Collaborative Leadership

Posted on November 28, 2011 by

We must become more collectively intelligent to have any hope of creatively addressing the systemic challenges  in our organizations and societies today. One key to this is developing our capacity for collaborative leadership, which I define as the process of engaging collective intelligence to deliver results across organizational boundaries when ordinary mechanisms of control are absent.

I’ll be dedicating several posts to this topic, drawing on the white paper on collaborative leadership I wrote for Oxford Leadership Academy. Here’s the lead-in … and what you’ll find there:

“Collaborative leadership is an increasingly vital source of competitive advantage in today’s highly networked, team-based, and partnership-oriented business environments. Yet few leaders have been trained to lead collaboratively, especially those at more senior levels who climbed the organizational ladder in a different era. In this paper, we describe key practices of collaborative leadership, identify critical leadership competencies associated with it, highlight common barriers, and suggest next steps for companies interested in developing leaders who can collaborate to transform business for good.”

I welcome your reflections and stories!

Posted in Collaboration, Collective intelligence, Conversation, Leadership, Networks, Relationship, Teams | Leave a comment

The real horse whisperer

Posted on October 24, 2011 by

The first time we watched Buck, my wife and I were quietly enthralled. The second time, we stopped the video every few minutes to take notes. For in the story of Buck Brannaman and his way of working with horses there are profound lessons about life, love, healing, and leadership.

“Everything’s a dance,” Buck says. “Everything you do with a horse is a dance…. Be gentle in what you do, firm in how you do it.”

Brannaman is the horseman who inspired Robert Redford’s The Horse Whisperer, and Buck is his story. It won the Sundance Audience Award for Best Documentary this year and beautifully captures both the old cowboy’s hard-won wisdom and the revelatory power of his presence as he works.

When Buck calms an unbroken colt or teaches a headstrong horse to trust, you witness a master whose true tools are not the rope in his hands or the switch he uses but clear intent, compassion, and respect. Mastery of energy. An unshakable commitment to healthy relationship. Attention to what is.

It’s as life-changing for the people involved as it is for the horses.

The excerpts below offer a taste of Buck’s approach. In the movie these concepts come vividly to life. We often talk about transformation, but in Buck you see it happen in the moment. Check it out.

  • “A lot of times, instead of helping people with horse problems, I’m helping horses with people problems.”
  • “Horses mirror you. You can’t lie. Fine horsemanship becomes a way of life. It’s not about controlling the horses. It’s about how you treat your spouse, how you treat strangers – will you give people a chance like you give the horses a chance – and how you discipline your children. You can discipline and encourage, or you can discipline and discourage.”
  • “You allow a horse to make mistakes. The horse will learn from mistakes… but you can’t get him to where he dreads making mistakes for fear of what’s going to happen after he does.”
  • “Your energy moves the horse. It’s not always physical. Sometimes it’s mental. When you’re young, you ride like it’s 90% physical and 10% mental. But if you could ride with 90% mental and 10% physical, you’d be much better off.”
  • “For every movement you make on a horse, there’s a perfect position of balance that takes no energy from the horse. He doesn’t feel like you’re pushing him or that he’s dragging you along with him.”
  • “Your horse is a mirror to your soul. Sometimes you might not like what you see in the mirror. Sometimes you will….  This (relationship) is just an amplified situation of what is. Maybe there’s some things you have to learn about you, and maybe the horse is the only damn way you’re going to learn it.”
  • “There might be some [working with me today] that become artists. Where you become creative and use your imagination, where you look like one mind and one body. If you got a taste of that, if you got a taste of what I’m talking about, you couldn’t get enough of it. You’d rather do that than eat. You may spend your whole life chasing that, but it’s a good thing to chase.”

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Energy, Leadership, Mastery, Relationship | 1 Comment

Aligning people and culture with strategy

Posted on October 19, 2011 by

How do we align people and culture with strategy in today’s increasingly complex, fast-paced business environment?

