Ecstasis Blog

Today’s post is short and sweet. I had a powerful conversation that matters last Thursday. To me a conversation matters when it produces not just insight, but action. Positive action. For leaders, that positive action involves moving our business forward and developing our capacity to be successful.

The conversation last week came down to three things that I took as a call to action:

1. Strive to Maintain a Positive Outlook. Know where you want to go and have faith in your vision and your capacity to make it real. Without this, you’re done before you start.

2. Strive to Be Emotionally Real. Don’t hide from what you are experiencing as you work to lead others and accomplish your objectives. Stuff happens. You are affected by it. Allow yourself to experience it and (appropriately) express yourself with the people with whom you work.

3. Strive to Continually Build Competence. Don’t become complacent. Do what you need to do in order to keep a beginner’s mind, a learner’s attitude. As we move up in organizations we are rewarded for what we know and what we deliver. The paradox is that to continue delivering success, we cannot settle into a knower and doer mentality. Once we do, we are open to both self-sabotage and being out-played by someone who is still striving to develop and grow.

The powerful part of the conversation last week for me was the reminder that these three things are vitally interconnected. Striving in just one area leaves a gap that can hold us back and keep us from the results we desire and the experience we want and need to be successful. When we strive to do all three of these things, we can thrive personally and professionally.

As we cross from January into February and are a step closer to success or failure in 2012, let’s make a commitment to do the hard work of living and leadership and strive to thrive.

Cheers,

Greg

Today in the US we fittingly remember and celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. Time and circumstance called to a generation; and, Martin Luther King, Jr. in a courageous act of leadership, answered the call. Dr. King’s work was an ongoing struggle to shine a light on injustice and challenge us to live in a way that is consistent with a value and ideal we purport to believe as a country: that all people are create equal. His struggle and the struggle of those who stood with him resulted in a new collective awareness that changed who we are as a people and as a country. The reflection to which he called us made us more authentic; we began to walk our talk as a nation.

Today, let’s reflect on how Dr. King’s life and legacy inspire us and how we are carrying his legacy forward through our own words and deeds. What might we do to keep the dream alive and expand its promise to more and more people? We began to walk our talk with Martin Luther King all those years ago; we’ve still a long way to go.

Here’s an excerpt from a paper I’ve written on Influencing with or without Authority. If you’d like a full copy, send me an email and I’ll get you one.

All leaders face three realities; first, they cannot succeed without engaging others and convincing them to devote time, energy, and resources to the leader’s objectives. Second, leaders have no direct authority over most of the people they are attempting to engage and convince to follow. And third, even those people over whom leaders do have direct authority are less tolerant of a “command and control” way of being led.

In his book “How”, Dov Seidman writes, “The days of leading countries or companies via a one-way conversation are over. The old system of ‘command and control’- using carrots and sticks – to exert power over people is fast being replaced by ‘connect and collaborate’ – to generate power through people. Now you have to have a two-way conversation with your citizens or customers or employees.” Now leadership requires a capacity to engage others and influence how they direct their time, energy, and resources.

Influence is defined as “the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself.” Influence and leadership are connected. In our conversation about leadership, we have defined it as the capacity to impact and engage others in an important work that causes forward movement with positive effect. Leaders must be able to influence the character, development, and behavior of others. People respond to and engage with what satisfies their needs. People respond to leadership. Previously, I have cited Arie de Geus, author of “The Living Company,” who says that a primary role of leadership is to create the conditions in which people will “voluntarily give their best.” Leadership gets people to voluntarily give their best. People rarely give their best in a ‘command and control’ environment. Even if this was once the case, current events suggest that that world is slipping away.

The signs of leadership are Clarity of vision, mission, purpose, plan, metrics roles, etc., a positive Atmosphere, and Talent engaged and performing at a high level. When and where these conditions exist, peoples’ needs are being met by leadership. Seidman continues, “leadership itself must shift … from coercive or motivational leadership that uses sticks or carrots to extract performance and allegiance out of people to inspirational leadership that inspires commitment and innovation and hope in people.” When we create the conditions for success (Clarity, Atmosphere, and Talent), we are inspiring commitment and innovation and hope and making it possible for people to voluntarily give their best.

It is possible to lead in this way with without “authority.” What gives a person “authority” to provide leadership, to create the conditions for success? In short, nothing. Leaders see what is missing and work to fill the need, be it for clarity, a positive atmosphere, or talent development. This type of leadership is not given; it is claimed. This type of leadership is highly influential and is not based on “authority” or position.

