Cultivating the Art of Leadership

I just did a two-day workshop for an early-stage technology firm, founded in Silicon Valley and seeking it's day in the sun.

The subject was marketing, as in "what does the brand stand for," "who is the core customer to target," and "what is the unique promise of value?"

I don't market my marketing offers these days, but an executive with whom I had worked in the 1990s made the request. I had material to use, so workshop design was a breeze.

It helped that I knew the CEO so well, and I liked the fact that the group would be small and comprised of the top leaders in the company.

So with a couple of weeks notice, I said "yes." It was the first time I really integrated my marketing offer so intensively with my coaching offer.

One of the goals of the day was to move from "inside-out" to "outside-in" thinking (a la moving from "Personal" and "Material" to "Social" in the integral quadrants model).

"Inside-out" thinking is near epidemic in high tech. Understanding a technology and its myriad applications leads to trying to "push" the message out to the market, which ultimately is a very expensive proposition.

Instead, we spent time on customer segmentation (who was on the other side of the "conversation for relationship?").

We worked to convert messages into language that addressed customer needs and breakdowns and not just theoretical possibilities. We worked on telling the company story in more accessible and powerful ways, ways that their kids and their families could understand.

We also worked on how each of the leaders were showing up in their business conversations.

What declarations were they speaking into and were they believable? Were they generating the trust that would be required for a visionary early adopter to sign on the dotted line?

The team members had flown in from both coasts. They were incredibly bright, committed, and open. Together, and in just two days, they made a quantum leap in how they position their company.

The leadership team also walked away knowing themselves and each other better, saying "we got far more than we ever expected."

The best thing is that the work was really fun. It made me want to spend more time with high tech innovators again.

Interestingly, the competencies required for precision and focus in branding and strategic marketing are not so very different from those that leaders need when extending their vision and enrolling people in an uncertain and not so inevitable future.

Labels: branding, early-stage technology firms, strategic marketing

Morality. It's about happiness and suffering. It's about individuality and the collective. And, in a light-hearted way, it was the theme of the movie I watched last night, Chocolat.

Morality is also a big topic when it comes to big-time political debates. And, since politics keeps coming up over dinner table talk of late, the article Is ‘Do Unto Others’ Written Into Our Genes? by Nicholas Wade and Dr. Jonathan Haidt's work keep coming to mind.

Haidt has spent a lot of time studying ideas of morality from around the world and found two systems of moraliy (one being primitive-emotional and the other modern-rational) along with five foundational values that show up across all cultures, including:

1. Prevent harm to another person (individual)
2. Offer fairness and justice to each person (individual)
3. Demonstrate loyalty to group (social)
4. Respect authority and hierarchy (social)
5. Demonstate sense of purity and sanctity (social)

In Haidt's model, some people (predominantly liberals) identify primarily with individual functions of morality and are called "contractualists" -- those who work to fine-tune laws and institutions to maximize freedom of choice and minimize suffering of individuals.

Other people (predominantly conservatives) share these values but also identify with the social functions of morality and are called "beehivers" -- those who work to ensure the survival of the hive, its intrinsic order, and its traditions.

While Haidt talks about religious versus secular along with liberal versus conservative views, his model can be illuminating for leaders. In particular, I liked how Dr. Haidt defined morality:

"Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, practices, institutions, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible."

Replace "social life" with "organizational life" and morality (think: morale) becomes the code that in fact makes work possible. If morale is low, we can use Haidt's five distinctions to assess what's at risk in our moral code.

• We can ask how well are we honoring the individual? How well are we preventing harm and ensuring fairness for each individual?
• We can also assess how well are our organizations serving the collective? How well are we all demonstrating loyalty, being respectful of others, and maintaining integrity with our public commitments?

Over dinner table talk, I'm always interested in how leadership disciplines -- in this case social competence with its emphasis on curiosity, respect, and collaboration -- can contribute to the national dialogue on politics and politicians.

When consulting and coaching, especially in the land of the "rugged individual," it's often helpful for clients to move beyond the "I" and into a more genuine collective sense of purpose and shared values.

If you're curious about where you would land on the five foundations of morality , consider taking Dr. Haidt's moral inventory and drop me a line about your thoughts on this topic!