Category: Culture

Three Warning Signs Your Workplace Culture Might Be Toxic and How to Begin a Detox

Recently I was in a coaching session with a client who was worn out and frustrated in a way that felt different than our previous meetings. He was doing his best to stay resilient in the face of many recent and significant challenges at his workplace. At that moment, he reflected on how he was contributing to the problems he was facing. He then paused and asked me, “How do you know if your workplace culture is toxic?”
We explored his inquiry further, and I asked some more questions to understand what he was seeing, sensing and hearing from others on his team. In this series of blogs, I will be sharing my reflections sparked by this conversation and take you deeper into our approach to culture transformation.
What is culture?

  • Culture is a set of learned beliefs, values and behaviors that have become the way of life in an organization;
  • It results from the messages that are received about what is really valued around here;
  • Most of these messages are nonverbal;
  • People pick up these messages and adapt their behavior to fit in.

Your workplace culture is either an enabler or detractor of success, fulfillment and well-being. Leaders set the tone, showing what is valued in an organization through behaviors, symbols and systems. Most simply, people are watching those who are successful and have status in a group and ask themselves, “What do I need to do to fit in and succeed in this environment?”
As social and emotional beings, we have a deep need to belong and also to be valued for our unique contributions. When this doesn’t happen in healthy, mature and constructive ways, we seek out ways to get our needs met in unhealthy, immature and destructive ways. This usually happens at an unconscious level being driven by underlying insecurities, fears and patterns of reactivity and defensiveness — toxic behaviors. Toxic literally means poisonous, and toxic behaviors drain life energy out of people and create distrust. When our motives, language and actions become harmful to ourselves and to others, it is time for a detox.
Three warning signs your workplace might need a detox:

  1. People don’t feel safe to take risks and are on the defensive.

When people don’t feel safe, their energy is spent trying to protect themselves, which leads to not taking risks, less creativity and innovation — and most damaging, distrust in their relationships. What are some common threats to feeling safe in the workplace that would cause you or others to go on the defensive?
Behaviors such as put-downs, sarcasm, negative tone of voice or body language, bullying, inconsistency, rigidity, exclusion, favoritism, controlling, lying, blaming, shaming and manipulation are some examples. At various times, we have all probably been the recipient and the deliverer of some of these threatening behaviors, even if it was unintentional.
Defensive patterns happen unconsciously. When we are overwhelmed and stressed or feeling threatened, the higher order “executive functions” of our brains shut down. Critical decision-making reverts to the more primitive and reactive brain centers, which increases our tendency to fight, freeze or flight. If the record of experiences stored in the hippocampus tells the amygdala that it is a fight, flight or freeze situation, then the amygdala hijacks the rational brain, which can lead a person to react irrationally and destructively.
Unfortunately, these types of behaviors happen all too frequently in the workplace and contribute to creating toxic relationships and conversations. Taking ownership for how you could be contributing to the problem either through action, inaction or tolerance is the first step. Being open to assessing your own thinking and behavior patterns and comparing them with how you are perceived by others can help you to identify passive and aggressive defensive styles that sabotage your effectiveness as well as constructive styles that are more effective. These can also be assessed at a team or enterprise level to identify specific change levers for culture transformation.

  1. People don’t have clear plans, goals and are working in silos.

If there is misalignment at the highest level in the organization regarding strategy and business priorities, this cascades down to the rest of the organization. Depending on defensive styles, I have seen executive leaders and managers begin working aggressively toward competing goals and commitments, positioning and posturing themselves in their silos or passively “going along to get along” to avoid conflict. Even with the best of intentions, people often repeat ineffective defensive patterns out of habit during change.
In the face of uncertainty and lacking information, people make assumptions about what is happening and why. These stories often fuel feelings of fear, unhappiness and frustration, leading to disempowerment and resignation. People are less productive, they disengage, and both execution and collaboration suffer.
How can you best respond to this challenge? Working with your leaders to understand the business priorities and establishing clear goals, plans and expectations in alignment with the strategy reestablishes focus and purpose for team members. The majority of people want to do their best and will take initiative and propose solutions when there are clearly defined objectives, plans to achieve them and structures for mutual accountability.

  1. Managers don’t know what is important to people on their team.

Think about the worst manager you have worked with during your career and their characteristics. Typically, when I ask people to reflect on this, they say things like they don’t know me, they don’t care, they don’t have time to meet, they don’t listen to me, they know it all, and they seem most concerned with their own accomplishments and success.
Human beings want to be seen and valued for their contributions. Linking people’s work to something that is meaningful to them is the strongest foundation you can build for engagement. Connection to personal values provides a sense of purpose and a compass to orient individuals when times get tough. Values are the point of greatest leverage for people because they remind them who they want to be and what is important to them when things aren’t going the way they hoped.
Creating a culture where listening to what matters to people will help your organization to better care for them, validate and appreciate their strengths, and offer them opportunities to continue to stretch, learn and grow. When people sense you care about them and want the best for them, they feel safe and respected, and they will usually bring the best of themselves to the challenge.
How to Begin a Detox
The purpose of a detox is to cleanse or reset the system. Here are some tips to get you started.
Raise your awareness: A detox begins by acknowledging what isn’t working and creating a desire for transformation. This is an invitation to look within yourself and your organization more deeply to diagnose and surface what’s happening with both qualitative and quantitative data. This will help you to understand the current culture challenges and opportunities as well as the “from – to” mindset shift needed to enable sustainable behavior change and the key levers for organizational transformation.
Alignment: Partner with key stakeholders to build the business case for change, identifying a clear connection to how a toxic culture undermines execution of business strategy. Design a customized culture transformation plan, integrating values-based mindsets, behaviors, systems and symbols needed to execute in alignment with your business priorities.
Action and accountability: Support leaders and teams to embed desired mindsets and behaviors into the day-to-day rhythm of the business with coaching, pulse checks and metrics to measure impact.
Culture transformation can take years. However, one positive change or choice typically leads to other positive changes and choices. How you choose to respond can influence and impact those you work with in significant ways over time.

CHANGE IS A CHRONIC CONDITION

THREE SOFT SKILL PRIORITIES THAT EFFECTIVELY 
TREAT THE LEADER (WITH THE CONDITION) VS. 
TREAT THE CONDITION (IN THE LEADER)

Some of us are more successful than others in the face of the change epidemic that we find ourselves in. Most of us leaders orient to change and transformation with the wrong mindset and a limited, outdated set of tools. All of us are pretty late, though, with regard to following the most effective treatment. Nevertheless, thank you, Thomas Friedman and each one of you reading this. “Thank you for being late”(versus choosing not to show up at all). Late means you are here alongside the rest of us. I’m glad you are here. We may have a long way to go before we get clear on why we are here, but we are beginning to see that your treatment is bound up with mine, so let’s get serious and work together.
Here’s a perspective on the good news, the bad news, the reality, and a more effective treatment.

THE GOOD NEWS
Now that we are learning to address change more seriously, moving beyond mere coping strategies, we see its full and exigent nature. Change isn’t a “problem” to cure, a challenge to beat, or a phase to get past. Change is a persistent, unstoppable, chronic condition(the 21st-century lifestyle) that we will always have to live with and embrace.
Everything we need to be unstoppable ourselves and to get to our next level of performance (whatever we decide that is) is already inside of us. We have more than enough capacity for change. That’s how we became successful in the first place. We already have our 10,000 hours of leadership practice. We aren’t lacking discipline, willpower, grit or hard work ethic…and no, we don’t need to consume any unicorn DNA from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to improve our decision-making in response to change (although it wouldn’t hurt to channel our “inner-Andreessen” a bit more often).

Each of us is born with all the capacity we need for effectively dealing with change. Our amazingly antifragile brains and human spirit are why we are the most dominant species on the planet. You already know everything I’m sharing with you here; I’m just reminding you that you know it.

