Author: Steve Wolinski

In this posting, I build on the October 7 blog, in which Steve Wolinski introduced Diana Whitney’s, Kae Rader’s and my book, Appreciative Leadership: Focus on What Works to Drive Winning Performance and Build a Thriving Organization. Expanding upon Steve’s clear summary of our book’s content, I provide some history behind the approach and the design of the text, along with more detail about the five core strategies that together unleash positive power.

The Origin of Appreciative Leadership

Appreciative Leadership was born over a period of years, during which we worked as Appreciative Inquiry consultants and authors. We noticed how some of the initiatives we worked on resulted in “transformational” change (Bushe and Kassam, 2005); while others started strong but lost momentum or effectiveness over time. Patterns of leadership began to emerge among the successful initiatives – and we followed them. Through one-on-one interviews and focus groups, we identified five core strategies that are at the heart of Appreciative Leadership: qualities, strengths and capacities that compel people to follow and foster winning performance. We collected many of the stories from which the strategies had been gleaned, and wrote a book “by leaders, for leaders,” whose purpose was to simultaneously heighten readers’ awareness, affirm their capacities, and enhance their capacities. The Wisdom of Inquiry: Leading with Positively Powerful Questions

The first of the five core strategies is Inquiry. By “asking” more than they “tell” and employing purposefully positive and value-based questions, appreciative leaders actively invite people to share their thoughts, feelings, stories of success and ideas for the future. As committed practitioners of Appreciative Inquiry, we had already seen the power of positive questions. Over years of consulting, however, we discovered that leaders who practice The Wisdom of Inquiry help cultivate environments in which people feel both empowered to make decisions and take risks, and encouraged to learn, experiment and innovate. These capacities, in turn, enhance organizational performance.

The Art of Illumination: Bringing Out the Best of People and Situations

Second comes the strategy of Illumination. Individual and collective strengths are a deep well of potential just waiting to be tapped. By recognizing and shining a light on strengths, appreciative leaders transform raw potential into positive results. They do so by actively seeking to discover the unique skills, abilities strengths and positive potential of every person and situation. They also keep their eyes and ears open to see and hear what works, when people are at their best. They tell stories of success, anticipating and fulfilling people’s need for recognition and celebration and disseminating best practices. Finally, they align strengths – providing opportunities for both individuals and organizations to do more of what they do well, and collaborate where appropriate with others whose strengths are complementary.

The Genius of Inclusion: Engaging with People to Co-Create the Future

By acknowledging and addressing people’s need for belonging and creativity, the third strategy – Inclusion – opens the door for commitment, alignment and co-creation among today’s multicultural, multigenerational and multitalented workforce. New realities are crafted in relationship and conversation; so the act of bringing diverse groups of people “to the table” for crucial decisions and planning is itself transformational. But Inclusion also speaks to how we bring people to the table. It calls us to engage people in a manner that fosters safety and encourages equal voice … that leads to deeper and more intimate connections and accommodates conversational differences, which enable people to contribute in ways that are both comfortable and empowering. The Courage of Inspiration: Awakening the Creative Spirit

The fourth strategy – Inspiration – breathes new life into possibilities, offers hope in the midst of crisis, and gives people a reason and way to go forward. Seeing, experiencing and knowing the hardships of the world, appreciative leaders choose to live and work in ways that are energetically positive. They use elevated language and broadly share uplifting stories. And drawing from the wisdom of the many, they put forth visions of what is possible (i.e., hopeful visions), along with resources and paths for getting there. Together, their language, stories, visions and paths forward give people courage to shed habitual ways of living and working, and to move in new, innovative and more life-affirming directions.

The Path of Integrity: Making Choices for the Good of the Whole

Integrity is perhaps the most important and least understood of the five strategies. It speaks to qualities of character such as honesty, transparency, authenticity, and moral or ethical conduct. But in the end, the strategy of Integrity is about wholeness. Appreciative leaders walk the path of integrity by employing holistic approaches to support the authentic expression of human potential, and to foster the design of life-affirming products, services and organization. They also make conscious choices to serve the whole (i.e., whole person, whole organization, whole world), and encourage or empower others to do the same. By embracing Integrity, appreciative leaders let others know they are expected to give their best for the greater good, and that they can trust others to do the same.

Appreciative Leadership Practices

On October 11, Sharna Garner asked for “simple suggestions or techniques” for the average manager who is super-busy and looking to be Appreciative Leadership on a daily basis. In my next posting (October 26), I will specific practices that leaders can use to bring these strategies to life and unleash positive power – within themselves, and among the people they serve.

