Tips from the Undercover Boss: What does "they" tell you?

If you're up for a bit of Reality TV (the kind that won't rot your brain or leave you feeling unclean and in need of a bathe), I'd suggest the series Undercover Boss. In the next few posts, I'll explain why. For today, let's look at the sinister use of "they" in organizations. 

I've lately become a fan of the American TV series, Undercover Boss*. Yes, it's "reality" TV but its redeeming quality is that it highlights the major and continuing disconnect in organizations between the folks who make strategy and the people who actually make it all happen every day.

Can you see your CEO mopping toilets?

In each episode, a TV crew follows the CEO of a major company while he poses as an entry-level worker to see what life's really like on the front lines of his own organization.

Leaving behind not only the C-suite but also their (usually large) homes, families and pampered lifestyles, the human side of each CEO is revealed. Each struggles to deal in his own way with his new transient reality of temporary, insecure jobs and moving around from one motel to another.

The situations are predictably hilarious, as these high-powered execs push mops, clean out horse (and human!) shit, try to keep up with the inhuman pace of modern assembly lines and, in more than a few cases are actually told: you're fired!

A whole new take on "bottom line"

What makes it good TV are of course the human interest stories that emerge as the Undercover Bosses learn first-hand what effect their decisions (often driven by cost-cutting and "efficiency") have on the daily lives of their staff.

The bosses also hear staff using phrases like "Head Office" and "Corporate" and "it's policy" as they do things that clearly don't work and often actually make their job a lot harder.

These employees (even if unwittingly) have the chance to "speak truth to power" and let the Big Boss know, in no uncertain terms, that there is a very real "Us versus Them" divide in the organization.

And in case you think that doesn't matter, read on...    


What "they" tells you, and why you should listen

In "They" have a lot to answer for Richard Branson writes:

A company's employees are its greatest asset, particularly in service-based operations where your people are your product. When a company fails to grasp this simple business tenet, the result is invariably an oppositional "us and them" divide between management and front-line staff.

Managers and business leaders should watch for this tendency. A company where the staff consistently overuses the word "they" is a company with problems.

If employees aren't associating themselves with their company by using "we," it is a sign that people up and down the chain of command aren't communicating – and if that turns out to be the case, you'll usually find secondary problems throughout the company, affecting everything from development to customer service.

Repairing an "us and them" environment is a cultural challenge that usually calls for greater employee involvement and improved internal communications from the executive suite to the shop floor. In my experience, middle management is a good place to look for the source of the problem. Feedback from up and down the chain often hits a wall in the person of a midlevel manager who has fallen victim to the "knowledge is power" syndrome.

Identifying such blockages and unclogging corporate arteries will bring huge payoffs.

Watch for my next post, which will include tips and practical ideas for handling these stubborn and unhelpful middle-management communication blockages!

Where you can find Undercover Boss

In Australia, full episodes are available to replay on Ten's website: scroll down in the right-hand window until you find Undercover Boss, then select from recent episodes.

Outside Australia, you can try YouTube or your local network's website. (In fact, if you're a reader and you find a link to episodes of the show, please be sure to share the URL in the comments below - thanks!)

* - big hat-tip to Andrew & Sascha Rixon in Melbourne for letting me know about the series

Social media is good for you (when done well!)

Today as I set out to share some highlights from my past two days at the Melcrum Social Media conference in Sydney, I notice that I've still got a nice buzz...not from the networking cocktail session but from the interaction, both face-to-face and on twitter during the day. Read on to find out why social media is good for you, some ideas on how to do it well - and don't miss your TOP TIP at the end!


Social Media conference highlights

During the conference there was a particularly active tweetstream and there have already been a few great blog posts about the conference; I particularly like the insights of Emma McCleary:

Social media is about long-term engagement; creating things that people want to use and growing spaces online that encourage people to work communally.

We’re all a copy and paste away from inside to outside so there’s no reason to categorise social media as a risk to your organisation or check every post, status update or tweet happening if   you’re not also checking emails or USB sticks that carry files in and out of your workplace.

and Alison Pignon:

...if you don’t trust your workforce, then you have a management issue, not a communication issue. Meanwhile, encouraging free and open discussion (based on a good social media policy and user guidelines) can only help to demonstrate the trust you do have in them. 

Rather than feeling that it’s absolutely necessary to first build a social media strategy and get buy-in from the whole senior team before launching a new tool, sometimes it’s just best to go out there and try it.

Here are a few of the thought-provoking gems provided by Euan Semple's report of the state of social media (for now...):

• Social Media is about "Globally distributed, near instant, person to person conversations" from Cluetrain Manifesto
• Online the Customer really is King/Queen: “If you don't want me to criticize your product, don't have a shit product."~Dave Weinberger
• "In a knowledge economy there are no conscripts, only volunteers (but we train managers to manage conscripts!)"~Peter Drucker

CORPORATE CULTURES

• Paradox of corporate cultures: going to useless, time-wasting, pointless meetings = good, but having useful conversations with people via social media = bad(?!?)
• What's it say about corp culture that staff are unwilling to enter things about themselves on company databases/intranets that they will freely put on web via FB, etc? Dramatically low levels of trust...