THE BAD NEWS
Not all of us have the conscious awareness to convert capacity into capability. Not all of us have chosen to do what it takes to bring the capability“online” yet.
We may all be sincere about our change goals, but very few of us are serious about waking up to the deep work that enables us to become the kind of leader who can actually facilitate an adaptive enough environment where transformative results are possible for our families, teams, businesses and communities.
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.” — Richard Feynman

Chronic conditions don’t improve without intervention — when we ignore the symptoms and behave as if maybe it might slow down or the worst of it may almost be over, or maybe we can wait it out and our old success formula might kick in again and take care of all this VUCA.
As with most chronic conditions, we have spent the last few decades developing unhealthy habits and blind spots when it comes to dealing with our chronic condition of change (e.g., denial, misdiagnosis, mistreatment, delay/stalling techniques, reactivity, toxic positivity, “Victim” mindset, “Knower” mindset, front lines blame the senior executives, senior executives blame the front lines, episodic/event-driven training, treating culture change and transformation like a communications project, we intellectualize change content but don’t operationalize change readiness).
We all suffer and cause suffering when we choose to avoid the serious transformation work. This is primarily a result of our lack of mastery at staying conscious/awake. “Avoiding” is a default/autopilot tradition fueled by our lack of awareness. It is an ineffective response to change. It promotes resistance, suffering and long-term, permanent damage. Avoiding the anxiety and suffering actually causes MORE anxiety and suffering.

A recent study by Dr. Srinivasan Pillay, an international expert in burnout stress and anxiety at Harvard Medical School, found that 96 percent of senior leaders reported some degree of burnout; one-third described their burnout as extreme. Dr. Daniel Friedland, MD, and founding Chair of the AIHM (Academy of Integrative Health & Medicine), describes in his book “Leading Well From Within”a neuroscience based framework for conscious leadership, that: “burnout is an ominous triad of symptoms in which individuals experience emotional exhaustion, feel disconnected in their relationships, and experience a reduced sense of personal accomplishment in their work. Dealing with burnout is not only debilitating for the leader, but the leader’s stress can ripple through an organization, eroding the culture and significantly impacting employee engagement and the bottom line.”
Understandably, under stress, we often unconsciously succumb to the short-term avoidance and tension relief of dopamine…unknowingly feeding our brain’s bias for the status quo/homeostasis. Our default reactivity causes us to miss this moment of truth altogether because of our acceptance of temporary relief substitutes. Our satisfaction with these substitutes deceives us and stands in the way of our power to choose more effectively — to consciously prioritize serotonin and deeper, long-term happiness. When we settle for less (like this), it comes at a cost to ourselves and to others.
We haven’t brought the antifragile capability of our brains fully “online” yet, despite knowing that, in our lifetime and our children’s lifetime, there will only be chronic, irreversible change.
Like most chronic health conditions, it is persistent, frequently recurring or otherwise long-lasting in its effects. It is life long, and because it will last until we die, it is terminal. The speed of change is advancing far beyond our comprehension. Things will never be this slow again. 
That’s all we know for sure. It’s never going to go back to the “good old days.” Complex-adaptive systems like ours (e.g., company, community, country, planet) don’t transition backward. No wonder our brains tend to avoid all of that and go back to sleep — back to a ZOMBIE-like autopilot.
Nevertheless, things will never be this slow again.

THE REALITY
Change isn’t good or bad; it just is what it is. Change always happens; resistance and suffering always happen; and the right change always wins (in the end). What if we could reframe our orientation to change and learn to live with this chronic condition (stay in the tension together) in a healthier, more effective way — a way that reduces the unnecessary suffering and brings us more happiness and fulfillment?
In business transformation, when we treat the disease in the patient versus treating the patient with the disease, we fall victim to our own counterproductive form of mistreatment. We mistakenly wind up focusing more on the technical side of change and devaluing the human side of change. Our biases today cause us to react to change with a disproportionate reliance on the “DOING” (technical domains/hard skills, e.g., technology, behaviors) versus securing the path to value by also focusing on the “BEING” (human domains/soft skills, e.g., mindsets and identity). To succeed, we need both at full strength.

The hard skills/soft skills perspective has changed dramatically according to leadership research like this “Street-Level View” on Leadership Effectiveness and its impact on business performance, where senior leaders describe in their own words how leadership effectiveness (creative vs. reactive) correlates to performance and results (the return on leadership). They defined most key hard skills as table stakes and soft skills as being where you get a multiplier or canceling effect on leader effectiveness. Historically for some leaders, their over-indexed reliance on hard skills got them pretty far up the ranks. Today and into the future, leaders are reporting that their deficits on the soft skills side (their reactive liabilities) are actually canceling out their technical strengths. A lack of strength in soft skills creates a leadership-canceling effect — eliminating even a minimally acceptable return on leadership effectiveness.

As leaders of the organization, we repeat convenient myths over and over again, and we have no trouble finding plenty of people who will agree with us:
We complain: “People resist change…nothing we can do about that.”
MYTHBUSTER: People don’t resist change; we resist loss.
We conclude: “That’s just the way it is…change is hard.”
MYTHBUSTER: The reason change is “hard” for us is because we’re doing it wrong….
We justify: “We don’t have time to do the deep work of change.”
MYTHBUSTER: The scarcity of time perspective comes from how we confuse the “convenience of physical time saving with the convenience of not extending ourselves for the quest of something better” (from one of Seth Godin’s blog posts).
We profess: “I got this; I’m on board with change; I’m not the problem, it’s them; fix those resistors over there.”
MYTHBUSTER: We aren’t the heroic revolutionaries that we think we are. We are just as much of the problem as the resistor/naysayer, perhaps more so because we can’t recognize our own unconscious complicity, consent and bystandering in our nonresistance. All of us “nonresistors” are what give the status quo its power — not “them.”
Most of the misdiagnosis, mistreatment and myths around change cause us to employ a common stalling technique of focusing disproportionately on the technical/hard skills and just tweaking the system and trying harder (trying mostly the old way but harder) — just suck it up; be positive; muscle through it.

Someone tells us how to behave differently and “do” different things if you want a different result (and at some point, one of us usually talks about “cascading the WIIFMS” and/or quotes Einstein’s definition of insanity as the end-all-be-all advice for change, sigh. I love Einstein, but I hate that quote. As profound as that quote is, it seems to cause us to intellectualize the point more than operationalize action). We’ve been trying that stuff for a long time and look where that’s gotten us.
Underinvesting in the human side is NOT helping us adapt more quickly. We don’t get better in time; we just cause more suffering and permanent system damage. The data shows it is no myth that we are beyond stressed — suffering from high degrees of burnout, tension, drama and frustration that are pervasive in the systems we work in.
Nevertheless, things will never be this slow again.
It should feel like a relief to at least have a proper/useful diagnosis. After years of feeling like something was wrong with us because we were struggling just to keep up at our “current level” let alone get ahead and progress to our “next level”— at least we know we weren’t imagining all of that — we weren’t crazy after all.
Good. Now we can treat our condition more effectively.

THE TREATMENT
The condition is complex, but the treatment is simple. As technical domains accelerate change exponentially, they pave the way for higher-level work and soft skills. Yuval Noah Harari says that we can’t recommend with certainty what skill sets we should be teaching our kids (today) to make sure they are relevant contributors in the 30 years ahead, but he says our best bet is to:
“develop their emotional intelligence (EQ)and their resilience (AQ); their ability to keep changing and learning to embrace change all the time”
Living successfully with change is easier when we match our investment in hacking machines with an equal and/or more holistic/integral investment in “hacking humans”. Not just to protect our individual operating systems from surveillance capitalism but “hacking humans” in order to unleash/fuel unprecedented vertical learning, people development, emotional intelligence, adaptability intelligence, cognitive flexibility, complex problem-solving and impeccable coordination of action/effective execution (at scale without compromising trust or momentum) to continually adapt our organizational cultures to be more constructive. 
Business leaders and talent development both agree: “Training for soft skills” is the №1 priority for talent development.
“In the age of automation, maintaining technical fluency across roles will be critical, but the increasing pace of change is fueling demand for adaptable, critical thinkers, communicators, and leaders.” — LinkedIn’s 2018 Workplace Learning Report
Our current and future generations of leadership will focus on strengthening the most essential mindsets and soft skills of our time, to drive business growth and healthy transformation without sacrificing trust or momentum (i.e., collaboration, adaptability, creativity, persuasion/influence, attention management/prioritization), according to the most recent LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report, and similarly reported in complementary research (e.g., NLC Assessing the Future of Our Work, WEF The Future of Jobs Report, WEF Center for New Economy and Society Insight Report Towards a Reskilling Revolution in collaboration with Boston Consulting Group, Harvard Business Corporate Learning’s State of Leadership Development Study).