Amanda Trosten-Bloom, Principal, Corporation for Positive Change

303-279-2240 (v), 303-277-0659 (f), amanda@positivechange.org, www.positivechange.org

This blog entry is intended to be a quick and basic introduction to the theory and practice of Appreciative Leadership, as espoused in a recent book by Diana Whitney, Amanda Trosten-Bloom, and Kae Rader. The name of the book is Appreciative Leadership: Focus on What Works to Drive Winning Performance and Build a Thriving Organization. In the next couple of weeks one of the authors, Amanda Trosten-Bloom, will be sharing some of her thoughts about appreciative leadership in this blog. Amanda will undoubtedly provide a more nuanced and intelligible overview of Appreciative Leadership in her entries. And she may be inclined to respond to the overly simply comparison of Appreciative and Transformational Leadership contained in this blog entry.

Appreciative Inquiry

The foundation of Appreciative Leadership is in a theory and approach to organizing known as Appreciative Inquiry (AI). The fundamental difference between AI and other approaches to working with organizations is that instead of focusing on what is wrong or broken — and trying to fix it — AI seeks to discover the uniquely positive qualities and capabilities of an organization and uses these as the foundation for future development or change. It is a highly participatory approach that involves asking strategically crafted questions about an organization’s collective strengths, achievements, success stories, positive traditions, and visions for the future. AI is based on the assumption that organizations will change in the direction of the questions asked. If inquires are into problems or difficult situations, that is what you will keep finding. And if the focus is on what the organization is at its best, that you will move the organization in that direction, and be able to build sustainable changes that are grounded in these emerging narratives. AI is firmly grounded in social constructionist theory, ideas around the power of generative conversations, and the centrality of relationships and language in the functioning of organizations.

Definition and Five Core Strategies

The model of leadership put forth by Whitney, Trosten-Bloom, and Rader is extremely well aligned and consistent in theory and practice with AI. The authors define Appreciative Leadership as the relational capacity to mobilize creative potential and turn it into positive power – to set in motion positive ripples of confidence, energy, enthusiasm, and performance – to make a positive difference in the world. With very little effort, this could be made into a definition of AI itself. The authors introduce the Five Core Strategies of Appreciative Leadership: Inquiry, Illumination, Inclusion, Inspiration, and Integrity. Again, nicely consisitent with the basics of the AI approach to organizational change. I will leave the more detailed description of these strategies for upcoming entries – whether by Amanda or this writer.

Comparison with Transformational Leadership

The similarity between the Five Core Strategies and the familiar 4-I model of Transformational Leadership are interesting. It isn’t just that Idealized Influence, Inspirational Motivation, Intellectual Stimulation, and Individualized Consideration begin with the same letter as the 5-I model in Appreciative Leadership. There is some definite overlap between the two models in terms of how leadership is conceptualized. In my opinion a significant difference is that Appreciative Leadership is firmly grounded in one of the most widely used and innovative approaches to organizing to emerge in the postmodern times. The authors have effectively taken the theories and practices of Appreciative Inquiry and translated these into an attitude and approach to leadership that can be embraced and put into practice in a fairly step-by-step manner. It seems to me that these are not claims that can be made by proponents of Transformational Leadership. Appreciative Leadership is obviously in its infancy compared to Transformational Leadership when it comes to the amount of research and analysis that has been conducted in an attempt to determine correlations with organizational effectiveness and other success metrics. But having AI as its foundation, in my mind, immediately establishes Appreciative Leadership as a legitimate and worthy peer with Transformational Leadership. It will be fun to see whether this opinion holds up.

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Steve Wolinski provides leadership development, organizational change and talent management services to numerous public, private and non-profit organizations.

In his last post, Steve Wolinski amplified the conversation I started this month on women and leadership. He ended his blog entry with an assertion based on recent research that shows while more and more women have reached the ranks of middle management, still woefully few of us are represented at the top. His conclusion was that it seems that women are not perceived as possessing enough of the more so-called masculine traits, such as “being keenly focused on the financial bottom line, capacity for critical and strategic thinking, and the ability to make risky and independent decisions.”

I would argue that it is actually more complicated than that. In her 2010 book, Developing Women Leaders, Anna Marie Valerio presents a compelling case regarding the factors that impact women’s rise to the top. Many of the issues relate to gender stereotypes and how they affect how a woman is perceived as a leader. She offers a number of strategies that HR professionals, managers and female leaders can undertake to address and surmount these perceptions.