HOW-TO

• "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." ~Sinclair Lewis
• How to run social media at your organization: Just do it! "Keep moving, stay in touch, head for the high ground" (from US Marines)
• When confronted by resistance (see "fear of losing control" below) and asked to "prove" the "ROI of social media?" Simply reply "what's ROI of not doing it?" Or, better still, "what's the COI?" (cost of inaction) of continuing to do nothing to engage with our own people?
• Beware of trying to "manage" online communities - they will grow organically, or not at all
• If you build it, they might or might not come... "It's easier to build a tool for the community than a community for the tool."
• And always remember: "No matter what you are trying to achieve social media adoption happens one person at a time and for their reasons not yours."

FEAR OF LOSING CONTROL (Hint: you never had it)

• People worry about "losing control". You don't have control anyway! What you DO have w. social media tools is the chance to influence
• "How do I control the msg?" - Try instead "management by being interested": seed existing conversations w. good questions (influence-not-control)
  
• These technologies surface what's going on in your organization (culture, behaviour, etc.) -->Agreed!:
• "Social media in organizations is great for surfacing morons"(!) - yes people will initially have a whinge, but they didn't start whingeing just because social media appeared; it's already happening around the watercoolers. Providing a forum surfaces problems that want fixing and (for those people who never stop whingeing) identify mis-matches in the organization that need addressing for everyone's benefit

BEING REAL

• Good tweets (that build trust & relationships), including those by staff on a corporate twitter account, need to be human and not corporate drone-speak; even inane tweets have a place if they are authentic and create connections
• Sadly, "Watching big corporations trying to get into 'this social media stuff' is a bit like watching your dad dancing at a disco" (LOL!)  
• The most tragic example lately: "BP's biggest failure wasn't only mechanical or engineering, it was in not actively building trusted social networks and not giving straight answers when given the chance

ONLINE EXPRESSION & LIVE INTERACTION

• "Even if no one read my blog, I'd still write it...makes me more thoughtful, more aware, notice more things" 
• Online media won't replace face-to-face interaction; a great use of online collaboration is to improve the quality of the face-to-face you DO have (e.g. by brainstorming ideas in an online forum before meeting face-to-face to arrive at a final decision, or getting a sense of someone's interests and areas of potential collaboration from their LinkedIn profile before meeting for a cafe-chat)

WHAT'S THE POINT OF SOCIAL MEDIA...?

• A few answers: it helps unlock the knowledge the exists in many people's heads throughout the organization/network, so people can find answers and information faster and easier - and get stuff done; it helps break down silos by encouraging interaction; it gives a place to have the conversations (they're already having) in a way that can be entered and influenced by managers and leaders - as equals and colleagues...

Finally, the thing I liked most about the conference was the sense that no one really has all the answers now. Like speaker Helene Bradley-Ritt put it, "implementing [social media] is a change journey" and on that journey we're all fellow travellers, so it was great to be a part of an event designed to help each other along the way to do great things!

Warm, twuzzy feelings...

What explains the need of our BlackBerry-bearing, Twitter-tweeting Facebook friends for constant connectivity? Are we biologically hardwired to do it? Do our brains react to tweeting just as they do to our physical engagement with people we trust and enjoy?

So how come I'm still buzzing today...? The answer to that question and the ones just above is found in this Fast Company article about research by Neuroeconomist Paul Zak (aka "Dr Love"), showing that social media can help spike oxytocin levels in the brain and reduce stress hormones cortisol and ACTH.

"Social networking might reduce cardiovascular risks, like heart attack and stroke, associated with lack of social support" because our brains interpret activities like tweeting as if we were directly interacting with people we have empathy for and care about: "E-connection is processed in the brain like an in-person connection."

Perhaps this is why so many Gen-Y's, whose lives are increasingly shaped by social media, expect to be able to maintain those important connections in the workplace - so much so that one source indicates "for 20 percent of Millennials, or Generation Y-ers (those born from 1980 onwards) a ban on social media in the workplace is often a deal breaker" when deciding whether or not to take a job. 

So here's your TOP TIP: don't just sit there - apply all these great ideas and get connected like your life depended on it...it just might! And please, allow me do my small part to promote your health: in just 10 seconds you can connect yourself with upcoming blog posts - enter your email address in the "Get blog updates sent to your email" box in the top-right side of this page or click on the "Get blog updates by RSS feed" button. (Wondering how RSS works? Watch this video.)

Highlights of EE conf in Sydney

"Culture eats strategy for lunch. You can have a good strategy but if you don't have the culture and enabling systems to implement that strategy you will fail." 

~Dick Clark, CEO Merck USA

The second in the series of Australian "National HR Solutions & Strategies Summits" on Employee Engagement takes us to Sydney and a surprise change of venue to the Grace Hotel with its neo-Gothic exterior and Art Deco interior. 

Like the previous week in Melbourne, this conference delivered the goods with a series of insightful case studies and useful lessons on the people side of business. My favourite quote of the day is listed above; in what follows are some further highlights.

