Self-Awareness for a “creative economy”: The biggest opportunity for business leaders today

September, 2012

“We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.” – Anais Nin

“The more you know, the more you realize you know nothing.” – Socrates

I recently watched a terrific TED talk with Kathryn Schulz about how most of us will do virtually anything to avoid being wrong. Schulz, the author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, lays a case for not just admitting but embracing our fallibility.

Fear around being wrong tends to resonate with all of us and what’s fascinating is that wherever fear is present, a defense of the mind – self-deception – is also present. In our personal lives, self-deception can lead to divorce and job loss. In politics, it can lead to war. In the business world, it can tank companies or even the entire economy.

I’d like to focus on self-deception and explore why systematically overcoming it in organizations and in leaders may be the biggest business opportunity today. Evidently, I am not alone in holding this belief; Google’s “Search Inside Yourself” program seems to follow a similar logic, focusing on building capacity in mindfulness training and self-awareness.

From a business perspective, the big opportunity lies in being able to deal with the fact that self-deception is so widespread and costly. Consider the companies that have suffered financially or even collapsed because of a “big assumption” or “false belief” about how things work or should be. Think about all the leaders you have encountered who have refused to see clearly, no matter what information was presented that countered their beliefs. Few business leaders have the support or capacity – or are willing to take the perceived risk – of shining the light on their own blind spots, and businesses pay a huge price for this across all organizational elements.

The main challenge for leaders is the same as it is for everyone: overcoming the mother of all blind spots…thinking you don’t have any! I think this mind trap may be especially common for many business leaders due to the perception that they are, based on conventional terms of validation, already “successful.” Come to think of it, I haven’t met a single business leader – or person, for that matter – who doesn’t suffer from this fallacy to some degree (myself included!).

Again, the ramifications of this mind trap are immense. The more self-deceived an individual is, the more blurred their vision becomes, leading to increased levels of cynicism, blame-laying and self-victimization, burnout and ultimately to a dearth of innovation and creativity, without which you cannot survive in today’s “creative economy.” More than ever, we need business leaders who challenge beliefs about how things are and what is possible, and who can skillfully discern between limiting and growth-affirming beliefs. It is my prediction that the organizations with the most self-aware and behaviourally-effective leaders will be the big winners of tomorrow.

Seizing the opportunity – What can you do about it right now?

To transform to this new level of performance and learn to “see things as they really are,” you must build capacity in accurate self-assessment, including collecting and receiving objective feedback about yourself as a leader.

Here are a few things you can do to kick start your journey:

  1. First, realize that no matter how sharp or successful you are, you simply don’t know everything and suffer from blind spots just like everyone else. Vigilantly pursue what you don’t know rather than look for evidence that confirms what you think you know, as this is how self-deception sustains itself.
  2.  Look out for situations where you feel like an innocent victim. When you find one, look closely at the ways you may be adding to the problem and thus co-creating it.
  3.  Seek outside perspectives through 360 feedback surveys and professional leadership coaching. Don’t accept being left with just a nice 360 report without coaching support to help you interpret the results and define a clear path forward. Without this, you are vulnerable to self-deceptive interpretation of the data. Blind spots by their very nature seek to remain blind!
  4.  Practice mindfulness and meditation; the art and science of intentionally paying close attention to “yourself and the way things are” in the present moment in a detached (yet alert) and nonjudgmental way. Mindfulness and meditation practice builds self-awareness, a cornerstone in developing “emotional intelligence,” a crucial component of effective leadership.
  5.  Write regularly in a journal. This will help you explore your beliefs in a more objective way.
  6.  Observe and listen to others to help you understand them better. Chances are you will learn a lot about yourself and it will develop your ability to more skillfully handle the self-deceptive qualities of others.
  7.  Read up about the human mind, common leadership fallacies and human misperceptions. Some great books include:
  • Search Inside Yourself by Chade-Meng Tan
  • Conscious Business by Fred Kofman
  • Leadership and Self-Deception by The Arbinger Institute
  • Immunity To Change by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey

Why Coaching In The Workplace?

August, 2012

What is Coaching?

  • The process of equipping people with the tools, knowledge, and opportunities they need to fully develop themselves to be effective in their commitment to themselves, the company, and their work.
  • A “designed alliance” focused on developing an individual to become their “best self” and to contribute their “best fit” and talents.
  • An ego-less process in which coachable moments are created to draw out distinctions and promote shifts in thinking and behavior.”

