Why developing leaders isn’t such a great idea – And why developing leadership is...

Question: What do all the following words have in common? Situational, Authentic, Spiritual, Transactional, Transformational, Action Centered, Adaptive, Rubbish, Servant, Hopeless, What we need here is some bloody….?

Answer: See bottom of the page  [1]

I blame my parents. I had an upbringing somewhere to the political left of Karl Mark. I don’t remember being taken to Highgate Cemetery to see his grave, but it wouldn’t have been a strange excursion in our house.

And from this egalitarian nurturing environment I come away with a naive discomfort of some people having power over others (…especially me).

So it is not surprising that I have always had a bit of a discomfort with the idea of some people being leaders and other people not. And a distrust of the idea that leaders are somehow a definable subset of a population. The more I hear it being defined, the queasier I get. There has been something that has felt plain wrong about our thinking on leadership and, like “…a splinter in the mind” it has increasingly niggled and irritated without resolution.
 
Organisations have long worked on the premise that:

• Leadership is a result of having people who are leaders
• Individuals can be developed to be leaders
• Leadership is whatever ‘good’ leaders do
• Leadership if defined at all, is defined in broad ambiguous behaviours of people called leaders or individual leadership competencies
• These competencies, behaviours, standards etc are sometimes created or edited by the iffy HiPPO process[2]

And the pedigree of much thinking on leadership is vested in the power structures of the past: religious, political, military. The constant reinvention of what leaders do or who leaders are is still in thrall to ‘the great man’ view of history. This view isolates individuals from the complex context within which they appear to succeed and then gives them undue credit for that success. Individuals are lauded for their success, at least until history decides that perhaps the firebombing of Dresden or the unintentional over exposure to sub-prime mortgages or a voracious acquisition trail wasn’t such a great idea after all.

So in order to tease that splinter out of my mind, here’s an alternative view of leadership development. What if:

• Leadership is not a characteristic of individuals or “special” ability
• Leadership is a set of outcomes achieved in an organisation
• Leadership is a quality of the experience that people have of the organisation
• In essence leadership is a process or a function
• For any organisation, the desired outcomes of leadership can be defined
• The organisation can have leadership by developing its processes of leadership (or its leadership function), rather than ‘developing leaders’

So an organisation can decide that it wants people to feel led, and that ‘being led’ means, for example: having clarity of direction, a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning, feeling inspired, acting prudently, being innovative or other similar feelings/behaviours. It can then decide that achieving these outcomes can be made a clear business intent. And the means can then be designed for delivering that intent.

Leadership in this new perspective includes working on organisational communication, engagement processes & capability, and perhaps most importantly some clear responsibilities of people managers. People managers would have a clear responsibility for ensuring their people had clarity of direction, sense of purpose, inspiration to uphold the organisational values etc etc. The next step is an important one. The next step is to expect managers to contribute their part in delivering these leadership outcomes in whatever way works for them and their people! And that is instead of telling them the one way they are expected to be ‘a leader’. Doesn’t sound too outrageous to me.

On the one hand it could feel as reductive as saying that leadership can be made as procedural as moving premises. But on the other hand it is saying that if clarity, inspiration, meaning and purpose are so important why would you not design them more rigorously in to the way you run your business? The current alternative is that we relegate them to a nebulous and indirect process of developing individual leaders?

This nebulous process then operates a little like a dark art in which all manner of slightly dodgy psychology, neuroscience, sociology and spirituality is co-opted to be sprinkled over the top in pursuit of credibility. And as part of the denial that the question of “How we develop leaders?” has no answer.

If the status quo on leadership really worked then wouldn’t the national survey figures we see published every day about how people feel about being employed, led and managed be a little better than they are?

[1] Answer: They can all precede the word, 'Leadership'
[2] Highest Paid Person’s Opinion

Why Resistance to Change is Delicious

I have been trying to write a difficult email. Actually it is written but not sent. I have not sent it now three times. Someone is expecting it and keeping my commitments is really important to me, but I still can’t send it. The subject of the email is not really of broad interest but the way it has opened my eyes to the value of resistance may well be.