Our ability to influence is tied directly to our level of trustworthiness. When we are recognized as sincere, reliable, competent, and concerned for others and something bigger than ourselves, we can wield tremendous influence. Our leadership is recognized and assessed on our ability to create clarity, shape a positive atmosphere, and develop talent in order to achieve business objectives. When we are leading in this way, we can be very influential and through our leadership enable people to self-motivate and “voluntarily give their best.” The result of this type of leadership and influence is alignment, engagement, and unified action. This type of influence enables us to “’connect and collaborate’ – to generate power through people.”

Hi Blogosphere! Sorry I’ve been away so long. The second half of 2011 was quite full. I’ll do my best to post more frequently and regularly in 2012. As we are just dipping our toes into a new year, I thought it would be helpful to share a practice I undertake at this time of year at the urging of my coach. I hope you find it helpful as well.

2012 Starting Point

The time is ripe to consider what you want to make real in the new year. Next New Year’s Eve, what do you want to celebrate? For what would you be extremely grateful 12 months from now? Having some awareness of what you would celebrate and be grateful for will provide you focus to “make it real.” This exercise will help create a “Manifesto” for the new year.

To begin this process, it is appropriate to take a look back to attend and reflect upon your experience and accomplishments in the year gone by. What you learn through this process will empower you to imagine your way forward and move to have the experience and achieve the results you want in the new year.

Find a quiet, distraction-free place to reflect upon each question. Give yourself ample time to consider each question carefully. It may be helpful to write your answers in a journal or on a piece of paper.

Step One (2011):
• What were the 10 most important challenges you faced in 2011?
• What were your 10 biggest accomplishments of 2011? (Things you did well, ways you’ve developed as a leader / person, goals you achieved, etc.)
• What about your attitude and behavior were instrumental in achieving your biggest accomplishment in 2011?
• What was your biggest disappointment in 2011 and what was your role in the situation?
• What were your top 10 sources of frustration / energy drains?
• What were your top 10 sources of happiness / energy producers?
• Who were the most important people in your life in 2011 and how have you let them know of the impact they had?
• Of the top three goals you were aiming for, how satisfied are you with the results you achieved?
• Of the top three goals you were aiming for, how satisfied are you with how you achieved them?
• What is the biggest lesson you have learned in 2011?

Step Two (2012):
• What business results to you want to celebrate?
• What leadership experience do you want to celebrate?
• What career position or advancement do you want to celebrate?
• What personal finance accomplishment do you want to celebrate?
• What health and fitness accomplishment do you want to celebrate?
• What spiritual experience or commitment do you want to celebrate?
• What travel and leisure experience do you want to celebrate?
• What family experience do you want to celebrate?
• What personal relationship experience do you want to celebrate?
• What successes of others (family members or close friends) do you want to celebrate?

Step Three:
Generate a Manifesto that simply articulates what you want in 2012. This will be a regular reminder of what you want to make real in the new year. Here’s a sample Manifesto:
Manifesto Sample

31 December 2012

I am very grateful that:

• My team achieved our major objectives including revenue targets.
• I was recognized for my leadership, specifically my ability to collaborate and work across boundaries.
• I was promoted to CEO.
• Our retirement portfolio increased by 25%.
• We donated more time and resources to our favorite charity this year.
• I lost 20 pounds and kept them off.
• I completed a marathon.
• I devoted regular time to my spiritual practice.
• Our family had a marvelous holiday in Australia.
• Our family is happy and healthy.
• My partner and I have a strong relationship.
• My son got into his first choice university.

Have fun with the process. Be bold! The barriers to our success in our mind. The ability to overcome them begins with leadership. You are always at the starting point. Ready, set, GO!

Follow me at Twitter: (@greggiuliano)

Here’s to a 2012 filled with ease, simplicity, prosperity, and fun!

Cheers,
Greg

I had an interesting conversation the other day with an executive who is getting significant resistance when he presents his ideas for instituting change in his organization. Rather than focus on methods for leading change or overcoming resistance, I asked, “How do you interpret “No”? He looked at me puzzled for a minute and replied (as most of us would), “’No’ means ‘No’.”

I pressed on. “What if ‘no’ doesn’t mean ’no’?, I said. What if ‘no’ means ‘I don’t get what you’re talking about.’ or ‘What you’re proposing scares me.’ or ‘I don’t want to do that.’?”

There are three points I wanted him (and us) to reflect on. One, resistance isn’t necessarily a dead end to your idea. It simply means that you may need to rethink your strategy for securing buy-in and find another way to get it. If we stop to think about it, “no” doesn’t mean “no”; it means, “not this way.”

Two, using inquiry before advocacy is always a smart strategy for engaging others. As soon as we advocate for a position (or idea), the other person is voting – Do I agree or disagree? Using inquiry to open the conversation provides the opportunity to bring your option or idea into the conversation so that it meets with less resistance. You are inviting collaboration and that’s almost always a good idea.

Three, we can’t change others. If our tactic for securing buy-in isn’t working, complaining about it and being upset that we got shot down gets us nowhere. We need to change the only person we can – ourselves.

