Leading Effectively Series
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For 35 years I've prided myself on running pretty good meetings. I keep people on the topic, complete the task, ensure everyone has a chance to contribute (even those shy or anxious members), and focus on action outcomes with accountability. But it doesn’t take much for a meeting leave the tracks and plunge into the icy waters below.
In fact, all it takes is forgetting to surface the hidden expectations and assumptions that everyone is carrying when they enter. I had to learn that again recently when I led a meeting to make some policy recommendations for the Center.
On the surface the meeting went well. Everyone spoke, although some more than others. One of the members had written a memo that sparked the meeting, so that person contributed more than others, but that would be expected, wouldn’t it? We’d had over a week of a virtual data collection process in which a wide range of other professional staff had been invited to write their experiences or expert advice. I asked that each person open the meeting with any concerns they’d like to raise and then we proceeded on the basis of proposals. We got them all covered in the two hours allotted and I took the results and wrote a summary.
So, how did I know that the meeting was a flop? Every member of the group (and a few other colleagues) called or wrote me after the meeting with a proposal to either strengthen or revise the recommendations I’d collected in the summary.
Why weren’t these raised in the meeting? Of course, it’s possible some people hadn’t really given the issue enough attention in the days leading up to the meeting. However, when I questioned those who communicated later, I found that a whole set of hidden assumptions had sunk our little ship:
1. “Doug, I expected that you, as an expert in this, would have spoken up more.”
2. “I didn’t want to be seen as just pushing my own agenda.”
3. “I didn’t feel like getting into an open conflict with ______.”
4. “I don’t think I really understood what was being asked of us.”
They all seem reasonable issues to me. They should have been addressed in the meeting.
So, what are the lessons I’m taking from this?
1. When everyone’s attention is stretched thin, it may take two meetings: one to get participants to really focus and understand the issues and context, and another to knock out something that can stand.
2. Taking time to get clear about the purpose of the meeting, the roles to be played by each of the participants, and the group norms can save a lot of time later.
3. I should trust my gut. If I’m feeling hurried or anxious or frustrated, there’s a good chance I’m responding to something emerging in the group. Take time to figure out what it is and if I can’t figure it out, ask the group.
Why is it that the hardest lessons to learn are the ones we have known all along?
Good luck with your meetings,
Doug
How do we develop leadership for public service?
A number of us at CCL have the pleasure of collaborating with colleagues at the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service at New York University. One question we have explored together is, How do we develop leadership for public service? Wagner sees its relationship to student through this lens of leadership development. Dean Ellen Schall's addressed this year's graduating class and talked about this relationship:
"We have always understood at Wagner that it mattered how we started to engage you, even as prospective students, that we were beginning a conversation, perhaps a relationship--one that could last for years. Two years ago, when many of you applied, we decided to add a particular twist to our application, in part to get your attention, in part to signal we were after a different level of engagement. We gave you the possibility of responding to a photo, a visual image, from a collection of images developed by colleagues at the Center for Creative Leadership. As you may remember, we use Visual Explorer, which is what CCL calls this approach, at orientation as well. The basic idea is that it’s easier to get the conversation started when you have an object in the middle. And we wanted to get a conversation started."This "twist" has worked well.
“It allows us to get a deeper sense of the applicant’s passion for/commitment to an issue, and unlocks the depth of interest in a way that is not always achievable in a standard admissions essay,” says Tracey Gardner, Wagner’s chief of staff.
This Sunday's New York Times published a slide show of the most compelling images and themes.
What does a swimming tiger suggest about public policy, or a pricked finger say about your goals?
Development of leadership in public service begins with engagement. How do you attract and engage students so that learning can be deeper? It can start with a simple question: What do you see?
"Too often," notes Ellen Schall, "applying to graduate school is transactional. We added Visual Explorer because we wanted to signal that the Wagner experience is transformational. Visual Explorer calls for people to slow down enough to reflect on their own experiences, connect their passion for public service to their professional goals, and offer their own perspectives on how to change the world."
Contact Chuck Palus at CCL Labs for more information on using Explorer Tools to create more effective and engaging surveys, and for visual support for collaborative conversations.For more information on this work at NYU Wagner click here.
Warning: shameless, self-serving propaganda alert!
Let me be absolutely clear: what follows is completely self-serving and if this kind of thing bothers you, you should stop reading now.
Glad we cleared that up.
