by Jane Perdue | Leadership
There I was, jamming to the car radio while traveling to a meeting.
Paused at a stoplight, I glanced at the car to my right. The driver met my eyes, shook his head, and made the cuckoo gesture. I smiled and kept on singing.
Had this situation occurred earlier in my personal journey, I would have responded very differently. Feeling silly, self-conscious, and embarrassed, I would have prayed for the red light to be short.
Social convention—the law of opinion as philosopher John Locke calls it—says that “normal” people don’t behave that way! Back then, I would have stopped singing immediately because, as Locke puts it, the “threat of condemnation or disgrace from one’s fellows is a powerful motivation.” For most of us, being in situations in which we’re isolated, don’t fit in, or feel silly isn’t any fun at all.
The pressure to conform and the desire to belong are rooted deep in us, and together they can influence our actions.
Solomon Asch conducted research in which “subjects were asked to match lines of different lengths on two cards. In this experiment, there was one obvious right answer. However, each subject was tested in a room full of ‘planted’ peers who deliberately gave the wrong answer in some cases. About three-fourths of the subjects tested knowingly gave an incorrect answer at least once in order to conform to the group.”
Spiral of silence
Some times, in our desire to conform and fit in, we go further than changing an answer. When our point of view, opinion, or preference is in opposition to what the majority thinks, we sometimes choose to remain silent.
Political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann calls this behavior the spiral of silence. This spiral is especially potent when our opinions have a moral component—that’s us trying to figure out what’s right and what’s wrong.
As leaders, we may not enjoy being isolated or not fitting in, yet we can’t hesitate to go there.
Leaders marshal the courage to stand alone.
Leaders don’t allow themselves to be deterred from doing what’s right by the fear of being alone or not being liked.
Leaders being different
Effective leaders are mindful of not letting a desire to conform push them into the spiral of silence. To avoid letting that happen, they:
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- Make the tough calls no matter how unpopular those decisions may be.
- Hold people accountable so poor performance doesn’t fritter away potential.
- Pursue change knowing it is the path to ongoing relevance.
- Encourage purposeful discomfort in pursuit of personal and organizational growth.
- Ask the uncomfortable questions to ferret out the best solution and minimize bias.
- Ensure there is diversity not only of sex, race, and age but also of thought, opinion, and perspective so people can appreciate both sides of the bigger picture.
- Are self-aware, perpetually seeking to understand themselves to better understand others.
I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. ~Audre Lorde, poet and activist
Effective leadership means delivering both results and relationships, which sometimes requires putting ourselves in the lonely—but necessary—place of speaking and acting differently.
We choose to march to the different drummer.
And give ourselves permission to (badly) sing our hearts out while behind the wheel.
What’s been one of the most troubling things you’ve seen happen when people choose to conform rather than break the spiral of silence?
Image source: Pixabay
by Kay Peterson | Leadership
Organizations, communities, governments, and even families want to create highly effective teams.
They are encouraged to include members with demographic diversity in order to tap the power of differences. But research shows that with demographic diversity alone, you may experience the messiness and process conflict that impact overall team performance.
Observable differences may oversimplify the variability in perspective and focus that contribute to real team effectiveness.
After all, what if all team members judge too early before setting a vision for an ideal outcome?
What if a majority of members are paralyzed by the need for perfection and never get results?
Instead of simply focusing on observable demographic factors, try looking intentionally at the deep diversity found in the learning styles described in How You Learn Is How You Live: Using Nine Ways of Learning to Transform Your Life.
Research shows that this type of deep diversity is strongly related to conflict management and effective performance in teams.
To appreciate and cultivate style diversity in your teams, first develop a deep diversity within yourself by using all nine learning styles.
You’ll appreciate the strengths that each style offers and understand how overusing one approach or skipping it entirely impacts your success and limits your choices.
You’ll also appreciate the strengths of others whose preferences are different from your own.
9 learning styles that support diversity
Here are the nine styles and team roles to activate in yourself—and your teams–to summon the deep diversity that allows you to reach your full potential.