The engagement journey continues…
 

Reporter: "What do you think of Western civilization?"
Gandhi: "I think it would be a good idea."
 

Sophie Crawford-Jones of PwC gave us an informative overview of how the concept of engagement has developed over the past four decades as well as her thoughts on where it’s going over the next few years. While I like with the theoretical construct Sophie offered, I also think it’s fair to say that, whatever the next big thing in engagement is likely to be in 2010 and beyond, organizations still have a great deal of work to do in the here-and-now. 

Or to paraphrase Gandhi: while many more people nowadays are familiar with the concept of people engagement, effective engagement practice is often still in its early days.
 

Who’s telling your story?
 

The good news is that, as organizations seek to create a culture that invites greater engagement with their people, there are some practices that have proven helpful. Several examples were given of how leaders and managers used compelling stories to link people’s proven resilience in the past in ways that help to get them through hard times today with a clear vision of the future. 

This narrative approach acknowledges the reality that every moment is an engagement opportunity. It's not just an "HR responsibility" but needs to involve senior leadership and happen at all levels of the organization. And it’s not one-off events or even CEO roadshows that do it - effective engagement lives and breathes in your culture and must be related to every single thing that people do in the business.
 

It’s great to have a CEO who "gets it" and even better to have one who can tell engaging stories. It’s also true that stories can only gain currency and influence people’s daily behaviour when they are told and retold. That requires leaders and managers throughout your organization who also "get it", who can spread the influence of those stories with equally motivating effect. In other words, it falls to your people managers to engage your people.
 

In this quest to develop people managers into effective engagement allies, I was heartened to hear how one organization is getting some good results. Josie Gosling gave NineMSN’s answer to making this happen, with what they call communication champions. The idea is as genius as it is simple: there are already a handful of people in your organization that everybody else asks to explain and clarify what’s going on. These people are "naturals" - they have a talent for communication and/or the status and influence within the organization’s social networks that make their voices stand out. 

Let me quickly note two useful principles at work here: 1) a use what works (or solution-focused) approach helps you get fast results by working with people’s strengths, in this case communication "naturals", and 2) the realization that these communication/influencing talents can be found anywhere in your organization and don’t necessarily have anything to do with role or positional power.
 

Once you’ve identified these people…make them your new best friends! Do everything you can to develop their natural abilities (through mentoring, coaching and skills-building) and have the courage to "give it to ‘em straight" by making them part of the inner circle of communication practice. Giving them the big-picture perspective behind the messages will help them communicate better and, in turn, model the kind of engaging communication behaviour you want happening in your organization.
 

Setting the Stage for Success
 

Once the story of your organization is captured and consciously promoted, it will start to become clear which actors may not have a part to play in future performance. In both Sydney and Melbourne, conference speakers repeatedly made the point that low turnover can actually be a bad thing. As much as you need to actively retain your best people, you also need a standard practice to move out poor contributors.
 

Doing so in a grown-up and dignified way not only shows your commitment to do right by the people who ultimately leave - it can have a powerfully positive effect on those who stay. What's more, when a difficult situation is finally addressed the relief is palpable ("Well thank god…we've been talking about this for ages, now it’s finally behind us!"). 

As Chris Disley of Mars Food Australia pointed out, managers who can effectively manage low performers and disengaged people out of the organization actually get higher engagement scores as a result.
 

Chris also shared a crucial conversations exercise in which team members are asked, "If you left the company today to start your own business, who would you take with you…?" Naturally you need to contextualize the conversation and make clear this is a though-exercise, not an invitation to jump ship! While potentially confronting, such a process of rank-ordering people’s contribution from greatest to least can be a vital step toward having the kind of open and honest conversations that need to happen in effective teams.
 

Skills + behaviours = great performance
 

Finally, besides offering the quote that heads this post, Jason Flanagan of BT Financial Group gave some ideas on how to engage with your talented up-and-comers. He described how "high-potential" staff are matched with internal projects that tackle real business problems (e.g. bureaucracy-busting, new product development, etc.). Here I’d like to introduce a distinction that helps make sense of why this is a great example of people development that’s engaging too.
 

A skill is defined as "the ability to do something well" and is essentially the knowledge gained when for example you learn a tool, process or concept on a course. A behaviour, however, is "the way in which one acts or conducts oneself, especially toward others" and manifests in the actual application of skills and knowledge - in real business contexts, on an ongoing basis.
 

So giving your top talent projects in the business is a great idea because it ticks many boxes:

• they get the recognition they deserve (often worth as much or more than money) and a chance to strut their stuff
• as they work on the project there’s a chance to identify skills gaps that may emerge and target them for further development (so you can send them on courses, e.g. effective communication skills, project management and the like)
• perhaps most importantly, projects offer a practical way to apply their skills in real-world business contexts; combined with an effective mentoring/coaching program this means they learn a skill, give it a go through "live" application, talk through the results, then make needed adjustments (a double-loop learning process crucial to embedding a skill as an ongoing behaviour)
• and all this development is not extra-curricular and in addition to their day-job, but sits within the organization and produces useful outcomes for the organization.

