Tag: shared purpose

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The Arts Can Teach Us to Lead, Part 1: Embracing Diversity Brings Innovation — The Compelling Case of Sissoko and Segal

I am a firm believer that we can learn much about how to lead from engaging with and in the arts. This post begins a series on the topic.

It’s a set of ideas I’ve been thinking and writing about for a long time. Quite simply, the arts “traffic in understanding,” in the words of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard – and understanding one’s internal and external worlds is at the heart of leadership effectiveness. 

The major challenges in leading – understanding and working with those who are different from us, forging shared interests and common goals, motivating, influencing while remaining open to new learning, understanding the roots of competing interests and conflicts, finding lasting solutions to complex problems – echo life’s larger challenges.

The arts lay out these grand dilemmas in accessible form and invite us to reflect on and learn from them. I’ve been reminded of this by some recent events.

The first was a Ford Foundation conference held May 4, 2011 called "Fresh Angle on the Arts: Reimagining Culture in a Time of Transformation" – a day of discussions and performances exploring the role of art and artistic expression in times of social transformation and revolutionary global change.

Different cultures, ethnicities, and social traditions can separate us. But understanding our own history and heritage and then broadening our perspectives on other cultures through education and collaboration can take us to rich, new heights and toward common ground despite our differences.

Listen to excerpts from the CD called “Chamber Music” as performed by Ballaké Sissoko (an African musician playing a traditional lute-harp from Mali called the kora) and Vincent Segal (a French musician playing the classical cello) at the Ford Foundation conference.

Through the music of Sissoko and Segal, you’ll hear and experience quite simply and enjoyably exactly what I’m talking about – and chances are you’ll understand the importance of leading through and with diversity in today’s global world faster and deeper than you might from a lecture, essay, or class on the topic. 

“Chamber Music” has been reviewed as “one of Europe’s most buzzed-about world music recording.” It is also a clear and powerful illustration of fusion without loss, synergy without dominance, differences as the springboard to innovation, shared leadership through true collaboration, and globalization without fear. 

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Surviving and Thriving in Post-earthquake Japan: In Praise of Self-Organizing Teams and Leadership from the Foot of the Table

News from post-earthquake, post-tsunami Japan has not been uplifting, but a recent story is a major exception. For students of leadership and organizations, it’s also a powerful illustration of the impact of leading from the foot of the table and of organizing and empowering others to take charge of their lives.

It’s well worth digging up the New York Times article for a full read. Here’s why.

When the tsunami hit, the tiny fishing village of Hadenya was cut off from the rest of the world: bridges, roads, phone lines, and cell phone services were gone. It was bitter cold. Homes, buildings, and vehicles had been destroyed. Food and fuel were thin. Those who ran to a hillside community center and escaped the crushing waves had no idea of the extent of the devastation – or whether others knew of their survival.

What did the stunned and frightened villagers do? They organized, and informal leadership created a communal spirit, division of labor, and focus on survival that enabled the isolated villagers to carry on unassisted for 12 days, to care for the young and weak, and to sustain hope and health.

With sophistication and a clear view of the amazing devastation, the group responded to the informal leadership of Osamu Abe, 43, who was known to others because of his job as head of a local nature center. Mr. Abe went into action. He mobilized school children to erect tents so residents could rest outside during the aftershocks. Groups were formed to gather water from the marshes and firewood from the debris to boil it. He asked a nurse to set up a makeshift clinic for those in need. Daily lists of tasks were formed, and jobs were assigned.

Some scavenged for food and found a truck washed up by the waves that contained edible products. Others drained gasoline from smashed cars or kerosene from destroyed fishing boats for cooking and heating fuel.

Some boiled water, cooked, cleaned, and created tidy order in the shared community center space. (The photo of stacked supplies in the gymnasium is the epitome of neatness.)

A surveillance party set off over the hill to alert the nearest and larger local town of the villagers’ survival.

There was much to be done, and everyone was needed. For the few who initially refused to participate, Mr. Abe offered them “positions of responsibility” which he was happy to report indeed motivated them.