Experiencing style. Activate your Connector by engaging in relationships, staying in the present moment, and recognizing your feelings. Ask: “Am I present?”
Imagining style. Activate your Dreamer by imagining possibilities and generating new ideas about what might be. Ask: “What are the possibilities?”
Reflecting style. Activate your Observer by taking many perspectives and mulling things over patiently before taking action. Ask: “Am I listening carefully and seeing the whole picture?”
Analyzing style. Activate your Planner by organizing and structuring your environment and the information you need to consider. Ask: “Do I have structure in place to support me?”
Thinking style. Activate your Questioner by being a healthy skeptic to investigate and evaluate the facts. Ask: “What does the evidence prove?”
Deciding style. Activate your Judge by committing to one plan, setting a goal and knowing how you’ll measure progress. Ask: “Have I committed to an outcome?”
Acting style. Activate your Achiever by getting things done on time, even if you have limited resources. Ask: “Am I making things happen?”
Initiating style. Activate your Influencer by courageously taking the lead in the moment. Ask: “Do I seize new opportunities?”
Balancing style. Activate your Adapter to pivot when situations change or you identify gaps. Ask: “Do I adapt when priorities shift?”
You may notice that you favor some styles mainly because you’ve been successful using them. You develop a sweet spot through practice and operate in a habitual steady state. However, these preferences are not traits; you can build flexibility in styles that are unfamiliar to you through practice.
As you develop flexibility in all the learning styles, you’ll be activating your own internal team that will allow you to deploy all parts of you as a whole person and to focus on all steps in any process.
Meanwhile, to create teams with deep diversity, consider tapping people whose preferred styles are different from your own. The map of the nine learning styles will give your entire team a model to understand and appreciate their strengths and differences.
And, because the nine styles correspond to nine steps in the learning cycle or any other process (like decision-making, team work, and innovating), it will give you a process map to follow, too. If you don’t know what to do next, you can find where you are on the learning cycle and take the next step.
The deep diversity of the nine learning styles will make you more effective in any situation, and will help teams to harness the power and synergy of differences that matter most.
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Today’s guest author is Kay Peterson, co-author of How You Learn Is How You Live: Using Nine Ways of Learning to Transform Your Life, founder of the Institute for Experiential Learning, board certified coach and organizational development consultant.
Image provided by author
by Jane Perdue | Leadership
Do you know what practice makes for being an effective leader?? It’s not avoiding actions that make you uncomfortable.
To be a productive and persuasive leader, you have to do that which makes you uncomfortable. Then you do it again and again until you feel comfortable doing it.
You may never come to like giving negative performance feedback or making staff reductions, but you still do it with tact and grace. You develop a comfort level with your discomfort. Capable, inspirational leaders repeat the getting-comfortable-with-discomfort process with every item on their personal and professional development list.
If you’re not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it’s almost certain you’re not reaching your potential as a leader. ~Seth Godin, author
A friend says he always knows when someone in his work department has messed up—everyone receives an email from the boss reminding them to start, stop or continue doing a particular thing. Their boss is notorious for not dealing with performance issues head-on. He indulges his comfort zone and short-changes developing his employees.
The comfort zone is a behavioral state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, using a limited set of behaviors to deliver a steady level of performance, usually without a sense of risk. ~Alasdair A.K. White, management theorist
Being stuck in that “steady level of performance” has its benefits and disadvantages. On the plus side, there’s consistency and safety. On the minus side, there’s lack of growth, no improvement, and probably a few incorrect assumptions. Boredom, too.
Back in 1908, research from Harvard psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson demonstrated a “Goldilocks too much, too little, just right” correlation between performance and mental or physiological arousal. Effective leadership requires finding an ever-flexing optimal level of anxiety. Too much leads to danger or chaos. Too little yields being safely stuck in complacency and the status quo.
A just-right amount of short-term stress helps us learn, grow, and make better choices. “Working right around the edge really helps you learn and progress,” notes Erik Dane, a professor at Rice University. If your goal is to lead others, you have to first lead yourself, and doing that requires embracing a measure of discomfort. Comfort and conformity are augmented with discomfort and differences.
