Want Different Results? Do Something Different

From an article by the Newfield Network on observing and action:

We maintain that whenever individuals and organizations are dissatisfied with the results of their actions, they tend to reflect on the actions and on improving their performance by speeding up the process. We observe that dissatisfaction remains because basically the same kind of action is being performed. We believe that in these cases reflection should focus on the observer that they are, namely, that they should discover the basic assumptions that have been limiting their scope of action. From this perspective an unknown world of possibilities for actions and meaning opens up, a world that was inconceivable under the old paradigm.

What I took away from this paragraph is that revisiting our actions and endlessly refining them won’t necessarily fix problems. When something is less than satisfying, we need not to refine what we’re already doing, but to question the assumptions that led us to those actions in the first place. Reminds me of the saying that the definition of insanity or stupidity is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results.

I posted on my coaching blog about how coaching coaxes us through this process, moving away from doing the same things over and over and moving towards examining our assumptions and considering other options. Coaching expands our skills as observers and alerts us to new possibilities of action.

This Meeting Is Not For Discussing Anything That Matters

From the Center for Creative Leadership’s white paper on Senior Leadership Team Coaching, quoting Kerry Bunker, a Senior Fellow at the Center:

For every senior team, the issues that must be addressed “are more comfortably left under the table or voiced only as the team members are walking away from the room,” says Bunker.

Sad but true. How often have you attended a meeting where the crux of the matter surfaced in a post-meeting discussion, in the break room, in the bathroom, in a post-meeting email conversation – anywhere except during the actual meeting agenda points.

The white paper suggests that the safe and trusting environment built by a senior leadership team coach will prevent this left-under-the-table phenomenon from happening.

What are your techniques for making sure that the “real” issues are raised, and not voiced as afterwords or asides?

The Alchemist: A Transformative Leader

I posted previously about The Seven Transformations of Leadership article by David Rooke and Bill Torbert.

My colleague Mary Stacey, along with Torbert, is running “Action Inquiry: Transformational Leadership in the Midst of Action” this week at the Shambhala Authentic Leadership in Action Institute.

Thinking of that, I reread the Rooke and Torbert article recently, and the characteristics shared by the Alchemist leaders (the Nelson Mandela level of leadership) jumped out at me:

On a daily basis, all were engaged in multiple organizations and found time to deal with issues raised by each. However, they were not in a constant rush — nor did they devote hours on end to a single activity. Alchemists are typically charismatic and extremely aware individuals who live by high moral standards. They focus intensely on the truth. Perhaps most important, they’re able to catch unique moments in the history of their organizations, creating symbols and metaphors that speak to people’s hearts and minds.

I’m many leadership levels away from an Alchemist, but appreciate these characteristics as a way to notice and create the situations that will further my leadership growth, and to notice Alchemists in action so that I can learn from them. Maybe even to see a little bit of alchemy in myself.

Building a Feedback Relationship

Seth Godin’s recent post on Direct and useful project feedback contained a good tip on how to build a feedback relationship with a team. It seems so obvious – and yet, I’ve never been in a work environment where we tried this out. I’m going to change that!

How do you develop the trust and esteem you need in the third example? Sit with the team and jointly criticize other work. Before you start developing, spend time giving feedback on how someone else could have done a better job (on a design, on the foley in a movie, on a logo). By earning the right to give feedback externally, you make it more likely you’ve got the right to do it internally.

Facilitation: See it, Hear it, Touch it

Last night ended the first year of my psychotherapist training program. I’ve been reflecting on what I’ve learned and noticed about facilitation through going through these classes.

The course was almost entirely auditory: 90% of the classes were discussion-based. For someone like me, who is predominantly an auditory learner, you’d think this would be a great system. However, just because you’re talking doesn’t mean you’re reaching the auditory learner. The auditory learner listens to what you’re saying, meaning that it needs to make sense. There needs to be main points. There needs to be verbal signals (”First we will talk about x, then y”, or “The point of this story is …” “To summarize the presentation …”). The auditory learner actually pays attention to the verbal flow and the words of the argument, and less attention to your gestures or to the colourful and descriptive phrases you’re using.

In some of our weekend workshops, we did more kinesthetic and visual activities. If you haven’t tried incorporating such activities into your own groups or workshops, I highly recommend it. You’ll get an entirely different take on a topic if, instead of asking for open discussion, you ask people to draw a response and then present it. You’ll gain an entirely different understanding of perspectives if you ask people to articulate their viewpoint through a gesture, body position, or sculpture.

People new to facilitation are often reluctant to deviate from the traditional discussion-based approach, fearing that pictures or movement won’t address their topic or will be uncomfortable for participants. I strongly believe that we are missing out on entire ways of knowing and ways of being if we don’t include such representations. Try it, and trust the process – you’ll be pleased and surprised with what unfolds.

“Tell Me How I’m Doing” – Interaction as Feedback

After mulling over Tell Me How I’m Doing (excerpt here) for a few days, here’s what I think is worth taking away:

1. The leadership fable genre is overdone. I hope to never use it.

2. Interaction as feedback; feedback as interaction. Author Richard Williams basically classifies any form of human interaction – conversation, body language, small talk – as feedback, and points out that without it we shrivel up and become shadows of our former self. What I’ll take away is that attention is sometimes the type of feedback that’s needed, and that all too often the better a job an employee (or manager) does, the less attention is paid to him/her. Less attention equals less interaction equals less feedback equals shrivelling up and wondering if anything you’re doing matters at all. I think Williams is trying to promote a mindset shift from feedback as a specific, planned, timed act to a mode of relating to each other. We relate to each other all the time, interact with each other all the time, and therefore are always giving each other feedback.