Many organizations, researchers and leaders have identified coaching as a critical leadership and management competency. In addition, employees are asking more and more for coaching. True coaching improves employee and organizational resiliency and effectiveness in change.

We define coaching as the skills, processes and knowledge through which people involve themselves in making the maximum impact and constantly renewing themselves and their organizations as they experience continuous change.

Coaching is not management skills re-packaged, although coaching draws on certain management skills and competencies. Coaching deals with employee growth, development, and achievement by removing roadblocks to performance and enhancing creativity. Management deals with supervision, evaluation and meeting objectives.

Coaching is not therapy or counseling, although coaching uses some of the same communication processes. Coaching is about creativity, performance and action, while therapy deals with resolution and healing of the past.

Coaching is not mentoring or consulting, although coaches will use their experience, diagnose situations and give opinions or advice at times. Coaching uses all of one’s knowledge and experience to enable the person being coached to create and develop their own best practices, connections and resources.

Finally, coaching is not training. Coaches give information, but they support those they coach in developing their own skills and knowledge.

Why Coaching in the Workplace and Why Now?

Coaching promotes creativity, breakthrough performance and resilience, giving organizations a competitive edge and an effective way to flow and operate within an environment of continuous change. Successful organizations like Hewlett Packard, IBM, MCI and others have recognized that managers must be able to coach their employees and each other, and have included coaching in their management/leadership development.

Coaching has been identified by these organizations as a critical leadership and management competency.

Organizations are discovering that the traditional “command and control” style of management is no longer effective in today’s environment, which requires rapid response, leveraged creativity, resilience, and individual effort and performance in order to remain competitive.

Retention is critical, and coaching supports employee career/professional development and satisfaction, which keeps valued employees.

Employees who are coached to performance rather than managed to performance are more committed to and invested in the outcomes of their work and achievement of organizational goals.

Successful organizations have also discovered that on-going training of the workforce is necessary to remain competitive. However, without coaching, training loses its effectiveness rapidly, and often fails to achieve the lasting behavioral changes needed. While training is an “event”, coaching is a process, which is a valuable next step to training to insure that the new knowledge imparted, actually becomes learned behavior.

Coaching has never been more necessary than now and into the future.

Moving forwards change will be the norm and individual resilience and performance will be crucial to team and organizational success. Coaching leverages individual strengths and abilities for maximum performance.

Coaching also provides for direct on-the-job learning as well as just-in-time learning tailored to the particular situation. By enabling behavioral shifts, coaching allows projects and people to move forward immediately and with less effort. Change in business today is often not linear, and requires quick shifts into entirely new models. True coaching supports people in quick shifts needed to meet changing business demands.

Today’s employees are experiencing the new employment “covenant” which developed in the ‘80’s and is now a part of corporate life. Career self-reliance is a critical employee competency under the new covenant, in which employees trade skills and contribution for development and opportunity. Managers and leaders must coach their employees, as they become career self-reliant and engage in continuous career development.

In today’s marketplace, adding value is key to business success.

Successful coaching adds value to employees, who then add value to their organizations by giving their best. Employees want to be happy, productive and innovative, and coaching creates the environment where this can happen. Coaching also supports diversity by recognizing every employee’s uniqueness.

Research and experience shows that employees perform better when positively coached, rather than being constantly evaluated. Researchers have also seen that people with more positive attitudes are more likely to succeed in their jobs and careers. Coaching fosters more positive employee attitude as a key component of development, and enhances positive attitude through positive support.

Finally, coaching skills build and enhance team and work group performance, motivates sales production, improve management and leadership, and promote diversity awareness and leveraging. Human resource professionals have identified that in order to work well in the future, companies will need to hire employees for their fit with the organization, rather than to fill job descriptions. Employee fit is assessed and developed through coaching.

Managers also coach employees to become more career self-reliant and to develop their careers more effectively.

Who Coaches in the Workplace?

Successful managers and leaders today are developing their coaching skills, in order to support and enhance employee performance and development. Managers with coaching skills also “peer coach” each other, as a key way to provide each other with support and guidance in challenging environments. Finally, managers in a 360º feedback situation may “coach up” by coaching their superiors to enhance their own ability to lead and manage.

