Tag: innovation

my innovation mindset

Ten years ago, I decided to focus my career on helping organizations innovate by developing new products and services. Because of that, I did my best to embrace what I considered an “Innovation Mindset.”  I thought to myself: I need to become an innovator and adopt this mindset in my life. For me, this meant not being afraid to try new things, takings risks, and doing my best to be creative. However, as a result, I became someone who struggled with routines because I thought an innovative person should not be static.
As I started to grow personally and professionally, more complex problems appeared in my life. The idea to optimize, or improve, some aspects of my life did not resonate with my “innovation mindset.” I didn’t have a problem with the idea of improving and trying new things. The conflict I had was that for me, optimizing meant finding a routine and sticking to it.
 

The breaking point

 
my innovation mindsetThen, eventually, there was a point when I realized that the pain of not doing anything was larger than the pain of change. So, I started my Optimal Me journey. I decided to start with my nutrition. I reduced sugar, carbs, and read some books on the topic. I have to be honest, I could not become a keto person, but I became conscious about how I eat and how my body feels when I eat garbage (aka “junk food”).
Then, I continued my journey and started tracking how many hours I was sleeping. I downloaded an app and noticed how bad the quality of my sleep was. I kept going and explored new ways of exercising, measuring my HRV to understand my nervous system. In other words, I got quite nerdy about it. I started to read about meditation and practiced it 3 to 5 times per week. I tried specific ways of breathing to deal with stress, and so on. My point here is not to talk about all of my experiments in the Optimal Me program, but to reflect on the fact that what started as a small step became a deep dive on improving several aspects of my life.
 

Readjusting my innovation mindset

 
As a result of implementing these improvements, I was able to cope with some personal and professional problems and found the balance I wanted to achieve (for now). You might wonder if I currently have a fixed routine that includes all of these tools or techniques? Not quite. I do have some routines, but there are a lot of things that I stopped practicing. I thought I had failed because I had explored so many things during the last two years that I was not applying regularly. For example, I remember thinking: “Why am I not tracking my sleep anymore?”
The answer is simple. I am aware that now I sleep fine. Then I realized that some of those experiments helped me to deal with moments of stress, anxiety, and more. I was not using those techniques, apps, or routines simply because I did not have those problems anymore. However, now I have a set of tools that I can use when I feel I need them again. And this is the whole point of optimizing my life. Develop awareness, learn, test, and repeat if it makes sense. Otherwise, save it for later.
I realized I had a framed optimizing my life in the wrong way. It’s not a journey that you start and finish. It’s a life-long learning process of self-awareness and trying new things to deal with all the life-changing challenges that appear along the way. The cherry on top is that this is how innovation in organizations works. Having a successful business is not possible with a fixed optimization formula. The things that worked in the past may not be useful in the future. This is how I optimized my innovation mindset.
 

What happens when procrastination gets the best of us?

According to Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D., procrastination is a common human tendency. About 20 percent of adults have regular bouts of procrastination. She claims it is so common that no one can ever completely avoid it. Psychology researchers say that procrastination is characterized by the “irrational delay of tasks despite potentially negative consequences.” How can we overcome this paradoxical challenge that so many of us are facing?
Recently, I committed to writing an article for our website and, at the time that I did, I was energized and enthusiastic. Time passed, other work piled up, and… ahem… I admit I was tempted to renegotiate the deadline. The challenge is that at Axialent, our culture frowns upon the behavior of making excuses – one is expected to be a player, own up, and honor commitments, or renegotiate the terms of the agreement.
Bummer.
The victim in me was agonizing, wanting to say, ‘I don’t have enough time.’ A more culturally acceptable version of this at Axialent is, ‘I prioritized other commitments.’ But what about my commitment to write the article? What happened to my willpower in this situation? In any case, that was not the best version of myself.
Instead of letting this angst go to waste, I decided to use it to jumpstart this article. I wondered whether others who may read this could be beating themselves up for similar situations. And I thought that those readers might find it helpful to know that, 1) they’re not alone, and 2) there’s a science-based method out there that allowed me to put this article together and get-it-done.
 

So, what can we do when procrastination gets the best of us?

