Thursday, May 31, 2007
The Likeability Factor & Seeing Clearly
There's actually a book called The Likeability Factor, which makes the case that the more likeable we are, the greater our chances are of having happy and fulfilling lives.
And, likeability is related to four key practices:
Regardless, being likeable is part of good leadership. I've worked with plenty of leaders who feel others "don't get" them or "don't appreciate" their good intentions. Alas, the delta between good intentions and effects on others is sometimes large.
My teacher, Daniel Silberberg, is constantly asking us to study ourselves, to see ourselves as others see us --to see ourselves as if we're in a film and we can see every detail of how we're behaving versus trusting our theories of how we are.
Others see us this clearly. We see others this clearly. The trick is in seeing ourselves so clearly.
Daniel cautions us over and over to study ourselves before assuming we "care for others" or "listen well" or are even "likeable." Too often, we fool ourselves into believing our intentions match our behaviors.
Leaders can't afford to create unintended effects. Remember, others see us more clearly than we see ourselves (or than they see themselves, but that's another story!).
When we catch on to ourselves -- really catch on-- we actually become more likeable.
As Daniel likes to say, "No one wakes up and decides to be angry, impatient or hurtful." It happens because we fall asleep in our own lives and can't see ourselves in action.
It's a useful practice to take a week to study everything you say and do and how it affects others. Notice yourself as if you're in a movie.
Tone. Pace. Stance. Language. Body language. Connecting. Disconnecting.
What do you see and hear? How is it different from what you intend and believe about yourself? How does what you notice affect you?
And, likeability is related to four key practices:
- Being friendly - expressing a generally positive and welcoming attitude
- Being relevant - connecting our interests with theirs in meaningful ways
- Displaying empathy - accurately perceiving and understanding another person's internal frame of reference
- Being genuine - being transparent and sharing what is real for you and others
Regardless, being likeable is part of good leadership. I've worked with plenty of leaders who feel others "don't get" them or "don't appreciate" their good intentions. Alas, the delta between good intentions and effects on others is sometimes large.
My teacher, Daniel Silberberg, is constantly asking us to study ourselves, to see ourselves as others see us --to see ourselves as if we're in a film and we can see every detail of how we're behaving versus trusting our theories of how we are.
Others see us this clearly. We see others this clearly. The trick is in seeing ourselves so clearly.
Daniel cautions us over and over to study ourselves before assuming we "care for others" or "listen well" or are even "likeable." Too often, we fool ourselves into believing our intentions match our behaviors.
Leaders can't afford to create unintended effects. Remember, others see us more clearly than we see ourselves (or than they see themselves, but that's another story!).
When we catch on to ourselves -- really catch on-- we actually become more likeable.
As Daniel likes to say, "No one wakes up and decides to be angry, impatient or hurtful." It happens because we fall asleep in our own lives and can't see ourselves in action.
It's a useful practice to take a week to study everything you say and do and how it affects others. Notice yourself as if you're in a movie.
Tone. Pace. Stance. Language. Body language. Connecting. Disconnecting.
What do you see and hear? How is it different from what you intend and believe about yourself? How does what you notice affect you?
Sunday, May 27, 2007
The Art of Sharing Assessments
This blog is called "Cultivating the Art of Leadership," and "art" is the operative word.
I regularly work with leaders on the art of more powerful assessments -- the art of describing "how things are going" in terms of behavior, relationships, and outcomes against goals.
It's an art to bring precisely what we're noticing into language -- especially language that captures what we consider important, opens new understanding in others, and also preserves dignity on both sides.
Some of us tend to withhold our assessments -- until the annual performance review or until we have no other choice (e.g., a project is failing, friction between team members has gotten out of hand, etc.).
Some of us tend to launch our assessments like bottlerockets, surprising our listeners with ill-considered statements and unexpected or negative emotional energy.
Neither way is particularly skillful. The withholders tend to worry about others, believing others "can't take it." The launchers tend to focus on their own standards, believing others "must take it."
The metaphor of "taking it" (or not) is what creates mischief.
If we can instead transform our lens from one of a "burden" others have "to take" to a view of describing "cause and effect," we can move from labeling behavior (as good or bad) to supporting learning (exploring how certain behavior produces certain effects).
So, the art is in opening up a new domain of attention for learning. This is core to the integral coaching methodology.
I had a conversation last week with a client who said that sharing assessments wasn't going so well for him. What was off was that he was sharing some pretty global assessments, which -- although likely to be seen as "accurate" by many observers -- only created defensiveness in his listeners.
