The Language of Leadership

We can easily understand that those who look to us for leadership want us to offer clarity, just as we ourselves seek it from our seniors. In years gone by practices such as ‘management by objectives’ were intended to help leaders describe outcomes in concrete language. Similarly we’ve expected that the leaders in the organisation will create strategy and communicate it clearly to the followers, who will then implement it. Such views still permeate much leadership thinking and literature, and in many situations they still offer value. And yet for many today these ideas feel like a relic of a bygone age; one that was more stable, simpler, slower-moving, with far fewer interconnections.

Writing brilliantly about how to lead in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world, Jennifer Garvey-Berger and Keith Johnstone offer guidance for “communicating your certainty about uncertainty”. They helpfully draw on a case study in which the director of a cash-strapped Family and Children’s Services department must lead her team to reduce incidents of harm coming to children in the community. The breadth and complexity of the situation defies simple explanations or solutions. Much as her team would like her to provide a clear plan of action, (who wouldn’t?), this would be futile as she cannot possibly have the answers.

“Instead of tightening the reins and controlling what others do, leaders in this space need to loosen up and enable others to find a helpful path through the unknown. This means that not just the outcome of the strategy, but the process of building ideas together during complexity becomes a key shared resource.” (p. 149)

So instead of offering answers, leadership in complex times requires that we are clear about both the direction we’re headed, and the questions that we collectively must address. Rather than, “this is how we will reach our destination”, we need to communicate “this is what we need to understand more clearly …. in order to know how to get to our destination”. More than ever, leaders need to be challenging their people with the questions that will nurture new understanding; encouraging what Garvey-Berger and Johnstone call ‘safe-to-fail’ experiments that will stimulate new learning, while providing the necessary boundaries or ‘guide-rails’ to maintain focus and a sense of safety.

Such an approach also needs to be adopted in the context of performance management. Objective-setting should be used to measure progress in learning and understanding, and not simply used to describe outcomes – over which most of us have limited control anyway! For example I’m astonished at how many school teachers are only ever targeted on outcomes (“a certain number of children achieving a certain grade”), rather than on their own learning and experimentation with the effectiveness of different teaching strategies. Schools are one place we might expect an appetite for learning!

Perhaps it’s natural that we tend to resist the discomfort of this, of being asked to be part of the process of creating strategy, not simply executing it; of engaging with complexity and questions, rather than looking to others for answers. Indeed there is evidence that the brain actively avoids anything that may feel unclear, that we tend to block out any data we find confusing.

And yet most importantly, competitive advantage, whether in children’s services, education or in business, depends increasingly on the ability of leaders to help others to learn and experiment rather than simply execute. The challenge for leaders is to be able to resist the pressure of closing down on options too quickly, to maintain an approach characterised by curiosity, to clarify the questions that need to be addressed, to pay attention to the data, and then to help the organisation respond in the light of what is discovered.

Garvey-Berger, J and Johnstone, K (2015): Simple Habits for Complex Times; Stanford University Press

I am currently reviewing a friend’s new book, and I was struck by the internal resistance I experienced while doing one particular exercise. He asks the reader a number of questions to help them to create a personal vision, including the following:

• What do you want your overall lifestyle to be like in 3 – 5 years’ time?
• What do you want your work and broader life to look and feel like in 3 – 5 years’ time?

I found myself wanting to move on and ignore the questions, or simply to pay lip service to them. What was going on? Surely somebody like me who asks other people questions like these for a living should have no difficulty with them? And yet I did.

While it’s natural for us to want our lives to be different, and to feel dissatisfied with our current lot, it’s curious how uncomfortable it can be taking time to create a clear picture of a desired future. Thinking about possible reasons why I (and I assume others) experience such a strong avoidance to creating a personal ‘vision’, I came up with the following:

1. If I have a ‘vision’ of the future, I’ll have to do actually start doing things differently, change my ingrained behaviours, and in truth I really don’t want to do that!
2. It’s very likely that in the first instance I won’t know how to achieve my vision. I’ll feel rather confused, which is a feeling I’d much rather avoid!
3. If I start to think about having a different lifestyle … and then I fail to make progress towards it …. well, it would surely have been better not to have thought about it in the first place!

So if I, or my clients, are to ever bring about change, it strikes me that an important first step is to take a few moments to acknowledge our (their) hesitation or reluctance. Our avoidance serves a purpose and should not be lightly dismissed. The chances are that if we ignore these uncomfortable emotional reactions, they will ‘go underground’ as it were and do even more to hijack our good intentions.

So at this time of New Year, I suggest we acknowledge our Old Friend, we notice how Avoidance has served its role well in protecting us from disappointment and discomfort. Let’s honour Avoidance’s role, and then thoughtfully and with great compassion for ourselves, get on with the task of developing our vision for a different future.

Happy New Year!

Conventional training holds out the promise of becoming more effective as a manager, leader and communicator. And yet it can fail to deliver long-term behavioural change if it ignores the hidden and seemingly ‘hard-wired’ patterns of thinking and feeling that run counter to the sought-after change. While many folks come to courses expressing a strong wish to improve their time-management or delegation skills for example, when it comes to it they often discover that it is just not that easy. The new skills make perfect sense, and yet applying them in practice is difficult, and it’s not clear to the individual why this is so.

These hidden patterns of thought and behaviour that run counter to change are described by Kegan and Lahey as competing commitments. By taking the time and care to unearth them, give them expression, and understand how they may have been of service in the past, it is possible to start gently shifting them, and creating the space for real change. However, if I ignore these opposing patterns, I am not only failing to serve the individual, I could even be accused of acting unethically, albeit while acting with some benevolence perhaps!

