Tag: Joan Gallos

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How Great Leaders Think: Gray and Free

It’s not that I’m so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.[i]

― Albert Einstein

One of the most useful and innovative leadership skills I know is the ability to think gray and free. The idea comes from the late Steven Sample, engineer, professor, and successful, long-term president at the University of Southern California who transformed the institution during his nineteen years in office.

I love the process of thinking gray and free – it’s not easy but it works, is supported by neuroscience, can be taught, and stretches everyone’s creative potential. And it’s fun! Can’t get much better than that!

The rationale for learning to think gray and free goes something like this:

Problems are problems because what has usually worked in other situations does not work with what you now face. Those are the times you need to harness your creative best for breakthroughs in your thinking so you can identify fresh options. You need ways to break out of your cognitive ruts, but human nature doesn’t make that easy!

Under stress and in the face of major challenges, it is easy and almost automatic to rush to judgment in dealing with new information or situations by labeling them good or bad, right or wrong, true or false. We want fast and decisive action to relieve our stress. But snap judgments in difficult times can put you on a dead-end road. Thinking that you are right, you keep doing what you’ve always done: the problem continues, frustration mounts, stress levels rise, and you double down on what you’ve always done. You can see where all that will land you!

Not anymore! Here’s where thinking gray and free[ii] comes into the picture.

When asked, leaders and managers often say that they try to “consider all the options” before reaching a difficult decision. Steven Sample disagrees. They may consider all their options, but do so within the constraints of their current thinking patterns and approaches. Learning to think gray and free is “an unnatural act” that forces you to remain unresolved and open to fresh solutions beyond your comfort as a way to tap into unused cognitive pathways. That’s what can lead to your greatest insights, free you from the bounds of convention, and allow your natural creativity and intellectual independence to shine. As you move beyond the temptation to plow ahead and fix things quickly, you will also see more clearly what matters – and doesn’t.

Sample’s favorite way to stimulate that kind of thinking is to contemplate problems from absolutely outrageous positions and in impossible ways. Literally!  The process of arriving at his highly successful patent design for a dishwasher control reads like something from a Charlie Chapin movie: Sample crawled on the ground to contemplate the controls from different angles and forced himself to imagine the dishwasher was being controlled by a French horn, sofa, ladybug, electrons, hay bale, and more. This thinking was so difficult that he could only sustain it for about ten minutes at a time. But after a few of these thinking sessions, he suddenly could see in his mind’s eye the complete circuit design – and a way to do it he had never contemplated before.

Innovative ideas come when you challenge your assumptions and allow yourself to revel in blue-sky moments when anything is possible.

Steven Sample used various techniques to stretch his capacities to think gray and free. Two favorites are described below[iii]. Try one!

Resist the temptation for binary thinking: Force yourself to read an article, listen to a news report, or engage in a conversation with another and suspend all judgments: don’t believe or disbelieve, or classify anything as right or wrong. Listen and keep telling yourself, “that’s really interesting.” If you find you can’t, then write down your first impression about the matter, and force yourself to not think about it until a later time (or ever again). Training your mind to “bend over backwards by thinking gray with respect to a few everyday matters” is an excellent way to overcome your natural inclinations to speed judge and to think right-wrong/yes-no.

Contemplate the outrageous together: Bring a group of people together who have widely varying perspectives and a common goal. Ask each individual to propose an “off-the-wall idea” for achieving the goal, with the proviso that every other person in the group must respond with at least two reasons why the idea will work. There is benefit in forcing yourself to learn to think positively and deeply about an idea you’d rather quickly reject.

Great leaders think is broad, deep, and creative ways.  How can you expand your capacities to do the same?  

