The Fires of the Forge

Self Reflection, Leadership and Politics

I'll admit it. Watching the debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden last night got me pretty worked up. So what's that got to do with self reflection, leadership and politics? A lot, methinks.

One of the grand pooh-bahs of building a great consulting business is Alan Weiss. www.summitconsulting.com and his blog is http://www.contrarianconsulting.com

One of the points he makes applies to all leaders, not just consultants. When I first read his book Million Dollar Consulting, one particular point he made was this. Our sweet spot is where three lines intersect. One, what the market wants. Two, what our passion is. And three, what we have the skills and experience to do. The net? What I should be doing is is where my skills & experience, passion and market needs all meet.

Enter self reflection. Lacking the capacity to self-reflect (a.k.a. self knowledge / emotional intelligence applied), look at what trouble we can get ourselves in to.

Lacking self-reflection, we simply project on to the market what we think the market needs, and we miss the bull's eye. (For example, do leaders actually want a practical approach to emotional intelligence? I don't know. I could be missing the mark.)

Lacking self-reflection, what we think is our passion may be nothing more than our social conditioning (what we have been programmed to believe we should do) and our need for validation (if I do this I will be sooooo respected!) getting all hot and bothered together. That's a problem. That is misguided approval seeking stealthily masquerading as inspiration.

Lacking self-reflection, we may so underestimate the task at hand that we lead ourselves to believe our skills & experience are sufficient.

The net? Lacking self reflection, our perception as to where those three lines cross may be way out in left field. Maybe even in the parking lot behind left field. So we may be like a puppy-dog chasing a butterfly across the field--with great joy and absorption--and having no idea that we are skipping with heartfelt (and reckless) abandon towards a... well, cliff.

Practical Application/Action--Stepping into the Fires of the Leadership Forge

If this makes sense to you, what might you do with it?

1. Casting your vote. Looking at what the country needs, the candidate's passion and their actual, proven skills and experience... well, what do you think? It is the most critical election in your and my life time.

2. Leading by Example. If you wish Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin (or maybe even the people right around you) had a little more self-reflection, try upping the ante on your own self-reflection. Get more real. Take action on what you know you should do by are avoiding. Be the change you want to see in the world.

3. Market and Deliver with Authenticity: If you are a coach and/or consultant, how ya doin'? Are you clear on those three lines? Or do those lines look more like a three strand bowl of spagetti?

4. The Right People: If you are a leader, have you thought about interviewing new hires along those three lines? Have you thought about assessing whether you have the right people on the bus to get you to where you want to go? Get a line on your people by looking for where each of those three lines intersect for them. And if you don't have the right people to get you there, fish or cut bait.

Have a great weekend.

Otis
(c)2008 Otis Woodard

The New Age of Leadership--Distinctions Part 2

Thanks for your warm support of and response to yesterday’s blog. Let’s continue.

Yesterday in my blog post (please read it) I outlined how most leaders—lacking self knowledge—unconsciously (and predictably) re-act to their challenges rather than responding intelligently. Re-acting to challenges involves significant cost, the sum total of which is reflected in the challenges we currently face individually and collectively. What is called for, in order for us individually and collectively to reach the next level, is intelligent response to the challenges we face--not more unconscious reactions that simply dig the hole deeper and deeper.

The Response-Able Leader

Now, let’s look at the alternative to the fixed perception->emotional reaction->intensity->force short-circuit that controls most leaders. Let’s look at the alternative that will be a requirement for moving in to the new age of leadership.

What is interesting about this more conscious alternative to unconscious re-action is this: not only does the leader make better decisions immediately, thus shaping a new future for him- or herself, this alternative approach opens both the leader’s perception and their heart ever wider, making them more fluid, more authentic, more open, more inclusive and ever more powerful.

Here is the response-able circuit.

When confronted with what he or she doesn't want to see, the response-able leader acknowledges that his/her perception is selective. That acknowledgement of their own human weakness triggers a gap in the old short-circuit, which they seize. In that gap the leader, in an act of intent, shifts their perception to begin looking for what they may be missing. That is an act of sobriety and fluidity. (Juxtapose this against the leader who, lacking self knowledge, is trapped within their fixed perception.)

Then, realizing that the mind has only limited power to see (and in fact can only see what is already known), they search their feelings. They can do this because they are using their emotions actively to guide them to their feelings. (Contrast this to the leader who lacks self knowledge: their fixated perception triggers an emotional reaction which is either acted out or suppressed.)