 
What happens when procrastination gets the best of us?
If you think that I listened to a pep talk that made my fingers glide across my computer keyboard, think again. The fuel that got me going was something I learned in one of Axialent’s newer programs called Optimal Me. There was no motivational speech, just scientific facts on how the brain works, how our mind works, how our body is this smart machine that I had neglected. Among many other provocations, this one nugget of wisdom stuck with me: better than having the motivation to do something is having a motive. Why? Because motivation depends on my emotional state, while a motive will always be around when I need it.
So, as all my anguish poured in at the thought of submitting this article, I turned to my motive. I just had to remember that the ultimate reason I had for writing this is not to produce a perfect literary piece, comply with a deadline, or respond to a colleague’s request. My motive is to share less-than-extraordinary experiences that could make ordinary people’s lives a little better. It’s to be of service and maybe help others out.
Once I connected with that, my energy reset. My mood was out of the question. I put in the work. A less than perfect first draft came out. I trusted my colleagues to edit it with due professionalism. And got-it-done.
 

The Optimal Me method

 
Optimal Me is not a recipe book from where I took this advice, plugged and played. It’s a journey that exposed me to thought triggers from a carefully curated stack of knowledge about our well-being. More importantly, it enticed me to experiment my way to better-being (yes, I just made that word up). How? The course’s experimental nature made it attractive because it became a game that I was happy to play – albeit without gamification.
I’ve participated in development programs before where learning outcomes were based on knowledge consumption. Others, the transformational ones, relied on double-loop learning. This program is different in that the main goal is to learn to experiment for the sake of experimentation. Knowledge was not there to be consumed but to shape my experiment. I was free to pick the topic that I was more drawn to among all the curiosity triggers I received. I felt empowered to shift mindsets and learn!
This comes with a bonus: I, the participant, reaped the benefits of this program in full. I did not learn something that I was expected to ‘pay forward’ to my team (like leadership skills) or ‘pay back’ to my company (like technical skills applied to my job). What I learned by experimenting with productivity directly affected my well-being at work. What I learned after experimenting with nutrition, sleep, and exercise affected my body.
Given the constant uncertainty we’re living in these days, more and more companies we engage with are earnestly concerned about and caring for their people’s well-being. If you work at one of those companies and want to explore a non-threatening, enjoyable, and science-based method to address this pain point now, I recommend you give Optimal Me a try. Experiment. It will be worth it.
 

If you would like to see the recording of our live Optimal Me webinar with Oseas Ramirez, click here.

After a year of a pandemic that has taken a physical and emotional toll on hundreds of millions of people, the elusive idea of “well-being” is more relevant than ever. Even before the pandemic, it was already a hot topic with an established multi-billion dollar industry. The need for organizations to prioritize their employees’ well-being is more present than it has ever been. Does this mean we have the right tools and resources at our disposal? Not exactly.
 

The Road to “Well-Being”

why organizations need to prioritize their employees’ well-beingOne of my qualms about the idea of “well-being” is that it often follows a prescriptive approach. This is how one “should” eat, workout, rest, work, etc… oh, and here is the evidence for it. As well-intentioned as this might be and as well-substantiated as the proposal may be, I have noticed that many of us find it difficult to fully connect with it beyond just accepting what is proposed.
In many cases, we fall into a loop of feeling we “should” do something or be a certain way. We feel bad when we fail to follow the recommendation or achieve the state we believe we should pursue. We sometimes even reach the conclusion that doing or being a certain way is out of our reach because of __________ (fill in the blank with your favorite response – the one I found most people reference is the lack of willpower or discipline). In many cases, we are either left with the option to “try again” and see if this time we will have the willpower, or try the next new workout class, diet, or meditation app in hopes that this time it will be different. Many of us are familiar with the new “hope-try-drop it-feel disappointed” cycle.
 

Why is it so difficult to adopt changes that are good for us… that we know are good for us?

I have been passionate about exploring this question for years now. I did so silently as I focused on consulting Fortune 500 companies on topics related to innovation, agility, and digital transformation. A couple of years ago, I realized that there were a series of overarching themes in the space of innovation that actually shed some light on helping us adopt those changes. Coupled with some of the core aspects of behavioral science popularized by many habits books and publications, I found an interesting intersection: behavioral innovation through personal experimentation. This was the starting point for Optimal Me, a program we launched at Axialent in 2019.
Ever since, we have worked with seasoned leaders from over 10 countries, spanning Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa. We have asked them to run experiments on a wide range of topics – whether it’s intermittent fasting to increase focus and energy, new workout routines to help with stress reduction, breathing practices, personal productivity methodologies, or team productivity approaches. The most gratifying aspect of this work has not been the direct results of the experiments, but when people reestablish the confidence to playfully experiment with learning something new. Trying out a workout regimen for a couple of weeks, measuring how I feel about it, and trying to learn what works best for me is very different than powering through two weeks of doing something that may not even be the right fit for me, but I have a sense of obligation that I should do it.
 