[i] http://amorebeautifulquestion.com/einstein-questioning/#jp-carousel-4256

[ii] Steven B. Sample (2008). “Thinking Gray and Free.” In Gallos, J. V. (Ed.) Business Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

[iii] The ideas in this blog are adapted from the skills tutorial appearing in Part II of Lee G. Bolman and Joan V. Gallos (2016). Engagement: Transforming Difficult Relationships at Work. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

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Inquiry: The Art and Benefits of Asking Good Questions

Always the beautiful answer/Who asks a more beautiful question.[i]

― e. e. cummings

Inquiry is a vastly under-appreciated skill, yet foundational for learning, problem solving, and relationship building. Good questions change lives and the course of history, and the resolution of big thorny problems requires them. Few are taught in their professional training to ask good questions. Journalists may be the rare exception.[ii]

Inquiry seeks to discover or learn what others think, know, want, or feel.

How can you foster better exchanges and relationships with important people in your life using inquiry? Fine-tune your inquiry skills to strengthen your capacity to lead?

The basic inquiry skill is knowing how to ask good questions. Good questions typically begin with words like how, why, or what. They go beyond requests for a yes or a no response. Instead they encourage people to think and talk: to provide information, describe and unpack their thinking, explore ideas, share their perspective, or consider new possibilities.

Good inquiry is necessary for testing ideas, seeking feedback, learning from others, and accurate situational diagnoses.

Tightly connected to good inquiry is active and attentive listening. The benefits of inquiry are lost if others see it as manipulative technique and not a route to your deeper understanding.

Edgar Schein introduces the concept of “humble inquiry,”[iii] defined as the fine art of asking others questions based on your curiosity and sincere interest in them. The purpose is to draw others out and into a closer and more trusting relationship. Schein sees humble inquiry as an investment of your time and attention to build foundations for effective teamwork – at work or home.

Inquiry is a habit of the mind that does not come easy to many, especially in a “tell” world that values experts who “already know.” Business organizations and “let’s get on with it” cultures often view questions as “inefficient” and the antithesis of action, task completion, and forward momentum, according to Clayton Christensen,[iv] an advocate of good questions as a way to foster disruptive innovation.

The culture of the charismatic extrovert – someone who speaks out and speaks up with clarity and drive – still dominates everyday beliefs about effective leadership; and more than a century after Dale Carnegie launched his first public speaking course at a New York City YMCA, his best-selling book How to Win Friends and Influence People is still a staple on airport bookshelves and business best-seller lists[v].

So how can you enhance your inquiry skills?

There are two places to start: (1) increase your use of questions, and (2) ask better questions. Where do you stand on each?

In our book, Engagement: Transforming Difficult Relationships at Work, Lee Bolman and I provide a tutorial on inquiry. You may want to try these recommendations from it:

Compare your advocacy and inquiry counts: Over the course of the next week, be mindful in your conversations with others about the balance between your advocacy (telling people something) and your inquiry (asking them a real question). Take time after a number of selected conversations to think about: How many questions did you ask the other vs. how many statements did you make? How often were questions real requests for information vs. rhetorical devices and advocacy in disguise? Tracking your ratio of advocacy and inquiry allows you to work on changing the balance.

Descriptive questions: Take as a goal for a day or a time period to avoid asking questions that evoke a yes or no answer. Substitute instead questions that begin with how, why, or what. How easy is that for you? How does that change the tenor of your conversations? Why do you think that is? What have you learned about others as a result?

Successful leadership is steeped in the search for information and learning – about others, the situation, and the best steps forward. How can improving your inquiry improve the impact of your efforts?

[i] e. e. cummings. Introduction to New Poems. Accessed December 12, 2015 at http://poems.writers-network.com/pdf/article-662.pdf

[ii] Warren Berger (2014). A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas. New York: Bloomsbury.

[iii] Edgar Schein (2013). Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

[iv] Clayton M. Christensen (2011). The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business. New York: Harper Business.

[v] Susan Cain (2013). Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking. New York: Broadway Books.

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Feed the Soul with Small Surprises: Sunrise on Corey Hill

I woke earlier than I wanted, and rolled over hoping for another few hours of sleep. It wasn’t going to happen, and I began to think about a thorny project that needed something new for forward movement. I got out of bed feeling tired, stuck, and annoyed.

I went to sleep the night before thinking about the issue, and asked my unconscious to work on fresh insights while I slept. That often works. Not today – and recognition of it was probably what woke me so completely in the early morning dark. I headed downstairs – and with an attitude – to feed the dog.