I spoke to two friends about my email. “Help me. Why can’t I send it?” I asked. One friend said – “Don’t be a chicken, get over yourself and just send the thing”. Another friend said – “The resistance to sending it is telling you something, why don’t you just sit with that for a while ‘til you understand what it is.”

In the organisational change world resistance is often talked about as something to be ‘removed’, to be ‘resolved’. It is a ‘blocker’ to change, it is something to work through or around. Conversations about resistance are often polarised. For example, in a health service client, the commercially essential move for performance improvement was described by the change leaders as being ‘resisted’, ‘opposed’ and ‘blocked’ by the concerns of long serving nurses.  How can we get past this resistance in order to deliver our change programme, we were asked? 

Our instincts at Ideas Unlimited have always been to engage with resistance, to hear it, to understand it, to resolve the polarised argument in order to make progress. But if I am honest with myself, have I been doing this within the “resistance is bad/change is good” paradigm? Have I been taking the side of ‘the change agents’ (who are usually paying the bill) and seeing my engagement with resistance or resistors as something necessary in order to deliver the change? Or have I really seen the value of engaging with resistance as the route to sustainable change?

Having been in Cape Cod last year at the Gestalt International Study Centre, I have begun to expand my notion of resistance (with still a way to go). In the therapeutic world resistance is delicious, it is exciting, it is to be invited, it is evidence of engagement with the therapy. Resistance is ‘the work’. When it arises, the therapist’s eyes light up. ‘Now, we’re working’ they say to themselves. In the consulting/leadership/organisational change world it is often received as a necessary part of the job but welcomed with less enthusiasm. “That was a tough meeting” we say (I say) or “Blimey. I’ve earned my gin and tonic today”.

The Gestalt therapist or consultant assumes that even the paying client comes to them with both a desire to change that has led them to seek help and a whole load of things that are stopping them making the change. To quote the late (and, by all accounts, lovely man) Edwin Nevis:

“The Gestalt Oriented Consultant assumes that when people ask for help, there is energy in them that is directed against acceptance of help from others… there is great value in the client having strong forces against change even when it believes that the system can function better if changes are made”. Organizational Consulting: A Gestalt Approach, 2001

The first way not to polarise the conversation about resistance is not to assume that some people are pro-change and others are against change. That is a simplistic view that does not acknowledge the ‘for and against’, the ambivalence about change in any individual or part of the system as well as in the whole. It is also a very convenient way for the paying client (for example the CEO or Director) to distract a consultant from really helping them – ‘it’s not me that needs to change, it’s them over there – go and fix them!” - a convenient and self-preserving projection.

The second way not to polarise the conversation about resistance, is not to label it only as a force opposed to change but also as an optimistic sign that change is being considered and engaged with. It is only when we really start to think that change could be possible that resistance rises in opposition – it leaps up to the defence of some valuable things. It leaps up to protect us from failure, it leaps up to tell us we are OK as we are, it leaps up to say ‘hey don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater’. It is part of changing. And because it is leaping up, in us or in others, we know that we are starting to get serious about change.

In business, resistance is often seen as something that might slow us down, something that might get in the way if change leaders give it too much attention. A bit like the behaviour of an incalcitrant child on a family day out, we don’t want to pay it too much attention in case it ruins our picnic. The Gestaltists hold to the Paradoxical Theory of change. This theory holds that in order to change we must pay close attention to the forces that are acting now both for and against change. They are of equal value. The more we are aware of both now the more likely change will occur (and the more sustainable the change is likely to be.) 

Reminding ourselves of all the reasons why change is necessary have obvious benefits. The benefits of openly exploring our resistance may not be so obvious. Here is my attempt to describe what paying attention to resistance may do for leaders of change.

If we pay attention to our resistance we may learn:

• what must be preserved through the change that is valuable to our customers and that will erode our business if we ignore it
• how a change must be implemented in order for stakeholders to get fully behind it
•  that our vision for the change could be even bolder or more ambitious than it is
• what strengths we are not appreciating in our current way of working that will be the very strengths we
• need to pull this change off
• what additional support or development may support us in making the change
•  what we are not acknowledging in others that will unlock their cooperation and potential
•  that others are not as against the change as we thought they were
•  that the only things getting in our way are actually more within our power to fix than we could have believed. 