Conclusion

We have learned that people are much more likely to stick with well-being initiatives if they actually enjoy doing them. Working on discovering this joy through a non-threatening (yet rigorous) personal experimentation process, supported by basic tenets of behavioral science is the core experience we are trying to instill in our Optimal Me participants.
Research has shown the incredible benefit of workplaces that provide well-being initiatives. Eighty-nine percent of employees at companies that support well-being initiatives were more likely to recommend their organization as a good place to work. Organizations with supervisors that supported their well-being plans reported a higher number of workers motivated to do their best, higher job satisfaction, and better relationships with their superiors.
If you are interested in innovation or growth mindset, Optimal Me will offer you a concrete way to embody it in your life. If you are just interested in learning how to be better in key aspects of your life, Optimal Me can offer you tools and approaches for you to test your way into it.
 

If you would like to see the recording of our live Optimal Me webinar with Oseas Ramirez, click here.

Many companies begin their culture journey motivated to make big changes. While the intention of major change is there, some will lack the follow-through to sustain focus and solidify lasting change. Taking the time to measure the progress of your culture in a conscious, intentional, and continuous way is important to keep your initiatives on track.

The first step for many organizations is to conduct a baseline culture assessment, typically consisting of quantitative and qualitative data. The purpose of the assessment is to identify their ideal culture, measure the current culture, and find out where the gaps are. This data helps leaders get aligned on their vision, as well as to better understand the mindsets, values, and beliefs that are widely shared in the organization, and how they may enable or get in the way of attaining results.

As the culture transformation process unfolds – roadmaps are defined, workshops are conducted, communication strategies are implemented and change agents are mobilized – measurement typically goes to the bottom of the priority list.  Rarely do we find that the same level of rigor that was used in the assessment step is applied to measure the progress and impact of culture change initiatives.  The approach is often limited to informal sensing based on unstructured conversations and casual observations, or relying on employee engagement surveys, which seldom measure shifts in mindsets and behaviors. This makes it hard to pinpoint where are we making progress and what we need to do to accelerate the change.

However, administering comprehensive culture surveys and conducting multiple interviews and focus groups may not always be feasible if you want to keep the pulse on the change and assess progress in a continuous way.

Here are some ideas to help you design your culture measurement strategy:

Identify where you are in your culture journey

Have you recently started your culture transformation effort?  Have you already started mobilizing people and launching initiatives?  Understanding where you are will help you define what you need to look for (your key hypothesis and key research questions) and the data sources that will be most helpful.  For example, you could assess the following:

  • Change readiness – Do you want to see if leaders and employees are aware, willing, and able to drive change?
  • Culture drivers – Do you want to see how effective the new programs or initiatives are?
  • Mindset changes – Do you want to assess if the desired culture mindsets and behaviors are becoming norms?
  • Outcomes – Do you want to understand how culture is impacting key business and people results?

At the beginning of your culture journey, you may want to focus on measuring change readiness and the effectiveness of culture initiatives.  As your process takes root, you can focus more on behavioral and outcome measures.

Identify potential sources of data

Since culture is experienced, the best insights typically come from a mix of quantitative and qualitative data.  Based on your key research questions, you can strategically identify potential data sources (such as employee lifecycle surveys, leadership 360s, performance evaluation forms, training feedback, sentiment analysis from employee comments, or feedback data) that can be re-imagined for intentionally capturing meaningful culture insights.  If your focus is more on assessing outcomes, consider conducting advanced analytics, integrating people metrics (such as engagement, retention, development and performance measures) with employee surveys and customer data.

Identify potential experiments

Many successful culture change initiatives are rolled out in phases.  This gives the organization the opportunity to learn and adjust, create success stories, and form culture champions.  The phased approach also lends itself to measuring the impact of the culture initiatives over time for certain groups and to compare the differences among groups who have experienced the change vs. those who have not.  Designing and measuring experiments will help you refine your approach before committing to bigger investments, make participants an active part of your broader change process, and assess the ROI of your initiatives.