Valerio groups personality attributes under two broad categories, agentic, as Steve mentioned, a term which is usually associated with masculine traits, and communal which is usually associated with feminine traits. Research shows that there is little gender difference in fact in terms of whether men or women possess greater or lesser amounts of agentic or communal traits: we are about equal. Managerial behaviors are often associated with agentic qualities. However, when women display too many of these agentic behaviors we are likely to be seen as too aggressive or strident, and when we display too many communal behaviors (listening, sensitivity, preference for harmony, giving, etc.) we are seen as too soft. Herein lays a double bind!! Women cannot simply display assertive behavior, independent thinking, because it may be to our detriment. So, I wonder what is really at play in the research that Steve quotes – do these women actually have less of those desired traits? Or are they carefully treading the double bind, because they lose if they are perceived as having too few of them or too many of them?

Here’s the advice, first for women leaders themselves, and then for HR professionals and these leaders’ managers. A strategy women leaders can employ is to use a feminine typified communal strength – a penchant for collaboration – as a basis for our leadership style. For example, a collaborative leadership would call for listening to others and taking their opinions into account (communal), as well as then moving the conversation forward to action in a facilitative style (agentic), rather then displaying the more masculine typified decision making style of command and control. For those of us for whom this may not come naturally, this may require skill development, but it will likely be perceived as effective, and is, all in all, a desired trait for a leader to have anyway.

Other advice for HR professionals and managers comes from research that shows that women often receive fewer stretch assignments than men, and also get less performance shaping feedback. Whether it’s based on the feminine culture’s somewhat conservative attitude toward risk taking, or a masculine reluctance to give out these assignments to people (women) who do it differently than them, women are often not picked for these leadership-skill developing assignments. Coupled with this, women often receive less feedback, either because men are afraid of how women might take it (will they cry?) or that they might be perceived as being discriminatory or perhaps harassing if they try. Therefore, managers and HR professionals concerned about women’s leadership need to look for ways to make sure women get these assignments. They also need to make sure that women get the feedback they need, either about the assignment itself or just in general about their performance at work. (Valerio, 2009) Bottom line, promoting women’s leadership is also about promoting diversity – in thought, style and execution. And other research shows that corporations who avail themselves of this gender diversity at the highest ranks of the corporation, including the boardroom, reap tangible rewards: they report these corporations perform better with respect to profits as a percentage of revenue, assets, and stockholder’s equity by a range of between 18% and 69%. (Cohen and Kornfeld, 2006). So, not only is women’s leadership a matter of gender equity, it’s just plain good business.

Cohen, R and L. Kornfeld, “Women Leaders Boost Profits,” Barron’s, Sept. 4, 2006

Valerio, Anna Marie, Developing Women Leaders, 2009, John Wiley and Sons, Malden, MA.

To learn more about Kathy Curran, PhD, and her upcoming workshop, Using Power in Relationships with Women and Men at Work, go to her website at www.powerandleadership.com or contact her at 651-293-9448 begin_of_651-293-9448 or kcurran@powerandleadership.com

Women, Power, and Leadership

In Cathy Curran’s blog on July 7, Women, Power, and Leadership, she talks about how, in the past 40 years, women have become increasingly important players in the business and professional worlds, including positions of leadership. She says that while a glass ceiling still exists and, despite the fact that more and more women are getting past it, that women continue to underrepresented in leadership roles. Cathy states that one reason more women have not made the transition into leadership is because the socialization of women still does not prepare them to handle organizational power and influence. She contends that among all the leadership skills taught to prospective female managers and leaders, education in the successful use of personal and organizational power is lacking. Cathy suggests that some of the more individualistic – and traditionally more masculine — skills and qualities, such as independence in thought, action, and decision making, taking risks, and understanding competition, are ones that women will need to intentionally put more time into developing in order to make a successful transition into organizational leadership roles.

Gender Disparity in Senior Leadership

I certainly agree that the leadership traits prioritized by most organizations could largely be described as masculine or agentic (i.e. someone that demonstrates assertiveness, competitiveness, independence, courageousness). Not only that, but I would argue the majority of competency models in organizations continue to manifest a bias toward traditional leadership qualities and skills. Despite this, the number of women in the managerial and professional ranks in the United States has steadily increased in the past 30 years, and research now shows that women currently hold 51% of managerial and professional positions (Welle, 2004). It is interesting that while these numbers are significantly larger today than ever before, the movement of women into senior leadership positions continues to be incredibly slow. According to Welle, among Fortune 500 companies, only 16% of corporate officers, 14% of board directors, 5% of top earners, and just over 1% of CEOs are women.

Influence of Gender Stereotypes

What is the explanation for this continued disparity at the top? Recent studies reveal that although gender stereotypes are slowly but surely changing in the corporate ranks, women in these settings continue to be viewed as having more nurturing, supportive, and communal tendencies, and are evaluated more harshly than men if they demonstrate these qualities, especially in more senior leadership roles. Ironically, women managers, on the average, actually score higher than men on objective measures of agentic or traditional leadership qualities, but still are not well represented in executive positions (Duehr & Bono, 2006).