Of course resistance may tell you that the change was never a good idea in the first place, but wouldn’t that be good to know now if it were true? 

With this in mind, we say to the leaders of change at the Healthcare Organisation, not only must you embrace, hear and get into dialogue with the resistance in your nurses, you must also explore the resistance in yourself. 

I still haven’t sent the letter but my acknowledgement of the reasons for my resistance to sending it, and the action I take with that awareness, are more likely to bring about the change I really want than the email itself could ever have done.

Performance is NOT Results

An ounce of performance is worth pounds of promises said Mae West.

Now there is a slim chance that the kind of performance that Mae had in mind wasn’t all that work focused – even if it does occasionally make use of a desk or a photocopier. But she is nevertheless still right about it being performance that counts. And to quote Gordon Gecko in the film Wall Street “everything else is just conversation”.

We are exercised by the use or misuse, of the words Performance and Results.

Now this is all going to sound a bit obvious but bear with us. Results and performance are not the same thing! 

Even though in many organisations they are used synonymously.

Our work in developing true high-performance cultures shows that the distinction between these words IS ever so important. Performance – the issue here is that performance isn’t results. Performance is what people do that then creates a result. So what, apart from pedantry, is the significance of that? Well how about the fact that in order to get different results you have to help your managers to develop their people’s performance, not just ask them for different results. The Emperor’s New Clothes surprise is that the vast majority of managers spend very little time developing their people’s performance – especially

when compared with the amount of time they individually spend worshipping at the altars of Email, Excel and PowerPoint.

Mae West and Andy Murray don’t feature in nearly enough consulting articles together so let’s take an example of performance from the world of sport…If Andy Murray’s coach, in the last couple of years, had just told him “I want you to win your next match” every time he lost, then he probably wouldn’t have developed as much as he has. He knew he wanted to win (get the result); he didn’t need a coach to tell him that! He just didn’t know HOW to win (develop the performance). So his coach got him to work on fitness so that he could last

5 sets, to “bulk up” so that he could hit more powerful shots, to work on his backhand because it broke down under pressure... and surprise, surprise the result is a US Open win. Just by doing what Ideas Unlimited has been shouting at the television!

What's disturbing you?

"Write about what disturbs you, especially if it doesn't seem to be disturbing anyone else" Skeeter Phelan is told by her publisher in "The Help". I'm disturbed by Syria, I'm disturbed by water shortage and the growing social divide. I'm disturbed by our decline in mental health. I'm also disturbed by the way grated cheese behaves when you are trying to clean up after a 3 year old and the smell of the house when the local Tom cat has been in. But apart from the grated cheese I don't think I am disturbed my much that others aren't. So I thought I'd dedicate this blog to grated cheese - they way it is irresponsive to a damp dishcloth, the way it curls off the plate onto the floor when you move from table to sink, its general level of unpredictability... Not really. What I wanted to say here is this. I'm disturbed by how more and more desperate many people in large organisations seem to be for space, for time to think, to be listened to, to collaborate, to churn and discuss things over, to take autonomous decisions in the interests of the mission at hand. I'm disturbed by how controlled many senior managers feel. And I include for example CEOs of large national businesses who still feel crushed by the control of Global layers above. In the Ideas Unlimited shed of ideas, we've been searching to find ways that help people in organisations (even in these times of massive change, economic pressure) create containers in which they can be autonomous; ways in which leaders can still have the assurance they need but in which executors/doers have the freedom to be human again. Is this disturbing anyone else?

Dumbing down?

The Edge Web site posted a question “How is the internet changing the way you think?” and about 169 philosophers, scientists, artists and others replied with short or medium pieces of writing at:
http://www.edge.org/q2010/q10_index.html (assuming that you can still be bothered to read as increasingly people are choosing not to get beyond 10 lines of text).

Below is Brian Eno’s piece to whet your appetite or put you off altogether (is the man everywhere?).

What reading a few of these made me wonder was what it might all mean for the future of organisations? Within all of this is some inherent futurology.