Conclusion

Your strategy to measure the progress of your culture should be aligned to the mindsets that you are looking to drive – whether it is agility, innovation, accountability, or inclusion.  Be intentional and approach the measurement process with curiosity – you are not looking for a pass or fail grade, but for powerful insights that will help you shape your best next step in your culture transformation journey.

If you ask any leader, “What has been one of the most defining moments in your career?” most likely, the answer will be related to leading a significant organizational change.  This is not surprising: our brains are wired to remember peak moments more vividly. These are experiences that capture us at moments of achievement or courage; or moments that change our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.1
Organizations place a lot of value on leaders who can effectively lead others through change.  In fact, effective change leadership is a common competency used to identify and develop high potential employees.2 However, despite the importance that both leaders and organizations place on change leadership, many organizations lack an intentional strategy to help their leaders become effective change-makers.  Many of us are guilty of having used the ‘sink or swim’ approach disguised as ‘on the job learning’.  Intentionally or not, we throw our up-and-coming talent into leading changes in an environment that is increasingly complex and unpredictable without the benefit of a foundation to help them along the way.
For on-the-job learning to be effective, it needs to reinforce the behaviors we are looking to shift or embed. This means that we need to define the guiding principles of how we should lead through change and the experience that we want to provide our change-makers, employees, partners, and clients.  The benefit of talking about ‘how we lead change’ goes beyond leadership development. It sets clear norms of behavior and common expectations of how we will measure success while empowering our change-makers to ask for what they need.
 

How can we best prepare our current and future change-makers? 

It’s useful to think about the actions that we can take preemptively, through more structured leadership development, coaching, and resources. We should also consider the ‘just-in-time’ support we can provide to help leaders navigate a change event.
The good news is that there is significant overlap between what makes an effective change-maker and what makes an effective leader.  Development activities (such as training and coaching) that encourage leaders to increase their self-awareness and growth mindset and help them become more resilient, inclusive, accountable, and collaborative, will also help them be better change-makers.  In addition, change-makers need to be good at storytelling, influencing, and systems thinking. To maximize impact, we need to be intentional in helping them understand how they can apply these leadership skills in a change situation.
 

As they get ready to embark into a large-scale, high-impact change, we can support change-makers in two dimensions:

  • Change acceptance – In order to lead, change-makers need to be willing to move. In many situations, we ask leaders to take on new initiatives on top of their current responsibilities.  You can increase their willingness to lead by creating a space to intentionally discuss how this initiative fits into the broader organizational picture and what’s in it for them personally.  When they intentionally set their personal goals – whether it is to accelerate their development, build their network, gain a broader enterprise view, learn new skills, or do something with impact – they will feel valued and more energized to take on a new challenge.
  • Change-related skills – Leaders need to feel able to lead the change. Beyond the resources and information needed to execute the ‘what’ of the change, they also need access to practical, ‘just-in-time’ change management guidance and tools. Instead of providing theoretical change toolkits and training that few people will use, employ a design thinking approach to uncover what would be most useful for change-makers as they navigate large-scale change.  This may include practical tools, like a change playbook tailored to your organization, and targeted coaching/advice to discuss ideas and overcome challenges.

Our change-makers can survive a change event, or they can consciously experience and lead the change.  This will not make the change less complex or challenging, but it will help them approach the experience with a different mindset, less fear, and a higher level of confidence.  It will also help advance the business goals that the change is looking to achieve and help build organizational agility and resilience.
 

References
  1. Doll, Karen. (2019). What is Peak-End Theory? A Psychologist Explains How Our Memory Fools Us.com
  2. Fernandez-Araoz, C., Roscoe, A., Aramaki, K. Turning Potential into Success: The Missing Link in Leadership Development. Harvard Business Review, November–December 2017 Issue

When it comes to culture transformation initiatives, complying with change is different from committing to change. For it to be successful, leaders need to be committed to changing how they think, act, and interact. You can’t force this kind of change… at least not sustainably. An essential part of closing the gap between where an organization is now and where they need to be is providing a clear roadmap of the culture plan. This is an important step toward making the necessary changes.
 