Here's the deal. Whether someone is perceived as causing friction or stagnation in a given circumstance, there are likely to be plenty of counter-examples to prove it's not always so. When we use global labels, what enters is oppositional energy and debate, and what exits is real learning.
When I was in my mid-thirties, at Lotus Development Corporation as a marketing manager in the consulting services division, my boss took time to give me some feedback. She told me that I showed up as "arrogant." She went on to say something about how she had discussed this with my peers from customer service, training, and the Lotus Institute.
I'm not proud of how I responded. I lit into her for talking about me to them before talking to me, and I felt incredibly defensive, making all sorts of counterpoints about our team processes.
Time passed (not that long actually). My boss left. I was promoted. I got her office, with a choice view of the Boston skyline and the Charles River. And, I was still proud of "breaking some glass" at times in order to meet deadlines or create breakthroughs.
But I learned nothing about this thing that I did when I got impatient to "get on with it," whatever the "it" was. I learned nothing about better listening, rapport, or collaboration. I had to learn those things quite a bit later.
The art is in describing actual behavior, in order to open the door to new understanding and learning. I like to point clients to the "Path to Action" section in Crucial Conversations when practicing making assessments more concrete and credible. The path to assessments goes like this:
I regularly work with leaders on the art of more powerful assessments -- the art of describing "how things are going" in terms of behavior, relationships, and outcomes against goals.
It's an art to bring precisely what we're noticing into language -- especially language that captures what we consider important, opens new understanding in others, and also preserves dignity on both sides.
Some of us tend to withhold our assessments -- until the annual performance review or until we have no other choice (e.g., a project is failing, friction between team members has gotten out of hand, etc.).
Some of us tend to launch our assessments like bottlerockets, surprising our listeners with ill-considered statements and unexpected or negative emotional energy.
Neither way is particularly skillful. The withholders tend to worry about others, believing others "can't take it." The launchers tend to focus on their own standards, believing others "must take it."
The metaphor of "taking it" (or not) is what creates mischief.
If we can instead transform our lens from one of a "burden" others have "to take" to a view of describing "cause and effect," we can move from labeling behavior (as good or bad) to supporting learning (exploring how certain behavior produces certain effects).
So, the art is in opening up a new domain of attention for learning. This is core to the integral coaching methodology.
I had a conversation last week with a client who said that sharing assessments wasn't going so well for him. What was off was that he was sharing some pretty global assessments, which -- although likely to be seen as "accurate" by many observers -- only created defensiveness in his listeners.
Here's the deal. Whether someone is perceived as causing friction or stagnation in a given circumstance, there are likely to be plenty of counter-examples to prove it's not always so. When we use global labels, what enters is oppositional energy and debate, and what exits is real learning.
When I was in my mid-thirties, at Lotus Development Corporation as a marketing manager in the consulting services division, my boss took time to give me some feedback. She told me that I showed up as "arrogant." She went on to say something about how she had discussed this with my peers from customer service, training, and the Lotus Institute.
I'm not proud of how I responded. I lit into her for talking about me to them before talking to me, and I felt incredibly defensive, making all sorts of counterpoints about our team processes.
Time passed (not that long actually). My boss left. I was promoted. I got her office, with a choice view of the Boston skyline and the Charles River. And, I was still proud of "breaking some glass" at times in order to meet deadlines or create breakthroughs.
But I learned nothing about this thing that I did when I got impatient to "get on with it," whatever the "it" was. I learned nothing about better listening, rapport, or collaboration. I had to learn those things quite a bit later.
The art is in describing actual behavior, in order to open the door to new understanding and learning. I like to point clients to the "Path to Action" section in Crucial Conversations when practicing making assessments more concrete and credible. The path to assessments goes like this:
- We see/hear something (e.g., someone interrupts, says others' ideas "won't work")
- We make up a story about what we've seen/heard (e.g., we believe someone is "arrogant" or an "irritating know-it-all")
- We feel a certain way (e.g., disappointed, angry, shut down, etc.)
- We act a certain way (e.g., we start to complain, avoid working with this person)
However, if learning can trump labeling, we can use the path to action to share what we're observing and how it affects us -- specifically.
Here's how I would have coached my boss to give me feedback when I was at Lotus.