In sum, these were a couple of informative and useful conferences, filled with "war-stories" and good ideas from HR and Comms professionals. Their stories clearly made the point that your engagement strategy will stand or fall based on the ability of your people managers to make it real as they engage with people. The stories that are alive in your organization will grow and thrive to the degree that you’ve got talented managers breathing life into them - so it makes sense to set them up for success. 

And for those who don’t have a part to play in your story’s future, you need to actively do what’s right for them and your organization by applying the other basic use what works principle: if something’s not working, stop doing it!
 

Hope you found these ideas useful and they take you a few steps closer to good people engagement, increased contribution and better business results.

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Story conference: habits, corporate culture & stories for change

Summary: An article based on content presented at the Celebrating Story conference held last week in Melbourne, Australia. The post talks about how individual habits form, how organizational habits are the corporate culture or "the way we do things around here" and how, during culture change projects, stories can be used to mediate the tension between individual survival responses and participation in the larger (organizational) group.
NB: This post is an abridged version of an article on transformational culture change in organizations due to be available later this month - to request a copy of the article upon its publication, email the author.

Habits are handy

Remember when you first learned how to drive a car or ride a bike?

In the beginning it took a whole lot of conscious, focused attention to learn this new task. Quite soon, though, the movements needed for that activity became more or less automatic. So much so, that sometimes you (like most people) will drive somewhere you've been to many times before and, upon arrival, have no recollection at all of having made the trip.

Similarly, if you try to explain in words to someone how to ride a bike, it's a really hard thing to do. Your long repetition of bike-riding behaviour has turned it into a habit and actually put it outside your conscious awareness, into an automatic set of movements.

The mechanics behind this process work like this. When you first sat astride that bike or buckled up in the driver's seat of a car you engaged in some pretty serious and focused attention, so as not to either scuff your knees or wrap your dad's car around a tree. At times like this, you're consciously engaging your cortical brain - that's the part which engages in complex tasks by weighing different options, considering evidence and laying down the new neural pathways required for learning and skill acquisition.

This is the "heavy-lifting" part of your brain; a processing powerhouse, the possession of which separates we humans from other species. It's hugely expensive to operate in caloric energy terms: it takes about 25-30% of the body's available energy to engage in sustained cognitive activity, like that required to learn a new complex task. That's why after a long period of intense concentration like studying for a test you're exhausted. Even though you were not very physically active, you probably demolished a big meal soon after and had a nice long sleep.

In order to manage your body's resources most efficiently the brain automates as many cognitive activities as possible. New learning is swiftly turned into automatic patterns of behaviour. They become habits and, as you have probably experienced, they can be very tricky things to try to change. As they become simply "the way you do things," they drop out of your conscious awareness. You find you have "imperfect introspective access" to your habits, making them hard to shift and a very powerful force for the maintenance of the status quo.


Vive la différence

Eating the same evening meal day in, day out can be comforting habit. It's efficient, no thought is required and it probably saves time and effort that you can expend on other things.

However, it also means you'll miss other experiences and culinary opportunities. It leaves you exposed if the ingredients for your favourite meal are suddenly unavailable. Your body may rebel against this monotony and develop an intolerance for some of the foods. The point is: the efficiencies that habits can bring can also stand in the way of the flexibility needed to adapt to internal and outside changes.


Organizational habits: Corporate Culture

A similar process happens on a wider scale in organizations. They can be said to have "habits" too, ones that, taken together, form the corporate culture - a concept that is most often described simply as "the way we do things around here". Corporate culture can therefore also be a powerful force for the maintenance of the status quo and, as with the dinner example above, most of the time that's OK.

However for an organization to be flexibly adaptable (e.g. for the organization to move from where it is now to where it needs to be in order to deliver on its strategic goals) many of the habitual patterns wrapped up in the corporate culture will need to change as well.

Now mention “corporate culture” to people in an organization and most will return a blank look, an uncertain smile, or a tentative nod. Having a conversation about culture is a bit like trying to talk to a fish about water - the awareness level is just not very high, because everyone is so completely immersed in the culture.

Any organizational change initiative will very quickly run smack into habitual, automatic patterns of behaviour. The way that people are invited to take part in that change process will therefore determine from the very start how successful the shift will be, and what results will be achieved as the new strategy is executed.


Change can unbalance "The Battle inside your Brain"

Since the habits of corporate culture are powerful forces to maintain the status quo, you need equally powerful countervailing efforts to shift these habits. The thorny question is: will making a powerful case for culture change encourage people to rationally evaluate new ways of operating using their cortical brain networks, or will it represent a source of disruption, insecurity and distress that's seen as a threat and triggers a limbic survival response in each individual?

The way that a change initiative is launched and managed will determine how well you set people up to be on the productive side of The Battle inside their Brain.

Remember that the limbic emotional brain network is where you see the classic knee-jerk reaction - act first, then consider - as it makes decisions first, then seeks justification (or rationalization) for the decision after the fact.