Creating the roadmap for culture change

 
The results of the tools we use in Axialent to measure the current and ideal culture (OCI® Organizational Culture Inventory® and OEI® Organizational Effectiveness Inventory®) and the leadership styles and behaviors (LSI® (Life Styles Inventory®) allow an organization to identify levers for change, so they can establish a detailed action plan for successful change management and measure their progress.
Developing an action plan for culture change requires planning for deeper, longer lasting transformation. It is not your regular change management plan.
It needs to cover the following aspects:

  • People need to understand the change, what it implies, and most importantly, why they should change.
  • They need to overcome any negative emotions associated with the change and connect it with positive emotions.
  • They need to be capable of change.
    The “Shadow of the Leader” is long. People will seek their leaders’ example of what it truly means to change. By using the LSI®(Life Styles Inventory®)tools from Human Synergistics, we provide leaders a powerful roadmap for themselves, that weaves neatly into the organizational roadmap because it is built on a common framework and a shared language.
    Most leaders easily “get” what needs to be done at an intellectual level. However, bridging the gap between knowing what they need to do and actually doing it requires working on a deeper level – what we call at Axialent the “being” level. Leaders have to become the leaders that the new culture needs them to be before we can aspire to achieve any true change and get others on board.
    Traditional training is insufficient for this – adaptive learning is a must in most cases.

Only after addressing these three factors can you expect people to be willing and committed to change.
 

Next steps – some food for thought

  • An action plan CAN be simple. It all boils down to who does what, by when.
  • Think of action planning as a proxy of the culture change you want to see. For example, if you want to foster a culture of greater accountability, empower autonomous teams to lead action planning for culture transformation in their sphere of influence and hold them accountable for progress and outcomes.
  • Consider mapping stakeholders by subcultures instead of the usual employee segments and check if this adds value to your action plan.
  • When you have a powerful suite of tools like the LSI, OEI, and OCI, you remove the guesswork from prioritization. You will have the main causal factors that will move the needle toward your desired culture. Concentrate on the handful of measures that will create the most impact instead of merely scratching the surface with various initiatives.
  • When you plan, test if executing short sprints instead of rolling out a titanic change program adds value. Carve out time in your plan to pause, re-measure, and recalibrate your plan itself.
  • Don’t wait until the end to conduct a post-mortem. Make learning an ‘action’ in your action plan by ensuring you will collect and analyze feedback and, more importantly, make time to integrate feedback.
  • Clearly lay out your options once you receive and analyze feedback (for example: pivot, persist, or pull the plug) to facilitate decision-making when that time comes.

 

Conclusion

Ensure that your roadmap for culture change includes actions that get people to truthfully say: “I understand why I need to change, I feel excited/happy/______ (<- your positive emotion goes here) about this change, I feel capable of changing what I am asked to change, and I’m committed to do so”. A clear roadmap of the culture journey will help to ensure success in implementing real and lasting change.
 
 

Have you ever struggled to establish a trusting relationship with a perfectionist boss? Some people believe perfectionism is a positive trait. They believe it fuels us to raise the bar in the pursuit of excellence. However, if you have ever tried to manage the expectations of a perfectionist in your life, then you can attest that it does not drive effectiveness. On the contrary, perfectionism kills excellence, harms relationships, compromises results in the long term, and generates frustration and disappointment.
 

The Perfectionist

For someone who has strong perfectionist traits, nothing is good if it is not perfect. The drive for perfection sets unreal standards for the individual and those around them.  A perfectionist will focus on the task and results over the team and the individual. This person will tend to lose sight of the forest for the trees.

They will be personally tuned in to all the details, taking on more than they can handle. This leader and their team will work hard for strenuous, long hours to accomplish the task… but it will still not be good enough.
For a perfectionist, establishing close relationships is tough. Perfectionists tend to alienate those around them. They do not trust others can complete the task flawlessly, so they try to control it by micromanaging each step of the process. People then disengage and disconnect, feeling oppressed and disempowered.
At an individual level, perfectionists are mainly trying to prove themselves and others right. Their self-worth is built on being seen as competent and flawless, by winning over others and delivering what they believe is expected of them: perfection. Perfectionists will often feel irritated, frustrated, and disappointed with themselves and their team for under-delivering according to unachievable standards.
 

Why do people think perfectionism drives sustainable results?

There is some common ground between a culture that embodies achievement and the one that promotes perfectionism: the drive, determination, and energy towards accomplishing the task and the commitment towards the quality of the outcome.
However, an organization that fosters a culture of achievement is continuously setting excellence standards (vs unrealistic standards of perfectionism). They look for new ways to become better, developing a growth mindset as the principle that underlies the culture. Fostering psychological safety and collaboration is key for teams and individuals to excel.  Failure in these types of organizations becomes part of the game. It is seen and lived by its members as an opportunity to learn, adapt, and continue improving. For a perfectionist, failure is difficult to embrace. It is directly related to one of their fears: not being good enough.
 