"I noticed that you interrupted others a number of times when we were generating ideas for our user conference. You went to the whiteboard and sketched out your ideas and took over the conversation, making the case pretty strongly for how your approach was better. For me, this produced a sense that you believed you knew more than the rest of the team. I think the team is starting to see you as arrogant and not respectful of their contributions. I was disappointed because I believe we need everyone's contributions and buy-in for success. I didn't say anything at the time, but I think this is an important area for us to discuss, as this behavior is not supportive of strong teamwork."
This would have put me in a different set of reflections.
If my boss had further asked me to be in a practice of noticing how often I interrupted others at meetings as well as how often I solicited others' perspectives, things could have really gotten interesting from the learning perspective.
Instead, I had to wait until I went to coaching school, when Pam Weiss gave me a program with some key practices around "not knowing" (for the sake of moving from knowledge to genuine wisdom) and "trying softer" (including learning to "yield" and "blend" with others as well as being able to push ahead aggressively).
My hope is that your colleagues and employees won't have to wait so long!
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Leadership Lessons from World Bank Woes
The World Bank woes made me flash back to graduate school. I remember reading articles by a the neoconservative bunch, including Condoleeza Rice, when I was at The Claremont Graduate School.
I was studying foreign and defense policy at the Center for Politics and Policy. I became familiar with diverse thinkers, from Jean Lipman-Blumen (crisis management) to Paul Kennedy (The Rise and Fall of Great Powers) to Paul Wolfowitz himself (I read about some of his earlier work, which focused on strategic access to Persian Gulf oil).
Fast forward to May 20, 2007. When I typed "Paul Wolfowitz" into Google, my search results yielded 7.7 million hits. This blog entry will be 7,700,001, I suppose!
Paul Wolfowitz is often cited as the architect for the Bush Administration's Iraq policy, and remained one its staunchest advocates, even as the Iraq war dragged on. Wolfowitz seemed fixated on the idea of success and impatient with indicators that the big vision needed revision, that new voices and strategies were required to address failures in the original policy.
According to a New Yorker article, "The Believer," published in November 2004 commented on Wolfowitz's unswerving support of the Iraq war:
"Wolfowitz’s critics accuse him of naïveté, of setting out a vision that fails to consider fully the complex and unpredictable regional dynamics..." Hmm. Failing to consider complex dynamics. Sounds familiar.
Wolfowitz went on to become president of the World Bank, ending his tenure in scandal, after he created an unauthorized and highly lucrative compensation package for his girlfriend, Shaha Riza. It didn't help that his staff felt alienated or that he was often at odds with his board.
Some see the derailment of Wolfowitz's World Bank career as a single, while admittedly-bad, ethics transgression.
In leadership, there's practically no such thing as a single bad call. Instead, there's a history of how a leader pays attention and practices. There's a history of how a leader enrolls the rest of his or her team to support the big vision , how a leader reads whether the strategy for the vision is working or not.
Every day, corporations pay out billions on "big vision" plays that were never linked to the devilish details of execution or changing conditions.
Think of the ebullient acquisitions made by WorldCom (its most notable acquisition was MCI in 1998, making the deal the then-largest merger in US history). However, massive debt, incompetent integration of operations across acquired companies, and accounting scandals led to bankruptcy a mere five years later.
Worldcom. Wolfowitz and the Iraq policy. Wolfowitz and the World Bank. Big visions gone awry have a lot in common.
Leadership Lessons: Beware the"big vision" that is fully mapped out in advance and creates impatient evangelists who fail to read cues in their always dynamic environments.
Focus on cultivating a culture of sensing and responding to changing conditions -- in people and the environment.
I was studying foreign and defense policy at the Center for Politics and Policy. I became familiar with diverse thinkers, from Jean Lipman-Blumen (crisis management) to Paul Kennedy (The Rise and Fall of Great Powers) to Paul Wolfowitz himself (I read about some of his earlier work, which focused on strategic access to Persian Gulf oil).
Fast forward to May 20, 2007. When I typed "Paul Wolfowitz" into Google, my search results yielded 7.7 million hits. This blog entry will be 7,700,001, I suppose!
Paul Wolfowitz is often cited as the architect for the Bush Administration's Iraq policy, and remained one its staunchest advocates, even as the Iraq war dragged on. Wolfowitz seemed fixated on the idea of success and impatient with indicators that the big vision needed revision, that new voices and strategies were required to address failures in the original policy.
According to a New Yorker article, "The Believer," published in November 2004 commented on Wolfowitz's unswerving support of the Iraq war:
"Wolfowitz’s critics accuse him of naïveté, of setting out a vision that fails to consider fully the complex and unpredictable regional dynamics..." Hmm. Failing to consider complex dynamics. Sounds familiar.