THREE SOFT SKILLS PRIORITIES — HOW TO GET TRACTION
Here are three soft skills/priorities to work on (forever until you die) that will help you and future generations of leaders effectively treat a chronic/lifelong condition like change. Mastering these practices will help lead the way toward healing and generating masterful results.
There are expert training regimens for each of these three soft skills priorities.
SOFT SKILLS PRIORITY NO. 1: TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF FIRST, SO YOU CAN TAKE CARE OF EACH OTHER BETTER…AND THEN TOGETHER WE GMSD (get more stuff done — the right stuff).
We are more effective leading through change when we learn to see the world and the work with new eyes. When we see the work in 3-D, we can focus and facilitate (and measure) the direct business benefits across three dimensions of success and three levels of depth:

The self (I): Facilitate high engagement/fulfillment
Explore how to expand/shift your identity and perspective — opening/awakening to see more. This is a more existential topic connected to our human propensity to learn and grow all the time (e.g., physically, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually) as conditions permit (internally and externally).
The team/relationships (WE): Facilitate high trust
When we show up strong as an individual, fully engaged, fully alive, we can contribute more to the team and facilitate the higher levels of trust needed to work through change and uncertainty.
The team can be expanded into the broader culture/system in which these folks operate. Since the culture/system always wins, we should intentionally explore how to make sure the culture/system is enabling, embodying and amplifying growth potential at individual and team levels versus impeding the individual/team progress with demoralizing organizational contradictions.
The task/achievement (IT): Facilitate high performance
High-performance results come from high-performing teams. The pursuit of excellence and execution standards are never compromised or softened when you focus on building soft skills; they are only strengthened. But we need to be focusing on different levers of change and sourcing from potentially counterintuitive sources of energy (not just the carrot and stick).
Focus on seeing every situation, every interaction and every challenge/strategy through this 3-D distinction. And focus on over delivering on all three dimensions of success simultaneously. The next level of high performance and adaptability (at scale) will consistently source from this multidimensional model.

SOFT SKILLS PRIORITY NO. 2: BUILD STRONGER MINDSET MUSCLES.
The reason for a specific sequence of teaching/training (mindsets first) is around the understanding that any new skills/behaviors, even the most common sense tools/skills/mechanisms, will not get sustainable traction if exercised/practiced on top of the current level mindsets/identity. Start with vertical learning: Start at the mindset/identity level while also progressively adding in more and more of the horizontal tools/skills.

As you already know, the problem with growth/change isn’t what the leader knows but who the leader is (our identity/mindsets), who we are becoming (expanding/growing into), and what level of thinking capabilities (complexity, systemic/strategic, interdependent ways of thinking, relating and taking action) we have access to.
Focus on variables in our control: Victims of change can’t innovate nor lead themselves (let alone others) through change. Victims see the world doing “it” to them; they can only react. They tend to perpetuate the myths about change. The “Victim” mindset is a leader’s (and culture’s) kryptonite. It comes from an unconscious focus on the variables outside of our control. We overcome that “Victim” mindset (reactivity) by building up our Player (Protagonist/Creator) response muscle memory by focusing on the variables that are in our control. We can’t control our psychology until we get ahold of our physiology, so it takes some time to learn how to turn off the hardwired fight and flight reactivity. But we can quickly learn to source from the “Player” mindset and play the hand we are dealt — no more sideline victim responses taking ourselves and our teams out of the game. Exploring these implications of being response-able vs. blame = the practice of self-empowerment and helping others find their power under stress is the most productive (superhero-like) way to work through chronic change.
Focus on learning, not knowing: What we know — our expertise — has a short shelf life. Our “Knower” mindset is an unsober mindset full of cognitive biases that unconsciously condition our thinking patterns and behavior based on old knowledge. We need to expand our options in addition to what we currently know and make room for lots of options outside of our current perspective. When we understand our traditional relationship to failure, learning, default thinking patterns and behaviors, we can choose instead to more often source from a more effective “Learner/Growth” mindset as opposed to being a “Knower/Fixed” in time. Our curiosity muscles drive our creativity/innovation muscles. But first, we need to learn how utterly reliant curiosity muscles are on our humility muscles. Ontological humility is the gateway to focusing on making sure our perspectives are expanding and we are becoming changed (by the process of learning). Learning how to stay in the ever-expanding “stretch” zone tension, learning how to help others expand with you, and growing to love/crave the “wobbly” feeling that coincides with the emotional labor of learning new things is where exponential growth meets exponential change.
Focus on essential integrity: Results are conditional, but WHO we are and how we treat each other while we work through change is unconditional. Our values, our purpose and the guiding principles that we stand for are always unconditional. They serve as our grounding — our sources of certainty in the face of uncertainty. It is wildly comforting for leaders to know that we can actually control something. We can take 100 percent responsibility for walking our talk. We feel infinitely stronger delivering on these values in pursuit of business goals no matter how the world around us changes. Most leaders don’t talk about these kinds of assets with their peers. When they learn to inventory them, share them and operationalize them, it is incredibly powerful on so many levels. Most do not have their own explicit measures/standards of integrity consciously present for themselves when they need them most, let alone tracking them like their most precious KPIs. When they do, it creates a substantial shift in the way they respond under pressure and the results they can create. Just doing different leadership things isn’t enough to generate the results we are committed to. We have to focus on our identity and on becoming transformation leaders — the kind of leaders who are walking embodiments of a transformation.
SOFT SKILLS PRIORITY NO. 3: LEARN BY DOING. GET YOUR REPS IN WHILE WORKING.
For sustainable progress, we need to focus on consistency over intensity. That will get us the maximum number of reps per decade. We don’t want this to feel like a New Year’s resolution. We are working on building healthier lifestyle habits, so the approach that works best with adults is to “learn by doing.”Adults learn more deeply and more quickly when they learn together in the context of business — learn during work, at the “point of need.” Treat everything like a business prototype, because it is. Apply your reps for №1 and №2 above on real issues/challenges versus just attending training events. We will need extensive, live-action practice reps, applying mindsets and skills training to personally relevant business initiatives, in order to learn how to override our automatic/default reactive, stressed-out brain responses and become the kind of leaders who can lead this transformation more effectively.
Don’t wait until after the big push, the project craziness is over, or after things “calm down” to get your reps in. Expanding these integral muscles happens in the middle of the work and the craziness. The “craziness” is always a great reason to practice and the best arena to practice in= high-quality reps. Show up, jump in and get messy! Here’s a quick example of how these soft skills apply directly to getting the work done. EFFECTIVE EXECUTION: Coordination of action (at scale) is only possible thanks to high-performing teams. That’s why all leadership teams focus on this Holy Grail. High-performance teams require high trust + high accountability = networks of endless commitments (requests + promises honor that request) to get X done by Y time to accomplish ABC goals. Raising our standards of making, keeping and checking on commitments for the sake of effective execution, better business outcomes and stronger business relationships (more trust) is a soft skill that can’t be outsourced to a checklist or project management software. We have to get our reps in while working together.
There are expert training regimens for each of these three soft skills priorities.
SERIOUS VS. SINCERE 
If we are serious about the way we are going to treat this, we will drop everything, including most of our current (important but not essential) learning and development efforts, in order to focus available investments on the deep work of transformation leadership, building organizational agility, innovation competency and culture change. Every other discretionary training investment is a distraction. It’s all a contributing part of our unconscious, long-term procrastination techniques that invisibly direct and preserve the status quo in our lives, even when we sincerely want to change.
Don’t just be a better leader; be a transformation leader. Prioritize the soft skills. Prioritize what needs to transform and why it matters to you. Prioritize which muscles need to be developed and in what integrated sequence — then get your reps in. Embed an expert-guided, deliberate practice into every day, and embrace the lifestyle changes that need to be made. Be kind to yourself as you prototype your own sustainable rituals and rhythms that you can fall in love with.
Don’t just try harder; train. Tweaking the system is not enough. Hacking/dabbling undermines the leader we need you to be. Train like you’re truly committed to developing these new muscle groups for the long term by making irreversible lifestyle choices. Play the long game. It’s the only constructive game that works on a chronic challenge like change. Lets treat (support) the leader with the condition — lets not waste time treating the symptoms of the condition in the leader. Everything else is equivalent to playing small & sitting on the sidelines, waiting for time to run out (nothing but self-imposed, impotent regret, bystandering and resentment on the sidelines) — we’re better than that.
Don’t just train alone; train together. Practice not quitting…together. Even a bad practice session is better than skipping — even do a “mulligan” — they are free and work really well too. Life is the dojo; life is the curriculum. There’s nothing to figure out, nothing else to go find. Drop everything that stands between you and your “dojo.” Let’s do more of what makes us stronger. Lets do the “pushups” together. Keep calm. Stay conscious. A boost in mental toughness will have an integrated, compound effect on us physically, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually.
You’re here. I am here. Let’s get serious about our treatment protocol.
Let’s get serious about the way we teach each other, to treat each other, while working. For the sake of better short and long term business outcomes on all three dimensions of success, let’s get serious about our soft skills training.
Because nevertheless, things will never be this slow again.