Instead, at the base of the stairs I impulsively grabbed boots, a coat long enough to cover my pajamas, and car keys. I leashed up the now-confused and still-sleepy old dog and headed to Corey Hill – the highest spot in the neighborhood – to watch the sun rise.

I expected solitude and a beautiful place to feel sorry for my tired and not-currently creative self. And then the surprises began.

I arrived at the small, hillside park in the urban core to find more than fifty runners in brightly-colored gear, depositing backpacks on the summit (probably containing dress clothes for subsequent jogs to work or school) and warmly greeting each other on a frigid winter morning. A few brought dogs and were letting them socialize in the off-leash park at the base of the hill. People were talking, laughing, digging out warmer hats or gloves for themselves or others, and stretching together. All-in-all it was a marvelous pre-dawn party.

As the sky turned a pinkish grey, the runners self-organized and small groups began to run together down the east side of the hill into the intensifying sunrise.

I walked to the center of the park and enjoyed the runners taking off into the emerging morning colors, the crescent moon still bright in the clear dawn sky, the gorgeous sun rising behind the tall Boston buildings in the distance, and the widening glow of pink that grew out of the sun sphere and surprisingly spread out and across the entire horizon surrounding me as if in a 360 degree hot pink embrace.

It was a big, spectacular sunrise. And it was made even more beautiful by happenings on the ground and reminders that we are never alone even in our darkest hours.

The world may seem cold, but it is always filled with warm communities of shared interest, the energy of accomplishment, new hills to navigate, the vitality of youth – many were runners in their 20’s and 30’s, love and friendship, and the ability of the human spirit to conquer the cold and dark with a smile, a buddy, and a stride forward. We just have to find what we need – and if we let ourselves, we may even find it by happenstance.

I found unexpected beauty on Corey Hill – but I was cold. I forgot gloves. So, I drove slowly down the hill, as the runners were heading back up, and stopped at a coffee shop. Alone in the shop with the barista, we talked. He told me about walking to work in the dark and how bright the stars and moon were – the clear skies probably why it was so darn cold. He had just moved into the neighborhood, as have I, from my former neighborhood – and we spoke about that. I told him about Corey Park, and he responded: “Oh, I’m stuck here in the mornings. Tell me all about the sunrise there.” And over my cappuccino with cinnamon and ricotta cheese cake, I passed along descriptions of the sunrise, the runners and dogs, and small surprises – and we were both fueled in new ways to better embrace our days.

Leadership is demanding business, and successful leaders have strategies to sustain vitality and resolve. They feed body and soul.

In a book that I co-authored[i], we propose strategies to nourish and strengthen leaders. One set of recommendations is to give deliberate attention to five key areas – we call them the 5 B’s:

1. Managing boundaries between self and others, between your life and your work

2. Attending to your body in ways that maintain basic good health

3. Bringing balance among work, friends and family, and leisure

4. Finding activities that feed the soul, like the beauty and recuperative power of the arts and nature

5. Increasing the odds that you’ll bounce back from stress and challenge through resilience training.

How can you bring more of the 5 B’s into your life? What greatness could you accomplish with a little extra clarity, strength, vigor, and bounce?

[i] Lee G. Bolman and Joan V. Gallos (2011). Reframing Academic Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Wiley, Chapters 8-13.

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One Billion Women

For those who don’t follow my tweets ( http://twitter.com/#!/JoanGallos ), this is exciting enough for a full write-up so please read on. [Check me out on Twitter if you want links to the articles reporting the story.]

The world of business and commerce has finally learned what women and micro-finance enterprises (like my personal favorite, the U.S.-based microloan agency called FINCA) have long known: invest in women. Women are reliable (and they repay their loans). They share the fruits of their economic success with their families and communities. Their success drives down illiteracy and mortality rates and supports the education of their children. And, as folks at the Economic Summit in Davos this month reminded us, their nation’s GDP goes up when women’s economic well-being does. Economies that engage women develop more quickly and out-perform those that don’t.