I’ve been at CCL long enough to see some interesting patterns in the ebb and flow of what clients want from CCL. Only a couple of years ago, many clients were focused on building their internal capacity to train leaders. Several large clients had the idea that they would learn what we do and then they could do it themselves. Personally, I’m a great fan of building the capability of clients to do leadership development and talent management with internal resources. However, I’ve seen a shift away in several substantial clients from the focus on doing themselves. Why would this be?
It is not because they don’t have top internal professional staff. The quality of education and preparation I encounter in the learning and development, talent management and organizational development groups in large companies continues to improve all the time.
It’s not because their own trainers can’t learn to do CCL’s industrial strength facilitation of learning experiences. Much of what we’ve developed has become well known in the training community and we've trained thousands to do it.
Rather, there are two big speed bumps that affect this.
The first is that the creation of great learning experiences is amazingly demanding. The staff support and creative energy required merely to duplicate what it takes to create an LDP (Leadership Development Program™) is very costly. But that’s what it takes to create transformative experiences that have lasting impact.
The second speed bump is more important. Although CCL has created great programs, powerful research that’s had significant effects on leadership, a wide range of publications and resources (just look at the burgeoning Explorer series (Visual Explorer, Leadership Metaphor Explorer, Values Explorer), and an impressive array of services (coaching, evaluation services, Leadership Beyond Boundaries, etc.), that’s not why clients want to stay close to us.
Clients want to stay close to us because what’s being created next is always more interesting and valuable than what we’ve already shared. It’s entirely possible to take CCL programs and make them your own. We’ll even train your professional staff to deliver your internal leadership programs. But what’s the point? As leadership changes and the demands on leaders change, what worked yesterday is only a partial solution to what is needed today. It doesn’t begin to meet the needs for tomorrow. We invest in research and collaboration with other practitioners all over the globe because leadership is still a very young field. The most important lessons are yet to be learned.
Stay close to us. The most valuable thing we have to offer is the relationship of collaborative inquiry that leads to life and world-changing discovery. Stay tuned because you don’t want to miss what’s next.
Doug
 When we lack the capacity to effectively communicate with one another, metaphor can provide the means. It has been said that leadership takes heart and requires a certain amount of verbal acumen. Well what happens when we can no longer find our voice and our hearts are literally ripped from our chests? Joss Whedon explores this struggle in his Emmy-nominated, Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, “Hush.”
Those not familiar with the Buffy lore (and shame on you), Buffy Summers is The Chosen One – the one girl chosen in all the world to fight the vampires and demons – all while attempting to survive young adulthood. She juggles the responsibilities of saving the world from certain destruction while trying to discover why she can’t maintain a healthy relationship with the opposite sex. If you thought high school was hell, try living on the Hellmouth.
In this particular episode, a pack of Brothers Grimm-like fiends known as The Gentlemen arrive in the dead of night and proceed to steal the voices of Sunnydale’s residents as they sleep. While it is obviously upsetting to wake and find oneself mute, the true horror of the situation is not made clear until the following night when The Gentlemen begin to collect what they are truly after - the hearts of the townspeople. Losing one’s voice may be unsettling and inconvenient, however terror quickly settles in when you realize that, scream all you want, no one is going to hear you.
But what does any of this have to do with the real world? How does a stake-wielding blonde make her way into a leadership blog? As the Buffy gang sings in another episode, “Where do we go from here?”
We hear time an again how effective communication is imperative. We’re coached on active listening skills, etiquette, and verbiage - yet we rarely discuss within the workplace the emphasis non-verbal communication has on the meaning of our message. Of course personal experiences will play a part in meaning-making, however it is sometimes what is left unsaid that imports the most impact. When a co-worker loses a close family member, the gentle squeeze of a hand can convey so much more than the mere, “I’m so sorry to hear of your loss.”
So where does metaphor come in? Metaphor is a vehicle. It provides us with a means of expression when words fail us or an illustration would better convey our message. Rousseau wrote “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.” He is not implying that we are literally chained to our desks, our homes, and our families. Rather, he provides a metaphor that society has saddled us (another metaphor) with certain responsibilities and expectations that is virtually impossible to escape. In the Buffy episode, Whedon uses metaphor on several of levels.