The final question we explored together was, “What shift to your relationship and communication strategy and/or your personal style will enable you to engage others and introduce your ideas in a way that reduces resistance and invites high acceptance and buy-in?” Some great ideas began to flow into our conversation. In the end it became clear that if my executive friend wants a different outcome, he can’t expect others to change. That’s up to him.

“Lighten up, Francis.” I love this line from Stripes (great movie, by the way). It is a constant reminder to me and to any leader that we run into trouble when we take ourselves too seriously. Most of us are not in roles where we are making life and death decisions. We are in business; we make and sell products, we sell and provide services. How is it that we become so worked up over things when something doesn’t go our way? Perhaps to be better leaders (and people), we need to “lighten up.”

I am not advocating being less than committed or serious about our work. I take my work very seriously. But, when we become overly serious about our work, we become closed down and certain, inflexible, and humorless. I know this is true for me. I think if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll acknowledge it’s true for you as well. These are not positive attributes that will serve us well as we work to drive our businesses forward and develop the capacity of the people around us to work with us in these endeavors.

As leaders, we are at our best when we are open and curious, when we approach our work with a sense of lightness. This mindset invites creativity, engagement, and collaboration. This mindset looks like flexibility, inquisitiveness, and a playful sense of humor as a way of being and leading. It allows us to become tolerant of uncertainty, which is vital for leaders; because in a world of constant change, certainty is an illusion and not our friend.

As things begin to ramp up, I challenge all of us to “lighten up.” What would it look like if we worked to drive our business forward and develop our people with a little more lightness? I think we’d be more inquisitive, more flexible, more comfortable with uncertainty, and more fun. Let’s try.

In Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future, Peter Senge and his co-authors write:

“We’ve come to believe that the core capacity needed for accessing the field of the future is presence. We first thought of presence as being fully conscious and aware in the present moment. Then we began to appreciate presence as deep listening, of being open beyond one’s preconceptions and historical ways of making sense. We came to see the importance of letting go of old identities and the need to control and, as Salk said, making choices to serve the evolution of life. Ultimately, we came to see all these aspects of presence as leading to a state of “letting come,” of consciously participating in a larger field for change. When this happens, the field shifts, and the forces shaping a situation can shift from re-creating the past to manifesting or realizing an emerging future.” (2004)

I’ve spoken before about the path of leadership. There are no simple steps or directions on how to be a great leader. Leadership is a path. The path leads us to the field. The field is the place where we are present, non-reactive, attuned, and open to both letting go and, as Senge writes, “letting come.” When we are in the field, we are not concerned with the past, nor anxious about the future. When we are in the field, we are not being driven by fear or anxiety or frustration, anger, or sadness. When we are in the field, we are not relating to the world as victim, or hero, or villain, we are conscious and we are connected.

The field is where we as leaders need to be. I think our teams and our organizations will be extremely well served by our living and leading in the field. I think it is very difficult to enter and lead in the field and very easy for us to get pulled out of the field if and when we are in it. The starting point for walking the path of leadership is cultivating consciousness and awareness. Just this can take a lifetime. Indeed, cultivating consciousness and awareness requires a daily focus and practice.

Fear is something that can keep us from walking the path of leadership and entering the field – fear of change, fear of losing what we think we have, fear of confronting and owning our own reality. The question each of us has to answer is, “Do I choose to accept responsibility for my life and live and lead in the present, in the field, accepting what comes of the choices we make, or remain stuck in the past and afraid of the future?

As summer draws to a close and we begin gearing up for the next year of racing to accomplish and accumulate, I challenge us all to strive to cultivate consciousness and awareness. Sit for a few minutes each day. Reflect on what living and leading in the field might look like, feel like. Reflect on what might shift for us, for our teams, our families if we could be in the field more. What might the next year look like if we could begin to let go of our old identities, our need to control? What might the next year look like if we began to realize an emerging future from the field of real presence, the field of conscious leadership?

As we rush from meeting to meeting, task to task, project to project, how and when do we take the time to ask ourselves if we are doing more at the expense of “being” less? John Kotter talks of this as “false urgency.” We’ve all gotten very good at false urgency. And it’s not healthy. For us. For our teams. For our organizations. For our world. And, it’s not sustainable.

At the end of “The House at Pooh Corner” by A.A. Milne, Christopher Robin is telling Pooh that he won’t be able to do nothing anymore and will Pooh think of him when he is out in the world not doing “nothing.” Pooh promises he will and Christopher Robin promises that he will be there too (in spirit). And the story ends with the message that in that enchanted place in the Forest a little boy and his bear will always be playing.