Below in this extract is the idea that what is valued is still what is authentic, rare or being made rare, or being simulated. So could that mean that the things we are drawn to in our work, like a depth of real conversation, levels of intimacy and exposure, an emotional experience of work, exploring meaning in work might become more valuable as they seem to become less and less common and less and less authentic?

I’ve been thinking anyway that I’d like NOT to collude any further in the dumbing down of organisation and to find the business opportunity that is represented by the rejection of bite-sized anything-that-isn’t-edible – one writer describes the 'pancaking’ of people and thought, as people increasingly know a thin amount about a wide range.

Maybe it is as simple as helping people in organisations (re-)find the pragmatism, value, efficacy and ROI of a depth of thought about all sorts of stuff.

I hope you’re not trying to read all this on a phone - but that is a factor in what is happening – people are transacting conversations in staccato form because it isn’t acceptable to ‘send’ more than a sentence and it is becoming a norm – a style of thinking as the result of it being unfashionable to sustain attention. Txt speak rprsnts the dpth of thought that precedes action. I h8 that idea. And, whilst I don’t believe thought is a replacement for action, especially in a world in which rapid-prototyping of ideas is more important, there is a very anti-intellectual strand to commercialism which means the resulting action feels like it is increasingly insignificant and better suited to hamsters and their wheels.

Steve. 27th Jan 2010.


BRIAN ENO
Artist; Composer; Recording Producer: U2, Cold Play, Talking Heads, Paul Simon; Recording Artist
THE 'AUTHENTIC' HAS REPLACED THE REPRODUCIBLE

I notice that some radical social experiments which would have seemed Utopian to even the most idealistic anarchist 50 years ago are now working smoothly and without much fuss. Among these are open source development, shareware and freeware, Wikipedia, MoveOn, and UK Citizens Online Democracy.

I notice that the Net didn't free the world in quite the way we expected — repressive regimes can shut it down, and liberal ones can use it as a propaganda tool. On the upside, I notice that the variable trustworthiness of the Net has made people more sceptical about the information they get from all other media.

I notice that I now digest my knowledge as a patchwork drawn from a wider range of sources than I used to. I notice too that I am less inclined to look for joined-up finished narratives and more inclined to make my own collage from what I can find. I notice that I read books more cursorily — scanning them in the same way that I scan the Net — 'bookmarking' them.

I notice that the turn-of-the-century dream of Professor Darryl Macer to make a map of all the world's concepts is coming true autonomously — in the form of the Net.

I notice that I correspond with more people but at less depth. I notice that it is possible to have intimate relationships that exist only on the Net — that have little or no physical component. I notice that it is even possible to engage in complex social projects — such as making music — without ever meeting your collaborators. I am unconvinced of the value of these.

I notice that the idea of 'community' has changed — whereas that term used to connote some sort of physical and geographical connectedness between people, it can now mean 'the exercise of any shared interest'. I notice that I now belong to hundreds of communities — the community of people interested in active democracy, the community of people interested in synthesizers, in climate change, in Tommy Cooper jokes, in copyright law, in acapella singing, in loudspeakers, in pragmatist philosophy, in evolution theory, and so on.

I notice that the desire for community is sufficiently strong for millions of people to belong to entirely fictional communities such as Second Life and World of Warcraft. I worry that this may be at the expense of First Life.

I notice that more of my time is spent in words and language — because that is the currency of the Net — than it was before. My notebooks take longer to fill. I notice that I mourn the passing of the fax machine, a more personal communication tool than email because it allowed the use of drawing and handwriting. I notice that my mind has reset to being primarily linguistic rather than, for example, visual.

I notice that the idea of 'expert' has changed. An expert used to be 'somebody with access to special information'. Now, since so much information is equally available to everyone, the idea of 'expert' becomes 'somebody with a better way of interpreting'. Judgement has replaced access.

I notice that I have become a slave to connectedness — that I check my email several times a day, that I worry about the heap of unsolicited and unanswered mail in my inbox. I notice that I find it hard to get a whole morning of uninterrupted thinking. I notice that I am expected to answer emails immediately, and that it is difficult not to. I notice that as a result I am more impulsive.

