March 9th, 2010
I was asked to do a training session on listening skills for a group of corporate executives a couple of weeks ago. How could I connect this training to systems-based leadership and the approach to self-management that we’ve described in “Leading a Business in Anxious Times?” Everyone knows what effective listening entails, whether on the job, in the family, or among friends. It’s important to pay attention to the person who is speaking, to maintain eye contact with him or her, to nod and smile from time to time, to give feedback that shows you’ve been listening (“what I’m hearing is…,” “sounds like you are saying…,” “is this what you mean?”), not to interrupt, and then to respond honestly and respectfully when the person is finished speaking.
But why is this so difficult for so many people? Why do we remember a mere 25 – 50% of what we hear? Why are most of us so unaware of the difficulty we have in really listening to the thoughts, opinions, and feelings of others? Where is all our reactivity coming from?
Those of you who have read “Leading a Business in Anxious Times,” particularly Chapter 8 (“From the Family to the Workplace”), can guess where I went with this training session. My first questions had to do with “listening in the family when you were growing up.” I asked how family members paid attention to each other, how they showed they were listening to each other, how they gave each other feedback, whether there was a difference in the way the adults and the kids listened to each other, and whether anxiety played a part in the way family members listened to each other.
Some of the executives in the training session couldn’t remember how their family members had listened (or not listened) to each other while they were growing up, but many of them described free-for-alls, with people talking all at once and the loudest voice carrying the day. Others described very quiet families in which everyone went about their own business without sharing any thoughts or feelings with each other. The most challenging part of the training session was the discussion of how the executives had automatically carried ancient, long-forgotten family patterns into their adult lives, particularly into the workplace, and how they affected workplace relationships, including leadership.
As you know from reading “Leading a Business in Anxious Times,” the first step in implementing behavioral change is to become aware of what you have been doing. When you become self-aware, you then have choices about whether you want to continue a particular automatic behavior or whether you want to try something different. The training session concluded with some role plays in which the executives tried out new ways of listening to each other. You could create some role plays for yourself, after you’ve thought about how people listened to each other in the family you grew up in, after you’ve become more aware of the listening (or non-listening) patterns you’ve carried into your adult life, and if you’ve decided you wanted to change some of those patterns.
Katharine Gratwick Baker, PhD
Tags: Leaders as listeners, listening and workplace relationships, listening patterns from your family of origin, listening skills, training program in listening skills
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February 24th, 2010
I was coaching a business executive last week who was relatively new to her company’s management team. She had worked for another company in the same industry for twenty years, and had been considered a particularly gifted leader there. When there were some shifts in the direction that company was going in, she decided to look for another job. This was a carefully considered non-impulsive decision, and she took her time exploring professional opportunities before settling on the new position. Her references were excellent, she and the CEO of the new company connected well on an interpersonal level, and he hired her specifically for her leadership skills.
The management team of the new company welcomed her in a very friendly way, and she jumped right into her new job, energetically expressing her thoughts and feelings in meetings about how things were run and the changes that needed to take place. Strangely enough the management team did not seem interested in her views and opinions and, although still friendly, they tended to ignore her comments in meetings. She had been hired for her leadership skills, but no one seemed to want her to lead them in new directions. What wasn’t working for her?
As we explored this problem in a coaching session, she recognized that her leadership in the previous company had evolved over time. She hadn’t started out a leader, but had gradually formed relationships in which she had proved her competence, reliability, flexibility and vision over many years. In the new company she thought she could hit the ground running and be the leader she had evolved into in the prior company. Through coaching she learned that leadership is a relationship process and that it would take time and the development of trust and mutual respect before she could become a true relationship leader in the new company.
Does this seem obvious to you? Not necessarily. If you think that leadership consists of a collection of individual characteristics and traits, then you may think this woman should have been able to become an instant leader in her new company. If you know that leadership is a relationship process, you surely understand what her “next steps” need to be in the new company.
Katharine Gratwick Baker, February 24, 2010
Tags: being new, leadership, relationships at work
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February 9th, 2010
On a cold grey day last week I heard the unmistakable honking of Canada geese overhead and looked up in time to see a ragged V flapping rapidly through the clouds in a northerly direction. There were perhaps 30 geese – 15 on each side – pushing the wind aside with strong wide-arced sweeps of their wings. Of course I looked instantly for the lead goose at the apex of the V, the top goose, the one with all the best leadership traits who knew where they were going, and would pull all the others along to springtime in Canada. But as I gazed high into the sky, the lead goose gave way and another, apparently equally strong, moved into the lead, and then another and another. The V kept going dead-eye north, but the leadership kept changing. Apparently they all knew where they were going, and each goose was both self-defined and a collaborative member of the larger V. Anxious times for Canada geese as the season changes and they need to look for forage and nesting places in the north. But they looked pretty calm and clear to me about where they were headed, and their honking had a celebratory sound.