Coaching provides not only a context for feedback, but also a process to support changed behavior. The best workplace coaches are those who understand and develop their own coaching style, rather than following a cookie cutter approach, who know how to “flex” their style to coach others, and who can use the coaching process and concepts effectively through understanding and skill development.

How do Managers and Leaders Develop Effective Coaching Skills and Competencies?

Managers and leaders develop their competency in coaching by:

  • Increasing their awareness of coaching and its benefits, and “buying in” to the concept and process;
  • Educating themselves on coaching concepts and tools;
  • Identifying their own coaching style and skill level, and learning to identify others’ preferences for being coached;
  • Practicing coaching using the best coaching tools and their own strengths; and continuously improving and installing their coaching competency through feedback and on-going coaching.

While some managers may “take to” coaching more naturally than others at first, we find that the managers, leaders and clients we work with all enjoy and become effective coaches once they are supported by a model in finding and using their own unique coaching strengths. Coaching truly provides a win-win for both coach and employee.

(Adapted from Corporate Coach U’s article on Coaching in the Workplace).

 

Ron Cacioppe is the Managing Director of Integral Development and holds a BSc, an MBA and a PhD. He has taught in the Graduate School of Management at Macquarie University, Curtin University and the University of Western Australia.

Ron has held a number of professorial positions, including the Australian Institute of Management’s Professor of Leadership. He teaches at MBA level in the areas of Leadership Effectiveness, Leading and Facilitating Teams, Managing Strategic Change and Philosophy and Leadership.

Confidentiality in 360 Leadership Surveys

July 2012

Recently I was contacted by a CEO who wanted to build his executive and management team.  He had the right people, but they weren’t operating as leaders of the business. They were more focused on their own technical areas than on the overall success of the business.

After some discussion he decided to do a 360 profile on each manager to build their leadership and team skills. As part of the process, the CEO was very eager to see the reports and find out each person’s ratings and what other managers said about them.  Although this might seem natural, it actually compromises the confidentiality of our process, and could be seen as a betrayal of trust – which would have damaged the moral of the leadership team.

Instead I suggested the CEO could receive a copy of each manager’s development plan and that he could meet with each manager and our coach and tailor a performance program ensuring the CEO’s goals for each manager were taken into account.  His response was great and we will go ahead on that basis.  The CEO will get the outcome he was looking for and the participants will feel that our 360 feedback process is about their development and we will maintain their trust.

It made me wonder though, if you did a 360 Profile, would you be o.k. with your CEO seeing your specific results?

 

Ron Cacioppe is the Managing Director of Integral Development and holds a BSc, an MBA and a PhD. He has taught in the Graduate School of Management at Macquarie University, Curtin University and the University of Western Australia.

Ron has held a number of professorial positions, including the Australian Institute of Management’s Professor of Leadership. He teaches at MBA level in the areas of Leadership Effectiveness, Leading and Facilitating Teams, Managing Strategic Change and Philosophy and Leadership.

Leadership: Coaching at a Higher Level (Voice America Radio)

June, 2012

Staffan Rydin with the Integral Business Leadership Group is hosted by Roy Saunderson and S. Max Brown’s radio show about employee engagement.

What can leaders do to foster a healthy workplace? On Rideau’s Real Recognition Radio, Roy Saunderson and S. Max Brown speak with Staffan Rydin, Leadership Coach and Management Consultant at The Integral Business Leadership Group.  How does coaching help good leaders become great?

Listen at:

http://www.voiceamerica.com/episode/62770/leadership-coaching-at-a-higher-level

Staffan Rydin is the CEO of The Integral Business Leadership Group and a Certified Integral Master Coach™ who helps leaders optimize their performance and transform to their fullest potential. He does this primarily using the Integral Coaching® Method, considered leading-edge in human transformation technology.

Staffan brings strong leadership capabilities, business acumen, and entrepreneurial aptitude to his work, skills he developed during his years as CEO of a successful and rapidly growing online media company, which he led from start-up to 67 employees in Vancouver, B.C. in just three years (2006-2009).

In addition, Staffan designs and facilitates corporate mindfulness and meditation programs for executives based in the Greater Vancouver region as well as teaches Conscious Leadership at the University of British Columbia (UBC).

Staffan was born and raised in Stockholm, Sweden, and has spent most of his life in Europe. He moved to British Columbia  in 2006 and currently lives with his wife in Vancouver.

Connect with Staffan on LinkedIn, on Twitter or via email.