What are the differences between a perfectionist leader and an effective leader?

 

 

Perfectionism kills excellence. How can we move from being a perfectionist to an effective leader?

 

  1. Commit to fewer goals (no more than 3 at once): Do not lose sight of the WHY (purpose). Reflect on how each goal contributes to your purpose and prioritize your goals in terms of impact. When setting goals, frame them in terms of growth (e.g: improving from X to Y) and make sure they are realistic and possible, considering the timeframe.
  2. Focus & practice letting go: When delegating tasks to your team, start small. Choose tasks/projects that represent a lower risk for you. Then agree on a process with your team where you can jointly review the progress in a way that everyone feels comfortable.
  3. Get to know your team better: Aristotle said, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Explore how each person can contribute to creating impact. Test and learn. Challenge yourself to think outside of the box and invite others to try new things. People experience a flow state when working on something they feel passionate about.
  4. Ask for feedback from your peers & direct reports: Make time for After Action Reviews after each major task/project completion. Appreciate what has worked well and reflect on what could you have done differently to contribute effectively to the project. Ask for specific feedback on your improvement goal from others. Let others know your developmental path and encourage them to offer feedback when they experience you moving away from your goal.
  5. Be kind to yourself: Practice self-compassion. Perfectionists work towards unrealistic standards which generate frustration and feeds the “inner critic” that shouts, “you are not good enough”. Practice expressing gratitude and connecting with what works. Journaling is a powerful way to reflect and it reduces stress. Try this simple journaling exercise:

    In the morning, ask yourself:     What would make today a wonderful day? What do I feel grateful for?
    At night: What good things happened today?

 

Conclusion

Our VUCA context requires leaders to develop a learning agility and be able to anticipate and adapt to constant changes. In order to do this, we need to be able to cope with failure and setbacks, learn, and strengthen our resilience. Perfectionist traits hinder change and effectiveness but can be overcome by developing the right mindsets (growth & learner) and being compassionate with our own self and others.
 

Next Steps: How to Achieve an Advanced Coaching Leadership Strategy: leaders on the starting line

In a previous article, I discussed the benefits of an advanced coaching leadership strategy. Now, let’s take it to the next level and examine how to achieve an advanced coaching leadership strategy.

Take the time to truly understand the gaps

Every company is in a different situation with different challenges. Even so, the first step for any company should be to consciously understand where they are, where they need to go, and how to fill the gap between the two. The best way to start this process is to run diagnostics, examining two dimensions:

  • First, stop the never-ending intellectual discussion about your company culture and measure it. I have worked with different culture assessment tools and the top one I recommend is the OCI® (Organizational Culture Inventory) from Human Synergistics. In my experience, companies can spend months and years talking about their need for cultural transformation without reaching any actionable conclusion and results. Using a culture assessment tool allows you and your team to clearly understand the desired culture, speak a common “culture language,” and measure concrete gaps to fill.
  • In parallel, individual and team leadership assessments and transformations are a key part of the process. We all know that the number one influencer of a company’s culture is its leaders’ behaviors and mental models. There are several excellent individual and team assessment tools, and the one I would recommend for transforming a leadership culture is the LSI® (Life Style Inventory), also from Human Synergistics. It allows you to make the connections between your desired culture and your individual and collective leadership transformation. It is then easy and straight forward to make the connection between the 12 leadership styles measured by the LSI® and the mindsets and behaviors corresponding to the “Command & Control” as well as the “Advanced Coaching” Leadership strategies.

Next Steps: How to Achieve an Advanced Coaching Leadership Strategy: leaders on the starting line

Then take action

After completing the diagnostic phase, along with the accompanying debrief sessions about your results, it’s time to take action. First, I recommend taking your team on a strategic off-site workshop to define your leadership culture transformation needs and goals. Use a “From-To” analysis, driven by a solid business case for change.
From this concrete exercise, the executive committee can formalize a kind of “Manifesto.” It will summarize the commitments in terms of mindsets and behaviors that the members agree to. They will need to adopt them individually and collectively, role modeling the desired culture and its impact on the company’s strategic success.
The next step is about empowering the executive committee to walk the talk. In my opinion, the best way of achieving this is through individual and team coaching. They will build a leadership culture and cascade it progressively to the next levels, the executive team leading by example. This has been proven to be the most concrete and effective way to transform a company’s culture quickly.
However, leaders’ (of all levels) mindsets and behaviors are not the only drivers of culture. In parallel, the company will need to align the company, business, and people systems/policies/processes and symbols to the desired culture.