Possessing this capacity to feel their way through the dark, combined with the sobriety made possible by a fluid perception, they are capable of seeing things very differently. This has two effects: (1) it opens up all sorts of unforeseen possibilities, and because they see the challenge as an opportunity to learn, to fulfill their purpose, and to uplift others and themselves through the impeccability of their actions, they feel warmth. This warmth then further opens up others and life around them to them, producing even more possibilities and cooperation. (Contrast this to the leader who, lacking self-knowledge, begins to build intensity which is “gonna hafta blow” at some point or another, and then fuels their re-action to the situation.)

Then, having seen what they need to see, and having felt what they need to feel, having watched their own thoughts and habitual reaction patterns surface, and having included others and life around them in formulating a conscious, intelligent response to the situation… they can act with tremendous confidence from a place of strength. No muss. No fuss. No ranting. No raving. No hands on the hips, finger in the chest or fists on the table. Truth spoken. Fierce resolve. Abiding humility. Self esteem builds. Isolationism melts away to inclusiveness. (For the reasons this is important, see prior blog on the two primary issues of man--lack of self esteem and isolationism).

Contrast acting from well-considered, self-possessed strength as opposed to force, as the leader who lacks self knowledge almost always relies upon (no matter how benignly they dress it up.)

I hope you can begin to sense the radical difference between the old leadership and the new, and the attributes required to do the new, and that you will probably not learn the new attributes by reading a blog, a book, attending a workshop or working with a coach. All those may help. But this is not an intellectual exercise. This is an experience. And no one can give that experience to you. The cost of experience is extremely high. It cannot be paid in dollars. And part of that cost is that you must accept response-ability to take that knowledge from the experiences you have.

Most leaders won't bother. The new leaders will. It won't be tough to spot them. Because, like the Eagles’ lyrics say, “Ah but you can’t take them anywhere, they don’t already know how to go.”

Yet the new leadership is where it is all headed, like it or not. (If you can resist the evolutionary impetus of life you can truly consider yourself strong-willed. ;) )

We can learn proactively or we can learn as an act of survival.

Speaking of survival. When you are trapped within the short-circuit dynamic, do you know how predictable you are and how easily you can be duped? Something to consider in these crazy times, when there are lots of people, some even well-intentioned, aiming to dupe you. Freedom? At the end of the day, freedom is the capacity to choose your response to any situation, in the moment. For all the talk of freedom today, few of us know what it is. And so, freedom is taken from us.

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” Goethe

“We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.” Goethe

Master your own re-action pattern. Transmute fixed perception to sobriety, emotional reaction to feeling, intensity to warmth, and force to strength, and you will not be deceived. Why? Because once you have seen the depths of yourself, you can see into the depths of everyone one and everything around you.

That is the true seat of power, and takes you to the epicenter of unconditional love.

Claim both. You are a leader.

The New Age of Leadership--Distinctions

What is the new age of leadership?

The fact of the matter is that none of us really know. It is dawning now.

Stephen Covey wrote about it in his book, The Eighth Habit. Basically what he says is that leadership will have to change as the industrial age version of leadership (control and transactions) gives way to the knowledge worker age. He speaks about that quite a bit, and then goes on to say at the very end of the audiobook version that he sees that we will very quickly move into a new age past the knowledge worker age...

So what is going on? Leaders haven't even adapted to the current, knowledge worker age, and we are moving on the next one? Talk about change.

I could pontificate about what is ushering in the change, but I can simply say that evolution is moving at a much faster speed now, that the entire universe is evolving, and that every molecule must go through that evolution, and that leadership involves a lot of molecules, so leadership is making that transition, too. But in saying all that, I haven't said much, and I actually don't know.

What I feel, however, is that there are several fundamental shifts you will be facing as a leader. I will contrast the old and the new forms:

Non-Hierarchical Power:  From positional power to… role based on earned respect
Subrogoation of Ego: From “my will be done” to…  the group's purpose fulfilled and Thy Will be done
Fluidity: From rigid execution of plans to… fluidity and improvisation
Co-Creation: From willfully producing results to... aligning with people and life around you to produce results.

I can also put it in terms of attributes:

A shift from fixed perception to remarkable clarity & sobriety
A shift from emotion to feeling
A shift from intensity (who, you?) to warmth

A shift from manipulation and force to strength

Let's look at an example of how those attributes interact.

The Reactive Leader (old leadership form now dying)

Most leaders have very selective perception. They see things one way--fixed perception. When things they are seeing are inconsistent or happening contrary to what they "know" is right, they become very emotional, and either overexpress the emotion or attempt to suppress it. No matter which, that then builds intensity. The intensity triggers them to force their will and their way (overtly or covertly). Then, no matter what happens, they use the experience to reinforce their fixed perception. A full circuit (a short-circuit) is completed. And then is repeated again and again, making the leader increasingly inflexible and reactive.

