out of our conversation was the birth of an idea, of a passion, that resides deep within both of us. We love working with Women Leaders!
70% of our preferred clients are women. Women make more personable, powerful, insightful and elegant leaders.
There is an imbalance of women to men in the role of Leader in the business world.
So from those thoughts and buoyed on by our existing clients, we developed the WIL breakfasts - in Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart (and soon to be Brisbane).
If this excites you too - read on!
WIL YOU LEAD
Women in Leadership Breakfasts (Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart)
Women in Leadership (WIL) is a monthly breakfast meeting in Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart created and sponsored by The Coaching Room.
Having coached Leaders in organisations for almost a decade, our experience of the opportunities (including support and networking opportunities) available to male and female Leaders has often seemed unfairly balanced toward the male Leaders.
It has been a concern at the forefront of The Coaching Room’s mind for quite sometime now, and so this year rather than just thinking about it, we have decided to do something about it.
We have created something that will provide Women in Leadership with a real and genuine space to develop deep and accelerated relationships with other like-minded women (also in Leadership positions), as well as the opportunity to grow, feel supported, learn, make friends and have fun, whilst making a difference for other Women in Leadership.
Add to this the support of our world-class Leadership coaches, and you have a very powerful opportunity for sustained Leadership growth.
Some of the intentions of the breakfast are:
· To provide a confidential and safe environment to be ourselves
· To recognise and have a voice for our Leadership opinion
· To gain vitality in our way of being as Leaders
· For everyone invited to connect, develop their Leadership capabilities, authenticity and friendship with other female CEOs and senior leaders in Hobart, Melbourne and Sydney (We will also be expanding to Brisbane over the coming months)
· For each of us to give of ourselves to those at the breakfast, in support of our Leadership growth, understanding and challenges
· For each of us to bring our challenges and successes - to share, so that others in the breakfast may celebrate with us and support us
· To have some timeout with like minded people in similar professional situations
· To make a stand for women in Leadership in what is a top heavy male dominated Leadership environment
· To connect us all in pursuit of Leadership excellence
This means:
· An opportunity to grow, to learn, share, smile and have fun in knowing and growing each other
· A sense of shared order and structure in our Leading
· That you will have the opportunity to actualize your leadership value as a human being
· That you get time in an informal setting with world-class leadership coaches aiming to give and add value to you
· You will learn from each other and we from you
· It will ultimately mean you will have a space in which to give and receive honour and dignity with leading colleagues
Timing and place:
· The breakfast will run once per month (on or close to) the same day each month
· Our first breakfast meeting in Sydney will be at 9:30 - 11am on Friday the 5th of March, 2010 at our offices at MLC - Level 57, MLC Centre, 19-29 Martin Place, Sydney.
· Our first breakfast meeting in Melbourne will be at 9:30 - 11am on Friday the 19th of February, 2010 at our offices in Collins St – Level 27, 101 Collins St Melbourne.
· Our second breakfast meeting in Hobart will be at 9:30 - 11am on the 17th February, at T42, Elizabeth Street Pier, Hobart Tasmania.
· This is a breakfast exclusively for Women in Leadership positions, those invited or that join us in the future will be mainly in the role of CEO of their company, in the process of becoming a CEO, or are in an explicit Leadership role within their organisation.
Energy:
Does the opportunity to be apart of this growing and exclusive group generate energy, motivation and intention within you?
If it does, and you are prepared to commit to being apart of this monthly breakfast meeting, we would love to have you join us. Our vision is to have 24 of us in the breakfast by mid 2010 (or sooner) and for those in the 'Women in Leadership' breakfast to significantly grow and show, develop and demonstrate what world-class Leading can achieve!
The Cost:
Your time and your commitment to 'give and to take' from this group.
The Coaching Room will be picking up the bill for your breakfast!
Next Steps:
The first WIL session will be intentionally small. We are doing this so that we can successfully set a positive framework to help us move forward more effectively.