The story of Hadenya was not an isolated incident. Japanese authorities note that the spontaneous self-organizing and informal leadership seen there characterized other small towns and shelters, and the relationships and structures formed will serve villagers well when relocated into new housing miles away.

So what do you take from the Hadenya story to inform your leadership? Your willingness to face seemingly insurmountable challenges? Your ability to rise to the unanticipated?

The moral of the story for me: never under-estimate the power of the human spirit, the ability of individuals to mobilize and channel it, and the capacity of groups with shared interest to make a difference.

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Leading in a World of Social Media Technologies

The happenings in the Middle East say much about the power of social media technologies. They are revolutionizing the practice of leadership.

Followers need a simple cell phone to organize a groundswell in support or opposition to any leader, product, or cause. Huge crowds can be assembled with a simple text message and that powerful contemporary closer: “Pass this message on.”

Strangers with shared interests or common beliefs forge virtual communities and become cyber allies through vehicles like Facebook and Twitter. Building solidarity, commitment, and shared purpose no longer require face-to-face meetings – or even residency in the same nation or on the same continent.

A twitter revolution or a smart mob a la Howard Rheingold is no novelty. Social media technologies created the conditions to topple a controlling, military-backed, thirty year regime in a seemingly stable country like Egypt; and they continue to send aftershocks through a host of other nations. They will continue to do so.

What does all this mean for contemporary leadership?  What is important to remember? 

1. Leadership is vital. At its core, leading is a social process rooted in relationship, collaboration, and mutual interest. Advances in technology and the ease of electronic communications and social networking provide additional tools for building the networks of relationship and shared purpose needed for success.

At the same time, they also expand the need for leadership. We have mind-boggling capabilities at our finger-tips to forge global alliances, further causes, and foster organizational agendas – to create, in the language of super-blogger Seth Godin, tribes of ten or ten million who care passionately about the same things that we do. All these new groups need direction, cohesion, and contribution. They need leadership from people like you or me.

2. Leaders know and respect their followers. Perhaps there were times in history when leaders could ignore the needs and collective power of their followers. Those have passed. Then President Mubarak, sitting in his palace telling world leaders that the disturbances in Egypt will pass, is a symbol of a leader in denial and out of touch. Leaders know their followers well. Social technologies can help them in this.

3. Leaders listen to, learn from, use, and manage the social groundswell. Contemporary leaders need to take their heads out of the sand about social media technologies. They are powerful and here to stay. When United States senators twitter their constituencies, and the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies talk to their constituents through Facebook, something about leading has definitely changed.

Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff provide a wealth of strategies for working the groundswell,using it to inform and energize your leadership and organization, and turning the power of social media to your advantage. I’ve learned a lot from their book, appropriately titled Groundswell. 

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Real Leadership is Love

Happy Valentine’s Day. Today is the perfect day to reflect on an important leadership truth. Leadership is all about love.

It’s about devotion to a cause or an organization and the deep desire to contribute in important ways.

It’s about the satisfaction from true partnership and recognition that there is power and possibility in joining with others.

It’s about deep relationships and collaboration that result in the reciprocal learning at the heart of shared mission and purpose.

It’s about appreciation for others who are vital to advancing a mission.

It’s about the maturity to separate liking someone from recognizing that we owe everyone basic human respect and a willingness to work well with them to advance a common cause.

It’s about authenticity and bringing your true self to the work.

It’s about finding joy in the challenges and the experiences. (See my previous posts on raising your joy quotient).

It’s about commitment, hard work, hanging-in during tough times, and growing from the experience.

Leadership is all about love. Is love at the center of what you do?  What would need to change to make it so?

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Creating Communities of Shared Purpose and Contribution: Still Surprised

I just finished reading a new book by Warren Bennis, Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership.  I loved it for a number of reasons.

First,  Bennis is the father of applied leadership studies and a writer whose prose sings with humor, grace, and wisdom.  I always learn from Warren Bennis and from how he frames experience.  I expected to do the same from this – his book #30 – and I wasn’t disappointed.