Change is easier when we don’t miss the “burning bush” moments.

 

 
I wouldn’t mind a “burning bush” moment, but who am I? And who talks like that? I mean, besides Moses.
The other day, a Jedi friend (Vid) invited/dared a group of us to notice our way of paying attention — challenging us to really focus on the quality of our attention so that we don’t miss the reveal/the messages about our mission for next year, our calling for the next 10 years, or our purpose for the rest of our lives.
It is very easy to miss…we’re all so busy.
He went on to explain how it was actually the quality of Moses’ attention that allowed him (Moses) to notice the uniqueness of the burning bush, which then caused him to take interest and dared him to draw near. With a little more care, curiosity and concern, he became “exquisitely present” and therefore ready to learn about the new master plan that was in store for him.
I wonder how many burning bushes I continuously walk right past when the quality of my attention is compromised or because I’m not really even looking for it. We certainly can’t find what we’re not looking for. If the quality of my attention is not deliberately, exquisitely, evermore present, I’m likely to just keep missing it. Am I missing it on purpose? Maybe I’m not really open to a new master plan after all. Maybe I’m unconsciously just fine settling for the old reliable “Plan A” (keeping the status quo in place), delivering my current level performance. Maybe my strategy is to change very little and just keep hoping for the best. Maybe I’m not ready for the Red Sea moments that follow the burning bush moments.
“I sure hope 2019 is better than 2018,” a friend blurted out to me in passing.
“So what are you going to do differently in 2019 to make sure that it is better?” I responded to her question with a question, knowing all along that it was really directed inward, at myself. Then I kind of got in her face (my own face) and said, “Let’s get specific. Let’s build your 2019 plan.” I think this kind of annual year-end recap/reflection and next year/next level planning exercise (see questions below) is the closest I’m going to get to a burning bush experience. I’m no Moses. For a clear, actionable plan to be revealed, I have to slow down, take my shoes off, pay attention and draw near.
Only a very small percent of the population have clear goals/priorities let alone write them down. Yet when we do write them down, we are exponentially more successful at achieving our next level goals/priorities.
This post is an invitation to myself and others to slow down, take interest and dare to draw near. Let’s spark our own pseudo-burning bush moment. Use this list of reflection-provoking, planning questions below. Modify them, make them your own, or use a different list of questions to capture your thinking for an increased likelihood of success in 2019.
We don’t want to miss the burning bush moments. We want to draw near in order to be sent out more effectively — maybe even to become a burning bush ourselves.
 

2018 Current Year/Current Level Reflection and 2019 Next Year/Next Level Planning

 
2018 Current Year/Current Level Reflection
POSITIVE:

  • What did I love most about 2018? When was I happiest?
  • What am I most grateful for from 2018?
  • Which three moments were most meaningful?

AUTHENTIC/PURPOSEFUL:

  • Where did I really use my strengths?
  • How did I live out my values/purpose?

DISAPPOINTMENTS/LEARNINGS:

  • What were my biggest disappointments? …frustrations? …failures?
  • What were my biggest inconsistencies with my values/purpose/priorities?
  • What still makes me feel angry? …sad? …anxious? …scared?
  • What is the most honest thing I can say about my disappointments?
  • What is the most compassionate thing I could say to myself about my disappointments? (reframing)

MOMENTUM

  • What momentum did I start to build in 2018 that I want to take forward?

 
2019 Next Year/Next Level Planning
(A more complex spreadsheet template is available upon request for those interested.)

  • What do I love to do that I want to do more of in 2019?
  • What core values are most inspiring to me?
  • What priorities do I want to focus on in 2019?
  • What would be most inspiring for me to accomplish in 2019?
  • What would be my heart’s desire or biggest dream?

By Fred Kofman
 
The worst leader is he who people despise. A good leader is he who people worship. A great leader is he who makes people say: “We ourselves did it.”
Lao Tse
 
Just as in the theory of systems, the whole is more than the addition of its parts. In management, the team is more than the addition of its members. That which makes a team differ from a group of working people is synergy. Through the development of a shared vision, an engagement with certain essential values, a context of mutual confidence and respect, and a unifying interpretation of certain recurrent practices for the efficient coordination of actions, a group of individuals can generate a creative energy that largely exceeds the mere addition of individual energies. Such as a light beam may organize itself by means of a crystal into a laser ray, a beam of individuals may organize itself through a field of intellectual, emotional and existential forces, producing an extraordinary team. The leader is the person in charge of creating and maintaining such field of forces.
Traditionally, the leader is identified as a person detaining formal authority. From ancient heroic myths to modern management literature, the leader appears as an individual capable of leading others. This image is valid all right, but it conceals other possibilities. In this article, we want to put forward an alternative idea: shared leadership. To do so, first we will analyze the role of the leader, and then we will propose that it can be played by a collective person. Moreover, our thesis is that in highly uncertain situations, exercising shared leadership has advantages over individual leadership. Quoting Peter Senge, “Our traditional idea about leaders — special persons who determine the direction to be followed, take key decisions, and instill energy — is based on a nonsystemic and individualist vision of the world. Especially in the West, leaders are heroes, great personalities occupying the center of the scene. As long as these myths prevail, the focus of attention will increasingly fall on immediate facts and charismatic heroes rather than on systemic forces and collective learning.” (The New Task of the Leader, the Creation of Learning Organizations — Sloan Management Review, Fall 1993.)
 