Meanwhile the cortical rational brain network is built to weighing options and alternatives, gathering data and information and then make decisions based on careful analysis and thoughtful debate - consider first, then act. It's in this latter part of the brain that our better nature and true talents as functional adults is located. During a change, you want people to be spending lots of time there and as little time as possible in their limbic survival mode.

What's tricky is that the limbic survival reaction produces powerful emotions and reacts faster than the cortical rational brain. Here's why.


Survival strategies and the Individual

When any change happens in their environment, people will have an immediate response at a very basic level of the brain, the limbic system.

This is a survival response and one that is deeply hardwired - essentially it provides the motivation to focus your attention and assess the situation that you now face in terms of what threats may be present and whether there's action that needs to be taken to ensure your survival.

These survival responses are made up of something that you've no doubt heard of before: the "3 F's" of fight-flight-freeze response.

The limbic system is much older in evolutionary terms than the larger cortical brain, which means that these emotionally-fuelled fight-flight-freeze reactions happen even before we’re consciously aware of them. Now, these reactions have to be fast or they wouldn't be of much use to keep you alive in threatening situations where instant action is required.

The price you pay for the limbic system's speed is that it bypasses the rational cortical brain. Because your rational cortical brain is the part which enables you to consider evidence, weigh alternatives and make well-thought-through decisions, it means that pre-cortical, unconscious reactions can produce some really dumb decisions. Also because the limbic system is a critical part of our age-old, hardwired survival mechanism there's no way to "turn it off". That is to say, you can't NOT have a reaction to things.

The question is, what you do with the emotional energy that results.

Managing this energy requires that people know their most frequent survival strategy: fight-flight-freeze. To use less provocative terms, think of them as gears that you switch depending on whether you need to go forward, reverse, or just be in neutral.

• Forward (fight) is all about action, but it can't be your only survival mode; faced with something bigger and toothier than we are, it makes sense to have other reactions to fall back on.
• Reverse gear (flight) is the withdrawal mode, where you disengage to observe the surroundings for signs of danger and decide whether to re-engage or flee still further.
• Neutral (freeze) in this context is the in-between mode, staying put and being mostly non-threatening and compliant.

These reactions are reactive, not thoughtful. Fighters will unthinkingly attack a change initiative, Fleers will unthinkingly withdraw either mentally or sometimes even physically from the environment, while Freezers will unthinkingly agree and be compliant, but not have any capacity for real engagement with the change.

People in survival mode are in a emotionally high-strung state of limbic lock-down. They will be barely functional as rational adult individuals and even less inclined to participate in groups. Since each person's limbic behaviour tends to trigger a limbic response in others, teams devolve into an animalistic battle of each-against-all.

As each person's limbic response ricochets and intensifies that of others, the group's level of emotional reactivity rises and other team members come to be viewed one of two ways: as competition or food. In such a setting change becomes impossible and people long for the safety and familiarity of habitual patterns - hence why so often a few months after a change is introduced, people revert back to pre-change behaviour patterns.


We live in tribes and tell stories

This may all sound quite grim, a bit like an organizational Lord of the Flies (a.k.a. The Apprentice TV series). Thankfully, two characteristics of human beings offer a way to mediate this state of high tension between individual survival and group participation: 1) we are inherently social animals and 2) we are meaning-making machines.

1) Our social brains. There's something called the default mode network in the brain, which is "what the brain does when it is doing nothing in particular" and involves primarily two areas of the brain.

Researchers don’t agree on all the components of the default network, but consensus is growing that it has two major hubs: the posterior cingulate cortex, or PCC, with the precuneus, and the medial prefrontal cortex. The functions ascribed to those two areas may give clues to what the default network is good for. The medial prefrontal cortex is involved in imagining, thinking about yourself and “theory of mind,” which encompasses the ability to figure out what others think, feel or believe and to recognize that other people have different thoughts, feelings and beliefs from you. The precuneus and PCC are involved in pulling personal memories from the brain’s archives, visualizing yourself doing various activities and describing yourself. [...] Together, these hubs give you a sense of who you are. Their prominence in the network has led some researchers to propose that the function of the default mode is to allow you to internally explore the world and your place in it, so you can plot future actions, including contingency plans for various scenarios you might encounter.*

So it seems that when you're not thinking of anything else, you're thinking about yourself - as defined by your social relationship with others. In other words: as defined through interactions with the group.

2) Stories. A good deal of research has confirmed the human predilection to make characters and narratives out of whatever we see in the world around us. Put simply, we are meaning-making machines. In keeping with the above, it's also interesting to note the role that stories play to promote social cohesion among groups and serve as a valuable method for passing on information. Moreover, stories and narratives play a key role in persuasion: people accept ideas more readily when their minds are in story mode as opposed to when they are in an analytical mind-set.** (Hat-tip Shawn for this article.)


Practical takeaways

God turns you from one feeling to another
And teaches you by means of opposites
So that you will have two wings to fly
Not one. ~ Rumi

Illustration credit: Simon Kneebone, Cartoonist & Illustrator


Our default mode is to define our selves in social terms through relation to others and we tell ourselves stories to make sense of the world around us. We're naturally tribal, storytelling creatures. In this tension of opposites, between the individual's concern for survival and his/her desire to belong to a group, there can be found both the high energy of the emotional limbic survival response and the amazing human capacity for complex thought and meaning-making.