When Sunnydale’s inhabitants literally begin to lose their hearts to the Gentlemen, the survivors find themselves reassessing their current relationships or lack thereof. Suddenly, conversations that seemed too difficult to broach in the past become less complicated without the need to “talk about it.” Actions become more accountable. Up until now, Buffy and her current love interest Riley have had one awkward conversation after another, each trying to conceal their hidden identity from the other. Coincidentally, it’s not until they loose their ability to speak that the characters make any real physical contact. It’s not until they are surprised to find themselves in the same room, holding their own against a common enemy that they begin to understand the depth of one another’s character.
So what is being left unsaid in your workplace?
We're fascinated by the reasons that things go wrong. And they go wrong quite often. Sometimes in spectacularly unpleasant ways; sometimes in a slow slide into irrelevance. Whole industries are devoted to the diagnosis of failure and there are some lovely, detailed models of organizational disaster. I'm persuaded that in many cases there is a simple, accessible common factor that affects us as individuals and as organizations. It's anxiety. Actually, it's rather the difficulty individuals and organizations have managing their anxiety. This lens has been helpful to me as I've watched smart, talented people and organizations drive themselves into the ground.
It happens when the whole focus of attention is on the risks and dangers of living in this difficult world. While I'm not so pollyanna that I think we should only focus on our strengths and opportunities, it isn't difficult to get into an obsessive preoccupation with managing risks, real and imagined. I used to think it was something we could blame on the corporate legal department, because it's their job to identify and hedge the organization against excessive risk. But now I think it has more to do with the way we react to potential risk: we let it control our business choices.
It manifests in a couple of ways in organizational life. One occurs when organizations begin to multiply their policies and rules to cover every potential problem. The paradox is that contracts and policies that build in protections from every type of malfeasance or negligence define the relationship as fundamentally absent of trust. That is, they communicate more than limits or boundaries; they also communicate an implicit expression of the relationship itself. Perhaps more importantly, the multiplication of rules and policies has a chilling effect on creativity and innovation. When there are many rules, it becomes the first responsibility of employees to check to make sure that they are not violating them.
Then comes the documentation. While documentation is important to preserve records of actions and ensure reporting, the need to document everything can mean that 20 to 30% of the creative energy of the organization is diverted from customer service, product development, or business strategy. Some businesses find that filling out forms is their new business model. New rules and requirements in HR policy or in contracts should be subject to their own rigorous risk assessment: do they add sufficient incremental safety to justify the additional negative impact on climate and workload?
Last week I met a consultant whose firm focuses on performance improvement through people policies and practices. She told me several stories of companies who had accelerated the aggregation of HR policies, thereby clearly communicating to the workforce that none of them could be trusted and they were expected to attempt to steal everything possible from the company. She said something that CCL believes most fervently: you can't change performance if you don't address the culture. She has proposed a single sentence HR policy: Every employee is expected to work for the best interests of the company and its customers and employees.
A culture of distrust (and its cousin: control) cannot spawn an organization where everyone gives their best. That kind of culture only comes where leaders believe in the capability and generosity of their follows. Unfortunately, when the market is down and the strategy isn't working all that well, it becomes easy to blame the attitudes of the workforce. Or when someone goes off the track, it's easy to clamp down on everyone. The multiplication of "zero tolerance" policies shows how quickly we accede to the hierarchical solution; even if the result is the arrest of 5-year-olds for carrying camping utensils for show-and-tell.
Compliance is not creativity.
Control is not commitment.
Passion, creativity, commitment: these are all freely given or they are not given at all.
Our culture is flailing in a sea of anxiety...about the economy, about jobs, about competing on the world stage. This is the time to reinforce our commitment to collaboration, to mutual trust, to shared goals. When anxious, our best escape is in a return to core values. We need to line up with people who are leading the way to positive environments, inspiring innovation, making high performance a pleasure.
Find them. Shine a light on their energy and grant others the freedom to do it, too.
Doug
The word "entitlement" basically means getting something because it's your right to have it - it's not a matter of earning it. On the other hand "empowerment" is about building confidence and capacity in order to gain access – to rights, to resources, to information, to services, etc. – in order to shape one’s life and surroundings.
The crossroad where entitlement and empowerment meet is charged with emotion.
Those of us in a dominant status group may be so used to certain rights and privileges, we feel entitled to them and abashed at the thought we wouldn’t have them and feel those without aren't doing something "right." Those of us in a non-dominant group may struggle towards empowerment in order to get glimpses of a life others take for granted, wondering why it has to be so hard.