Katharine Gratwick Baker
Tags: leadership, Leadership Among Non-Human Species, Reciprocal Leadership, Shared Leadership
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January 29th, 2010
Distinguishing leadership and management in organizations is critical for clear thinking about the roles, responsibilities and performance of people in positions of authority as well as those of the individuals who report to them. In our book Leading a Business in Anxious Times, Katharine Baker and I define leadership as “a relationship process among members of an organization that inspire them to take full advantage of opportunities, recognize and minimize threats to success, and avoid catastrophic failures” (page 19.) Framed as a relationship process, leadership is by definition reciprocal, and the outcomes are products of the relationships among people—the owners, executives, directors, managers, supervisors, employees, consultants, customers, vendors, etc. Thus the quality of the relationships in the workplace speaks to the quality of leadership.
Individuals who are responsible for accomplishing the work of the organization—the day to day operations, process improvements, implementing changes, etc. are often called managers. They usually decide policies, establish procedures, control allocation of resources, schedules, and evaluate performance against quality standards, and they are often responsible for hiring and firing of personnel. When outcomes are disappointing, you might hear them say, I really don’t like to “manage people”. In that context, I don’t see them as poor managers; rather I see them as poor leaders. I have a bias against the concept of any individual “managing other people” because it fosters one-directional thinking, without regard for the reciprocity of human behavior in social systems. All parties play a part in the product of their relationship. Thinking of business management as managing people keeps managers’ thinking other-focused rather than keeping it focused on their own behavior. The obvious point here is that individuals can change or manage their own behavior to create an environment where others have the opportunity to perform well, but they cannot change the behavior of others. That’s a by-product of high functioning leadership.
Leadership and management, as it is commonly understood in today’s organizations, are not mutually exclusive. Successful managers also provide leadership. They inspire people to perform and the most successful ones inspire exceptional performance—performance that results in successful outcomes for all stakeholders. However, leadership need not only come from managers or from others in positions of authority. Every employee in an organization can and often does provide leadership at different times around various challenges. Successful organizations develop a culture of leadership—with widespread recognition that the organization is a natural system of mutually interdependent individuals who are responsible for managing themselves in mature ways. Such organizations have leaders throughout that foster open discussion and collaboration, mutual respect, and decision making that is in the best interest of the whole organization.
Leslie Ann Fox, CEO, Care Communications, Inc. January 29, 2010
Tags: collaboration, define leadership relationships in the workplace, high functioning leadership, inspire exceptional performance, leadership, leading in anxious times, management, managing other people, organizations
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January 4th, 2010
Happy New Year to our readers, colleagues, friends, and families. What Leslie and I wish for the world (and for your company, your community, your family and ours) is that systems-based leadership ideas will take off in 2010. As we write in the introduction to Leading a Business in Anxious Times, the leadership principles we’ve introduced in the book “will enable you and your organization to successfully face the challenges that you encounter in an unknown but constantly changing future. They will give you the resilience, stability, flexibility, and vision to prepare yourself effectively for whatever lies ahead. Imagine if your company embraced responding to change as its strategic differentiator. What could it not accomplish?” (p. 22)
At this point all we know about 2010 (we don’t even know if it will end up as “twenty ten” or “two thousand ten”), is that it will surely involve enormous change and demands for adaptation from all of us. We will certainly be called upon to analyze, understand, and utilize new technologies, new products, and new ideas for defining and solving challenges at home, at work, and in the wider world. As you know from reading our book (and probably from your own life), most people experience change and the demand to adapt as stressful. When we are feeling anxious or stressed out, we can’t think as clearly, we make mistakes, we look for shortcuts, and our productivity and performance go down.
Faced with the inevitability of change in 2010, what can we do about it? We’ve said that functioning higher on the scale of differentiation (p.110) is the key to managing change and to providing effective leadership at all levels in a business. And raising your functioning has to start with self-awareness: “Understanding how you functioned in your family when you were growing up, what triggers your anxiety today, and how you react when you are anxious can inform your thinking in ways that enable you to better manage your anxiety in the present. Functioning at a higher level of differentiation as a member of an organization is always beneficial; you are less vulnerable to absorbing anxiety from others in the emotional system. Being a non-anxious presence in the system brings big benefits to the organization… As a way of leading, differentiation of self is about the value that a thoughtful, self-reflecting, emotionally independent individual brings to the workplace (p. 124).”
Please read on through Chapter 5 to learn more about how to do this. And write to us about how it works for you as you face the changes that 2010 will surely thrust upon you.
Katharine Gratwick Baker, PhD, Northampton, MA, December 31, 2009.
Tags: effective leadership, emotional system, manage anxiety, managing change, systems-based leadership
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October 28th, 2009
Our book describes the impact of anxiety on the workplace and how the capacity to think clearly in the presence of anxious colleagues, staff, and customers in the hallmark of an emotionally mature leader. Learning to recognize the signs of anxiety at both the individual and organizational level is the starting point for leading in anxious times. Our ideas about emotional systems and emotionally mature functioning in the workplace have helped us, our clients, and employees achieve a greater level of satisfaction at work and have had a profound impact on the culture of organizations that consistently pay attention to this dimension of leading.
We hope to have discussions on this blog with you, our readers. Please tell us how our ideas resonate with you and how you use the book in your workplace to promote more mature leadership. We are also interested in your thoughts about a definition of leadership that is based less on individual traits, personality, and temperament, and more on the mutual interdependence of the workplace relationship system.
We look forward to hearing from you –
Leslie and Katharine
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