Investing in women is a win-win-win – and these understandings is moving into the boardroom in big ways for what Newsweek recently called “a corporate revolution.”  And I quote:

“Now a corporate revolution is at hand, one that is moving beyond philanthropy, making women partners in business at all levels. . . . On Feb. 1, some of the most powerful companies in the United States (Accenture, Coca-Cola, Ernst and Young, Goldman Sachs, and others) are signing on to a worldwide campaign to bring women into the economic mainstream. The Third Billion Campaign is being launched by La Pietra Coalition – an alliance including corporations, governments, and nonprofits – to enable 1 billion women to become members of the global economy by 2025. The campaign title comes from the notion that over the next decade, the impact of women will be at least as significant as that of China’s and India’s respective 1-billion-plus populations.” (Newsweek, February 6, 2012, p. 12)

Some companies are ahead-of-the-curve on all this. Unilever has had a bottom-of-the-pyramid strategy for years that includes women. It has, for example, invested in 45,000 poor Indian women in 100,000 villages with micro-financing and training supports. In fact, 5% of its current profits in India flow from these efforts. Or Avon has 6 million women in 100 countries running their own small business – the life blood of the corporation. Companies like this demonstrate that bringing women into the economy translates into all the benefits to the women and their communities and families mentioned above – but also increased profits, new markets, better product education for new consumers, and product improvements for the company. It’s smart business to support women entrepreneurs at the grassroots level. Others have now pledged to take up the charge. 

And the Three Billion Campaign doesn’t stop with poor women in developing nations. Data is there to suggest it’s time for companies to address the lack of women in senior leadership and on boards. A recent survey by the New York-based think tank on women and careers Catalyst, for example, found a significant and strong correlation between gender diversity in a company’s leadership ranks and that company’s bottom-line. More women, better results. 

Reading this brought great pleasure. It also took me back to a recent experience, serving on a women in leadership panel with Gloria Steinem. In preparation, I went back and reread some of Steinem’s earlier works (which were so revolutionary at their publication almost half a century ago). I thought about a world where simple consciousness raising seemed shocking to one where some of the largest and most powerful corporations and agencies are pledging significant support — $20 billion, for example, by Walmart – so that 1 billion women will reach their economic potential.  

We have come a long way – and by 2025, will be a giant step closer to a fair and equitable world for men and for women.  Nice!  Very nice!    

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Depression and Executive Overload: We’re In Over Our Heads So We Better Learn to Cope Better

Andrew Weil has been making the media rounds with his new best seller, Spontaneous Happiness. His exploration of depression as a rising global phenomenon caught my attention.

Weil, an M.D. with an interest in wellness, points to the growing body of research on links between rising global wealth – and the adoption of the modern Western lifestyle (sedentary, solitary, stimulus-overloaded, indoors, technology-filled) and diet (processed and engineered) that goes with it – and higher global rates of depression.

I look at Leslie Chang’s award-winning Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China and see a case study of what he means (and one way to understand China’s distinction in having the highest female suicide rate in the world).

Closer to home, 1 in 10 people in the U.S. today are on depression medication. This includes millions of children. The World Health Organization projects by 2030, more people world-wide will be treated for depression than any other health condition.

Plain and simple, countries with the least developed lifestyles have the lowest rates of depression. “There seems to be something about modern life that creates fertile soil for depression,” says Martin Seligman, father of the field of positive psychology (and author of Flourish, discussed in an earlier post).[1]

Concludes Weil: our “ancient brains” just aren’t equipped for 21st century life (and we’d better start doing something to keep them and the bodies that fuel them in good working order).  Amen. 

So are you going to do anything different in your life for knowing this?  I ask because Weil’s message isn’t really new.

Fourteen years ago, Harvard psychologist Robert Kegan warned us[2] that modern living is just too darn hard – that over an increasing portion of our lives, there’s a mismatch between the complexity of what we need to know and understand to function productively and the human capacity to grasp it all. The result: increasing stress and a struggle to develop more sophisticated ways of thinking and learning to respond.  The flattening of the world has only magnified that.