As an example I sometimes work with people with an expressed development need to provide greater authority and direction in their leadership. For some folks, the possibility of developing this is inhibited by what we could call a commitment, albeit a relatively hidden and emotionally-driven one, to be liked by their staff. With deeper exploration it may transpire that underneath their need to remain liked, is a ‘Big Assumption’ that if they were not liked they would in fact be a terrible person. With this hidden belief lurking in the shadows, it’s clear why they would avoid at all costs any behaviour that would put their being liked at risk. While they might be prepared to practice delivering a tough message to a colleague during a role-play on a training course, when it comes to putting it into practice for real, that’s another matter!

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that skills training serves no useful purpose. It clearly does, especially in bringing a common understanding and experience to a large audience. What’s important is to be realistic about change and to allow for the fact that it may take deeper one-to-one coaching to bring about some lasting behavioural changes.

In his book Taming Your Gremlin, Rick Carson describes the so-called Zen Theory of Change. It’s a great description of the challenge of change – especially in relation to those development areas where people are struggling. While the language may sound esoteric, the idea expressed is essential for any of us engaged in developing people:

“I free myself, not by trying to free myself but by simply noticing how I am imprisoning myself in the very moment in which I am imprisoning myself”

Isn’t it remarkable how a single letter can make so much difference! (Thanks John for pointing this out.) The apparent randomness  of that single letter, either an ‘I’  or a ‘u’, can provide a valuable insight into the nature of human influence. 

In general as human beings, who are we most interested in? Of course it is ourselves. So if we want to positively influence someone, who do we need to show an interest in and to talk about? Clearly it is them.  And yet so much business communication revolves around “me” and “I”, rather than “you”.

For example, how many presentations have you heard  that begin along the lines of “I want to tell you about …”?  And yet a simple change  of focus from ‘I’ to ‘You’ can have a profound effect. When folks are learning to present, a good exercise is to try to remove the word “I” altogether. The results can be phenomenal. So instead of “I want to tell you …” we might get something like “You have expressed an interest in …” Not only does this provide a greater quality of recognition and motivation (most constructive!), it also forces the speaker to genuinely consider the interests and concerns of the listener, (also highly constructive!) 

None of this is to say that the effective leader does not reveal her own ideas, wants and beliefs. Far from it. The issue is rather that most of us habitually and when under pressure focus on “I”. Ultimately the effect on others is to constrict.

To focus on the “you” and to put ourselves in other folks’ shoes requires continual effort and practice. It rarely happens automatically, especially when leaders are under pressure and are feeling stressed. And yet this is when it is most required. A “you” focus demands preparation and mental poise.

As somebody put it, this may be simple, but it is certainly not easy.

How do you know when your work is done? For those of us who have unlimited possibilities for work and could do it 24/7 without ever finishing, it is a demand of good leadership to be able to stop, to switch off and to KNOW THAT YOUR WORK IS DONE! 

To attempt to manage their work and other commitments, most people keep some kind of ‘to do’ list? Yet sadly these often don’t deliver. This post considers the reason for this, and explores four things that what can be done about it.

The first problem is that most to-do lists grow ever longer as more items get added than get completed. Then some items just never acquire the sense of urgency and importance needed to be prioritised over other things. Yet they remain on the to-do list, forever reminding the individual of what they’ve not done, thus draining energy and generating feelings of failure. Eventually, recognising that the list isn’t working, many folks give up their attempts to keep a to-do list and the whole thing gets relegated to a file.

Such a list is in fact a ‘want to do’ list; an uncensored wish list of possibilities. As such, anyone comparing their actual daily accomplishments to the list is virtually destined for disappointment.

In summary four must-have requirements for success are:

1)      A master list showing all your major responsibilities, ideally limited to no more than twelve headings. For each heading list the routine tasks needed to fulfil that responsibility, then add any other activities or projects that are planned or underway. Categories of responsibilities that often get overlooked in such planning include personal development, non-work relationships, and ones’ own health! Such a list is not a to do list. Rather it offers a regular, say weekly opportunity to step back, assess one’s balance across these areas of work and personal life, and plan accordingly.

2)      A means of scheduling specific activities, transferring them from the master list and giving them a ‘home’, whether in a paper diary, MS Outlook, or smartphone app. There are plenty of apps out there and most seem to do a good job. The usual problem is not the tool, but the discipline of keeping it up to date. David Allen, writing in Getting Things Done, refers to such a schedule as a ‘commit to do’ list, distinguishing it from the ‘want to do’ list that many of us keep. The idea of giving everything a ‘home’ in the diary/planner is an important means of helping you to switch off and relax.

3)      Recognition of the tendency most of us have to fail to anticipate the unexpected demands that will disrupt our plans, and to be over-optimistic about how long activities will take. The fact many of us prefer to overlook is that we can only ‘commit to do’ something on a given day if we have a realistic understanding of how long it will take, and we have allowed time for the unexpected. Otherwise we are setting ourselves up for disappointment.

4)      The discipline to turn vaguely described actions into tangible outcomes, and at minimum a concrete first step. For example, the item “begin personal time management project” might be usefully translated to a first step of “create a list in Outlook of all my responsibilities and core activities”. Many things on to-do lists fail to get actioned because they are vague and unclear! Articulating the very first outcome that you need to achieve is a good place to start.

For most of us, the above will require one or more new decisions, and this will demand effort. The reward for putting effort into determining what we will commit to do, and then doing it, is the satisfaction of knowing that our work is done!