That was the “calling question” for our second Oxford Leadership Cafe, which I recently facilitated in Paris. Some two dozen top HR executives from sixteen different companies joined Oxford Leadership Academy’s supervisory board to explore it. We met at L’Oreal’s Le Magnum Building and were hosted by Tony Russell, L’Oreal’s Director of Senior Executive Development. Participants came from Aer Lingus, AkzoNobel, HSBC, Novartis, Sandvik, Telefonica, and Towers Watson – to name but a few of the companies represented – and found the exchange with their peers invaluable.

I was particularly struck by several recurring themes in the stories they told:

  • Alignment occurs naturally when people understand and embrace what you’re trying to do, especially when what you’re trying to do is something that matters to them and they understand why their contribution matters. This kind of alignment can’t be dictated. It arises through conversation and is sustained through authentic relationships.
  • Conversations that create shared meaning are paramount. People need to understand context in order to make wise choices. They want to talk about why in addition to how or what. Only shared purpose that engages the heart as well as the head will create the deeper alignment that can transform a culture. “Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired us because he cried ‘I have a dream!’” one participant noted. “He didn’t say, ‘I have a plan.”
  • The speed at which businesses operate today make old paradigms of leadership and change increasingly obsolete. Corporate hierarchies are permeated by networks through which most work and learning actually occurs. Leadership wisdom lies not in consolidating control but in activating collective intelligence at every level.
  • Knowing and leading oneself is the touchstone for knowing and leading others. Leaders working to align their teams must first align themselves. Leading amid complexity requires greater openness and even vulnerability than are customary in the workplace today.
  • Leaders who want to build companies that last must focus on achieving short-term business goals through the development of people and culture, not at their expense.

The latter theme echoed Brian Bacon’s opening remarks, in which he compared the culture of an organization with the immune system of our bodies. We all have cancer cells inside us all the time, he noted, but in healthy individuals the immune system keeps them in check. The immune system that keeps companies healthy lies in their people and culture – and only with a commitment to changing the toxic behaviors that undermine people and weaken culture can leaders create the foundation for sustainable advantage and long-term success.

Thanks to Roberta Faulhaber, who brought color to the day with her graphic harvest of key themes!

Graphic harvest from the Oxford Leadership Cafe

Posted in Conversation, Culture, Engagement, Leadership, Purpose, Strategy | 1 Comment

Neuroscience and leadership

Posted on February 23, 2011 by

Leadership is about relationship – and leaders who create resonant relationships, who inspire and engage others, and who coach with compassion tend to be more effective than those who are more one-sidedly “results-driven.” Most of us know this from our personal experience. We’re more motivated, more innovative, and tend to perform better when we’re on purpose and our hearts as well as minds are engaged. Now research is starting to reveal some of the brain mechanisms  involved.

Check out “Neuroscience and Leadership: The Promise of Insights” in the Ivey Business Journal. Author Richard Boyatzis reports on studies that illuminate the neural pathways involved in building relationships, fostering empathy, and helping others learn, adapt, and innovate.

Here’s an example. Research now demonstrates that “our unconscious emotional states are arousing emotions in those with whom we interact before we or they know it.” Negative emotional states activate the sympathetic nervous system , which limits openness and ability to learn. Positive emotional states activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which fosters “adult neurogenesis (i.e., growth of new neurons) … a sense of well being, better immune system functioning, and cognitive, emotional, and perceptual openness.”

While this “emotional contagion” is present in all relationships, it’s amplified for leaders because of the power associated with their position. And negative states, even unconscious ones, will overwhelm positive ones.

So greater self-awareness – and a leader’s ability to shift his or her own state – are absolutely crucial leadership skills.

Research also helps us understand why purpose and positive images of the future are so important. Summarizing work on parts of the brain that Boyatzis calls the Positive Emotional Attractor, he writes:

All too often, people in leadership positions begin conversations about the financials or metrics and dashboard measures of the desired performance. These findings suggest that while important, this sequence confuses people and actually results in them closing down cognitively, emotionally and perceptually. If you want them to open their minds, you need to discuss the purpose of the activity (not merely the goals) and the vision of the organization or clients if a desired future were to occur. THEN, you can lead a discussion about the financials, metrics and measures.