Seven years later, psychiatrist Edward M. Hallowell offered a different slant in Harvard Business Review in “Overloaded Circuits: Why Smart People Underperform” – an article that remains one of the most read HBR reprints today. Hallowell spoke of an increasing number of patients reporting symptoms similar to those of attention deficit disorder without having that disorder. Their symptoms were merely the brain’s natural response to stress, stimulus, and overload: impatience, as well as diminished capacities for problem-solving, resilience, focus, memory, and creativity. Talented executives became “frenzied underachievers.” 

We can all do better than that – and have to, given today’s fast-paced world. Suggestions for how from my most recent book, Reframing Academic Leadership.[3]

Learning to Cope in a World on Over-drive

Healthy leaders care for themselves and build vitality by attending to five key areas: boundaries, biology, balance, beauty, and bounce.

Boundaries: Got to have ’em, got to maintain ’em. Human are programmed to take in the emotions of others. That’s why we feel better around positive, high energy people. Negative emotions hamper brain functioning. Don’t dwell on them. Hallowell suggests interacting with folks you like every 4 to 6 hours, especially during stressful periods, to promote positive feelings. 

Biology: Take better care of your body, and it will take better care of your brain. Increase aerobic exercise, eat better (more fruits, vegetables, lean proteins; less sugar, white flour, processed foods), stay hydrated, limit caffeine and alcohol, improve sleep patterns. The evidence for these is overwhelming, and neuroscience confirms that healthy brains develop new circuitry to compensate for the normal loss with aging.

Balance:  Balance flows from willingness to attend to the diverse needs of mind, body, and soul. Try mindfulness to train the brain to focus amid distraction. Stress is eased with learned relaxation. Negativity is countered by conscious focus on positive sentiments (empowerment, love, care, appreciation, forgiveness, compassion). Deal with fears of overload by remembering you can handle it – and you will. Weil suggests cultivating times of silence and limiting email, television, disturbing noise, and internet use.

Beauty: Find it for yourself: it feeds the soul. Nature and the arts are obvious choices. “Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable,” said playwright George Bernard Shaw. Weil touts the added physical benefits of time spent outside, including Vitamin D (which is vital for brain health).

Bounce: Resilience comes from recognizing that we always have choice in interpreting and responding to events, keeping things in perspective, trusting one’s instincts, practicing new behaviors and responses, and reflecting on the consequences. It is helped by learning to “wear life loosely” and by reaching out to others for social connections. Weil reminds us that social interactions are a powerful safeguard of emotional well-being. 

[1] Andrew Weil (2011). “Don’t Let Chaos Get You Down.” Newsweek. Double Issue (November 7 and 14), pp. 9-10.

[2] Robert Kegan (1994). In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[3] Based on materials in Lee G. Bolman and Joan V. Gallos (2011). Reframing Academic Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Chapter 12.

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What if everyone in town wanted to be a school teacher?

I live in a city whose urban school system has been in chaos since the 1970’s. On January 1, the district  loses its state accreditation to no one’s surprise. The State Commissioner of Education has now asked the Kansas City Missouri School Board to resign rather than risk being removed. It’s a mess – and has been for some 40 years (and despite the best efforts of some very good people).

It’s easy to point fingers – at the Board, parents, taxpayers, the superintendent who jumped ship after a slim few years in the job (or many of his predecessors who did the same), teachers, the teachers union, teacher preparation programs, families who fled the district, and more. It’s hard to find a way out.

An interview with Finland’s Minister of Education, Henna Virkkunen, got me thinking. How could we create a city/regional/national culture that really values its schools?

We espouse public education as the foundation for an educated citizenry and strong democracy. How could we really live that?

As our public school system sinks deeper into the morass – along with those of many other urban centers — my city is launching a campaign to become the entrepreneurship capital of the nation. I can’t help but wonder, what if we decided to become the public education capital instead? 

What if everyone in town – especially the best and the brightest – wanted to teach in our public schools rather than start their own business?  Devoted themselves to study and preparation so as to obtain the coveted career prize of a teaching job?  What would a community do to promote teaching and learning at that high level?  What would have to change? Any suggestions?