That last point is tricky. You see, the reason the results--good or bad--will almost always be used to reinforce the fixed perception is this. First, if the results are "good" (meaning it pleases us), then the reinforcement is obvious--"See, I was right!" And if the results of us forcing our will and way were bad, then we blame others for compromising us in the first place, causing us to step in after the situation was already, irretrievably messed up. The blame, then, let's us off the hook and entitles us to believe we were right even when the results of our "force" were highly undesirable. (Now do you see why in my prior post I said Personal Responsibility is the gateway attribute leaders must develop, and why I defined Personal Responsibility as "the absence of blame"?)

In tomorrow's blog, I will take you through the alternative to this short-circuit. I will be the underlying software the new leaders will be running. I hate to leave you hanging, but this blog is already lengthy.

For now, watch your own self. See if you can observe yourself all the way through a fixed perception->emotional re-action->intensity->manipulation/force situation. Just observe. You don't have to change anything.

Heck, watch yourself watching the debate tomorrow night. That should stir some at least one or two of those short-circuits... no matter who you are rooting for. B:-)

The Three Core Attributes of Leadership

Today the market dropped 778 points, the largest drop in history. It dropped because Congress said "no" to the current form of the bailout plan. As I have posted before, what we are facing right now is the sum total of the imbalances we all have contributed to for some time now. Except the bills are starting to show up in the mail--like this crisis.

The imbalance--this crisis--serves a purpose. The working out of the imbalance serves a purpose. No matter what happens, that purpose will be served. If it all collapses, it will be (hopefully), a return to what is real--both materially and spiritually. If it doesn't collapse, and we are to stand any hope of it not coming back around again in a worse form, we will each individually have to change to stop contributing to the imbalance.

The net is that this is an individual issue: each individual has incredible power. And, whichever way this goes, there is no avoiding shouldering that responsibility... whether that responsibility is shouldering the consequences of collapse, or whether it is shouldering the response-ability required to resolve the imbalance so this doesn't come back around again.

And the net is, that whatever happens, we will be forced to evolve. And it will force a return to what is real.

As I write this book about leadership, and the nine levels of focus a leader must master, I am also writing about the three attributes that are essential. These three attributes are foundational to being able to work with the required nine levels of focus. The first attribute is Personal Responsibility. The second is Self Management. And the third is Innerdirectedness.

What is interesting to see is that leaders struggle with developing these attributes, individuals do, and, therefore, what can Wall Street and Washington reflect for us other than what we are? Ponder on that. There is all this rhetoric about "Main Street" and "Wall Street". Wall Street is bad, and Main Street is pissed off. Right? And then "Washington" policies have caused this, and Washington failed to get it done today. And we are so busy pointing our finger at Wall Street and Washington, we don't even pause for one instant to see if perhaps these institutions is simply reflecting for us what we as individuals have become. Painful to look at, no?

But the sad thing is this. You see, in refusing to look into that painful mirror, we also turn away from our power and the solution. For if the mirror is reflecting what we have become--each as individuals--what would happen if each of us leaders lead the way to a new way? What if each of us found in ourselves what Wall Street and Washington were reflecting? And what if, behavior by behavior, we ferreted out those negative behaviors and replaced them with positive ones?

What if we each developed Personal Responsibility, Self Management and Innerdirectedness to the next level  by changing our actions? How could the world--including Wall Street and Washington--not be changed?

One of my favorite scriptures from the Bible is where Christ says (paraphrased), 'all this that I have done, you can do and more.' The problem is, we haven't solved the riddle he spoke. The riddle lies in transformation of the Self. He modeled that.

Now we need to model it--transformation of the Self. You and I. That's leadership.

No institution can save us from the imbalances we have created as individuals.

We have all we need--as individuals--to participate in the fixing of this mess.

And blame ain't going to get it done.

Blame is the antithesis of Personal Responsibility. And the attribute of Personal Responsibility is the ring-pass-not which determines how much Self Management and Innerdirectedness we are capable of.

Tomorrow, I am very excited to share with you some ideas I just got from an article on restoring a sense of balance, perhaps even a quietness of life, which aids in the development of all three attributes--and most especially Innerdirectedness. I think you will enjoy what I have to share about that tomorrow.

Farewell from San Antonio, where I will be working with a client on their three year strategic plan tomorrow and the next day...