Wolfowitz went on to become president of the World Bank, ending his tenure in scandal, after he created an unauthorized and highly lucrative compensation package for his girlfriend, Shaha Riza. It didn't help that his staff felt alienated or that he was often at odds with his board.
Some see the derailment of Wolfowitz's World Bank career as a single, while admittedly-bad, ethics transgression.
In leadership, there's practically no such thing as a single bad call. Instead, there's a history of how a leader pays attention and practices. There's a history of how a leader enrolls the rest of his or her team to support the big vision , how a leader reads whether the strategy for the vision is working or not.
Every day, corporations pay out billions on "big vision" plays that were never linked to the devilish details of execution or changing conditions.
Think of the ebullient acquisitions made by WorldCom (its most notable acquisition was MCI in 1998, making the deal the then-largest merger in US history). However, massive debt, incompetent integration of operations across acquired companies, and accounting scandals led to bankruptcy a mere five years later.
Worldcom. Wolfowitz and the Iraq policy. Wolfowitz and the World Bank. Big visions gone awry have a lot in common.
Leadership Lessons: Beware the"big vision" that is fully mapped out in advance and creates impatient evangelists who fail to read cues in their always dynamic environments.
Focus on cultivating a culture of sensing and responding to changing conditions -- in people and the environment.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Asking for Testimonials
In building a new web site, I asked my clients -- present and former -- to give me quotes to help visitors to my site understand what happens in coaching and what it's like to be coached by me.
I coach people to make more powerful requests, to enroll others in supporting new initiatives, etc. It was interesting to notice how I felt a bit reticent about asking for testimonials.
Reticent, as in restrained, reserved, reluctant. Let's see, might that be the basic "fear of rejection" in play? So, I noticed the feeling and asked anyway. And, the responses have touched me -- some quite deeply.
I had lunch with a senior executive, with whom I worked several years back. I asked her what her lasting benefits have been from being in a leadership development program.
I took a lot of notes about improved relationships, greater self awareness, the ability to take stronger stands as a leader and as a person, and so forth.
She shared how our work together differed from the first coach she hired, as in "night and day" differences. She felt her first coach focused on really superficial things that were "techniques for manipulating people" or things she could get from any management course.
She valued the integral approach and said: "One of the biggest things I learned was greater self-awareness, especially the effect I was having on others. In the past, I could have a negative effect and be totally unaware of it."
We continued to talk and one story really captured my attention.
My client told me: "I use what I learned about leadership in parenting all the time. My daughter is involved in theater and works in stage management. She has come home in tears because the kids wouldn't listen to her. I used the aikido exercise you taught me to help her distinguish between forcing and encouraging others to work with you."
My client's daughter really got it and came back from a Shakespeare camp reporting she had had more success leading her peers by learning to "dance differently" with them.
My client confessed that before her own program, she was a dyed-in-the-wool command and control leader, as in "just tell them what to do and expect the best." She said her daughter was getting something about leadership that took her decades to understand."
How cool. I learned the aikido exercises from Richard Strozzi-Heckler, who is a 6th-degree black belt in aikido. I taught my client. And, she taught her daughter, who is having vastly different conversations than I ever had at her age.
Meanwhile, back to the testimonials. I'll use the best business ones from the many notes I have been taking, and I enjoy hearing "the rest of the story" as the saying goes.
I coach people to make more powerful requests, to enroll others in supporting new initiatives, etc. It was interesting to notice how I felt a bit reticent about asking for testimonials.
Reticent, as in restrained, reserved, reluctant. Let's see, might that be the basic "fear of rejection" in play? So, I noticed the feeling and asked anyway. And, the responses have touched me -- some quite deeply.
I had lunch with a senior executive, with whom I worked several years back. I asked her what her lasting benefits have been from being in a leadership development program.
I took a lot of notes about improved relationships, greater self awareness, the ability to take stronger stands as a leader and as a person, and so forth.
She shared how our work together differed from the first coach she hired, as in "night and day" differences. She felt her first coach focused on really superficial things that were "techniques for manipulating people" or things she could get from any management course.
She valued the integral approach and said: "One of the biggest things I learned was greater self-awareness, especially the effect I was having on others. In the past, I could have a negative effect and be totally unaware of it."
We continued to talk and one story really captured my attention.