The heights charm us, but the steps do not; with the mountains in our view we love to walk the plains. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, writer and statesman
5 uncomfortable questions to ask yourself
If you think you’ve became too comfortable in your current leadership practices, reflect on your answers to these five questions. Better yet, share them with a colleague and listen with your head and heart to what he or she has to say.
• Do I accept what is offered or do I ask for more?
• Do I accept conformity because it’s the easy way out or do I push boundaries and challenge assumptions to make the playing field level for all?
• Do I use the words “or, but, and no” frequently or do I use “and, let’s give it a try, and yes” regularly?
• Do I focus only on my strengths or do I invite others to help me see my blind spots so I can be better?
• Do I believe my positions and answers are always the right ones or do I welcome diversity of thought, opinion, and perspective?
Risk exists in identifying comfort zone weaknesses, habits, biases, and instincts. However, rewards come, too.
How have you learned to find the leadership magic that sits outside your comfort zone?
Image source: Pixabay
by Jane Perdue | Leadership
Google “songs about money” and entries like “40 best songs about money” and “12 best songs about money. EVER” pop up.
The search results are less abundant if you google “songs about ethics.” No 12- or 40-best lists appear. “Top 10 social and political songs of our times” is as close as it gets.
Emphasizing economics over ethics is a practice playing out in many workplaces and cultures. Money has become the end rather than a means to an end.
The pressures to conform to workplace economic norms are everywhere.
The axiom “you’re only as good as your last set of numbers” is a performance standard embraced many bosses. People in boardrooms are reminded “cash is king.” Resumes are packed with claims of “saving over $600k in payroll” and “grew profitability by $10m year over year.”
Suppose you understand the importance of economic performance. but you aren’t willing to do whatever it takes. No matter how hard you try, you can’t embrace the notion the ends justify the means.
What you want is personal and professional success based on ethics, justice, relationships, respect, equity, and inclusion.
With that foundation as your motivation, how do you step in the opposite direction—away from peer pressure, business norms, groupthink, and the power of conformity—to share a perspective that’s contrary to both expected and rewarded workplace behavior?
Thoughtfully.
Start by assessing your personal tolerance for risk-taking as well as that of your organization. You need to know if you can withstand the pain, loss, and opportunity that come with embodying truisms such as speaking truth to power, making your voice heard, and marching to a different drummer.
“Risk-taking is hard to adopt among leaders,” says Julie J. McGowan, professor at Indiana University, “Because recognized leaders have the most to lose and aspiring leaders may be discounted as lacking in knowledge or common sense.”
…there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right. ~Martin Luther King
Only you will know if the time is right for you to step up, take the risk, and speak out.
7 questions to ask before you make your voice heard
As you consider taking the first step in being different, explore these issues so the action you take is informed, thoughtful, and purposeful:
⇒Is this issue important to only you or do others share it? Will those who think/feel/believe the same speak up after you’ve led the charge, or will your voice be the only one that’s speaking? Are you ready to forge ahead regardless?
⇒How has your corporate culture reacted to those who have challenged the status quo? Are you prepared to accept the consequences of deviating from the norm? Are you willing to be singled out? To be alone? Are you equipped to lose your job?
⇒Are you willing to be the center of attention? To deal with your position going viral within the company? Are you ready to be emulated and/or attacked?
⇒Do you have solid solutions in mind? Are you disposed to collaborate with others and devise a solution that integrates the views of many? Are you willing to push for change? Are you willing to use your voice for other subjects as well?
⇒Have you brainstormed possible unintended consequences, both positive and negative, both personal and professional, of the stand you’re championing?
⇒Are you OK, mentally and emotionally, with the possibility of failure? Of success? Will your self-esteem survive the hit? Can your ego withstand the attacks if you fail or the glory if you succeed?
⇒Do you have the will to see it through? Do you have a support system to nurture you along the way regardless of the outcome?
Deciding to speak up or to continue go along to get along is a personal choice. Only you can decide if high risk/high reward is your calling or if low risk/low reward represents the boundaries of your comfort zone.