The role of the leader
The leader develops precise functions destined for keeping cohesion and alignment of the organization, directing it toward its objectives, assuring a maximum utilization of its resources, honoring its system of values, feeding the individual enthusiasm of its parts, and continuously regenerating the culture that supports the interactions. The leader maintains the creative tension. Every action (be it individual or collective) sets off from the difference between a present reality that is unsatisfactory and a desired future possibility. The leader is permanently busy “charging the battery” of the organization through a dual strategy: (a) interpreting the present world, (b) imagining possible future worlds.
The first focus of a leader is hermeneutic (interpretative): He looks at the world, reading its signs and providing sense to the group reality, for instance, studying the market and casting an analysis of its forces, weaknesses, opportunities and risks. As Max de Pree, ex‐president of Herman Miller, says: “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.” Much of the multiplying effect a leader exerts lies on his ability to help people see the reality in a more generative, deep and energizing way. The leader can see (and show) opportunities where others only see problems.
The second focus of a leader is poetic (creative): He looks into his heart, reading its wishes and imagining a possible reality that may make them real, for instance, making up a new way of doing business. Quoting Albert Einstein: “Imagination is more important than information because knowledge is limited while imagination embraces an infinite possibility.” The leader’s power derives from his ability to paint futures that can light up the passion of the members of an organization. This “sacred fire” that burns in men’s spirit is the fuel of the organizational engine.
Every individual exerts this leadership task for himself. The responsibility for one’s life and the actions being displayed is not feasible of being delegated. An organization that demands the subordination of personal autonomy becomes a cult that deprives individuals of power and discourages and neutralizes its members. The way to build a community collectively responsible for its creative tension has to do with encouraging a continuous reflection on reality and organizational aims.
The leader teaches and redesigns the organizational culture. A culture is a set of ideas and practices that aid a community to locate itself in the world and to sail about it — a collective “mental pattern” that organizes the experience of those participating in it coherently. Quoting Schein: “Leadership is related to the formation of the culture.” The construction of the organizational culture and its evolution management is the “sole and essential function” of a leader.
Mental patterns are systems of deeply rooted assumptions, generalizations, images and archetypal plots that influence how we understand the world and how we take actions in it. They condition our personal, organizational and social lives and help us to make sense of reality and perform our functions efficiently. They determine what is rational, correct, moral, convenient and legitimate for us. They help us decide how to interact with others and with the world so as to maximize efficiency and keep coherence.
The leader is the cultural architect. Through his example, his words and his actions, he exerts a deep influence on the way of thinking and on the way of being of the organization. With his behavior, the leader is constantly sending subliminal messages about what is good, true and beautiful — the three dimensions that, according to Plato, define the essence of a cosmovision. This design task is a fundamental lever point to create the organizational synergy. The “adequate” culture becomes the link connecting the present reality with the future vision, through efficient and ethical mechanisms of behavior.
Cultural design is a continuous task. Beliefs and behavior systems tend to become age‐stiff and lose contact with the dynamic reality that generated them. The obsolescence of certain ideas and practices represents one of the major risks threatening the survival and vitality of the organization. On a social level, Michel Foucault analyzed this phenomenon and concluded: “The history of thought and culture throws a continuous pattern of great liberating ideas — ideas that inevitably become oppressive straitjackets containing the seed of their own destruction at the moment they face new emancipating conceptions, which will eventually turn enslaving.” The leader is he who is permanently busy updating the culture, to keep it fresh and vibrating.
Every individual has a personal leadership world in this area. As a father, a mother, a brother, a friend, a therapist or a manager, the person is able to show and project his cultural influence over his immediate environment. In organizational life, the coherence of culture demands a “traffic director” who helps to negotiate and align cultural forces emanating from each individual.
The leader defines structures, strategies and politics. To implement the ideals and cultural values, the organization needs to literally “incorporate them,” or “make them corporal.” The structure is the body of the organization, the visible side of culture. The leader is the person in charge of conducting the generation and maintenance of the structures, strategies and politics. In particular, the leader is in charge of keeping up the strategic compromise against environment pressures. When the temptation for straightforward gratification threatens with deviating the organization from its objectives and fundamental values, the leader works as an “anchor” and reminder, of that which, though essential, may turn invisible to the eyes of urgency.
Such as the designing of a culture, this defining of structures, strategies and politics is a continuous and dynamic task. To keep its coherence, the organization must fit the evolution of its mental pattern to the evolution of its forms and courses of action. The leader coordinates the design conversation in which the organization permanently reinvents itself.
Again, we emphasize the necessity of an individual leadership in life. Particularly, the creation of personal structures — such as the family, the job, friends, a religious congregation or other groups — are essential actions. To live in plenitude, the individual needs to examine his conscience and implement behavior standards that enable him to be at peace with himself and ethically proud, disregarding the pressures of the moment. In an organization, different individuals gather around directing ideas. While in the past, these ideas exclusively came from the leader, in the future, they will be born from a community dialogue. (The term dialogue comes from the Greek “dia‐logos,” which stands for “shared sense.”)
 
Shared leadership: The leader as a collective person
The great risk of charismatic leaders is the temptation they generate in others to delegate on them the responsibility of leadership. In situations of high uncertainty and volatility (such as those proposed by the present century), nobody has enough cognitive and emotional ability to totally assimilate the complexity of reality. If the community (and each of its members) does not take upon itself the role of leadership, it is highly probable it lives trapped in its childhood, depending on what the “parents” (leaders) dictate it to do. The problem is that paternalism, be it heroic or tyrannical, generates order through the eradication of the differences.
Such homogeneity brings about peace, but it reduces the possibilities of managing increasing complexity. Organizations are coming to understand the value of preserving diversity.
Diversity, though, is a double‐edged weapon. Provided there is a common place where the different points of view can align one another seeking a transcendent welfare, the organization learns and develops with effectiveness. When the common place is absent, the discussion creates friction and wearing away rather than light and energy. We have attributed the leader the responsibility for creating that common place, but no leader can substitute the individual compromise of each member of the organization. In the world of the future, those companies that have members both individually and jointly responsible for leadership will bear a clear, competitive advantage over those where the passivity of the personnel delegates such leadership to the “boss.”

“She micromanages”; “He delegates too much”; “She doesn’t allow us to give our input”; “His requests are indecipherable”; “She demands too much in too little time.” The list could go on and on. Difficult bosses…they seem determined to make our lives impossible.
Yes, there are challenging bosses out there. And there’s also our ability to respond to any given situation. Consider the following scenarios. For each situation, take a moment to honestly think how you would respond. What’s the immediate reaction that comes up in those few seconds after you are posed with the situation?

  • When there’s a mistake or you are asked about a breakdown:

a) You identify who’s responsible for getting you into this situation. For example, “The report isn’t ready because the finance team didn’t post the data in the internal system.”

b) You acknowledge your contribution to the problem. For example, “I forgot to explicitly request from the finance team the data I needed to ensure I’d get it on time.”

  • When your manager delegates a task and you are unclear about a few things:

a) You leave the conversation thinking what an ambiguous request and that you’ll do the best you can with the information you were given.

b) You ask for clarification.

  • When you are asked for your opinion in the middle of a heated team meeting:

a) You give a polite opinion, wanting to avoid creating more disruption.

b) You express what you think in a way that is honest and at the same time respectful to others.

  • If you disagree with your manager:

a) You share your point of view with colleagues but not with your manager. He doesn’t really listen, so what’s the point?

b) You express your disagreement with your manager, stating the facts that underlie your opinion and acknowledging that your perspective is one of many possibilities, not “the” truth.

The options might be a bit extreme, but they capture two archetypes: the victim and the player. In the “a” responses, the focus is on what others did wrong or should do differently. You suffer the consequences of external circumstances (e.g., the finance team didn’t do their job; your boss makes unclear requests). In the “b” responses, the focus is on how you contributed in some way to the situation and what you can do. You respond to external circumstances (e.g., you ask for clarification; you express your truth).
Acting as a victim might be more an automatic reaction than a conscious choice. It protects you from blame and feelings of failure. There’s safety in feeling innocent and watching from the sidelines. But it’s also disempowering. You get trapped in the assumption that there’s nothing you can do.
It’s not you; it’s me
The first step is to recognize that it’s not all about your manager. If you believe her actions are wrong and there’s nothing you can do about it, you are trapped in the mental model of the victim.
The most significant shift from victim to player is moving from a frame of mind of “it’s not up to me” to “what can I do.” A powerful way to do so is paying attention to your language.
As we saw in the examples at the beginning, the victim speaks in the third person and focuses on factors beyond his control: “The finance team didn’t post the information”; “It was too little time”; “The request was unclear”; “Management doesn’t support the idea.”
The language of the player instead starts with “I” and includes specific actions you could have taken or can now take. “I didn’t ask the finance team for the information”; “I underestimated the time it would take me to complete the report”; “I didn’t understand the request”; “I couldn’t convince management to support the idea.”
Another telling difference is that the victim uses the language of “should,” indicating obligation and judgment, while the player uses the language of “could,” indicating possibility and learning.
I’m not advocating for you to become a language fanatic, paying attention to each specific word, but to see language as an expression of your underlying frame of mind and to start paying attention to your automatic responses. Are you focusing on external causality or personal accountability? Are you focusing on what others should do or what you could do?
You can’t change how somebody else behaves. But you can influence through your thoughts and behaviors. Next time you are faced with an ambiguous request, instead of thinking “he should be better at delegating,” consider asking clarifying questions around quality standards, available resources and time of delivery. You are helping your boss be a better boss. And you leave the conversation empowered to actually get the task done.
A footnote for the leader
Just as we are inviting the reader to take ownership on how he or she responds to a “difficult boss,” as a leader, you also can take ownership if you have an unmotivated team member. How might you be contributing to this person’s engagement with the project, department or company? What example are you setting through your actions? How much do you focus on what others should have done versus what you can do? Are you having honest and respectful conversations around performance? Are you delegating clearly?
Creating an effective and meaningful relationship goes both ways. When we are unhappy with somebody else’s role or behaviors, a lot of energy goes into complaining, venting or denying. Shifting from outside causality to personal accountability, from blaming to owning, opens the space to identify what can be learned, what can be done, and how to make it happen.