To be part of this exclusive group, please reply by email to Jay Hedley (jay@thecoachingroom.com.au) or Joseph Scott (joseph.scott@thecoachingroom.com.au
Thanks, Jay
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Leadership Development Book List - The 10 Leadership Books you must read ASAP
As part of our coaching engagement, we will require that you grow through education and reading. Below is an ordered list of must read books for Leadership growth and development:
1. Leadership and Self Deception - Arbinger Institute
This is a journey every leader must wrestle with - that of understanding the failings of self deception. As Leadership is about Leading through others, we must first learn to understand and change ourselves, our strengths, issues and challenges. Only then can we hope to become more authentic and congruent and ultimately more influencial with her people.
2. The Anatomy of Peace - Arbinger Institute
Continuing the journey from Leadership and Self Deception, every Leader must learn to understand and deal with conflict - therefore facilitating better communication.
3. The E-Myth Revisited - Michael Gerber
Understanding the role of a Leader and Entrepreneur in an organisation. Michael Gerber is at the forefront of thinking about the impact of Leadership on business.
4. The Leadership Challenge - Kouzes and Posner
A broad and deep text on what Leadership really is. An outstanding reference guide with wonderful metaphors and stories. Heavily research based.
5. Mastering the Rockerfeller Habits - Verne Harnish
Masterful simplification of the keys to Leadership and Business success. Harnish is very talented at simplifying the complexity of business success.
6. Selling With Integrity - Sharon Drew Morgan
The new paradigm of sales and change - Morgan is a genius.
7. Dirty Little Secrets - Why Buyers Can't Buy and Sellers Can't Sell - Sharon Drew Morgan
Morgan has gone further in this book to look at how change occurs through the buying process. An extraordinary piece and literature that every Leader must read.
8. Bonds That Make us Free - Terry Warner
Warner is one of the Co-Founders of the Arbinger Institute. This book is an essential for the Leader in helping create meaningful relationships with their people (followers).
9. The Art of Possibility - Rosamund Zander
The new paradigm of Leadership - Leading through inspiring, enabling, awakening and empowering others - YOU MUST READ this book if you are in any type of Leadership position.
10. Generation Y - Peter Sheahan
An Australian author writing on thriving and surviving with Generation Y. A must read for any Leader dealing with 18 - 35 year old staff. This book will help you understand and awaken this generation from a Meta-perspective (Values/Thinking Patterns/Beliefs etc.
1. Leadership and Self Deception - Arbinger Institute
This is a journey every leader must wrestle with - that of understanding the failings of self deception. As Leadership is about Leading through others, we must first learn to understand and change ourselves, our strengths, issues and challenges. Only then can we hope to become more authentic and congruent and ultimately more influencial with her people.
2. The Anatomy of Peace - Arbinger Institute
Continuing the journey from Leadership and Self Deception, every Leader must learn to understand and deal with conflict - therefore facilitating better communication.
3. The E-Myth Revisited - Michael Gerber
Understanding the role of a Leader and Entrepreneur in an organisation. Michael Gerber is at the forefront of thinking about the impact of Leadership on business.
4. The Leadership Challenge - Kouzes and Posner
A broad and deep text on what Leadership really is. An outstanding reference guide with wonderful metaphors and stories. Heavily research based.
5. Mastering the Rockerfeller Habits - Verne Harnish
Masterful simplification of the keys to Leadership and Business success. Harnish is very talented at simplifying the complexity of business success.
6. Selling With Integrity - Sharon Drew Morgan
The new paradigm of sales and change - Morgan is a genius.
7. Dirty Little Secrets - Why Buyers Can't Buy and Sellers Can't Sell - Sharon Drew Morgan
Morgan has gone further in this book to look at how change occurs through the buying process. An extraordinary piece and literature that every Leader must read.
8. Bonds That Make us Free - Terry Warner
Warner is one of the Co-Founders of the Arbinger Institute. This book is an essential for the Leader in helping create meaningful relationships with their people (followers).
9. The Art of Possibility - Rosamund Zander
The new paradigm of Leadership - Leading through inspiring, enabling, awakening and empowering others - YOU MUST READ this book if you are in any type of Leadership position.