Be thoughtful. Be prepared. Do what’s right for you.
And, please be kind as you make your voice heard for what you believe in.
Image source: Pixabay
by Bill Treasurer | Leadership
Life is like a dogsled team. If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes. ~Lewis Grizzard
Ah, the middle place.
This is the point in your leadership career where nothing is certain, and everything is up for grabs. As a leader, your development is well under way, but nowhere near complete; you are formed but not finished.
The challenge for midcareer leaders is to balance the ends-and-means tension created by the differing wants of your direct reports and bosses.
While most mid-career kicks stem from not paying enough attention to results (the “ends”) or the treatment of people (the “means”), there are additional kicks that you may experience midway through your leadership career:
The Passover
You’ve been working for the company for some time, doing a good job and expecting to be offered the next promotion. What happens next?
You get promoted, right?
Nope. Moving from the middle ranks to the upper ranks takes more than getting great results, treating your people well, or being tapped for the company’s elite leadership program: it takes opportunity.
And many times, you get passed over for an outsider.
So what can you do?
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- Bring the outsider in. Help the new person be successful.
- Trust your leaders, and ask them what you can do to help create additional opportunities that you might be able to fulfill.
- Grab the ring yourself. The more your results are unassailable and the deeper the loyalty you have among your people, the closer you’ll be to stepping onto the next rung.
The Smackdown
Failure, for high achievers such as those with a leadership profile, can be crushing. Emotions of fear, insecurity, and doubt can rent space in your mind for months afterward.
Where you once were bold and sure, now you’re tentative and hesitant.
At this point, an ass-kicking from a wise and more senior person can be helpful.
So what can you do?
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- Sulk, but do it by yourself.
- Get perspective from a senior leader who has had a similar experience in the past.
Your failure is a grueling type of education. You wouldn’t want to go through it again, but the lessons you learn are invaluable, and will have a positive and enduring impact on your career.
The Ebbing
At some point at this middle stage of your leadership career, it’s common to be consumed with a gnawing sense that “there must be something more.”
The job of a leader, which looked so enviable when you were younger and at lower levels, feels less satisfying than you had imagined. Ebbing is a time of reflection and reassessment, when you’ll have more questions than answers. The questions you grapple with during the Ebbing stage are well worth answering, because they will influence the kind of leader you will ultimately be.
Finding the Cheeky Middle
If you find yourself deep in the ebb, pay close attention to the questions that surface for you.
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- Who do I aim to be as a leader?
- What true difference do I hope to make through my leadership?
- How do I wish to treat people while I’m leading?
- What principles will I uphold?
- What compromises am I willing to make?
- What actions do I need to take to close the gap between the leader I aim to be and the leader I am today?
- Can I become the leader I want to become by working where I work today?
The cheeky middle, in other words, is a supremely important place. Rather than endure it, embrace it as an essential part of your leadership development. Do that, and you’ll benefit from what you learn when you become a senior leader.
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Today’s guest contributor is Bill Treasurer. Bill has conducted over 500 corporate workshops designed to strengthen people’s leadership skills, improve team performance, accelerate innovation, and help executives behave more courageously. His latest book, A Leadership Kick in the Ass, will be released on January 16, 2017. You can find out more about Bill at www.billtreasurer.com and http://giantleapconsulting.com.
Image source (before quote added): Pixabay
by Richard Lindenmuth | Leadership
Today’s guest contributor is Richard Lindenmuth, who has walked the interim leader path more than once in multiple industries. He has over 30 years general management experience, is Chairman of the Association of Interim Executives, and author of The Outside the Box Executive.
Here’s a familiar story of late: A company’s leader has to step down, for any number of reasons, and the board of directors appoints an Interim CEO. Recent examples include United Airlines, DuPont and Twitter—where Interim CEO Jack Dorsey recently became CEO.
Let’s be clear: an interim CEO is not the same as a CEO even though there are many intersecting skills.
An interim executive parachutes in, takes charge, assuages fears, restores confidence, troubleshoots immediate to systemic problems, takes action, and plots direction—fast. (more…)