Conclusion

Moving from a Command & Control to an Advanced Coaching Leadership style is part of a business strategy that focuses on the decentralization of decision, control, and accountability by engaging and empowering employees.
Doing this will lead to the transformation of your organizational culture.
In a VUCA world, you can’t afford to wait half a decade to achieve such a culture shift.

Next Steps: How to Achieve an Advanced Coaching Leadership Strategy
climbing helping team work , success concept

An interview with Thierry de Beyssac
More and more in today’s business world, we see the traditional “command and control”  leadership style isn’t working. In this interview with Axialent consultant Thierry de Beyssac, he shares his thoughts about the need to embrace new strategies and skills in order to be successful leaders in today’s fast-changing environment and the benefits of an Advanced Coaching Leadership Strategy.

First, can you tell us what the Advanced Coaching Leadership Strategy is?

Advanced Coaching Leadership is a kind of culture and strategy. It focuses on the decentralization of decision making, reduction of control, and increase of accountability by engaging and empowering people, thus liberating an agile organization and embracing four of the six “Harvard Leadership Styles”[1].

In case some of our readers are not clear on what the six “Harvard Leadership Styles” are, can you describe them for us?

The Harvard Leadership Styles, first developed by David Goleman and published in the Harvard Business Review, describes both negative and positive leadership styles:

  1. Coercive: The “Do what I tell you” style demands immediate compliance.
  2. Pacesetting: The “Do as I do, now!” style sets extremely high standards for performance.
  3. Coaching: The “Try this” style makes people accountable and helps them find their own way to succeed.
  4. Democratic: The “What do you think?” style builds trust and commitment through participation.
  5. Affiliative: The “People come first” style creates harmony & meaning and builds emotional bonds with employees.
  6. Authoritative: The “Come and do with me” style aligns and empowers around an inspiring vision.

Which of the Harvard Leadership Styles does a “command and control” leader use?

The Benefits of an Advanced Coaching Leadership Strategy: team working together to reach the top of the mountain
The command and control style leader uses coercion when setting tasks and demands that employees do as they do, “now.” They set extremely high standards for performance. This controlled, centralized decision making and solution giving fosters authoritarian micromanagement. It creates and feeds into a competitive and perfectionistic culture where employees fear failure and blame others.

And what are the traits of a leader following the Advanced Coaching Leadership Strategy?

A leader following the Advanced Coaching Leadership Strategy (ACLS) decentralizes decisions and control, prioritizes accountability, achievement, and agility. This type of leader creates conditions for others to succeed. Instead of authoritarian, an ACLS leader will be authoritative within a clear collective vision and sense of purpose. He/she will allow for personal growth, self fulfillment, and the realization of self and employee potential. This creates a culture where feedback flourishes.

In what kind of business environment does this style work best?

The Advanced Coaching Leadership Strategy is imperative for large, complex, multi-generational, and global organizations. It creates an interconnected diverse workforce and collaborative models, which allows for an openness to company-wide culture transformation.

How does ACLS translate into the culture of an organization?

Traditional hierarchical leadership cultures tend to have centralized structures with top-down communication and micro-managing (“my truth is THE truth” leaders). In contrast, the ACLS supports cultures to have a decentralized and “collegial” governance model, with visionary leaders who empower others. ACLS leaders understand that coaching employees to grow their skills is a way to engage with them to take accountability, give the best of themselves, achieve challenging objectives, and will lead to successful teamwork.

Advanced Coaching Leadership sounds quite challenging. What kinds of mindsets and competencies are required for the ACLS?

Self-awareness and creativity are key; an ACLS leader must be able to foster collective intelligence, collective creativity, and collective accountability. They will also need an unconditional responsibility mindset: the Player vs. Victim posture. They will be able to admit that, as a leader, you cannot know it all, see it all, nor be right and creative all the time. It is key to have this Learner posture, to foster a permanent two-way feedback culture and be able to delegate.
Harvard research has shown that the best leaders master the following four, or more, of the Harvard Leadership Styles: Coaching, Democratic, Affiliative, Authoritative. These leaders run companies with decentralized and empowered cultures. They achieve high people engagement and build a strong culture of consciousness of self (mindfulness): self-awareness, self-development, unconditional responsibility, ontological humility, sense of purpose and self-actualization.