Healthy Groups: Task Functions and Maintenance Functions

The Change Agency makes a useful distinction between task functions and maintenance functions in a group. Whether you’re a group participant or a facilitator, having some of these different functions on a checklist (mentally or externalized) will help ensure that 1) the group gets done what it needs to get done; and 2) it does so in a way that nourishes and enriches the participants.

Sample task functions include initiating activity, coordinating, summarising, and diagnosing. Sample maintenance functions include reducing tension, consensus-testing, harmonising, and encouraging.

Many facilitators and participants will lean one way or the other in their tendency to support different behaviours. For example, my natural strength is in the group maintenance functions, and I’ve consciously learned skills in the task maintenance functions. Which set of skills are your natural habitat? Which skills do you need to develop in order to bring both analytics and harmony to your groups?

“Plus-ing” – Building on Ideas

Yesterday, Sasha Dichter blogged about “plus-ing” – a culture of combining and building on ideas, rather than tearing ideas down and pointing out where they’ll go wrong:

All of you smart, critically-minded people out there (you know who you are) ask yourself how often, when asked to give feedback of one sort or another, [you] jump right in to all the little or big changes you think should be made.  This is actually the easy way out: you feel like you’re being helpful, improving the output, and it makes you look smart to boot.  And when you’re talking to someone you like and respect, you assume they know you think they’re smart/capable/etc. and that the thing they’ve just done (the practice presentation, the brainstormed idea) is pretty good.

Not only am I guilty as charged, but I’ve also worked with a lot of people who are also guilty as charged!  (Smiles to all of you – you know who you are). In fact, I read his post just before replying to someone’s draft documents with my page-long list of recommended changes, a list which didn’t comment on what I thought did work and why.

Dichter’s next point relates to my previous posts on feedback, and my firm belief in the importance of positive feedback:

If something is mostly good, start with that.  And don’t talk in general terms (”It’s really great.”) as this is neither credible nor useful.  Give this part real attention and thought.  Give it as much analysis as you give your (subsequent) critique. Tell the person what’s good.  Be very specific about what you like.

This will accomplish three things: first, it will give the person just as much feedback about what works as about what doesn’t, so she has a chance to amplify and strengthen the best part of what she’s done.  Second, the person will feel good and gain in confidence.

Perhaps most important, it gives you practice at giving positive feedback in an honest, genuine, and specific fashion – which is actually much harder than it looks.

I’ll go one further. Not only will this give you more practice at doing something that’s difficult, but I suspect it will also make you a better manager. The more practice you have articulating what actually works, the better you will be able to give instructions, delegate, and set clear expectations. You’ll be better able to give the instructions that are needed up front, which will reduce the time you spend later on giving critical feedback and wondering why someone didn’t live up to your expectations.

Now, the onus is on me to take this advice – a tough challenge for someone whose default calling is to edit other people’s words and thoughts.

Communities of Practice for the Solopreneur

A number of the people who read this blog are, like me, thoroughly engaged in organizational work, yet working on their own as a consultant / coach / facilitator to organizations. When we’re outside of organizations, one of the things it can be hard to build is a community of practice.

I was thinking about this on the weekend when I attended a get-together of the coaches who went through The Coaches’ Training Institute co-active coaching training with me. Our cohort connected so strongly that we’ve continued to meet together, after all the courses, to share our experiences building our businesses, coaching clients, finding coaching niches, identifying our own strengths, sharing resources, and comparing what we’ve learned.

I believe that it’s essential for those of us working on our own to find ways like this to support our own learning and share the meaning we are finding in our work. And for those of us working within an organization, it’s always a good time to ask the questions: Do I have a community of practice here? Who am I learning from? Who is learning from me? How are we coming together to make sense of our work?

“Think Passion, Integrity, Authenticity, Collaboration”

I’ve been reading Fierce Conversations. The preface opens with:

When you think of a fierce conversation, think passion, integrity, authenticity, collaboration. Think cultural transformation.

Think of leadership.

I’ve been slow to post lately, and part of it is because I’ve been trying to put my finger on what exactly I have been learning about working in and with groups. I know the learning is happening, because I’m seeing changes in myself as both a facilitator and a participant. As I read over Susan Scott’s principles for fierce conversation, I thought, “Hmm, maybe that’s it. I am engaging in conversations in a fiercer way [think passion, integrity, authenticity, collaboration].”

Here are, from the book, Scott’s Seven Principles of Fierce Conversations:

1. Master the courage to interrogate reality.
2. Come out from behind yourself into the conversation and make it real.
3. Be here, prepared to be nowhere else.
4. Tackle your toughest challenge today.
5. Obey your instincts.
6. Take responsibility for your emotional wake.
7. Let silence do the heavy lifting.

Reread the above list. Are you ready to incorporate one of those principles – or all of those principles – into some of your conversations today?