Bias at the Top

It appears that more traditionally feminine qualities, while more often valued and perceived as effective at middle manager levels, are not seen as having the same relative value for senior level positions, especially in larger companies. It seems clear that in a majority of corporations, the competencies most valued at senior levels of leadership continue to be the more traditionally masculine (e.g. being keenly focused on the financial bottom line, capacity for critical and strategic thinking, and the ability to make risky and independent decisions). There are of course many unfortunate ironies and outcomes associated with these biases. While many women appear to possess the traits viewed as important for senior leadership, they are frequently not perceived to have enough of these qualities, especially by the individuals that make decisions about senior leader advancement. If this is true, it would seem that further development in women of certain, more agentic qualities and talents, will be important — as Kathy Curran states – but it is likely that changes in perception, or a changing of the guard, may also need to take place. If the glaring gender disparity in executive positions is going to shift, there will likely need to be a perceptual shift within the ranks of those that make promotional and hiring decisions for these roles.

Introduction

As the last forty years have demonstrated, women have successfully become players at many tables in the business and professional worlds. Increasingly, more women are moving to the head of the table as well. But this can still be a bumpy road for many otherwise capable, talented female leaders: the glass ceiling still seems to be there, only now we can see women on the other side and wonder why we can’t make it ourselves.

The main premise of this blog entry is that among all the leadership skills taught to prospective female managers and leaders, education in the successful use of personal and organizational power is still sorely lacking. It is well accepted that the skills that enable a person to excel in their chosen field are very different than the ones necessary to lead and manage others. However, for women, the challenge is different than for men, not necessarily only because of possible discrimination, but because our socialization still does not prepare us to handle organizational power and influence well.

Organization Politics and Power

The type of power I am referring to is organizational political power. Although organizational politics is often cast in a negative light, I maintain that politics is a neutral term, that its skills are useful if not mandatory for organizational success. The negative cast enters depending on how one plays politics, not whether. The term politics refers to a system of reconciling divergent interests through the use of consultation and negotiation. This political negotiation happens at the intersection of stakeholder relationships among interests, conflicts and power. To work out a successful acquisition for an organization, to lead an organizational change, or to manage the many disparate abilities of direct reports and/or departments require the ability to successfully navigate and master the currents of stakeholder interests, conflict and power.

For women, though, the foundational abilities on which organizational political prowess is developed are still not ones most of us are socialized to acquire, because much of the tacit understanding of these skills is based on participation in masculine subcultures. Negotiating, depersonalizing, reframing, risk taking, strategizing, competing and mastering the unwritten rules of the organization come harder to us than for many of our male counterparts.

Stages of Power

Hagberg (2003) posits that this occurs because of difficulties in transitions between one stage of power and the next. According to her, there are discernible levels of organizational power that one must master to be successful in one’s career. Stage One she defines as Powerlessness. For the purposes of this blog, we will not delve into this stage. Stage Two, Power by Association, is where we learn the skills and abilities of our chosen profession – to become competent as a marketeer, a teacher, an engineer, etc. It is characterized by apprentice-like behavior: as we try to understand and make individual contributions to the organization or profession to which we belong, we look for a powerful other(s) to emulate.

After mastering this stage, we transition to Stage Three, Power by Achievement, as we begin to move up the ranks of the organization. This heralds the beginning of our management career. This stage calls for independence in thought, action, and decision making, taking risks, understanding the unwritten rules of the organization, ability to negotiate, strategize, compete, build effective coalitions, play as a part of a team, and maintain a healthy balance between self interest and the good of the organization.

Hagberg generalizes that Stage Two power accentuates what could be called a more feminine expression of power, whereas Stage Three calls for a more masculine demonstration. For men, moving from Two to Three is the easiest transition among the stages: they are socialized to expect that they will move from Stage Two to Stage Three, and if they are talented, other male hands reach down to help them up. For women, Hagberg asserts that this transition is the hardest: some of the agentic, individualistic skills that are demanded by Stage Three are more foreign to our upbringing and to how we’re shaped by culture.

Conclusion

Therefore, to excel as managers, we need to pay more conscious attention to learning these skills. Reflection, role playing, peer coaching based on an understanding of the types of skills needed to excel at Stage Three all become useful tools in the acquisition of what have traditionally been thought of as masculine-identified traits.

What does this mean in terms of the feminine strengths we can bring to leadership? Are they not important as well? More about that in a forthcoming post . . .