In cased you missed it, here are the first five questions.
 
Dear CEO,

6) We are not going to refer to this as “the soft stuff” anymore. Devaluing the human dimension compared to the technical dimension of business is not helping us adapt more quickly. We will learn to measure and understand the direct business benefits of our transformation efforts across all three dimensions of success: i) the task, ii) the team, iii) the self. We will overdeliver on all three dimensions.

Regardless of the outside help we get, we can’t “outsource” this work. We have to do this ourselves. We have to become transformation exemplars, and that will require us to integrate the human and technical dimensions of business. We will work on designing and capturing tangible ROI from the beginning. The experts I am bringing in will teach us how to do that in a practical way that matters to us. At the same time, we can also illustrate tangible value by comparing the culture/leadership investment to the cost of NOT shifting (e.g., employee turnover, inability to attract star employees, stalled customer focus improvements, stalled innovation, slower implementation times, lack of agility).
 

7) Expect a significant transition during year 2 and year 3. Companies like ours that are successful shifting culture do not usually say, “we got it” during year 1. This is not an HR project; this is a business prototype, which will give us a chance to “really learn by doing.”

The experts I’m bringing in will take us through a series of 90-day sprints that will help us “learn by doing.” These prototypes will help us learn what helps us deliver better results in the context of working on the business, not in theory. They have seen and lived through all kinds of scenarios facing other peer executives in situations like ours. They heard me admit and ask the same textbook questions while giving me the objective, outside, cold-water-wake-up-call answers that we need to hear…

  • We’re stuck. How do we break free from the inertia of learned helplessness and tyranny of low expectations to get to the next level? Clarify the culture standards (and learning gaps) that we have between our current level and our desired level, then clarify how committed we are to get to the next level (and why). What’s at stake for you? me? our team? the organization?
  • How do we avoid the early-on potential for unskilled false starts (e.g., too big or too fluffy) or snapping back to homeostasis/current level? We won’t get tricked into shortcuts and we won’t “bolt this on.” Connect the development work directly to high priority business imperatives — that’s the best reason to train. We won’t treat this like a communication project; it’s a business prototype.
  • How do we accelerate the process? We will stop delaying it, and we will go deeper faster. We will let the leaders and teams also “learn by doing” with high-impact, real-world, 90-day sprints where we can experiment to see what works here (what we’re ready for).
  • How do we extend and keep the flame going? Let’s stop asking that “cascading” question right now. We’re not sure that we’re willing to do what’s necessary to even “pack the snowball tight” with the senior executives and focused experiments. Let’s focus on that first. If that sticks, then we’ll start building peer learning communities as well as formal/informal communities of practice where we all will learn while doing — we train together while delivering business imperatives.

 

8) Expect to pay attention to things you haven’t paid attention to before.

  • We are going to be doing something that most leaders have not been invited to do before…to courageously observe our own leadership style/techniques, the impact it’s having on delaying the organizational performance/shifts, and then optimize them according to what we say matters most to us.
  • We are going to start with the initiation phase of a vertical learning adult development program, where we will become more objectively aware of our current level and next level gaps…and we will see more clearly than ever before.We will be even more committed than ever to the possibilities that come with our next level goals. We all deserve to get to the next level!
  • It will take deliberate, focused practice to shift these specific organizational capabilities from unconsciously incompetent to consciously competent, and to deliver consistently on the high-performance attributes we have chosen. Some individuals will go faster than others, and some microcultures will influence others faster. Meanwhile, our brain’s biases, our history and our system inertia are working against us more than working with us to support the change. However, once we build our transformation muscles, we will have more wind at our back…exponential business benefits and odds of success for 202X and beyond.

9) I need you to ask for more help.

Not because you are weak but because you are strong — because you have all the power. When it comes to preparing yourself to be an exemplar transformation mentor/leader, you need to ask for more help so everyone will see that being a learner, “asking for help,” and being transformed ourselves is something we value at the highest levels of the organization. Saying “I don’t know how to do this” and asking for help is not a sign of weakness around here anymore. From now on, we win by learning.

You (we) should be asking for more feedback and more guidance on how other companies make this shift — on how to best mentor the executive team through this beyond stepping up as a public player in workshops. The majority of adult development/learning doesn’t happen in the workshop; it will happen in the learning experiences we share with each other during the course of running the business. And it will come from the social influence that we contribute in every meeting, every agenda and every interaction that we have within the leadership team.
 

10) We are going to lead the way.

 
 
 
 


Based on several true stories inside of multinational organizations:
When the chief human resources officer (CHRO) or any C-suite executive finally refuses to be a complicit bystander and commits to leading the business (like a real business leader)…here are 5 ways to start the conversation:
Dear CEO,

1) We have a serious problem …a culture problem.


We are witnessing a historic shift in what’s expected of us when it comes to understanding and evolving our company’s culture. We can’t deny or minimize the negative impact that our executive leadership is having on our culture any longer. The crisis of unconscious leaders is all around us, AND it is clearly a disadvantage for our business performance. This is a new era with new rules. We need to let go of some of the old success formulas…not all of them…just some. We are up to this challenge. We are going to shift the culture and expand the future-focused capabilities that we need (e.g., alignment, collaboration, curiosity, innovation, agility) so that we can not only stay relevant and competitive in the future but so that we can win. I (CHRO) am going to help you lead the way through this. I will need you to trust me. We will do this together.
 

2) Our industry, our history and our future are at odds.

It’s time for us to reactivate some of our originating startup/adaptive DNA and take our enterprise transformation seriously if we expect to win in the future.
Yes, we’re already rich, we have plenty of reserves, and we’ll probably stay afloat beyond your retirement…but we’re just floating right now. We’re not moving forward. We’re stuck. That’s not the kind of legacy we want to leave here after all this time, after all our hard work. The business case for change is undeniable, and yet we keep putting our head back in the sand, hiding in our offices, telling our employees and each other, “we got this.” But we’re just floating — and floating is insufficient. Just “getting by” is creating a long-term disadvantage for us, and it’s creating a ridiculous amount of unnecessary suffering right now.
“Just floating” is not going to be your legacy. And it’s not going to be mine either.This is not going to be fixed by having a two-day workshop or retreat. There is no shortcut. We need to shift some of our default thinking patterns/habits and close the gap on some key organizational attributes/behaviors that can make us more agile, collaborative and innovative. To be a legitimate competitor, we need to perform these attributes consistently at a professional, world-class level. This is not amateur hour or a time for dabbling/hacking away at this like it was a hobby to pick up over a weekend seminar. We have to evolve rapidly. We have to transform. We’ve been talking about this for years. If it were easy for us, we would have already been doing it. We’re stuck. We clearly all have a lot to learn. We need to adjust the way we think, relate, make decisions and take action. It’s never too early (and hopefully not too late) to ready our teams and ourselves for the future.

3) Our employees are losing faith…

So we have to act decisively. You saw what they wrote in the annual engagement survey. The research firm quantified just how much they are losing faith. You read the verbatims. You were upset by the quantity and toxicity of verbatims. You asked me:

“Who does that? Who writes that kind of terrible stuff, knowing that their bosses are going to be reading it?” Seriously, who does that? The “un-led” do that. (JL)
We can lead better. The people in our organization are telling us that we have a problem, and they want us to create a more constructive work environment.

  • They basically called BS on our leadership team’s ability to deliver on a majority of our company core values (e.g., teamwork, innovation, courage, respect, trust, creativity, integrity). They notice the incongruence. THAT IS A STRONG SIGNAL FOR US.
  • They said they have 20 percent less confidence in our business potential over the next two to three years compared to their confidence a year ago. THAT IS A STRONG SIGNAL FOR US.
  • They said they are 25 percent less engaged than a year ago across all business units. THAT IS A STRONG SIGNAL FOR US.

None of this will fix itself. We MUST ready ourselves to respond more effectively by leading a sustainable, strategic culture shift.
 

