Blog 8.2

This week I had an opportunity to pause and reflect on the past few weeks.

Truly, it’s amazing how quickly the time goes by.

In the past few weeks, I’ve become far more sensitive towards others, towards their feelings about life, teams, and projects, and how to better encourage them. I’ve also felt a tremendous release from having to be a certain kind of leader. There are countless models of leadership, and no one model is right; additionally, one person might have to flex between several models based on team need and context.

I think I’ve been getting more flexible.

I’ve been reading a lot about sensing, too.

This blog post from Innovative Excellence, for example, explores how powerful (and at times deceitful) our senses can be. The author mentions our brains “filling in the gaps” based on previous experiences to expedite processing time, and the power of one sense disagreeing with the others (it looks and smells and tastes like an apple, but the texture is way off).

He applies the idea to innovation, and says that using these affordances (the idea that certain forms or materials afford a certain kind of motion or involvement: a knob for turning, a handle for pulling, etc.) or the dissonance created by senses in disagreement provide opportunities for leverage in innovation. If it’s going to disagree, make it seem like it was on purpose, and use the opportunity to make your statement louder. As we like to say at work “never let them see you bleed.” That is to say, if something is off, don’t bring it up. In fact, if you can, use it to your advantage.

Great Leadership explored the idea of listening. However, author Marcia Reynolds doesn’t really explore the concept of listening as the “sense of hearing.” Instead, she speaks to listening to your peers, to your leaders, to your followers, and being humble enough to admit when you don’t know the right answer, but you are willing to talk about it.

She briefly explores the concept as a biological concept: that leaders– especially those who have already climbed the corporate ladder, would become less and less comfortable with ambiguity. Personally, I don’t blame those with greater responsibilities for wanting to make safer decisions. Their mistakes have far greater consequences than those who have less to lose.

Which is a concept that Seth Godin explores in one of his blogs: when a business is new, that is the time to make sure what you’re offering is fresh. That is the time to take chances. As he says, “Too often, we look at the serious nature of starting a business (and worse, our imagined serious implications of failing when we do so) and we forget about useful, fresh or interesting. We forget to do that thing that might not work, to expose ourselves to things that are generous and new and fun.”

So while young business have an opportunity for newness and risk, the older and larger a company (or idea, or leader, or group) gets, the fewer chances they’ll want to take.

1) The larger you are, the more appealing old, tested, proven methods appear.
2) The larger you are, the more you have to lose.
3) The larger you are, the more people you have to convince
4) The larger you are, the more resources you have to move

But I think that’s where sensing can be reintroduced: large companies, leaders, and teams need to be in tune with themselves, with each other, and with what’s going on around them. They need to be able to not only look, but to see, not only hear, but to listen.

And only once they can sense what’s around them, with them, and within them can they know where they need newness.

Blog 7.2

Values always beat data. It’s why Apple fans remain Apple fans. MAYBE this other device is cheaper, and maybe it performs better, but I FEEL better about Apple products. So that’s what I’m going to buy.

Values, if consistently and constantly communicated, will hold a team together. A diverse group that would otherwise be at each other’s throats will gladly set aside their differences if they determine to work towards the same values. This is why knowing WHY is perhaps more important than knowing HOW, and especially as a leader, knowing why you do what you do in addition to knowing why you want others to do what they do has the potential to change everything about the way you handle your team.

Chapter 9 of Tribal Leadership takes a closer look at the importance of values. In it the authors discuss discovering values, applying values, and sticking to values, even in the face of loss or embarrassment.

Seth Godin also explores values in one of his recent blogs. What’s more important than reading off data, he says, is explaining why the data matters. So first, sell the cause. If what you say matters as much as you say it matters, then your audience can google it.

Of course, I’ve heard several professional suggest that you cater to your audience when presenting an idea. Some executives are driven by passion. Bring passion. Other executives NEED the numbers. For them, bring the numbers. Bottom line is this: make sure you know why it matters. Understand the values. If the values are measurable, tactile, economic, bring the data to give context. If the values are intangible, noble, altruistic, perhaps the numbers don’t tell the whole story.

Some of the best communicators have the ability to “tune in” to others. Scott Belsky mentions these individuals in his book Making Ideas Happen. The idea is that each person has their own “frequency,” and to communicate to a given person, you ought to tune into their frequency. The quicker a person can adjust frequencies, the better they can communicate to a wide range of people. These people, he mentions, also seem to be most aware of their own frequency— that is, they are more self aware than others might be.

I have found this to be the case in my own journey in leadership. I work among very different generations, and every day I learn how to better listen to each “frequency.” As a result of this, I get to play translator among confused parties. Additionally, I grow ever more aware of my own frequency.

Scott Elbin posts in Great Leadership about the same idea: to be an effective leader, you must first understand yourself. Mindfulness isn’t just for the holy men, he claims; know yourself, lead yourself, lead others.

Innovation Excellence’s 19 work habits to get ahead in the business world speak to the same effect in some of their points:
Habit 4: leave time to breath and recenter yourself
Habit 7: have a real lunch break to allow yourself a break
Habit 8: find intrinsic rewards that make you proud of yourself (e.g. that satisfy your values!)