Some excerpts below from the interview with Henna Virkkunen (conducted by Justin Snider, contributing editor of The Hechinger Report) to see where a different scenario for Kansas City – for your city, for our country — might take us.

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It’s well-known that Finland’s teachers are an elite bunch, with only top students offered the chance to become teachers. It’s also no secret that they are well-trained. But take us inside that training for a moment — what does it look like, specifically? How does teacher training in Finland differ from teacher training in other countries?

Virkkunen: It’s a difficult question. Our teachers are really good. One of the main reasons they are so good is because the teaching profession is one of the most famous careers in Finland, so young people want to become teachers.

In Finland, we think that teachers are key for the future and it’s a very important profession — and that’s why all of the young, talented people want to become teachers. All of the teacher-training is run by universities in Finland and all students do a five-year master’s degree. Because they are studying at the university, teacher education is research-based. Students have a lot of supervised teacher-training during their studies. We have something called "training schools" — normally next to universities — where the student teaches and gets feedback from a trained supervisor.

Teachers in Finland can choose their own teaching methods and materials. They are experts of their own work and they test their own pupils. I think this is also one of the reasons why teaching is such an attractive profession in Finland because teachers are working like academic experts with their own pupils in schools.

How are teachers evaluated in Finland? How are they held accountable for student learning?

Virkkunen: Our educational society is based on trust and cooperation, so when we are doing some testing and evaluations, we don’t use it for controlling [teachers] but for development. We trust the teachers. It’s true that we are all human beings, and of course there are differences in how teachers test pupils, but if we look at the OECD evaluation — PISA, for example — the learning differences among Finnish schools and pupils are the smallest in OECD countries, so it seems that we have a very equal system of good quality.

What do you think the U.S. can and should learn from Finland when it comes to public education?

Virkkunen: An educational system has to serve the local community, and it’s very much tied to a country’s own history and society, so we can’t take one system from another country and put it somewhere else. But I think that teachers are really the key for a better educational system. It’s really important to pay attention to teacher training, in-service training and working conditions. Of course, the teachers always say we also have to pay attention to their salaries. But in Finland, it seems that the salaries are not the main reason it’s an attractive profession. Teachers aren’t very badly paid. They earn the average if you look at other academic professions.

In the U.S., it’s estimated that 50 percent of new teachers quit within five years. I suspect it’s different in Finland. Is teaching seen as a lifelong career in Finland?

Virkkunen: Teaching is a lifelong career in Finland, but right now we are doing an evaluation of why some teachers leave their jobs. The rate isn’t very high. It’s often men who leave, as they find jobs with higher salaries. We have to develop some kind of mentoring system because the new, young teachers need support. Often the feedback I hear from young teachers is that it is not easy to cooperate with parents, for example, so that is one of the areas where young teachers need support from their colleagues.

What’s something important but not widely known or well understood about public education in Finland?

Virkkunen: We teach all pupils in the same classrooms. We don’t have really good, top schools and very poor, bad schools. We are quite good at giving special support to students with learning difficulties. About 25 percent of our pupils receive some kind of special support, but in regular classrooms — often the teacher has an assistant in the classroom. We also think it is very important that there aren’t too many pupils per teacher. We don’t have legislation limiting class size, but the average class size for all grades is 21. In first and second grade, it’s 19.

We think we can have equality and good quality at the same time — that they are not opposites.

Our students spend less time in class than students in other OECD countries. We don’t think it helps students learn if they spend seven hours per day at school because they also need time for hobbies and of course they also have homework.

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For Shame, Forbes: Tarnishing a Gem in the Crown of Social Progress and Gender Equity

As I write, 104,778 people have viewed the Forbes article on the “10 Worst Stereotypes about Powerful Women.”

I’m curious. What did people learn from reading this? And what will they do with this information so that we never have to see another article about this topic again?

If you have been reading my blog this week, you know about mounting evidence of the links among gender, career success, and professional confidence. A quick summary for new readers: you need confidence to succeed!