4) Our leadership team is not yet equipped to respond/lead a transformation like this alone. We don’t know how to do this effectively yet (and pretending to know is only making things worse). 

By our own words, we are at an inflection point that our default thinking patterns, behaviors and leadership muscles are NOT prepared for and need to change in order to achieve our three- to five-year plan success/goals — LET ALONE THIS YEAR’S STRETCH GOALS. We can do this, and I am going to lead this. We’re not transformation experts yet, so I’m going to get you and our entire leadership team the expert support, learning and development we all need to feel strong leading the way.
We will focus on consistency over intensity. We’re going to play the long game — no culture “change theater” or quick fixes. We will lead the way, with humility and empathy — not by knowing but by BECOMING LEARNING EXEMPLARS, showing that we value learning more than saving face. We are not yet personally connected to the kind of transformation that we are asking of our people, but we will be. This journey will be one of the greatest achievements of our career. We can do this.
 

5) To ready the organization for change  we should expect to invest in both expanding leadership capabilities and building internal capacity. 

We need to work on our inner game (transforming our mindsets) and our outer game (the way we execute the business). Our internal team of leaders will be fully involved and take on this initiative in a way that integrates with all of our existing work. Our leaders will be doing the majority of the training and development of middle manager cohorts — once we get a couple of cycles under our belt and I am confident that we can skillfully marry executive mentors and the extended leader/team cohorts into effective, sustainable programs that simultaneously support specific business priorities. For the transformation and readiness part, we will need to partner with an expert firm for the high-leverage areas that require their expertise, and we will need to be focused on the C-suite leadership development and culture change readiness (mentoring and coaching) work as well as ensuring high quality, internal capacity building.





To successfully achieve next level results/culture shift that we say we want, to maintain momentum and to build internal capacity to sustain it, I would expect us to work with expert resources/interventionists over the next three-year time frame while we build internal competency. It will more likely be front-loaded than equally spread out across those three years. It doesn’t have to be incremental learning and development dollars; we can reallocate some of our other important learning and development budget for this essential work.
Here are five more questions to engage the CEO.
 

I was working with a team the other day and one of the members said, “I want to feel it’s OK to say what I am about to say; and if it is OK to say what I am about to say, then I wouldn’t need to ask for it.”
The irony of psychological safety is that you only know you need it when you don’t feel you have it.
 
What is it?
Psychological safety is a term that describes the phenomena of feeling that it’s OK to take a risk. In my words, I can bear the discomfort of stepping out of my comfort zone in this situation with this group of people.
Research undertaken by Edmondson et al. and Google have found it’s one of the key ingredients in high-performing teams. This research has given us language to describe it and to start thinking about how we can intentionally create it.
The other day in an organization I was working with, I heard two colleagues discussing their manager: “He doesn’t make it psychologically safe for us.” I also hear executives talk about how they need to train their managers in psychological safety.
How do we train for psychological safety? How do we help each other to create the environment for each other to tolerate the discomfort of being vulnerable, of being seen in all our glory and messiness? Depending on our past experience, that can for some of us be almost intolerable. So how do we tolerate the intolerable?
 
Where does psychological safety come from?
Well, as I see it, it’s partly internal and based on one’s own level of tolerance of the unknown. As to some degree, we can only know it’s safe to take a risk when we have taken one and survived, and we carry that level of internal trust in ourselves around with us wherever we go.
This internal safety level is then heightened by and impacted by the situation we find ourselves in. We have an antenna that reads faces and body language, atmosphere and energy, and makes inferences and draws conclusion. It tells us whether it’s OK or not OK to express ourselves fully.
And it’s an infinity loop as how we are received, then it impacts future decisions, making us more or less confident to take risks in this situation and situations like them. Is that complicated or what?
 
So how do we create it?
It requires working at the “being” level as well as the “doing” level. Psychological safety is created moment by moment. It’s a felt sense. It often arises out of not feeling safe (i.e., in the bearing of not feeling safe, we find safety — the eye of the storm). It’s not static; it’s dynamic. And it’s not evolving.
 
What does it require of us?
It requires a mindset of a learner, of deep curiosity, of staying in a conversation with ourselves and others to help each other bear the discomfort of being vulnerable — being in open, transparent communication with each other, in each moment. For example, I can’t make my manager make it psychologically safe, but I can find out what is important to him/her and what he/she needs to feel psychologically safe.
It requires a mindset of taking responsibility for my part in the process and not waiting for someone else to give it to me or do it for me. For example, I don’t wait for the company to organize training on psychological safety. I find out what I can do in every meeting to make it easier for people to take risks.
It involves treating myself and others with kindness and compassion. We are much more likely to take risks if we feel we will be met with kindness — for example, remembering that most people care and want the best for everyone, and if they are behaving badly, it’s because they are scared or hurt.
It involves seeing our interconnectedness and interdependence, realizing that we are all similar in our fears and hopes, yet appreciating that we all have different ways of expressing our true nature in the world.
When we say what is true for us in that moment, we feel liberated and free to do our best thinking, and we became more productive.
 
What can I do?

  • Not pretend to know when I don’t; I can ask for help. This is difficult, especially when I feel like I should know and I am paid to know.
  • If someone is behaving oddly and creating an atmosphere, I can ask what is important to them. Usually we get defensive and upset when something we care about is at stake, so I can check if something important to them is at risk.
  • I can have check-ins at every meeting, which is an opportunity for everyone to arrive and get present, and to say anything that is concerning them or impacting their ability to be present.
  • I can say if something is concerning me, and that gives permission for others to say the same.
  • I can find a clean way to discuss the undiscussables.
  • I can continuously remind myself that I am human and, as such, I am impacted by others.
  • I can take risks to expand my comfort zone.
  • I can learn breathing and body practices to grow my ability to tolerate the discomfort of feeling unsafe.