The other habits speak more towards increasing productivity, and are excellent tactics for setting yourself up for success. However, they aren’t directly related to either being mindful of yourself or of understanding your values.

Truth is that there will always be a way to improve. Knowing how to do what you do will always change. However, if you really lock down WHY you do what you do, and you understand what makes you tick, then nothing can keep you from pursuing the HOW.

Blog 6.1

Topic of the week: words.

I love words. Words have so much power. I know we’ve been taught that sticks and stones will break bones, but that words will never hurt, but I must believe that the statement is absolutely and totally false. Words can hurt. Words can bruise. Words can kill. Of course, words can also give life. They have that power.

Words played an interesting role in this week’s readings.

In Tribal Leadership, a field guide to leading groups through the five tribal levels, the authors pointed out that their studies disregarded all demographic information— age, race, socioeconomic status, IQ, religion— and looked at two objective points of data: relationships, and language.

Language, they argue, will show you two of the truly visible qualities of a person. The other is the kinds of relationships the person establishes. But look at the words a person uses, and you can tell the kind of filter that they use to see the world. Language has the power not only to identify paradigms, but also the power to change them.

Godin speaks to the same effect in this blog, in which he ponders the power using your language to communicate your ideas no matter how clumsy or awkward yo might be at first. He compares those who are able to work their words and communicate their ideas to those who win gold medals and to those who champion companies. He makes an interesting point when he says that “you do have the sake keyboard as everyone else. It’s the most level playing field we’ve got.”

Similarly, innovation excellence promoted a tweetchat conversation on the power of language in innovation. The blog can be found here. Regrettably, I’ve yet to find the actual conversation. I’m still on the hunt, and will update if I’ve found it. However, it’s good to know that there’s now more conversation about conversation.

Finally, Leadership Freaks contrasts 10 qualities of a jerk leader against 10 ways to get what you want. Much of what the blog discusses can be found in the first few chapters of Tribal Leadership: make it about others, don’t make it about yourself. Even as a leader of a group, your role is not to demand what you want, but instead to inspire others to achieve what they desire.

Blog 5.2

I’ve been fortunate to take part in several amazing creative and supportive communities, not the least of which is the online community of Threadless.com. I’ve seen dozens of artists encouraged and nurtured to success by the supportive yet honest community of creatives. One of the things that makes the community so unique is that though the entire website operates on a crowdsourcing business model, none of the artists feel as if they are in direct competition with each other. There’s success enough to go around. Because of this, artists aren’t afraid to share their ideas, their skills, or their secrets with other artists.

Scott Belsky, founder of Behance and author of “Making Ideas Happen” calls this “sharing ideas liberally.” Sarah Miller Caldicott, great grandniece of Thomas Edison and co-author of the book “Innovate like Edison,” encourages the same behavior in her book as well as this blog she wrote for innovation excellence. My employer is an associate of Caldicott’s actually, and we had a chance to Skype with her on her book. It was fascinating to hear second-hand about the tenacity and transparency that Edison worked with, and while some of his innovations and practices were ethically questionable, it is clear that his methods were effective. Bottom line: sharing your ideas with others doesn’t rob you of the opportunity to claim the idea as your own. Not sharing robs you of the opportunity to see it come to realization.

In a similar vein, Dan McCarthy, in his blog post on creating a positive leadership vision for change, hits many of the same points as Belsky’s sections on rewards and on managing the creative team. McCarthy’s articles makes seven points for creating a compelling leadership vision.

1. Be positive.
2. Be inspirational
3. Be bold
4. Include others
5. Find ways to measure and attain your goals
6. Connect others to the greater good.
7. Communicate it often.

While the seven points for an effective leadership vision for change is directed at situations of transformation, many if not all of the points apply to any leadership vision. The the above list, you might hear Belsky saying things like, “happiness is its own reward, recognize others, allow them to share ownership in your vision, set goals, but provide room for flexibility and play, and speak often, but speak last. Allow others a safe place to share their ideas without fear of contradicting you.

I’ve been working on allowing others to speak first. I was very quiet in high school, even though I felt called to leadership. Eventually I started speaking up more, because I realized that I had some good things to say, and that it was unfair to others for me to keep quiet. Not surprisingly, this went to my head, and I started talking too much. It wasn’t until years later that I determined to stay quiet until I felt that my voice was necessary. It’s amazing how insignificant your ideas really are once you allow others to say what they’re thinking.

Something else that I’ve been working on in my own leadership life is to allow myself to be transparent. I want to be able to step out and unabashedly allow others to see that I have nothing to hide. Seth Godin’s post on the courage of simplicity really spoke to me this week. Leadership is not about having the right answers all of the time. It’s about giving the best answer you have, and then getting out of the way to let truth prevail, like shutting up long enough to let others speak their voice first. Belsky speaks to this concept as well: “There is a saying: ‘You don’t know who is swimming naked until the tide goes out.” That particular section of text was speaking to the benefit and revealing nature of conflict, but it speaks well to the complexity that is the sophistication of fear that Godin speaks of in his post.

I want to be a leader that is unafraid of asking for help, that steps forward when he is needed, and steps back when he is not. I don’t want to just survive under pressure, I want to thrive, encourage, and allow others to see what I am truly made of.