I fear women will read this article and – tacitly or explicitly – find reasons to doubt that they have the right stuff for leadership and lose more of the confidence they need to craft careers of success and significance. Who wouldn’t if you thought that half the folks around you (and most of the folks in power above you) were still projecting all this old negativity on you?

Men who read the piece can have seeds of doubt planted – or reinforced – about their female co-workers.

In a week when men and women should celebrate another symbolic gem in the crown of social progress and gender equity as IBM appoints its first woman as CEO – Virginia Rometty joins the growing ranks of mega-corporation leaders that now include Ellen Kullman at DuPont, Meg Whitman at Hewlett-Packard, Ursula Burns at Xerox, Indra Nooyi at PepsiCo – 104,778 (and counting) people are having a refresher course on how to dismiss half the world’s population – and hold back progress on a host of fronts for us all.

All the traditional stereotypes are on the Forbes list – and Forbes Online kindly provides a slide show for those who don’t want to read the full article. The slides are a mix of actresses in their portrayal of fictional characters from movies and TV (e.g., Meryl Streep as the “frigid magazine editor” in The Devil Wears Prada and Glenn Close as the “back-stabbing boss” in Damages) with real women who are doing really important work. Each picture represents one of the negative gender stereotypes. Here’s where my blood began to boil.

It includes an unattractive photo of our successful, current Secretary of State (emotional), as well as associations of negativity with the photo of our First Lady (angry), the Head of the International Monetary Fund (masculine), our former Secretary of State (token), the President of Costa Rican (weak), a former Vice Presidential candidate (cheerleader), and the list goes on.

If I thought people were reading this article and standing in outrage that these associations were still happening in the year 2011, I’d feel better. But why do I fear snickers as the pictures of Hillary Clinton and others are passed around the water cooler instead?  And I am not going to even touch the racial issues in all this.

Enough Forbes! Enough media!  Seriously. We need stories that build the confidence and capacities of men and women so that they can bring their full talents to the range of contributions needed to succeed – and for our economy to rebound – in a fast-paced, global world.

Planting seeds of doubt reinforces the very thing this article hoped to counter! 

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Managing the Occupational Hazard of Leadership

Leadership is emotional work. “There’s no leading without bleeding,” Jerome Murphy, professor and former Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, writes in the most recent Phi Delta Kappan.[1] “No matter what we call it — stress, agitation, loss, frustration, fear, exhaustion, shame, confusion, sadness, loneliness, hurt — there’s not an executive alive who can lead without experiencing emotional discomfort.” Anyone who has led – from the head or the foot of the table – knows exactly what Murphy means.

Leaders can’t escape this occupational hazard; however, they can be their own worst enemy in responding to it – turning inevitable job discomforts into personal anguish and self-doubt that erode focus and energy.

“In the privacy of our minds, we can make things worse by fighting our discomfort, getting hooked on our troubling thoughts, and scolding ourselves for falling short. As a consequence, we can sidetrack our work and lose sight of what really matters to us.”

The stage is set for unproductive denial (and an investment of psychic energy pretending we’re not uncomfortable) or negative self-talk (and worries about whether our discomfort is a sign that we’re a flop or, worse yet, no leader at all). “In the grip of mind chatter that sounds like a Greek chorus of naysayers, it’s not unusual to rehash the past, fret about the future, and hang ourselves out to dry,” concludes Murphy.

There are more productive ways to respond, and Murphy draws from psychology and Eastern thinking to suggest six.

1.  accept the emotional discomforts at the core of leading: “In doing so, we can hold them more lightly, believe them less resolutely, and take them less personally.”

2. acknowledge distress without clinging to it: “We can have our thoughts rather than be had by them.”

3. focus on changing behaviors, not feelings: “We can accept what we’re experiencing at the moment while still working to make things better.”

4. treat self with compassion, kindness, and care. “Both intuitively and through scientific research, we know that self-compassion is central to well-being.”

5. accept human imperfection: “Self-criticism is often accompanied by an irrational but pervasive sense of isolation — as if ‘I’ were the only person suffering or making mistakes.”

6. keep faith in core values: They remind us what’s at stake and put the inevitable discomforts in leading from and toward them in perspective.

