Tag: communications

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Effective Thinking 101

If leading, first and foremost, requires clarity of thought about what’s going on and what we need to do about it, how do we make people better thinkers?  Slower in their natural inclinations toward snap judgments that may be wrong or incomplete? More aware of the evidence that underpins their conclusions? More open to soliciting essential information from others and flexible in responding to it? 

A colleague’s recent book, The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking (by Edward Burger and Michael Starbird), gave me a great idea. Subject yourself to the “How Do I Know?” test.

Simply stop when asserting a position and ask yourself the question “how do I know that?” If you can, take a few minutes to jot down your answers to questions like, What evidence am I using? What’s the source of my opinion? How long have I held this belief? Look at what you’ve written. You may be surprised to find yourself on shakier ground than you expect.

Try the “How Do I Know?” test regularly and often – make it a fun game for a few weeks to develop a new habit of the mind. Try it in the quiet of your home. While out shopping. When listening to the evening news. Use the “How do I know?” question to stimulate interesting conversation with friends or to determine subjects you want to learn more about.

Becoming a more mindful and deeper thinker is a first step in developing capacities essential for leadership success.

Want to take the exercise one step further? Try it in the midst of a disagreement with another. Take a break in the action and ask yourself, “How do I know what I’m so strongly defending?”  Get riskier: ask and answer the question publically, and ask your partner in disagreement to talk about the same.

“It’s not what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you do know that ain’t so.” Will Rogers or Mark Twain or someone else (Burger and Starbird, p.38)

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Leaders, Boost Your Creativity in 2012: Five Suggestions for the New Year

It’s resolution time. I’ve made my list and share five suggestions for yours to boost creativity in 2012.

Times are tough, and every industry is rethinking how it does business. Creativity and the capacity to think deeply and flexibly can pull an organization ahead of the crowd. How can you enhance your capacities and help your organization claim its competitive advantage?  Suggestions to boost your innovation brainpower:

1.  Read more fiction. There are plenty of benefits. Build new neuronal circuits. Deepen your knowledge of the human condition – and learn about yourself as your reflect on your responses. Improve your vocabulary, beef up those communication skills. Expand your cultural intelligence. Leadership is all about influence, communication, relationships, and seeing the simplicity on the other side of complexity. 

No time for major tomes? Try The Art of the Novella Series: short novels by some of literature’s greatest – Melville, James, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Twain, and more. The tiny classics tuck easily into a brief case, purse, or pocket – and their colorful contemporary covers are great conversation starters.

My first was a holiday gift – The Dialogue of the Dogs by Cervantes. Turns out the creator of Don Quixote also wrote the first talking-dog story. Ever wonder what your pet is really thinking, and what Fido can teach you about ethics and fairness?  I loved it: a quick read and deep ideas. I was hooked on the novella.

The Duel by Heinrich von Kleist (a 19th century German author I knew nothing about) was next. Read it, and let me know how your thinking about loyalty, everyday assumptions, and trust have changed.

I’m on The Lifted Veil by George Eliot now — her only work in the first person with eerie similarities to  Eliot’s claiming her public identity as a woman author. Next in line The Lemoine Affair by Proust — and a look at why humans are so easily conned!  Think shades of Bernie Madoff. 

2.  Discover the power and joy of quiet. We live in a world of 24/7 stimulation and news. We text, email, surf, and sit in front of screens (computer and TV) more and more (and Nicholas Carr in The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains paints a dire portrait of the neurological, intellectual, and cultural consequences). Creativity requires quiet – the time and space to think. Find ways to build that into your day. Mindfulness is not a luxury for strong leadership.

3.  Break the work addiction. All work and no play makes for dull, burned-out people – and maybe even dead ones. The Chinese pictograph for “busy” is two characters: “heart” and “killing.” Loving your work isn’t the same as being a slave to it. You’ll work better and smarter when refreshed. Play is productive.

4. Think gray. It’s simple and counter-intuitive: train yourself to not make decisions quickly. You’ll fall into your regular thinking patterns easily: you need to push yourself to think slowly and carefully about what you’re not thinking about. That’s where you’ll navigate through the shades of gray to identify the best course of action. It’s hard to think gray: humans love binary, right-wrong, yes-no, black-white thinking. The concept comes from Steven Sample (the highly successful president emeritus of the University of Southern California) and is developed in his chapter in Business Leadership.

5. Embrace the novice role. Experience the world with new eyes. It’s good for mind and soul. A good way is to try something you’ve never done but have always wanted to or that you know you don’t do well. The process of learning slows life down, encourages mindfulness, and fine-tunes your skills as a reflective practitioner – a definite leadership plus. You might discover a new talent or passion in the process. 

Onward to a creative 2012 for us all! 

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Naming the Elephant in the Room: Discussing the Undiscussable

Sometimes, a group will get stuck until someone is willing to name the “elephant in the room:” the uncomfortable topic that everyone is aware of but no one wants to talk about.

That topic can be about content or about how the group is working (or not working) together. Fear of conflict or unpleasant interactions often leads us to avoid sensitive topics or to beat around the bush so much that no one gets our message. Some of the most powerful contributions to teamwork involve the willingness to express uncomfortable truths.

You enhance your abilities to discuss the undiscussable when you:

Attend to process and content. You won’t recognize that the group is stuck unless you keep an eye on how the group is going about its work and on its progress.

Use yourself as a barometer. Use those knotty feelings in the pit of your stomach as a red flag that something’s off. Step back and ask yourself why the feeling?