There are a plethora of indicators, but none that give a sense of the overall feeling people have about their lot. I suspect, based on gut feeling, that with the recent roller-coaster economy more people are realizing that what they thought they were entitled to – a job, a house, a retirement - is no longer in their grasp. And those who still “have” are probably holding on a lot tighter.
 But what does that mean for us – all of us?
Germany, among other nations, has adopted kurzarbeit - shortened work hours so more people can keep their job. In contrast to lay-offs, with kurzarbeit everyone loses a little so everyone can keep a little.
I wonder if this feeling can extend to other areas – beyond a paycheck? I suspect that spreading opportunity (becoming collectively empowered) would do more to move our entire lot forward than having the dream of being able to move into one of the narrowing slots reserved for those who are entitled.
I find it telling that folks in the middle class tend to give more (percentage-wise) to charities than those in more affluent groups. Chances are they have a better idea of what it's like to need a break and that sometimes it has more to do with circumstance than personal character.
I recently worked with a very high-performing team of government leaders. We were working together trying to hone their leadership edge and create an even better synergy within the team.
During the discussions, the team (a group of high performers within the Federal Government) revealed the immensity of their challenges – they had a ton of money to manage, and hundreds of pieces of legislation to track – where would they have time to do leadership development or team building?
As one senior official stated, the plate is overflowing and yet others keep putting more on it.
This is a challenge facing many government agencies – it is both a sign of their importance as well as a unique compliment of others trust in their ability to handle such a difficult workload. The question remains, however, how to manage such a workload?
 This reminds me of the traveler who once asked the village chief how to eat an elephant? ‘One bite at a time’ was the reply.
Like the village chief, this high-performing team may want to look at how they can slowly take little bites and begin to make headway against the overflowing plate. There are a number of options to address overwork or over-tasking. Some include reviewing team roles, updating team priorities, creating efficient processes – and… yes, even making the time for leadership development and teamwork reflection.
I can hear the refrain – we don’t have time!
I wonder if we looked at time differently, a new perspective would enlighten us with an answer. Instead of looking at time as a boundary, lets look at time as an investment. If you invest time now in team building, could it return more time later? Research demonstrates the time spent in learning and reflection results in improved communication, efficiency, and trust within teams.
In addition, CCL research and others have demonstrated time and again the importance of reflective time for senior executives.
Thinking about time as an investment helps us to realize the return on its potential. Instead of looking at everything on the plate. Lets look at how we eat it, the time it takes to eat, and where we are investing that time at the current moment. Performing this quick analysis may reveal the amount of time being wasted, instead of invested in key priorities.
Using this temporal analysis is a wise investment that will help the team address that overloaded plate… one bite at a time.
So, are leaders born or are leaders made?
As a point for debate, the "born" versus "made" question doesn't generate the same heat that it once did. It might be fun to pose the question to undergraduate students who are getting their first exposure to leadership theory, but the grizzled veterans of the leadership game know that leadership is a learned behavior forged from the combination of experience, support, and training.
At CCL we might as well have a sign on the lawn that says ‘leaders made here.’ And yet, along with all we know about how leaders are made, we can’t deny that some are born with certain advantages. There is one specific advantage some are born with that we were able to clearly comprehend even at the tender age of 5 years old.
The advantage is height.
My colleague, Michael Campbell, and I have found the research on height fascinating.
Several studies indicate that taller men are more likely to be successful and that they earn bigger paychecks. In one study, each inch in height amounted to nearly $800 more a year in pay. The average height of US Presidents is, at 5 ft 11 in, about two inches taller than the average man. Corporate CEOs also tend to be taller and a quick look through CCL’s leader database of 4600 senior executives confirm that senior executives also stand taller than the norm.
So how can those who don’t tower over the masses overcome this apparently innate (born) disadvantage? As with many other facets of leadership, your behavior plays a key role in how you are perceived.
Lara Tiedens, an organizational behavior professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, has done extensive research on the ways executives acquire status. According to Tiedens, people often use height, or an inflated appearance of height, to look more powerful. Leaders who look directly at others, use an open stance and vigorous gestures, speak loudly in a deep voice, and lean in close are perceived by others as more competent.
Tieden’s research has also shown that women can mitigate the potentially negative consequences of behaving in a more traditionally male mode by pairing assertive speech with a concern for the relationship and a sense of liking people.
So we’d like to hear from you. What physical characteristics do you associate with leadership?