10. Generation Y - Peter Sheahan
An Australian author writing on thriving and surviving with Generation Y. A must read for any Leader dealing with 18 - 35 year old staff. This book will help you understand and awaken this generation from a Meta-perspective (Values/Thinking Patterns/Beliefs etc.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Leadership Coaching - The Art of Possibility
Below is a video showcasing a simple and yet very effective metaphor for Leadership. This video features Benjamin Zander and his new paradigm for Leadership Coaching - The Art of Possibility. It is well worth the watch and just may have a profound effect on your Leadership potential.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Leadership Coaching Article - In the Absence of Vision - A Leadership Article
In the Absence of Vision
by Dr. Mike Armour
Books on leadership inevitably place a priority on developing a compelling corporate vision. But articulating a compelling vision is a challenging task. Just ask anyone who has ever taken a stab at it.
So what do you do if you can't come up with a strong statement of vision for your organization? As a consultant and coach, I'm increasingly asked this question by clients. Oh, they have a general, well-conceived notion of where they want to take their people. But they are stymied when it comes to reducing these intuitions to crisp, compelling language, visionary enough to guide the organization for years to come.
It's not that these men and women lack the imagination, creativity, or insight to develop a well-formed vision. No, the villain is most commonly the relentless pace of change. These leaders find themselves in settings where vision statements are outmoded almost as soon as they are finished.
This is especially the case in industries where marketplace realities change color more quickly than a chameleon. In technology-related businesses, for example, product obsolescence is often measured in months, not years. It's not uncommon for market conditions to compel companies to rethink their entire business model in relatively short-term cycles.
A Heretical Notion.
In circumstances like this, how can you develop a long-range, sustaining vision? The truth is, it's often nigh unto impossible. You fundamentally have three choices.
First,you can forego a vision statement altogether. A second alternative is to develop a vision statement in precise, engaging language, simply accepting the fact that it is likely to be quickly outdated. Yet this goes against the principle that vision statements should provide consistent, long-term definitions of direction.
The third option is to offer a vision statement that is so generalized that it can weather periodic wholesale redefinitions of the core business. When they are this generalized, however, vision statements typically sacrifice the precision to be motivational and compelling.
Thinking about this problem recently, I've begun to toy with a bit of a heretical notion. Namely, vision may not always be as necessary for success as our management theories make it out to be. In particular, if you have a set of core values that are well-conceived, precisely-stated, and consistently-pursued, your organization may be able to do quite well based on these orienting values alone.
The power of vision is that it gives people a common focus and a common sense of direction, while also serving to inspire them to superior performance. Well-stated core values have the same potential. True, values do not give us as much focus as a compelling, well-articulated vision. But it seems to me that (in the absence of a clear sense of vision) corporate values which are carefully-enunciated, constantly promoted, and consistently followed can afford us much of the benefit of leadership vision.
A Values-Shaped Company
I had been toying with this concept for several months when I came across a book that seems to illustrate the power of values to shape a company's destiny. The book is Kirk Kizaniian's Exceeding Customer Expectations, a study of Enterprise Rent-A-Car and how it rose from obscurity to be the number one rental car company in the world.
Founded by Andrew Taylor, who fifty years later is still its Chairman and CEO, Enterprise began as a car leasing business. It started in two rooms (actually converted service bays) at a Cadillac dealership in St. Louis. Taylor had no vision of becoming a dominant player in the car rental business. In fact, he made a reasoned, purposeful decision to stay out of the car rental business. He felt the car rental industry was cluttered with too many players, which made margins too thin for sustained profitability.
From the outset, Taylor set out to build his automobile leasing company around a handful of orchestrating values. His first and foremost value was to exceed customer expectations and to do so consistently. Another value was to make it easy for customers to do business with his company. Still a third value was to provide a fun place for people to work and to give employees every opportunity to grow and advance both personally and professionally. Only satisfied workers, he believed, would rise to the performance standards to meet his customer satisfaction expectations.
Responding to Values
Without making this newsletter interminably long, let me quickly summarize how Enterprise went from ignoring the rental car business to being the industry's front-runner. Taylor's leasing customers kept asking him if he had a car that they could rent for a few days. Usually this was because they needed extra wheels for guests from out of town or because their own vehicle was out of commission for repairs. In the early years Taylor said, "No, we don't offer short-term car rentals."
But then he concluded that his failure to accommodate these request violated his value of exceeding customer expectations. So he added a few "loaner" cars that could be rented on a short-term basis by preferred customers. Slowly the rental car side of the business grew and expanded. Soon it was operating out of several locations.
