opinion

How aware are Chief Executives and their teams of what’s really happening in their organisations? It’s relationships – between people, and between people and events, behaviours, beliefs, cultures and outputs – that are the key to vitality and effectiveness. Given that, how many leaders are really in touch with the health of the relationships they preside over?

In my experience of working with senior people, the same problems and the same fruitless patterns often keep recurring in a single organisation – and it doesn’t seem they can be resolved by rational analysis. Some conversations seem to go round and round repeatedly without ever getting anywhere. Interventions such as leadership development programmes frequently work for a while, but they don’t sustain their benefits.

Sometimes skilled, capable and experienced leaders don’t seem fully able to occupy their authority – and this can be puzzling, given the competence of those leaders.

Such challenges may require a Bigger Conversation – the kind of conversation that addresses not just individuals or individual issues, but which sees both the individuals and the issues as an ecosystem, where what happens in one part of the system impacts on, and is impacted by, other parts.

Looking at organisational and individual challenges through a different kind of lens – a systemic lens – can get beyond the surface and illuminate the true dynamics of what’s going on. This is the kind of lens which takes account of the complexity of interrelationships between roles and the factors that influence them. Such an approach looks at the whole – and not only the separate parts of that whole without connecting them up.

Systemic interventions – whether with groups, teams or individuals – can be designed as a result of a conversation that looks through this new and bigger lens in order to settle dynamics, release vitality, surface blockages, equip leaders and their people to address these blockages, and lead to greater, and sustained, effectiveness for their whole organisations. They can all be equipped to be more resourced, creative, and courageous.

A Bigger Conversation, with broad and deep scope, which explores what’s actually happening and which helps illuminate the influences at work, can be the start of a step change in success.

If you’re reading this and you’re up for something new, different and important, let’s talk.

Photo by Paul Robinson via Compfight

A Bigger Conversation

Relationships - between people, and between people and events, behaviours, beliefs, cultures and outputs - are the key to organisational health. Sometimes skilled, capable and experienced leaders don't seem fully able to occupy their authority, sometimes the same challenge seems to recur repeatedly. Such challenges may require a Bigger Conversation: a conversation that addresses not just individuals or individual issues, but which sees them as an ecosystem.

Influence, impact and culture change: a systemic view

When a new broom comes in to a senior role with high expectations, but is inexplicably unable to occupy their authority, the situation can benefit from a systemic constellations perspective. This means looking at what might have been ignored in the organisation’s remembering, what or who might have been excluded or unacknowledged - and especially what might not have been acknowledged about the contribution of a previous occupant of the role. Energy is then released and the leader is freed up to do what they do best.

Compassionate leadership

Compassion at work increases our willingness to trust: our brains respond more positively to bosses who have shown us empathy – and compassion increases the health and wellbeing not only of employees but also of the bottom line. When compassion is low, engagement and levels of discretionary effort are low, retention and recruitment are more difficult, stress and absenteeism are high, and success becomes more elusive.

Self-leadership

Unless we know how to lead ourselves, we can’t expect to be effective leaders of others - and self-coaching engenders a capacity for self-leadership as a pre-condition for leading others. High-quality leadership isn’t a check-list: it’s a question of how the leader brings the essence of themselves to their role, and for this, leaders need to courageously examine their own practices and thinking, and to build their self-awareness, self-understanding, and awareness of how the systems of relationships and influences around them work, and how they impact on each other.

Making an impact - through self- and system-awareness

Creating an impact that is authentic - and therefore compelling and lasting - means going beyond the tools and techniques for managing body language, creating rapport and getting 'in the zone' for a presentation. The individual needs to be at ease with themselves through a high level of self-awareness and centredness, and a comprehensive clarity about their relationship to the systems they move within.

Post-truth leadership

We are witnessing the rise of post-truth politics: a culture in which statements are framed largely by appeals to emotion, completely disconnected from the political facts, and in which factual rebuttals in discussion are ignored. Are we also seeing the rise of post-truth leadership?

Wilful blindness, belonging and exclusion

Wilful blindness - the blinding of oneself to uncomfortable facts - comes from fear of conflict and fear of change. A powerful, unconscious impulse to obey, conform, and preserve our sense of belonging, means that we favour information that makes us feel good about ourselves, and that makes us feel comfortable and more certain. However, it actually leaves us crippled, vulnerable and powerless. Without challenging our belonging, the chances of growth, progress and anchored, sustained change are diminished.

Coaching qualifications and accreditations: a new angle

Knowledge and experience alone may have little or nothing to do with what makes for an excellent coach – and yet until now many of the principles underlying coach assessment have been about competencies. Tatiana Bachkirova and Carmelina Lawton-Smith (2015), of Oxford Brookes University, argue that the complexity and unpredictability of coaching may need a new model, and they propose a capabilities approach rather than a competencies approach.

#hellomynameis: Courage, passion and pioneering

Consultant geriatrician Kate Granger, who set up, and became the force behind, the campaign #hellomynameis, has died of terminal cancer aged 34. Passionate about person-centred, compassionate care, she was a leader by virtue of her passion, commitment, courage and determination to reach as many people as she could in service of a message which she believed would create a better quality of medical professional by releasing more of their inherent humanity.

Leadership and the EU referendum

Leaders need not only to fully understand the issue they’re dealing with, especially if it challenges groupthink, but they also need to be able to communicate it in a way that is accessible and compelling to their audiences. The leader who connects with their followers will hold them in the palm of their hands. This is truly where the power is.

opinion

Recent Posts