I notice that I more often give money in response to appeals made on the Net. I notice that 'memes' can now spread like virulent infections through the vector of the Net, and that this isn't always good.

I notice that I sometimes sign petitions about things I don't really understand because it is easy. I assume that this kind of irresponsibility is widespread.

I notice that everything the Net displaces reappears somewhere else in a modified form. For example, musicians used to tour to promote their records, but, since records stopped making much money due to illegal downloads, they now make records to promote their tours. Bookstores with staff who know about books and record stores with staff who know about music are becoming more common.

I notice that, as the Net provides free or cheap versions of things, 'the authentic experience' — the singular experience enjoyed without mediation — becomes more valuable. I notice that more attention is given by creators to the aspects of their work that can't be duplicated. The 'authentic' has replaced the reproducible.

I notice that almost all of us haven't thought about the chaos that would ensue if the Net collapsed.

I notice that my daily life has been changed more by my mobile phone than by the Internet.

Leaders versus Leadership

There is still a lot of the ‘Great Man’ approach to leaders around. Investment has been and still is in the personification of ‘leader’ in individuals rather than the phenomenon of leadership in organisations. But might the latter be the less ego-centric future? If you believe Garrett then leadership competence is entirely contextual anyway, so a great leader in one organisation can move to a different organisation and become ‘incompetent’ overnight (and we’ve seen plenty of that).

There is now a huge ingrained expectation that leadership in your organisation will come from somebody/some people whose job that is. And so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in which people look to an authority figure with an expectation which authority figures then feel they must meet. But most of our clients have to stop and decide who they want to include in a programme of work as ‘leaders’ because there isn’t such a thing as a pure leadership population in the first place “well we could get our top 20 to do this but maybe we want our top 100”. Actually don’t we want everyone who has people management as part of their job to do this?”

I’m not sure what this might mean for leadership development except that it might be very much more tangibly an applied issue. Leader is a role whereas leadership might be more of an organisational process which is not properly defined and attended to as it doesn’t structurally exist. So I’m imagining it could in practice be more like ‘Quality’ or ‘ Efficiency’, ‘Sustainability’ or ‘Ethics’, i.e. Not reducible to someone’s job.

I think where that has taken me as a train of thought is to wonder what would we be doing if the intention was to bring about a feeling of strong leadership as a characteristic of the organisation rather than start at the other end with individuals who are nominally leaders? If an organisation was wanting to develop certain characteristics of the experience of being in it like direction, conviction, supportiveness, challenge, responsibility, is it possible to focus on those outcomes and work back to how they would be created and sustained systemically? That would be different to starting with the premise that the organisation is the manifestation of individuals and so we need to start with individuals. You’d still end up working with individuals and teams (what else is there? Chairs and desks?) but would it be working on something slightly or significantly different? Something to ponder on...

Changing leadership habits in the age of 'bite-sized' learning

Neuroscience boffins know more and more about how our brains work and how human beings and therefore leaders, most of whom are human beings, change their habits. See The Neuroscience of Leadership. Any Organisation Development Director or CPO who hopes to influence leaders habits better start out with this understanding. To start with, a leader will need a new insight. This insight must be generated by a critical experience or a self-generated “ah hah!” moment, so don’t even try to get one through compliance. Then the insight needs lots of support and attention over a period of months to establish it into a habit – a new set of brain wiring that will endure and affect follower experience of a leader’s daily practice. Insight + sustained and supported attention = habit change. In the days of long and languid leadership retreats at beautiful country piles, perspective shifting programmes in Africa working with the Maasai or inspiring large group interventions with tons of experiential learning, opportunities for insight and support abounded. What hope for “ah hah!” moments in today’s climate of bite-size learning, on-line workbooks and 1 day in-house programmes? We think there is some, but only if we start with a clear understanding of what really works. Ideas Unlimited Partner Lucy Ball and Eve Poole (friend of Ideas Unlimited and Ashridge Business School Egg-head) will be answering this question in an upcoming article. Please e-mail lucy@ideasunlimited.com with your thoughts or comments or to register your interest in hearing more