But to honor another of his values -- making it easy for customers to do business with him -- he located his rental agencies in residential neighborhoods, not at some remote airport, as other companies did. This same core value led to another innovation which became his company's hallmark, the famous "We pick you up" policy.
Next, because customers needed a rental car so often in the wake of an accident, he pioneered arrangements with insurance companies to provide Enterprise vehicles to policy holders who had cars in a body shop. And to make things even more convenient for customers, Enterprise today offers rentals at body shops themselves.
At each step of the way, this progression of expanded services resulted from a commitment to exceed customer expections and to make it easy for customers to do business with Enterprise. None of these innovations occurred because Taylor had a vision of revolutionizing the car rental business. To the contrary, his innovations all came about because he kept his eye on his orchestrating values. Had he not given himself so thoroughly to exceeding the expectations of his leasing customers, he might well have never entered the rental car industry.
Values as Substitutes for Vision
If Taylor had a genuine vision early on, it was apparently to build a company that was true to his orchestrating values. Then, as unexpected opportunities came along, he opted to capitalize on them, not on the basis of a compelling vision, but on the basis of their alignment with his most critical values.
This, then, takes me back to the observation at the outset. A crisp, well-articulated vision may not always be essential if, in its stead, a proper values-structure is in place. Now, I'm not suggesting that just any set of values will suffice. From what I can tell, the values that best serve in lieu of a vision are those that embody the essence of the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
Moreover, the primary, orchestrating values need to be few in number. Perhaps no more than three or four. Otherwise it's difficult to maintain consistent focus on the critical values over the long haul. And these values must be the determining factor in who gets raises, who gets promotions, and who gets celebrated as a hero within the corporate culture. Only then will employees take the values seriously enough for these orchestrating values to exercise their full potential to shape the organization.
So strive for vision. There is no substitute for a precise, inspiring, compelling vision statement. But absent a vision statement (or the ability to create one), capitalize on a central core of appropriate values. Talk about the constantly. Relate every element of your business plan to them. Embody them personally yourself as the leader. Let them serve as marker buoys to keep you moving in the direction of whatever success the future holds out to you and your people.
Copyright 2007 - Dr Mike Armour
Used with permission and respect.
Leadership Development
and Executive Coaching
by Dr. Mike Armour
Books on leadership inevitably place a priority on developing a compelling corporate vision. But articulating a compelling vision is a challenging task. Just ask anyone who has ever taken a stab at it.
So what do you do if you can't come up with a strong statement of vision for your organization? As a consultant and coach, I'm increasingly asked this question by clients. Oh, they have a general, well-conceived notion of where they want to take their people. But they are stymied when it comes to reducing these intuitions to crisp, compelling language, visionary enough to guide the organization for years to come.
It's not that these men and women lack the imagination, creativity, or insight to develop a well-formed vision. No, the villain is most commonly the relentless pace of change. These leaders find themselves in settings where vision statements are outmoded almost as soon as they are finished.
This is especially the case in industries where marketplace realities change color more quickly than a chameleon. In technology-related businesses, for example, product obsolescence is often measured in months, not years. It's not uncommon for market conditions to compel companies to rethink their entire business model in relatively short-term cycles.
A Heretical Notion.
In circumstances like this, how can you develop a long-range, sustaining vision? The truth is, it's often nigh unto impossible. You fundamentally have three choices.
First,you can forego a vision statement altogether. A second alternative is to develop a vision statement in precise, engaging language, simply accepting the fact that it is likely to be quickly outdated. Yet this goes against the principle that vision statements should provide consistent, long-term definitions of direction.
The third option is to offer a vision statement that is so generalized that it can weather periodic wholesale redefinitions of the core business. When they are this generalized, however, vision statements typically sacrifice the precision to be motivational and compelling.
Thinking about this problem recently, I've begun to toy with a bit of a heretical notion. Namely, vision may not always be as necessary for success as our management theories make it out to be. In particular, if you have a set of core values that are well-conceived, precisely-stated, and consistently-pursued, your organization may be able to do quite well based on these orienting values alone.