From the very start of a change process, leaders need to use stories and encourage people to channel their emotions into productive behaviours. This can be successfully done in two practical ways:

1. Help individuals to recognize and manage their own limbic emotional reactivity, through awareness of the nine predictable limbic types (see below, Workshop).
2. Engage the group with story, with a narrative journey of change that sets the context, lays out the strategy, invites participation, shows the benefits, engages at an emotional level, outlines the detailed plan, and finally looks forward to positive future state (see below, Consultancy).
   

Are you a slave to your emotions or is your emotional energy serving you?

Workshop: The 9 Survival Strategies - which ones you use and how to put them to work for you (as presented at Melcrum's Strategic Comms conference Sydney, and used by Deutsche Bank, Lloyds TSB Bank, AMP, and other organizations in Australia and the UK).

What's the story of your next organizational culture change project?

Consultancy: To learn more about how tmc helps leaders to effectively engage their teams through times of change, email Todd.



References:
Peter Burow. "The Art & Science of Transformational Leadership."
**Jeremy Hsu. "The Secrets of Storytelling: Why We Love a Good Yarn - Our love for telling tales reveals the workings of the mind," Scientific American Mind, August/September 2008, 46-51.
M.D. Lieberman, D. Schreiber & K.N. Ochsner. "Is Political Cognition like riding a bicycle? How cognitive neuroscience can inform research on political thinking," Political Psychology, 24(4) 2003, 681-704.
*Tina Hesman Saey, "You are who you are by default," Science News, 176(2) July 18th 2009, 16.
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Does Charisma matter? Find your leadership style

Charisma is difficult to define, though it is often used to describe those with a personality that lends them the uncanny ability to lead, charm, persuade, inspire, and influence people. At base charisma, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, which means that charismatic people's power is largely dependent on the perception of others.

It is also greatly influenced by situational factors, since what might seem charismatic in one setting can be abhorrent in another (e.g. Hitlerian charisma inspired hope for national renewal among desperate Germans in the tumultuous Weimar era, even as its evil messages of hate provoked fear and revulsion in more stable democracies).

Expressed practically, charisma manifests as a sense of attraction. And ultimately we are attracted to those leaders who - sometimes for better, sometimes worse - achieve results through the application of the best leadership style for the situation.


What's the "best" leadership style?

When it comes to leadership, "best" is what is perceived to be most effective as related both to the particular situation and to the desired outcome. Research* shows that the most effective leaders use a combination of distinct leadership styles - each in the right measure, at just the right time.

Each of us is inclined toward at least one (and often two) of the eight leadership styles described in detail below. The key to dramatically improved performance and interpersonal effectiveness is to incorporate all eight - if not in one person, then by ensuring they are all represented across the makeup of groups of people and are each consulted for input at the appropriate time.


Eight Leadership Styles

Leadership style - Mentoring

Two representatives of this style are British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the character of William Wallace as portrayed in the film Braveheart.

What leadership traits could this unlikely duo possibly share?

A mentoring leadership style works best when change is driven by a moral crusade for justice and there is a need for integrity. It excels at setting a clear mission and creating a sense of urgency through effective motivation. What it looks like in practice is close and steady guidance to set high standards in the pursuit of excellence: in a phrase, "Do it again until you get it right." When well done, the style of these Explorer/Motivators encourages honest dealing with others and promotes a sense of commitment in the team culture.

When this leadership style is not present in the team there is no clear vision, no sense of purpose or common understanding, no honour and no team commitment. If a leader uses only the mentoring style, the overall impact on organizational climate will be medium positive - team members will have a clear sense of the mission, will interact honourably and with a clear sense of purpose, but will lack the advantages offered by a balance of this style with the other seven leadership styles as described below.

Leadership style - Coaching

Here it is helpful to think of "coaching" in its broadest sense. As examples, what US Vice-President Al Gore and motivational speaker Tony Robbins both do well exceedingly well is inspire and empower people, ensuring that people have the skills and information they will need for the future and fostering an environment in which they can excel and succeed. The style in a phrase is, "Try this!"

The coaching style works best when there is a need to help an employee improve performance or develop long-term strengths. To be clear, it is not about empowerment for empowerment's sake - it is paired with the need to develop vision and strategy for the future. It can also be confronting (as with alarming details of the environmental threat our planet is facing in Gore's documentary film An Inconvenient Truth) but with the intent of producing positive change.

Done well, the style of these Inspirational Coach/Facilitators encourages honest dealing with others and promotes a sense of hopefulness in the team culture. When this leadership style is not present in the team the physical environment and culture become hostile and the team loses hope as the future looks bleak, like a perpetual repetition of past disasters.

If a leader makes exclusive use of only the coaching style, the overall impact on organizational climate will be positive - team members will play to their strengths and be highly self-directed in an environment of hopefulness and empowerment but again will lack the advantages offered by a balance of this style with the other seven leadership styles.

Leadership style - Affliative

This leadership style is the one most often associated with "charismatic leadership" and there are abundant examples: US Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to name just a few.