Reference

Hagberg, J. (2003), Real Power: Stages of Personal Power in Organizations, Sheffield Publishing Company, Salem, WI.

Author

To learn more about Kathy Curran, PhD, and her upcoming workshop, Using Power in Relationships with Women and Men at Work, go to her website at www.powerandleadership.com or contact her at 651-293-9448 or kcurran@powerandleadership.com.

Written by Kristine Quade, JD, MSOD, HSDP

Environmental conditions are changing rapidly; in these shifting conditions, traditional leadership models are not working. Information is available to everyone, at any time. Social networks are eroding the established hierarchy. Product development cycle times are increasing at a shocking pace. Market conditions are being set by a different set of rules. How can any modern-day leader function effectively given these enormous challenges?

In these turbulent times where outcomes are unpredictable, those who lead dynamically are succeeding. Dynamical leaders pay attention to three conditions to ensure an effective, highly functioning organization: coherence, resilience, and fitness. The leader who masters these conditions will achieve what others say is impossible!

Coherence

Coherence can be thought of as an interdependence of parts. An organization needs to be coherent with market conditions to remain a player in a given strategic space. Departments need coherence to ensure a strong coordination of activity. Teams need coherence of behavior to effectively work for the organization’s benefit. Patterns that build coherence are those that keep communication open and honest, ensure clarity of roles and responsibilities, build shared identity, and create a rhythm of high performance.

Resilence

Resilience is the ability to integrate, re-calibrate and recover quickly when challenged. The normal inclination is to fall back to familiar ground, carefully exploring until the change becomes familiar once again. Resilient leaders are constantly placing themselves in unfamiliar conditions, stretching their capacity to absorb and adjust. They seek what is different in perspective, approach, or opinion; connect across boundaries; and explore new ideas and technologies like a curious scientist. Resilient leaders are constantly looking for constraints in their thinking, decision-making, relationships, and behavior. They actively explore their filters, viewpoints, and judgments, constantly seek ways to break constraints and keep themselves open and adaptable. Patterns that build resilience include utilization of multiple perspectives, ongoing learning, and establishing feedback mechanisms for recycling learning back into the system for continued expansion of potential. The cycle of exploration and knowledge generation comes from external markets, interactions with customers, attention to shifting conditions, and curiosity of teammates. A resilient leader notices patterns of creativity, exploration, collaboration, and integration.

Fitness

Leaders who understand fitness are not thinking about athletics. Instead, they are constantly scanning their environment for potential surprises. They regard blips and trends as pieces of a larger puzzle to be solved. They know that these changes offer valuable information that beckons them to make meaning for their organization. These leaders have inquiring minds and seek to build organizational cultures that candidly talk about what is being noticed, are patient with different perspectives, and discern emerging patterns from random blips and trends.

How does paying attention to coherence, resilience and fitness ensure the capacity to accomplish what others think is impossible? Some leaders choose to focus their attention on building coherence. They focus on clarity of mission, vision, values, process improvements, performance objectives, and measurements. YES! These are needed and necessary. But they are not the only conditions for success. Coherence forms the ground floor of an effective organization, but what keeps an organization alive is resilience and fitness—the ability to adapt to what is important.

Sad as it may be, the environmental conditions we are experiencing now prohibit many organizations from developing a five-year strategic plan that is fully executionable. Dynamical leaders know their approach to business opportunities require constant vigilance for shifting environmental conditions and the ability to adapt with urgency. Operating in these conditions means that leaders must expand their focus grow their organizations capability to be resilient and fit into an environment of rapid change.

If you wish to learn more about this type of thinking and how to become a dynamical leader, check out the schedule for presentations and/or workshops on http://www.DynamicalLeadership.com .

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Steve Wolinski provides leadership development, organizational change and talent management services to numerous public, private and non-profit organizations. Website, Email.

In today’s turbulent landscape, change is multidimensional. Leaders must consider speed and scope of change, along with multiple forces buffeting organizations from all directions—new technologies, increasing difference, expanding markets, increased customer and employee expectations, fiscal meltdowns, political battles. Leaders and organizations respond quickly to remain sustainable in today’s unpredictable landscape.

The study of human systems dynamics teaches that sustainability requires a system to adapt to whatever it encounters, as it holds its mission and values. An organization’s ability to thrive depends on its adaptive capacity, requiring it to be

• Sensitive to changing patterns,
• Flexible in response, and
• Robust to withstand multiple challenges.

In our book, Dynamical Leadership: Building Adaptive Capacity for Uncertain Times, Kristine Quade and I offer a model of leadership built on assumptions about organizations as complex systems. While some of these may sound counter to traditional approaches, they express a worldview of human system dynamics that honors inherent complexity of organizations in the 21^st century and explain why adaptive capacity is crucial today.