The power of vision is that it gives people a common focus and a common sense of direction, while also serving to inspire them to superior performance. Well-stated core values have the same potential. True, values do not give us as much focus as a compelling, well-articulated vision. But it seems to me that (in the absence of a clear sense of vision) corporate values which are carefully-enunciated, constantly promoted, and consistently followed can afford us much of the benefit of leadership vision.
A Values-Shaped Company
I had been toying with this concept for several months when I came across a book that seems to illustrate the power of values to shape a company's destiny. The book is Kirk Kizaniian's Exceeding Customer Expectations, a study of Enterprise Rent-A-Car and how it rose from obscurity to be the number one rental car company in the world.
Founded by Andrew Taylor, who fifty years later is still its Chairman and CEO, Enterprise began as a car leasing business. It started in two rooms (actually converted service bays) at a Cadillac dealership in St. Louis. Taylor had no vision of becoming a dominant player in the car rental business. In fact, he made a reasoned, purposeful decision to stay out of the car rental business. He felt the car rental industry was cluttered with too many players, which made margins too thin for sustained profitability.
From the outset, Taylor set out to build his automobile leasing company around a handful of orchestrating values. His first and foremost value was to exceed customer expectations and to do so consistently. Another value was to make it easy for customers to do business with his company. Still a third value was to provide a fun place for people to work and to give employees every opportunity to grow and advance both personally and professionally. Only satisfied workers, he believed, would rise to the performance standards to meet his customer satisfaction expectations.
Responding to Values
Without making this newsletter interminably long, let me quickly summarize how Enterprise went from ignoring the rental car business to being the industry's front-runner. Taylor's leasing customers kept asking him if he had a car that they could rent for a few days. Usually this was because they needed extra wheels for guests from out of town or because their own vehicle was out of commission for repairs. In the early years Taylor said, "No, we don't offer short-term car rentals."
But then he concluded that his failure to accommodate these request violated his value of exceeding customer expectations. So he added a few "loaner" cars that could be rented on a short-term basis by preferred customers. Slowly the rental car side of the business grew and expanded. Soon it was operating out of several locations.
But to honor another of his values -- making it easy for customers to do business with him -- he located his rental agencies in residential neighborhoods, not at some remote airport, as other companies did. This same core value led to another innovation which became his company's hallmark, the famous "We pick you up" policy.
Next, because customers needed a rental car so often in the wake of an accident, he pioneered arrangements with insurance companies to provide Enterprise vehicles to policy holders who had cars in a body shop. And to make things even more convenient for customers, Enterprise today offers rentals at body shops themselves.
At each step of the way, this progression of expanded services resulted from a commitment to exceed customer expections and to make it easy for customers to do business with Enterprise. None of these innovations occurred because Taylor had a vision of revolutionizing the car rental business. To the contrary, his innovations all came about because he kept his eye on his orchestrating values. Had he not given himself so thoroughly to exceeding the expectations of his leasing customers, he might well have never entered the rental car industry.
Values as Substitutes for Vision
If Taylor had a genuine vision early on, it was apparently to build a company that was true to his orchestrating values. Then, as unexpected opportunities came along, he opted to capitalize on them, not on the basis of a compelling vision, but on the basis of their alignment with his most critical values.
This, then, takes me back to the observation at the outset. A crisp, well-articulated vision may not always be essential if, in its stead, a proper values-structure is in place. Now, I'm not suggesting that just any set of values will suffice. From what I can tell, the values that best serve in lieu of a vision are those that embody the essence of the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
Moreover, the primary, orchestrating values need to be few in number. Perhaps no more than three or four. Otherwise it's difficult to maintain consistent focus on the critical values over the long haul. And these values must be the determining factor in who gets raises, who gets promotions, and who gets celebrated as a hero within the corporate culture. Only then will employees take the values seriously enough for these orchestrating values to exercise their full potential to shape the organization.
So strive for vision. There is no substitute for a precise, inspiring, compelling vision statement. But absent a vision statement (or the ability to create one), capitalize on a central core of appropriate values. Talk about the constantly. Relate every element of your business plan to them. Embody them personally yourself as the leader. Let them serve as marker buoys to keep you moving in the direction of whatever success the future holds out to you and your people.
Copyright 2007 - Dr Mike Armour
Used with permission and respect.
Leadership Development
and Executive Coaching
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