My client told me: "I use what I learned about leadership in parenting all the time. My daughter is involved in theater and works in stage management. She has come home in tears because the kids wouldn't listen to her. I used the aikido exercise you taught me to help her distinguish between forcing and encouraging others to work with you."
My client's daughter really got it and came back from a Shakespeare camp reporting she had had more success leading her peers by learning to "dance differently" with them.
My client confessed that before her own program, she was a dyed-in-the-wool command and control leader, as in "just tell them what to do and expect the best." She said her daughter was getting something about leadership that took her decades to understand."
How cool. I learned the aikido exercises from Richard Strozzi-Heckler, who is a 6th-degree black belt in aikido. I taught my client. And, she taught her daughter, who is having vastly different conversations than I ever had at her age.
Meanwhile, back to the testimonials. I'll use the best business ones from the many notes I have been taking, and I enjoy hearing "the rest of the story" as the saying goes.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Parenting & Leadership
It's been an inquiry for us for the past few years. Will we adopt? Will we just support needy kids through philanthropy? Will we be content to just be an aunt and uncle to our nieces and nephews? We feel incredibly blessed in our lives and wanted to share more.
Around the turn of the New Year, we decided to move forward -- as foster parents with the intention of fostering teenagers.
Our friends' responses ranged from, "I want to be your foster kid!" and "I could loan you my teenagers!" to "Wow, that's a big step, congratulations!" Mostly, we've gotten a lot of support.
In February, Steve and I took an intensive 32-hour foster care class. In April, we completed our homestudy and other paperwork, including the fingerprint cards at the local jail in Park City. Now, we're waiting for final approval of our background checks.
In the meantime, we're having the most interesting conversations with friends about what's ahead. Jack, a friend from California who is staying with us for a few weeks, had organized an evening "in" to watch the Floyd Mayweather, Jr./Carlos De La Hoya boxing match. I had never watched a boxing match, but I was game.
Our friends Tess and Jenn drove up from Salt Lake City to join us. Steve grilled steaks and steamed vegetables. And, Jack narrated the history leading up to the De La Hoya promoted event in Las Vegas.
When the fight was over, conversation turned to life, the Enneagram (four of us are Enneagram geeks, I confess), and then to our decision to foster.
Jack, a provocative kind of guy, asked, "So what do you do when your kid comes home at 4 a.m. high on cocaine after breaking curfew?"
What ensued was an animated conversation about boundaries, communication, intentions, behavior, and so forth.
Steve came down hard on the side of the rules and consequences (he grew up in a small town in a family with strict rules). My instinct was to try to understand the context and how the child was paying attention (I'm a coach and I didn't grow up with a lot of rules) before taking action.
It was an interesting moment. Suddenly, Steve and I weren't so aligned. It was clear to Jack, Tess, and Jenn that we weren't aligned. It would be patently clear to any child we fostered that we weren't aligned. The sniff was "good cop, bad cop" syndrome ahead.
And, so, I was grateful for the question, which had come up in a less triggering way in our home study, when our case worker asked, "How do you set boundaries?"
I shrugged, looked at Steve, and said, "I would probably defer to Steve on this one, as I didn't grow up with a lot of boundaries." Our case worker recommended a class on setting boundaries and discipline, and we readily signed up.
Our goal in going to the class is not so much to get the recipe for setting boundaries as to enter into an inquiry into our shared values and a study of what has worked for others.
In leadership, it's not so different. What are the consequences for failing to meet commitments, violating policies, breaking the law even?
You'd be surprised at how even the most senior executives labor over what to do when employees are disappointing them or violating trust.
As future foster parents, we have classes to attend, case workers to refer us to resources, and experienced families from which to learn. I have heard more than once, "I wish I had had the classes you're taking before I became a parent."
Leaders could afford to spend more time preparing for leadership. It's been said that leaders -- in marked contrast with athletes and musicians -- spend most of their time performing and little time practicing.
In my work, so often I see leaders who work together day in and day out, year after year, and they are not aligned on fundamentals, from what their dreams are for their business to their philosophies for leading people.
That's where Richard Strozzi-Heckler's concept of the "leadership dojo" comes in. "Dojo" is a term from the martial arts meaning a "place of learning and practice" and a "leadership dojo" would be a place where leaders could train in the real world and not just intellectually, taking metaphorical rolls on the mat of practice.
Richard's book on the leadership dojo is coming out this fall. Perhaps there will be interest to start something locally. Let me know your thoughts.
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