Life is a tapestry of different textures and colors. The pattern becomes visible because of unique differences from one yarn to the next. Human interactions are similarly woven through life, play, and work. The messiness inherent to human systems makes sense to dynamical leaders, and they see the tapestry that is their organization.

As the beat goes on complex systems organize toward “fit.” Interactions among individuals are responses and counter-responses. One individual shifts, calling for adjustments by others, triggering reactions elsewhere. This balancing act is continuous and simultaneous, creating a system-wide rhythm as the beat to which dynamical leaders are specifically attuned. They know the beat continues as long as the organization is open and vibrant.

There is no “there” there as patterns emerge continuously, whether or not they are watched. A system doesn’t self-organize toward a single point that signals some arbitrary conclusion. Rather, the system’s goal is fitness in a constantly shifting environment, responding to demands, seeking new opportunities, and finding new vistas. Dynamical leaders expect this and don’t wait for it to settle down or stop changing. They value this “dance” between the organization and its environment as necessary to sustainability.

Coherence is as good as it gets when work aligns with values and people across the system respond in similar ways. Dynamical leaders recognize there is no “perfect state,” and sustainability cannot be judged against external measures. The most useful measure of sustainability reflects coherence among parts of the system.

Things will go “bump” as difference within a system creates tension when individuals collaborate, build trust, or acknowledge fear. Tensions also emerge as the organization “bumps” against its environment. The goal of adaptive capacity is not to eliminate tension; it is to understand sources of tension, learn to negotiate their impact, and move forward.

There is magic in fractals as some patterns reverberate throughout the system. When similar behavior is observed in leaders, groups, and individuals, it is a fractal pattern. Behavior of senior leaders may be replicated at various levels in multiple ways. To influence a fractal at one level leverages work at others, magnifying impact of an intervention, increasing adaptive capacity.

Power is abundant, and multiplies as it’s shared. In complex systems, power is the ability to influence, and is no longer associated only with position or title. Everyone can influence, and as they do, creativity and efficacy are unleashed. Sharing power is not about leaders abdicating responsibilities or accountabilities. It is honoring individuals’ abilities to contribute to overall performance.

We believe there’s no silver bullet for today’s complex leadership dilemmas. We also believe, however, there is a path leaders can take to:

• Increase ability to thrive in today’s turbulence,
• Support others in contributing to sustainability,
• Respond productively to shifting needs, and
• Step into powerful roles as dynamical leaders in a complex world.

Royce Holladay

Director, The Network

HSD Institute

rholladay@hsdinstitute.org

www.hsdnistitute.org

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Steve Wolinski provides leadership development, organizational change and talent management services to numerous public, private and non-profit organizations.

Steve Ober is now co-hosting the leadership blog and that means that readers will be getting a deep and interesting dive into systemic leadership. In the coming months I will continue to provide an overview of some of the more prominent leadership theories, approaches, and practices. I just concluded a four week introduction on transformational leadership and will follow this up with a similar overview of adaptive leadership, followed by examinations of charismatic, dynamical, servant, and authentic leadership. This series will include some guest submissions by writers that are intimately familiar with these various leadership theories, models, and approaches.

Introduction to Adaptive Leadership

The ideas and practices surrounding adaptive leadership have been advanced in large part by Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky in the books “Leadership without Easy Answers” and “Leadership on the Line” and more recently with the help of Alexander Grashow in the book “The Practice of Adaptive Leadership”. This introduction, and the upcoming blog entries, will draw in large part from the work of these three subject matter experts.

What is Adaptive Leadership?

Heifetz et al believe that leadership is, at its essence, about influencing change that builds and enables the capacity of individuals and organizations to thrive. Specifically, that leadership is the practice of mobilizing groups of people to tackle tough challenges and thrive. The bottom line is that leaders need to understand the importance of adaptation and are able to employ the relevant processes and tools to build the adaptive capacity of organizations.

What does it mean to be adaptive?

The word “adaptive” in adaptive leadership is drawn from evolutionary biology and refers to the process that organisms follow if they are going to survive and thrive. The three components of this process (applied to organizations) are to 1) preserve the organizational elements necessary for survival, 2) remove (or modify) the elements that are no longer necessary or useful, and 3) create (aka innovate) new arrangements that enable the organization to thrive.

What does it mean to thrive?

In adaptive leadership, to thrive is to develop new capabilities and strategies to address changes in the environment (e.g. industry) and realize strategic vision and goals. The key for an adaptive leader is to understand what it means for a specific organization to thrive, and then help make that happen. To thrive is to successfully adapt to circumstances, make desired changes, and stay anchored to what is best about the organization in the process. This requires an appreciation for the core values, purposes (whether explicit or implicit), and the history of the organization.