These leaders create harmony and build emotional bonds with a style that aims to put people first. The affiliative style works best to heal rifts in a team or motivate people during stressful circumstances, fostering espirt de corps and effectively communicating vision and strategy ("Yes we can") to promote team engagement. By embodying diplomacy and inclusiveness, the leader brings out tolerance in others and enables effective teamwork through the respectful negotiation of differences (of cultures, worldviews, politics, etc.).

Done well, the contribution of these Promoter/Strategists to the team culture is widespread confidence, cheerfulness, discipline, and a willingness to perform assigned tasks in the interest of the common/greater good. When this style is absent, team members become self-righteous, intolerant and blaming, which splits the team into factions.

If a leader uses only the affiliative style, the overall impact on organizational climate will be positive - the team will act in a cohesive fashion, communication will be open and morale will be quite high, but again the team will lack the full advantages offered by a balance of this style with the other seven leadership styles.

Leadership style - Democratic

This style can be hard to spot because although it's all around us, it's a quieter and more self-controlled style. To get a sense of it, think of stories in which ordinary people do courageous, even heroic things in extreme circumstances - but who when interviewed afterwards say that it was nothing special and that it was obvious they should have done what they did.

Two well-known examples of the democratic style are Bruce Willis' character John McClane in the Die Hard movies and the character Samwise Gamgee in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy.

These courageous individuals see what needs to happen to move a project forward and just get on with it, through ingenious broad-based action to produce the necessary short-term wins. In a team, they forge consensus through participation and will frequently ask, "What do you think...?"

The talent of these Practical Problem Solvers is to break down bureaucracy, fostering innovation and confidence while building buy-in and consensus by seeking valuable input from team members. When this style is not represented in the team, everything becomes bogged down at key bottlenecks, there is no courage, no heroes and no decisions.

If a leader uses only the democratic style, the overall impact on organizational climate will be positive - the team will act in a cohesive fashion and morale will be quite high as people feel enabled to act with courage to do what needs to be done, but again the team will lack the advantages offered by a balance of this style with the other seven leadership styles.

Leadership style - Pacesetting

The pacesetting leadership style, as the name suggests, is about getting quick results from a highly motivated and competent team. There is an expectation of competence and a keen eye for turning abstract theories into real and tangible outcomes.

US President Abraham Lincoln and South African President Nelson Mandela are both exemplars of this style, setting high standards for performance and leading by example: "Do as I do, and do it now."

In a team setting, these independent and capable Creative Change Agents excel at applying discernment in the review of systems and practices, as well as consolidating gains in order to produce more change. This process of effective strategic analysis helps to ensure that the changes that take place are based on suitable and sustainable systems and practices. When this style is absent, the leadership has no credibility and the team focuses on the wrong actions.

If a leader uses the pacesetting style exclusive of any other, the overall impact on organizational climate will actually be negative. This is the case because, although the team will benefit from tangible systems and practices, the style can be experienced as quite confronting.

Pacesetters are often described as having a highly-advanced "bullshit detector" and are not at all averse to pointing out incongruence and inconsistencies, particularly if they detect what they think are instances of incompetence. It is therefore particularly important that the pacesetting style be tempered by elements of the other seven leadership styles in order to afford a balanced environment for team members.

Leadership style - Authoritative/Visionary

The authoritative leadership style mobilizes people toward a final destination. Note, however, that the authoritative style is not autocratic or dictatorial. It is more like a ship's captain navigating a course through the ever-shifting seas of change and inviting the team: "Come with me."

New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen embodied this style. Their vision and planning capacity enabled them to navigate a successful course even to what were the earth's most inaccessible realms at the time (Mount Everest's summit and the South Pole, respectively).

Authoritative leadership works best when changes require a new vision and a clear sense of direction in the pursuit of the vision's end goal. This leadership style manifests the quality of responsibility to creating certainty of cause, purpose and role:

"...we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."

~ British Prime Minister Winston Churchill

"...today we honour the indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history. [...] universal human decency demands that the nation now step forward to right an historical wrong. [...] The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia's history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future. ...for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry."

~ Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd

Whether in pursuit of high-minded principles, seeking to protect their charges, or maintaining steady faith in achievement of the desired outcome, the leadership of these Visionary Planners fosters stability and security even in the face of widespread and disruptive change. In their absence, there is fear and uncertainty as everyone is out for him- or herself.

If a leader uses only the democratic style, the overall impact on organizational climate will be most strongly positive in that the team will possess a calm certainty about the ultimate aim of their actions and the secure confidence to handle the hardships and unexpected course changes that will be required along the way. Nevertheless, as with all these styles there are considerable advantages to be gained by balancing of this style with the other seven leadership styles.

Leadership Style - Tactical

The tactical leadership style is one of acting dispassionately based on accurate, verifiable information; the style in a phrase is "Prove it to me." The style works best in highly technical and specialized situations requiring self-control and measured action - so think James Bond and, well, pretty much every character Clint Eastwood has ever played.