As we are out in the world not doing nothing, we need to create time for ourselves to do nothing. It is in this sacred time of doing nothing that we find refreshment, rejuvenation, reconnection with our self and our journey, our meaning and our place. From this place we can distinguish between real and false urgency. From this place we can engage others with authenticity. From this place we can lead with real power.

Remember the old western movies when the stagecoach gets shot at and the driver drops the reins and the horses begin to run wildly! The stagecoach is headed toward the cliff and all will perish! The hero jumps onto the stagecoach, jumps down into the midst of the horses and grabs the reins to regain control and slow to stagecoach. Who’s driving your stagecoach and how fast are you going?

As we journey through life we leave a legacy with every person we encounter. What legacy are you creating? Is it time to be intentional? Is it time to regroup, refocus, and re-energize? Is it time for you to be the hero and regain control of your stagecoach?

We all want to feel as if who we are and what we are doing has meaning. How can we reconnect with our truest inner voice and rediscover our capacity to make our own meaning? How can we intentionally walk a path that moves us forward on a journey of our own making? How can we distinguish between true and false urgency, engage others with authenticity, and lead with real power. I think it starts with our making the time to sit in our enchanted place with a bear and play for a while.

My wife loves running. Those who know her know this is a gross understatement. I like running. Those who know me know that this is fairly accurate. I do like running. I like being able to fit into my clothes and enjoy some good food and beverage even more. So I run.

The hardest part of running for me is the mental challenge to go a little farther or a little longer than my body wants. I’ve learned something important about this from watching my wife. She is tenacious. She will not give in or give up. As someone who likes visual cues, I had a bracelet made with the word PERSEVERANCE stamped on it to wear while I run. It reminds me of my wife. It provides me with the jolt I need to override when my body says, “That’s enough for today.” It is a great reminder of why I’m out there.

We’ve just turned the corner at the midpoint of the calendar year. The first six months have been grueling for lots of folks out there. And, we’re only half way there. There’s still work to be done, challenges to be met, risks to be averted, and opportunities to be had. We need to persevere.

Perseverance is a huge differentiator. It separates winners from losers and leaders from followers. It is about mental toughness and discipline. It enables us to keep going when we’d rather not. The moment of truth for each of us is when we’re in the middle of it and we’d rather just stop. Being able to persevere sets us up to win and to lead.

When I’m out on a trail and there’s another g@%&*#n hill, I stop for a second. I breathe. I remind myself of why I’m doing this. I think about how I’m going to get up this hill and finish my run.

As we make our way from here to December 31st, we will, at many times, need to stop, breathe, remind ourselves of our highest intent, review and revise our strategies and plans, and then keep going. We will need to persevere. The alternative is unacceptable.

In their new book, Beyond Performance: How Great Organizations Build Ultimate Competitive Advantage (Wiley, 2011), Scott Keller and Colin Price make the case that organizational health is vital for sustaining high performance. They posit that “Organizational health – the ability of your organization to align, execute, and renew itself faster than your competitors can – is just as important as focusing on the traditional drivers of business performance.”

They’ve done the research that demonstrates that healthy companies outperform unhealthy ones and that focus on performance and health increases the success of change efforts across multiple industries. I welcome their research and their results. They are demonstrating quantitatively what we’ve known qualitatively for a long while.

Focusing on driving business results is important; but it’s not enough. Smart leadership focuses on facilitating engagement as well as driving performance. This happens when leadership creates the conditions that make an organization healthy: clarity (which results in alignment), atmosphere (which enables smart and swift execution), and talent (which results in the aptitude and attitude for resiliency, adaptability).

Organizational health is always important. It is especially critical in times of organizational transformation. Keller and Price report in their research that 70% of change efforts failed due to poor organizational health, the symptoms of which include negative employee attitudes and unproductive management behavior. Those companies that focused on performance and health were “twice as successful as those focusing on health alone and nearly three times as successful as those focusing on performance alone.” (“What successful transformations share” McKinsey Global Survey, March 2010).

When we apply the CAT Scan model to assess change efforts we find that failure is due to the narrow focus of so many change efforts. Leadership tends to focus on changing structure and systems in the hopes that people will magically engage the change and perform at a high level in spite of a lack of clarity (no alignment), an insufficient atmosphere (no guidance on what/how to execute), and disengaged talent (“negative employee attitudes and unproductive management behavior”/lack of aptitude). Successful change requires us to address the needs of people, teams, and the organizational culture in addition to structural and systems and processes.

If our organizations are going to deliver value and maintain competitive advantage, leadership needs to get better at this balancing act of focusing on both driving performance and facilitating engagement (ensuring organizational health). When we accept our responsibility to create clarity, shape a positive atmosphere, and develop talent, we drive performance. We remove barriers to high engagement. Leadership that accepts this and works on getting better and better at it can only have a positive impact in both the short and long term.