What are Adaptive Leadership competencies?

The adaptive leadership approach views leadership more as a process than a set of competencies. Having said this, the following are some skills, attitudes, and implied qualities that align with adaptive leadership.

• The adaptive leader needs to be able to connect organizational change to the core values, capabilities, and dreams of the relevant stakeholders
• The adaptive leader seeks to foster a culture that collects and honors diversity of opinion and uses this collective knowledge for the good of the organization
• The adaptive leader knows that change and learning can be painful for people, and is able to anticipate and counteract any reluctant behavior related to the pain
• The adaptive leader understands that large scale change is an incremental process and that he/she needs to be persistent and willing to withstand pressure to take shortcuts

What is the theory that informs adaptive leadership?

The theory that informs adaptive leadership appears to be more about the nature of organizations than about the nature of leadership. In the writings of Heifetz et al, the clearest theoretical underpinning is the speculation that organizations adhere to the same processes outlined in evolutionary biology. It is the task of the leader to understand this theoretical framework (metaphor?) and use it to guide and strengthen the organization. If you are familiar with adaptive leadership, let me know if you agree or disagree with this notion that its theoretical focus is on organizations rather than on leadership.

What’s next?

The next few weeks will entail a more detailed examination of the unique elements of adaptive leadership and some of the different adaptive leadership tools and practices.

Guest Submission by Steven Ober, EdD

Leaders live and work in complex systems. In fact, we all do. These systems include our organizations, our teams, our families, our communities, and our larger society.

In today’s world, it is incumbent on those of us who coach leaders to deepen and broaden our ability to coach from a systemic perspective—to understand our client leader as an individual human system working and living in larger systems. How a leader proceeds in those systems, and how those systems operate, can have a huge impact on her ability to achieve her goals.

This article presents an overview of Coaching from a systems perspective:

• Definition What is a “system”?
• Why coaching from a systems perspective is critical in today’s world.
• What systemic coaching includes.
• How you can, on a practical level, coach systemically.
• Learning Opportunities that can help you broaden and deepen your systemic capability.

Definition

A system is a whole made up of interdependent, interacting parts. Changes in one of the parts create changes in one or more of the others. All of the parts are interconnected. Examples of systems include: You as a human being, your coaching client as a human system, the system that consists of you and your client interacting, the client’s organization and marketplace, and/or all of the above taken together.

Why is it important to coach from a systemic perspective?

There are two fundamental reasons that a systemic approach is critical to effective leadership coaching:

1. We are, in fact, systems living in larger systems. As human beings we know we are part of a whole natural system. We are all interconnected. A systems perspective gives us access to the fullness of this interconnection. Systems thinking is a powerful way to understand ourselves, one another, and our world.
2. The systems in which our clients live and work have a significant impact on their ability to achieve desired results. To serve them best, we need to help client leaders see how the forces in their internal and external systems influence their ability to create what they want and what they can do in their system to increase their success rate. If, as coaches, we do not take into account these broader and deeper systemic forces, we are ignoring huge areas of their lives, areas with forces that can greatly impede, or powerfully support their work as leaders.

What does coaching from a systems perspective include?

Coaching most broadly and deeply (coaching systemically) means being aware of three worlds and how they interplay to produce outcomes:

1. The Face-to Face-World—our interactions with our client, and their face-to-face interactions with other key people.
2. The Larger External World, for example our client’s organization, their business, their customers, and their marketplace.
3. The Deeper Internal World: How/what our client leaders think and feel, their mental models/underlying assumptions, their deeper beliefs, and in some cases, their deep story.

Systemic coaching is about helping our clients “see” the key variables from these three worlds, how they interact, how they help or get in the way, and what our client leader can do to change the system in favor of their leadership vision and desired results.

A leadership coach also needs to have a deep understanding of his own internal and external worlds and how they play out in coaching relationships.

How, on a practical, can you coach from a systems perspective?

1. Approach each phase your coaching work with the client’s (and your own) systems in mind. In each phase—entry, contracting, data collection, goal setting, action planning, and supporting implementation–ask, and help the client ask, “What are the key systemic variables we need to be paying attention to here?” For example, coaching from a systems perspective means having an understanding of the system around your client and how it may impact her. If you don’t have that information, you probably need to structure your assessment so that you gather some of it.
2. Use your client’s goal as your entry point. Focus your systemic thinking on helping your client achieve her coaching goal rather on than on a broad analysis of the entire system. Focus on her goal and how her internal, external, and face- to-face systems influence her ability to achieve it. Help your client set his goals, create his action plans, and implement those plans in ways that take into account key systemic forces at play.
3. Learn and use systemic tools in your coaching. There are many good tools out there that help us work with systems—for example, influence diagrams, causal loops, systems archetypes, the Butterfly model of Complex Human Systems, Jay Forrester’s systems dynamics out of MIT, and David Kantor’s Structural Dynamics.
4. Help your client leader look for leverage. Nobody can take on everything. Work to identify the key systemic forces he can focus on to have the most impact.
5. Always learn. Integrate and synthesize your systemic understanding and approaches through practice, practice, practice, combined with reflection, reflection, reflection.