Mindfulness training can help cultivate these habits of the mind. The leadership payback is clear: increased capacities for situational diagnosis, task focus, calm value-centered action, and resilience.

Our internal dramas may still be intense, warns Murphy, but we’ll witness them from a safe, nonjudgmental place where we can respond wisely.

[1] Jerome. T. Murphy. Dancing in the rain: Tips on thriving as a leader in tough times. Phi Delta Kappan (September 2011), 93 (1): 36-41.

Categories
General

Positive Employment News: Hiring is Up

The ManpowerGroup recently released a report[1] on global employment trends. Their data reflect interviews with 65,500 employers across 12 industries in 41 of the world’s largest labor markets and measure employer hiring expectations for October through December 2011. The news is good – a ray of hope for us all in these tough economic times.

The report highlights include:

 

36 of 41 of the countries surveyed expect to add to their workforces over the next 3 months. The quality of life and political implications of employment increases are huge.

There are positive domestic prospects, as well. The U.S. compared favorably with dynamic markets like Brazil & Taiwan, and all three expect a net positive employment outlook of +5%.

In the Midwest, 17% of employers plan to increase staff levels, and more than 71% expect to maintain current levels.

Industries, such as Wholesale & Retail Trade and Manufacturing of Durable Goods, project net increases of 17% and 16% respectively.

 

Manpower’s report concludes with a reminder that employers continue to maintain tight control on staffing levels. This means ongoing pressures for employees across sectors to perform at greater levels with fewer resources.

The Leadership Professor suggests that we all take a deep breath, celebrate our contributions and hard work, and remember that strengthening and elevating our skills keep us competitive in tough times.  A review of the blog archives, anyone?

[1] Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, Quarter 4, 2011.

Categories
General

Day 4: Ascending to Global Citizenship

This is the day that gives me some breathing space: a chance for a quiet afternoon in Shanghai – is that an oxymoron? – with our Executive Coach (who is travelling with us), maybe even a massage and a calorie splurge with dinner at M on the Bund. This, however, is the most stressful day for the EMBAs. Send them your love! 

We start as usual with class time and two fabulous instructors.

Bill Dodson (author, entrepreneur, consultant, and business principal, and writer of the http://thisischinablog.com ) brings his unique perspective on how to do business in China with exploration of the impact of cultural differences on business partnerships and opportunities. Check out his recent book to learn more.

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After a break for tea – this is China, after all – we probe the changing consumer markets with Paul French, prolific author and Founder and Publishing & Marketing Director of Access Asia. His recent book, Fat China, says as much about the dangers of Western notions of affluence as it does about China today.   

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Lunch together at the hotel is a kumbayah moment for the cohort, after which everyone goes off alone to do their individual interviews or site visits for their China projects.

Students have been working on these projects (at least in their minds) since last summer, and have been preparing for this moment of truth.

No matter how prepared, there’s always that last minute feeling of panic, heading off alone in a taxi or on the subway in a country where you can’t even fake that you know the language by giving your English a bit of an accent as you can in romance language countries.

Here’s where the rubber meets the road – a moment of executive growth and rise to full global citizenship.

Prediction: The meetings will go well, they always do. People will navigate a place as complex as China, even though they are not sure they can. Language won’t be easy, but they’ll make it work. And having conquered the fear of the unknown through their skill and flexibility (see past blogs on the topic of fear of differences and the unknown!), the students will be stronger leaders and different people.

We promise transformation in the Bloch Executive MBA – and this is one of the learning moments where we see the fruits of that transformation in action.

There will be another solo afternoon of interviews and site visits in Beijing for students, but this is the first – and the first is always the hardest.

I’m proud of everyone. You should be too. It ain’t easy – but people make it so and are better for having done that. They model professional development at its best.

Now, will I have the Chickpea Pancake served with Anchoiade & Tapenade, Eggplant caviar, and peppery Roquette or the Twice cooked, (so juicy and crispy) Pigeon served with ‘boudin noir’ and harissa at M on the Bund??? 

A toast to our students (and the beautiful view) while I decide.

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