Purpose, then goals. Meaning, then measures. If you want to foster learning, innovation, and effectiveness, create a culture of openness and engagement. It starts with self-awareness – with leading oneself. Now science is helping us understand these foundations of leadership from a physiological perspective.

Thanks to my colleague Erika Kleestorfer for pointing out this article.

Leadership is about relationship – and leaders who create resonant relationships, who inspire and engage others, and who coach with compassion tend to be more effective than those who are more one-sidedly “results-driven.” Most of us know this from our personal experience. We’re more motivated, more innovative, and tend to perform better when we’re on purpose and our hearts as well as minds are engaged. Now research is starting to reveal some of the brain mechanisms  involved.

 

Check out “Neuroscience and Leadership: The Promise of Insights” in the Ivey Business Journal online (http://goo.gl/pepnM). Author Richard Boyatzis reports on studies that illuminate the neural pathways involved in building relationships, fostering empathy, and helping others learn, adapt, and innovate.  

 

Here’s an example. Research now demonstrates that “our unconscious emotional states are arousing emotions in those with whom we interact before we or they know it.” Negative emotional states activate the sympathetic nervous system , which limits openness and ability to learn. Positive emotional states activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which fosters “adult neurogenesis (i.e., growth of new neurons) … a sense of well being, better immune system functioning, and cognitive, emotional, and perceptual openness.”

 

While this “emotional contagion” is present in all relationships, it’s amplified for leaders because of the power associated with their position. And negative states, even unconscious ones, will overwhelm positive ones.

 

So greater self-awareness – and a leader’s ability to shift his or her own state – are absolutely crucial leadership skills.

 

Research also helps us understand why purpose and positive images of the future are so important. Summarizing work on parts of the brain that Boyatzis calls the Positive Emotional Attractor, he writes:

 

 “All too often, people in leadership positions begin conversations about the financials or metrics and dashboard measures of the desired performance. These findings suggest that while important, this sequence confuses people and actually results in them closing down cognitively, emotionally and perceptually. If you want them to open their minds, you need to discuss the purpose of the activity (not merely the goals) and the vision of the organization or clients if a desired future were to occur. THEN, you can lead a discussion about the financials, metrics and measures.”

 

Purpose, then goals. Meaning, then measures. If you want to foster learning, innovation, and effectiveness, create a culture of openness and engagement. It all starts with self-awareness – with leading oneself. Now science is helping us understand these foundations of leadership from a physiological perspective.

 

Thanks to my colleague Erika Kleestorfer for pointing out this article.

 

Posted in Engagement, Leadership, Learning, Neuroscience, Purpose, Relationship | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The deep intuition

Posted on February 21, 2011 by

What if each of us is blessed with an inner guidance system designed specifically to answer the questions that matter most in our lives? What if we could learn to access that inner guidance system with ease and integrate its wisdom in how we live and work?

We are – and we can. It’s an important capacity for all of us – and an essential one for leaders.

The name my friend and long-time colleague Willis Harman gave this inner guidance system was the “deep intuition.” He wrote:

Each of us has access to a supraconscious, creative, integrative, self-organizing, intuitive mind whose capabilities are apparently unlimited. And if the creative/intuitive mind is so much more knowledgeable and wise than one’s conscious mind; if it has access to all the knowledge available to consciousness and more; then … why keep it for emergency use only? Why not turn to it with all decisions?

I once asked Willis if he really meant every decision. He assured me that he did. What do I most need to accomplish today? is just as legitimate a question for the deep intuition as What shall I do with the rest of my life?

Test this yourself. For the next few days, try turning toward your deep intuition with questions you face at home or in the workplace. Make note of whatever arises, whether words, images, emotions, or body sensations. Trust that what arises has intelligence present in it. Query it. Begin the process of getting to know your own wise self. And be patient.

What do you notice?

 

Posted in Inner Knowing, Questions, Wisdom | Tagged | 1 Comment