To me, the most intriguing paradox of conscious business — and the hardest to explain — is the interdependence of openness and resolve. How is it possible (even necessary) to be curious, open, humble, and yet at the same time, decisive and action-oriented?
This question is not just academic. If it weren’t possible to be both decisive and open, the whole set of mindsets and skills that we call “conscious business” would be of very little use. Why would anyone with leadership responsibilities want to practice being curious, flexible and open if it meant being ambivalent, indecisive and fickle as a chameleon?
I believe that skillful leaders get a “feel” for how to be “decisive learners.” They don’t just get it cognitively. An experiential component leads them to “get it” in the same way that you first found your balance on a bicycle or learned to look up while dribbling a ball.
By the same token, there is a risk of overexplaining such things. How long would you want me to explain how to ride a bicycle? (For that matter, how long would you want me to evoke the paradox of the decisive learner before asking you what you already knew about it?)
I’m going to offer two stories: one from the martial arts and one from business. Then it will be over to you!
As you may know, Tai Chi is one of the “soft” martial arts, like Aikido. The joke about Tai Chi is: “How can you expect to defend yourself when you are moving in slow motion?” Yet meticulous practice of these slow movements (the “form”), as well as “holding” postures, are a critical part of training for the dynamic and interactive part of Tai Chi “Push Hands.” And Push Hands can be lightening fast (and rock hard).
Traditionally, Push Hands is not taught to novices. I had been learning the “form” and related exercises for almost a year before I was allowed to join a Push Hands class in 1989. That is when I got my first taste of “open/flexible/receptive and tough/decisive/resolute.” My assignment was to try to “push” my Tai Chi teacher, Lenzie Williams (i.e., make him lose his balance or even just move his feet). The difficulty began when I couldn’t even find anything to push on. No matter where I thrust my arms, he seemed to just disappear. (He was “yielding.”) And yet when he pushed me, I went flying across the room. It was a major “aha.” I felt, quite tangibly, how it was possible to be totally receptive, open and relaxed, and at the same time grounded, decisive and powerful. Lenzie demonstrated these qualities without a shadow of a doubt. The only problem was that I had no idea how to do it! I had taken the most important step in my learning journey. I was now “consciously (rather than just unwittingly) incompetent.”
With practice, I became “consciously competent,” which meant that if I really paid attention, I could evade my more experienced classmates, and sometimes even push them out. The thing I paid attention to was staying relaxed and receptive as I yielded and also as I pushed. Lenzie always emphasized (and demonstrated) that the greatest strength came from the greatest “yielding.” It was by practicing softness that we developed our “rooting” — the ability to stand firm like a tree and push people in a way that was powerful and irresistible.
So that is the martial arts story. I also want to share with you the story of a CEO who transformed his leadership style from directive and controlling to receptive and encouraging, without losing any of his action orientation. In fact, he became more resolute, not less.
What happened is this: Bob wanted to engage his staff more. He recognized that there were unintended consequences when he “cut to the chase” and went into director mode. His staff would become remarkably passive, waiting for him to tell them what to do. This was frustrating to Bob. What he really wanted was for them to be energized and take more initiative, yet he seemed to be influencing them to do the opposite.
Following an Immunity to Change approach, Bob wrote down his improvement goal: He wanted to be more receptive and encouraging to his staff, particularly when they were tackling a problem that he had a strong opinion about. Next, he listed the things he did (unwittingly) that undermined this goal: interrupting, taking over, correcting, focusing on flaws, failing to inquire. He asked himself what did he worry would happen if he did the opposite of those things? The worry that first occurred to him was that they would steer the company into an impasse, and the results would reflect badly on him as a leader.
In other words, Bob came to see that he was ambivalent. He was committed to energizing and empowering his staff, but he was equally committed to never letting them get off track. Each of these competing commitments triggered the other. When he got carried away “correcting” his staff, he resolved anew to empower them, but when he trusted them to take charge, he felt an equally compelling need to reassert control. He was oscillating in a state of “unresolve,” never fulfilling either commitment to his satisfaction.
Bob did not resolve his ambivalence by “trying harder”; the problem was not willpower. Rather, he began to question the assumption that was holding it in place — that if he let others take the initiative, he would end up being neglectful (because they needed him to course correct) or worse, obsolete (because they didn’t). So long as this assumption remained “true” for him, he was bound to buck and bridle when he felt the initiative passing into others’ hands and out of his control.
Instead of remaining subject to this assumption, however, Bob conducted a set of deliberate challenges to it, in each case comparing what the assumption would have predicted to what actually happened. First he tried a new behavior. He listened; he left the initiative to his subordinates; he made himself notice, appreciate and acknowledge their progress. Then he asked himself, “Well, did they go off track? Am I being irresponsible or neglectful? Do I feel superfluous? Are they wondering what value I’m adding?”
To his astonishment (and relief), when subjected to such direct scrutiny, his “big assumption” crumbled; its predictions just did not hold up. And just beyond the movie that had been projected by this limiting belief lay a much bigger landscape of possibilities: His staff could seize the reigns enthusiastically, and he could feel good about it. They could suggest things he had never thought of, and he could be intrigued. He felt much more connected to his staff, more “on task” as he delegated, and more fulfilled as he discovered his role as a coach and mentor. Now his way of adding value wasn’t just to “keep the business on track.” It was also, in a more complex view of the world, to “grow leaders.”
Through this learning journey, Bob did a lot of letting go. He became less controlling and more curious, open, receptive, engaging, encouraging and patient. As he put it, he learned to avoid the “impatience trap.” His staff noticed the changes, and they were responsive and relieved. As Bob had hoped, they became more energized and took more initiative. He willingly relinquished the initiative. Most of all, he let go of a way of thinking about himself — a self-image as “company savior,” as the one who could discern the risks that others missed and save the day. He also let go of the corresponding self-doubt — his fear that he would have no other way of adding value.
But here is the paradox: In letting go in these ways, Bob did not become ambivalent or indecisive. On the contrary. He became resolute. He stopped oscillating between competing commitments and became more consistent in his mindset and behaviors. Rather than getting caught on the horns of a false dilemma (“if I empower my flock, they will stray”), he was now integrating the poles of a paradox. He could offer challenge and support, leadership and development.
Bob’s story is not unique. It describes a pattern of human development that Psychologist Robert Kegan has described as the movement from subject to object[1]. An assumption or belief that we were subject to — that functioned as a premise for our behavior without our being aware of it — becomes an object of reflection, and it can thus be modified to adapt to the realities we are dealing with.
My aim in evoking Bob’s story was to provoke recognition of this pattern. Have you observed it in someone at work? In your family? In yourself? Can you recognize how this form of human development follows a paradoxical pattern? On the one hand, you let go of a limiting belief or assumption — of an attachment to seeing things a certain way; you become more flexible, open, receptive to possibilities; you learn. On the other hand, you become more resolute — less ambivalent, more aware, congruent, clear and decisive.
If so, then you may also be able to see the connection between Bob’s story and the martial arts story mentioned previously. Each illustrates not only the possibility but also the necessity of being both receptive and resolute, decisive and open.
[1] Robert Kegan, The Evolving Self (Harvard University Press, 1982)

Becky’s frustration grew as she watched Joan blow up in her office yet again. Becky had served as the director of sales for a successful pharmaceutical company for the past six years and struggled with her relationship with her sales manager, Joan. Careful to not say anything that would trigger Joan, Becky began to hold back in their conversations and avoided meeting with Joan altogether.
“Not again,” Becky thought. “It seems that every time I meet with Joan, she gets upset when I ask her a tough question or I disagree with her position. This is driving me crazy! How can we work like this?”
Emotions are not wrong; they point to an unattended or unspoken request
“The major block to compassion is the judgment in our minds. Judgment is the mind’s primary tool of separation.” —Diane Berke
When you sit in judgment of those you manage and lead, frustration ensues and the opportunity for connection, understanding and honest dialogue diminishes. Compassion invites truthful conversation and opens space for exploration into potential resolutions. Compassion is defined as the emotional response we have when we perceive suffering and making an authentic effort to help. In the workplace, many leaders fear being perceived as weak if they show compassion, so they separate themselves from their own emotions as well as their team member’s, focusing solely on the task at hand.
Becky started questioning her own conversation style, words and behaviors. In a session with her executive coach, Becky described her relationship with Joan and detailed her concerns. Her coach asked her a very simple yet profound question:
“What would happen if you were to address her emotions head on and find out what is driving them?”
Honoring others as people
Becky was surprised and intrigued by this question. What if Joan’s emotions aren’t “wrong”? She had never thought about her relationship with Joan in this way. She decided that the next time things got heated, she would do just that.
A few weeks later, Joan and Becky were talking, and Joan began to go off on a rant again. This time Becky paused and acknowledged Joan’s reaction. “I see you are very upset. Can you tell me the source of your frustration?”
Joan stopped for a moment and did not respond. Becky said, “I have noticed a pattern in our interactions and want to find a better way for us to communicate. I am wondering what it is that I am doing or saying that is so frustrating for you so that we can find a better way. The quality of our communication is critical to our team and important to me.” Joan began to nod and then explained how she felt smothered by Becky’s constant direction and questioning her decisions. Joan described her desire for more autonomy and requested the opportunity to call on larger accounts and take on more responsibility with less direction from Becky.
Courage to lead with compassion
Current research from Stanford University found that organizations where compassion is emphasized experienced more employee loyalty and engagement. The employees are also less stressed and more satisfied with their jobs. They also cited lower turnover, higher productivity and increased efficiency as benefits.
As Becky shared this story, she acknowledged that many of her ways of leading were based on the assumption that she needed to “control” her staff to be successful and achieve results. This experience and shift in perspective reshaped her leadership. She began to have more patience with her staff’s shortcomings and was more open to forgiving them and encouraging them to do better. As a result of Becky’s compassion, Joan’s honesty and their ability to communicate truthfully, Joan went on to win a large account, and Becky was given a raise as her team began to flourish.
How do you lead with compassion in the workplace?
Here are three things you can do to practice compassion at work:

  1. To be compassionate with others, you must first practice compassion with yourself. Begin by noticing how often you judge yourself and others.
  2. Are you willing to see situations from another person’s point of view? Ask employees, bosses and peers questions to gain a better understanding of their view instead of making assumptions about what is driving their reactions.

Honoring others as people with hopes, needs and fears that are as real as your own empowers you to respond to human emotions with genuine concern. When you treat others compassionately, you have more ability to forgive; you experience greater resilience and less fear of failure and are therefore more effective.