Learning opportunity

Consider enrolling in an exciting new program, Coaching from a Systems Perspective. How do we increase our capacity for seeing and understanding systemic connections? How can we become more effective in dealing with the complexities of the systems in which we, and our clients, live and work? This three-day course, designed for practicing coaches, offers a basic grounding in modern systems theory and provides specific tools for seeing and understanding systems. We practice these during the program through a sequence of mutual coaching sessions. Participants consistently report that the program experience has taken their coaching work to a new and deeper level.

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Coaching from a Systems Perspective was developed by a group of senior coaches from the Coaching Community of Practice, Society for Organizational Learning. We call ourselves Systems Perspectives, LLC. You will find an overview of the program, dates, locations, and a contact person for each offering on our website: http://SystemsPerspectivesLLC.com. Upon completion of the program, 29 ICF CCEUs are available.

If you want to talk more about systemic coaching, how it can enhance your practice, and you can use it to help client leaders, feel free to contact me:

Steven P. Ober EdD
Office: 508.882.1025 Mobile: 978.590.4219
Steve@ChrysalisCoaching.org

The Four Transformational Leadership Behaviors

According to Bass, transformational leadership is comprised of four primary behaviors. The first is idealized influence, when leaders act in ways consistent with their stated beliefs, goals, and values, following through on commitments, and treating people in a consistent and fair manner. The second behavior is inspirational motivation, when leaders effectively communicate visions for the future of the organization and convey how the work of individuals and teams are connected to the vision. The third behavior is referred to as intellectual stimulation, the leader’s ability to create a work environment where followers feel safe to think creatively, challenge the status quo, and come up with innovative ideas. The final behavior, individualized consideration, is when leaders help followers identify personal development goals and design customized strategies for making improvements on these goals.

The Impact of Transformational Leadership

There is empirical evidence that these four behavior areas have statistically significant impact on various indices of organizational performance and business outcomes. In my previous blog it was shared that there is a clear correlation between transformational behaviors and increased innovation, motivation, perseverance, commitment, team cohesion, and performance.

The Transformational Behaviors that Make a Difference

So what are the specific behaviors that make the difference that makes the differences? The following are a list of ten behaviors, considered to be transformational, that have an impact on some of the target areas just mentioned.

1. Challenging and empowering team members to think independently and consider novel solutions to old or emerging problems is believed to increase the innovative capacity of organizations (Nederveen et al, 2010)
2. Empowering team members to think and act independently has been shown to reduce barriers to the sharing and utilization of knowledge across organizations boundaries (Garcia-Morales et al, 2007)
3. Establishing a clear understanding of the connection between the tasks/values of team members and the vision/values of the organization is shown to increase individual motivation (Wolfram and Mohr, 2009)
4. When a leader espouses a high level of ethics and acts in accord with these ethical standards an increase in follower trust and commitment should follow – variables with a direct correlation to performance (Rafferty and Griffin, 2006)
5. There is an apparent link between the degree to which a leader respects and attends to the emotions and professional needs of team members and the level of team member commitment and performance (Bass, 2006)
6. Inspirational, enthusiastic, and animated communication of organizational vision has been shown to enhanced team cohesion (Ayoko & Callan, 2010)
7. Success of change initiatives increase significantly when leaders include team members in the development of the vision for the future and the demonstrate a clear commitment to that vision (Herold, et al, 2008)
8. Commitment to organizational change initiatives increase if leaders are expressive, confident, and are able to incorporate values into change conversations with team members (Howarth & Rafferty, 2009)
9. The use of image-based messages and the ability to incorporate organizational goals into a compelling vision of the future has an apparent connection with team performance (Colbert et al, 2008)
10. Inspiring and empowering team members to embrace and pursue challenging goals and professional development has been shown to improve project success (Prabhakar, 2005)

The above is evidence of a correlation between specific transformational behaviors and various team member and organizational outcomes. But one must ask, are these behaviors unique to transformational leadership? If not, can it really be argued that there is a connection between transformational leadership and improved organizational performance? Please feel free to share your thoughts or questions on the topic.