“One of the hardest tasks of leadership is understanding that you are not what you are, but what you're perceived to be by others.” -Edward L. Flom, CEO of the Florida Steel Corporation, in a speech, May 6, 1987.
It's an old question; how much of "you" can you reveal at work? I don't mean dress code, but acting and saying things the way you would outside of work. Where's the line between inappropriate and inauthentic?
With social networking, flexible schedules, and hip-mounted technologies that keep us connected to people and places all over the world – separation between work and non-work is no longer the default way of doing things. Most workers have to figure out and manage their boundaries – by reinforcing them, blurring them, or whatever makes sense in the moment. Switching from one’s “work-self” to one’s “non-work self” is something we have to do more frequently. Many folks blend work and non-work “friends” on social networking sites. That could be a good thing, but is it? The idea of an integrated self is appealing - it'd make life easier, but is it a equal option for everyone?
Being authentic is bound to be easier for folks who are part of the leadership “in” crowd (aka folks who fit the leadership mold – who look, walk, or talk in a manner consistent with dominant images of leadership). As we collectively embrace more inclusive images of leadership, I imagine the option for everyone to bring their full self to work will increase.
In the meantime, we may have to ask ourselves is this inappropriate or is it something that challenges our image of leadership - and thereby places an expectation that someone else has to be inauthentic in order to fit our leadership mold?
Rick Neuheisel, UCLA football coach, is on a roll this year. His team is 3-0 (including a defeat of my beloved Tennessee Vols which I am still trying to get over).
 Despite his team beating the Vols, one of the things I like about him, he coined one of the best terms used on the Dan Patrick Show ever – “Passion Bucket.” He said during an interview with Dan Patrick a couple of years ago, when talking about how to defeat UCLA’s main rival, the USC Trojans, “When you’re at UCLA, you have to have your passion bucket full.” Lots of people have since used the term “Passion Bucket” on radio or television or in interviews, like Kobe Bryant, Bob Costas, Tim McCarver, and Kevin Love.
I love the term “Passion Bucket” and have tried to drop the term in conversation when I can. What “Passion Bucket” really means to me, it is a way to measure your enjoyment of life, a way to measure if you are living life to its fullest, a measurement of your energy and enthusiasm and motivation, a measurement of whether you are able to give everything you have, a measurement of how much you love and enjoy yourself and who you are.
 Sometimes your “Passion Bucket” may be overflowing; sometimes it may be empty. Leaders need to pay particular attention to the latter. When your “Passion Bucket” is empty, you won’t get work done; you won’t be a good leader, a good worker; you won’t be a good friend; you won’t be a good husband, wife, father, mother, son or daughter.
What can leaders do when their “Passion Bucket” is low, or empty? I recently had to think about this myself when there was nothing left in my own “Passion Bucket.” That was a rough time; work and non-work stuff was just awful, full of frustration and rejection, trying as hard as you can and nothing good coming as a result, not getting any breaks, a lot of hurt. As you can guess, I could not get work done, I didn’t enjoy life, I forgot what the good things were that made me who I was and made me unique. I was lost. That is a horrible place to be.
How did I start to refill my “Passion Bucket?”
I talked a lot to those closest to me and they listened to my frustrations. I also did the stuff that made me happy. I ran more miles. I played more golf. I listened and played more music. I went to Home Depot and bought all the yellow flowers I could find and planted them. I also really and truly thought about what were the things that made me who I was, the things that made me the individual that I love and that the people in my inner circle loved about me. I just didn’t give lip service to it, I really thought about those things. My inner circle of people also helped me with that as well.
Only you really know how to fill your own “Passion Bucket.” At work, maybe it’s concentrating more on the people you lead and less on the tasks of work (or vice versa). Away from work, maybe it’s journaling or writing. Maybe it’s hiking, or going on vacation. Maybe it’s scrapbooking or throwing a huge party with friends and family. Maybe it’s meditating or getting involved in the community or with certain religious activities. Maybe it’s spending just a bit more time with your spouse or kids. Seeking the advice of a professional counselor can also be invaluable.
 So, if your “Passion Bucket” is empty, allow yourself to take the time to figure out how to fill it back up.
Work, events, even people that you think are close to you can drain your “Passion Bucket” but ultimately, time and only you and those who are truly close to you can help refill your “Passion Bucket” to where you want it.
A full “Passion Bucket” is worth its weight to you at work and away from work, so don’t neglect it.
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