Build in periodic reflections. Leadership guru Ronald Heifetz calls this “getting to the balcony:” stepping out of the fray on the dance floor and giving yourself a different perspective on the action. You’ll give yourself a better chance of seeing the big picture.

Search carefully for the elephant. This requires three things: (1) determining the obvious truth being ignored or unaddressed, (2) figuring out how to present the information so that others can hear and test your observation, and (3) determining when naming the issue will be most helpful to the group’s progress. [Review the last post on skilled candor: those skills can help here.] 

Avoid the sledgehammer. It can be easier naming the elephant with a less direct route. Humor, a well-formed question, or using yourself – expressing your uncertainty or lack of clarity as a way of engaging others in an exploration they might be hesitant to initiate — can accomplish the task with grace.

Frame the elephant in a larger story. Explain not only what you see but why discussing it can help the group make progress. You may see this more clearly than others.

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Strong Advocacy: Perfecting Your Skilled Candor

If asked, most of us would say that it’s good to speak up, tell the truth, and say what we mean. Yet we often fall well short of candor for two main reasons: fear and lack of skill. We’re afraid we’ll hurt ourselves or someone else. Do we tell the boss something he doesn’t want to hear? Do we tell our colleagues something that will upset or anger them? Should we admit we’ve made a mistake? Even if willing to speak up, if our attempts at candor are awkward, confusing or inflammatory, no one is helped.

A key element of skilled candor is describing your reality, not “the reality.” Speaking up openly and honestly isn’t the same as venting, shooting from the hip, bluster, argumentativeness, or attack – all of which prime others to resist rather than understand your message. It helps to remember the distinction between your truth and the Truth. When you say, for example, “This is how I see it,” you’re describing your reality. When you say, “This is how it is,” you claim to know not just your perception, but the Truth. No one knows your reality better than you, but anyone can claim to know the Truth at least as well or better than you do.

To describe your reality you need to know it and accept it as your unique take on the situation. A first step is reflection – looking within and asking yourself what you are thinking and feeling and why.

If, for example, you’re in a meeting and find yourself thinking, “This is all stupid. We’re going nowhere.” you could say that, but you’d be making a claim about the Truth that has little chance of being a productive contribution and may be very different from what others are experiencing. A brief reflection on what’s happening for you might reveal that you’re feeling confused and have lost track of what the conversation is about. That lets you say something like, “I don’t know how anyone else is feeling, but I’m lost. I don’t know where we’re going. Is it clearer for you than for me?” That statement shares your reality while giving others permission to see it differently. And it ends with a question asking others to take stock on how things are going.

You can strengthen your capacities for skilled candor when you:

Know yourself. Regular practices like journaling, meditation, or activities that encourage mindfulness build your capacities for self-reflection. Mindfulness is an important leadership skill, essential for monitoring your ongoing assessment of process – how you think things are going in your interactions with others – as well as content – the progress you believe you and others are making on the substance of the task at hand.   

Slow down your reactions. Recognize that they are just that – your reactions.

Cool your inner critic. Resist jumping to fast conclusions and ask yourself why when you do.

Use “I” statements, if necessary, to develop the right habits of the mind. It may feel awkward at first, but it’ll keep you honest and focused on what’s happening for you.

Leadership is all about effective relationships and strong communications. So remember, the goal in all this is to find ways to engage others in honest conversations that enable you and others to learn — about what’s happening for individuals, about what’s happening in the exchange, and about how to work more  effectively together. 

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Long Marriages and Good Leadership: A Toast to Respect, Openness, and a Good Sense of Humor

Today’s my 30th wedding anniversary, and it feels appropriate to toast the day by musing about the similarities between a good marriage and good leadership.

Learning about both has been a work in progress for me; and the wisdom in a short article on wedding toasts in a local magazine, The Hills, caught my eye as relevant to the task.

So with a tip of the hat to its author, clinical psychologist Michael Seabaugh – and apologies if my applications, interpretations, and edits push beyond his intent – I share a few of his toasts.

They’re intended to keep a marriage on track, but they’ll also work to sustain the strong interpersonal bonds at the heart of good leadership. Leadership is, after all, the product of a relationship between leader and follower that is based on shared commitment, mutual respect, openness to learning, and passion for a common goal.  Sounds a lot like a good marriage to me!

May you find delight and growth in constant conversation. We learn about others when we talk openly and regularly with them – and about how they are growing and changing.  It’s especially important to continue the dialogue when we’re hurt, angry, busy, or sure we know it all – the very times we are most apt to pull back.

May you always know the supreme value of paying attention and paying respect. All relationships require tending. We respect others when we give them our time.

May you always listen. Making assumptions about others is human nature, but any couples counselor knows it is also one of the biggest spoilers of a good marriage. Seabaugh has a favorite quote from George Bernard Shaw on this: “Do NOT do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.”

May you always remember that your individual problems will always be your collective problem. This is a basic truth in teamwork and a tenet in systems theory. Heed the advice to refrain from telling your partner “That’s your problem.”

May you never forget that curiosity is always better than defensiveness. Ask for an explanation and listen. You may learn something important about the situation, your partner, and yourself. Let me tell you, it’s not easy but it’s a skill worth developing.

May you always have the good sense to find interesting what your partner finds interesting. An open mind and a willingness to experiment have the added benefit of expanding your world.

May you always remember the value of laughing at each other’s jokes, of maintaining a sense of humor about your own and your mate’s foibles, and of finding shared laughter in your observations of the world. Wear life loosely and cultivate a strong sense of humor. Both will serve you well in love and in work.

Happy anniversary, Lee!