Are there any situations where the other 2 Harvard Leadership Styles work for an organization?

The Harvard research found that Coercive and Pacesetting leaders can be effective in some crisis or severe turnaround situations when combined with the other 4 leadership styles. However, these two leadership strategies have the most negative impact on the 6 effective organizational culture components (Flexibility, Responsibility, Standards, Rewards, Clarity, Commitment).
Although the Coercive and Pacesetting styles can create short term gain, ACLS leaders understand that short-term failure can further long-term learning and winning (e.g. Design Thinking kind of innovation).

You have talked a lot about the pros of ALCS, are there any downsides?

Leading a business using the ACLS requires well-trained, versatile leaders willing to use these leadership styles while facing the high pressure of the “get it done now” economy. As I mentioned just now, there will be some moments when it is necessary to understand that short-term failure can further long-term learning and winning. Developing people is often seen as too time-consuming and resource-draining, so ACLS demands a strong leader who is willing to free up time for people management. This kind of leader needs to be willing to make a short-term time and resource investment while looking at the long-term gain.

So, in the end, what you are recommending is a change of culture. What would you recommend to a leader interested in this kind of leadership and culture?

I would say, don’t talk about it and don’t “do” it… measure it, own it, and be it.
Culture is the messages that people receive about how they are expected to think, act, and interact in order to fit in at a given organization. It’s that simple, that foundational.
The “Command & Control” leadership mindsets and behaviors tell you a lot about how you are expected to think, act, and interact. The Advanced Coaching Leadership Strategy does too… albeit in a very different way.
[1] https://hbr.org/2000/03/leadership-that-gets-results

Leading a Company Through the Crisis of COVID-19 : the shaddows of 2 professionals walking

The truth is, sometimes I dream of going back to February of this year when the coronavirus had not yet come to challenge us and change our lives. Other times, I think that COVID-19 has stimulated reflection and accelerated innovation that we had been resisting. Living this calamity at the head of a company breaks every seam in any comfort zone. At the same time, it has given us a unique opportunity to learn about disruption and management, to understand the importance of corporate culture in navigating the storm and to realize that in the end, it is always people who matter most. Leading a company through the crisis of COVID-19 presents us with continuing challenges we never thought we would have to face.
Leading a Company Through the Crisis of COVID-19: two leaders walk side by side
 

Leading in uncertainty

In these months, the ability to find meaning in the midst of uncertainty has been critical. And to be able to do that, we must have an open mind, practice curiosity, be willing to listen to different opinions, and learn from others. We also must be willing to experiment and accept failure when it occurs.
We have spent a lifetime talking about vision in companies. Never has the ability to frame a vision and to get others on board been so Important. We used to theoretically analyze exponential acceleration, now we need to create an exciting story that gets people on board, quickly.
The ability to relate within and outside the company, to influence, negotiate, and communicate genuinely is also an important lifeline. It becomes essential when a company’s survival depends on convincing those at home that we have to tighten our pay belts and those outside that they should finance you at an uncertain time or continue to hire your services in the midst of an unknown recession.
In a new and challenging environment, of which we don’t have any previous examples to refer to, supporting people, especially those you work with directly and who manage teams, is another key management skill. Application coaching, focused on management challenges, is a very useful tool in business leadership.
 

Leading a Company Through the Crisis of COVID-19

The pandemic has changed the game for all of us. Now it is no longer a question of predicting the future, but of inventing the present. To lead in times of pandemic is to invent. It means managing change by making thoughtful and courageous decisions that design new scenarios. This requires promoting a culture of learning at all levels while providing what is needed to foster resilience. We are living in an emotional, economic, and social roller coaster. A leader’s best contribution is to empathize, help, and provide some certainty so that people find meaning in their work.
If I had to recommend one thing to leaders in these uncertain times, I would tell them to be ambidextrous. Be able to live between the old and the new. Be able to manage what is happening now and help create what is yet to come. Understand human resistance to change and accept innovation and disruption. Dare to dream and make the new normal a better normal than the one that the COVID-19 has taken from us.