In a team setting the tactical leadership of these Auditor/Organizers promotes understanding through objective, rational inquiry and action. Their disciplined presence brings out calmness and clarity in others. In the absence of tactical leaders, the team will fail to keep adequate records of meetings and decisions and will lack an effective audit trail; group learning does not happen and ignorance prevails.

If a leader uses only the tactical style, the overall impact on organizational climate will be positive - the team will be clear on the learning captured from previous successes and will focus on the competent delivery of tasks and will act with objectivity, but will nevertheless lack the advantages offered by a balance of this style with the other seven leadership styles.

Leadership style - Commanding/Coercive

The coercive leadership style is best in a crisis, to kick start a turnaround, to capitalize quickly on entrepreneurial opportunities or to sort out "problem" employees. As the name suggests, the style demands immediate compliance: "Do what I tell you to do."

The two British entrepreneurs Sir Richard Branson and Sir Alan Sugar (of The Apprentice UK television fame) come readily to mind as examplars of this style.

What these Driver/Completer leaders enable is the application of vast amounts of energy to tackle large workloads and, at the end of the day, to celebrate successes in preparation for the next round of change and transformation. This "work hard, play hard" sense of drive taps into the passions of those around them and ultimately compels the team to engage in healthy debate in the pursuit of practical action. When this style is not present in the team, there is no energy or enthusiasm - everyone is exhausted and dispirited.

If a leader always and only uses only the coercive style, however, the overall impact on organizational climate will be negative. While the team will feel the pressure and drive to complete tasks, there is a risk they will ultimately feel alienated and uninvolved by the coercive leader's tendency to create the entire plan without any input from others, then expect others to follow and not ask questions. Here it is therefore particularly important that once the period of urgency and reinvention has passed, elements of the other seven leadership styles are reintroduced in order to afford a balanced environment for team members.


Eight Leadership Styles and you

Whether or not you agree with their ideology and beliefs, even whether they are real people or fictional characters, each of the people whose photos appear above are certainly leaders in their own way. What the Eight Leadership Styles model helps to make clear is that there are identifiably distinct leadership styles, each "charismatic" in its own way and in the right circumstance.

To find out more about how to identify your own preferred leadership style, as well as how to effectively interact with other styles and successfully cultivate a balance of all eight styles in your team or organization, send me an email.


*Daniel Goleman, "Leadership that gets results," Harvard Business Review (Mar-Apr 2000) pp 79-90; Peter Burow, NeuroPower handbook, edition 1.0.5 (2008); Dennis Turner & Michael Crawford, Change Power: Capabilities that Drive Corporate Renewal, (1998).

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Change, innovation & global opportunities

In the run-up to the workshop I’m running next Tuesday that asks, “Is your organization change-ready?” a bit of recent research suggests a growing realization among global senior leaders that their organizations are not as change-ready as they would like.

The “Global CEO study” by IBM is based on interviews with 1,130 CEOs, general managers and senior public sector and business leaders from around the world.

Here are some highlights:

• Eight out of ten CEOs see significant change ahead, and yet the "change gap" between expected change and the ability to manage change has almost tripled since the last Global CEO Study in 2006.

• Nearly all CEOs are adapting their business models and two-thirds are implementing extensive innovations. More than 40 percent are changing their enterprise models to be more collaborative. (And I would suggest this is not just with customers as the IBM study suggests, but also with employees as the Mercer Workplace 2012 report has persuasively argued.)

• CEOs are moving aggressively toward global business designs, deeply changing capabilities and partnering more extensively; organizations of all sizes are reconfiguring to take advantage of global integration opportunities.

An increasing number of senior leaders are coming to the realization that a different approach is required if they are to successfully manage change, develop sustainable innovation and succeed in a global context.

How does your organization compare?

According to the IBM report, the predicted Enterprise of the Future is change-ready, radically innovative, accesses active (not reactive) creativity and is comfortable with the realities of global business across cultures, able to work virtually and beyond the constraints of traditional “9-to-5” thinking.

So how does your current organization measure up to this predicted future?

Are there structures in place to manage the inevitable conflict created by change? Is there a healthy corporate culture in your own organization, let alone the expertise to manage the cross-cultural challenges of global business?

If not, what steps are being taken to foster the development of trust relationships? Is it a project devised by an external consulting firm and done TO your people, or process created collaboratively and interactively WITH your people – who are after all the ones who will have to carry on long after the consultants pack up and head out?

Does your organization have the management capacity to deal with complexity, the leadership ability to guide through change and – crucially – the transformational skills to overcome natural resistance to change by channelling that energy into engagement to produce positive growth and development of people, teams and organizations?

Useful questions to consider, whether you are a senior leader making your way in the current global business climate or a staff member making decisions about the sort of company where you want to spend the majority of your productive waking hours.

If in your opinion the answers to those questions fall short of the mark, the good news is that there is a way forward: an integrated, holistic approach to improved business performance that offers people a common language to structure their experience of change, helps to effectively engage stakeholders cognitively, emotionally and behaviourally, and enables organizations to communicate in a structured, effective, managed and phased way to enhance strategic alignment and produce high-performance cultures.

Email me for details.

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