I’ve got Post-its marking pages with good reminders and advice on topics like, garnering power through proximity (70), recruiting effectively (116), staying engaged in times of crisis (123), networking like a pro (131), the power of forgiveness (134), staff empowerment as “executive constellation” (146), leader renewal through self-reinvention (150), trust vs. charisma as a leadership cornerstone (184), the imperative for enhancing adaptive capacity and ongoing learning (193), and grace in aging  (all of Chapter 9).

Unlike some reviewers, I enjoyed digging through the stories of Bennis’s successes and failures – his crucibles to transform experiences into leadership muster – for truths that spoke to me.  That’s what a good memoir does.  So caution: this is not a book heavy on advice about how to lead.

No, Still Surprised is a book that encourages readers to think about their life experiences and choices, what they’ve made of and from them, and what work is left to be done.

I was surprised, for example, how quickly the book hooked me into reflecting on my own graduate school days in Cambridge.  Some stories sent me easily down memory lane:  thinking about the dynamic early days of the Sloan School at MIT (where I took courses while at Harvard), or remembering the excitement in discovering that a field like organizational behavior existed – and being thankful for wonderful graduate school chums and faculty who fed my excitement and who have remained close friends since (and because of) those earlier years.

Other Bennis stories brought back poignant memories of people – some of whom are no longer with us — who played a role (direct or indirect) in shaping my career choice, professional interests and directions, and values.  The diverse cast of characters during those intense NTL Bethel summers, for example, made learning challenging and fun.  Our eldest son is named Chris so no more need be said about the place that Chris Argyris, an extraordinary teacher and mentor to me and to my husband, holds in our hearts.  My dog is named Douglas McGregor as a tip of the hat to the man whose classic, The Human Side of Enterprise, is still vital, important, and undervalued in today’s bottom line-oriented work world.  And reconnecting with Ed Schein is always a highlight of any trip back east for important life reasons.

But the real power of the book came from Bennis’s ability to capture the electricity, the evolving dialogue, the community of inquiry, the hope,  the shared interests, and the commitment to social change and human development that characterized the Cambridge scene for me.

I had forgotten all the early 99 cent breakfasts at The Tasty, the noisy greasy dinners at Buddy’s Sirloin Pit, the late night coffees at Café Algiers and the like – the regular coming together with colleagues to share new insights on our evolving professional selves and our plans for how to better use our new skills.  Are we Model II yet?  How can we learn to reflect-in-action? What is real collaboration?  The conversations and meetings – formal and informal — about intervention theory, professional effectiveness, tacit characteristics of organizational life, models about self-fulfilling prophecies and defense mechanisms, applying ethnomethodology, opportunities for planned change, and shared field-work projects were lively, frequent, and learning-filled.

Faculty, students, managers, consultants – we all talked with and to each other, no status separations, working together in Ivory Tower offices or on the shop floor. The simple currency for invitation to participate was a passion for the issues and something to contribute – and newcomers were welcomed and mentored.  The regular Sunday night meetings in his Boston home that Bennis describes in the book is one example of this larger phenomenon.

This was a time and place for me marked by a vibrancy and an unapologetic commitment to issues of practice – to the leaders, managers, followers, and communities whose lives and work could be made better as a result of our thinking, writing, coaching, musing, and consulting.  We weren’t learning just for ourselves and our career advancement.  We were driven by a larger purpose – a sacred purpose.  We wanted to make things better.  And our teachers, mentors, and role models like Warren Bennis, helped us believe that was possible.

That unshakeable faith in human nature and in a better future is at the core of Still Surprised. And it is not now – nor was it back then – the faith of a Pollyanna.

Those who taught and led the neophytes – people like Warren Bennis, Chris Argyris, Ed Schein, Dick Beckhard, Don Schon, and others — understood the inefficiencies, pain, and down-sides of organizational life.  Many has seen first hand the evils of war and injustice, and they set out to do something about that.  They brought open minds, entrepreneurial spirits, and irrepressible optimism to the challenge – convinced that new ways of organizing, leading, and managing were possible.

They were carriers of America’s historic faith in progress and initiative. They believed in democracy, openness, and the worth of every individual.  Above all, they believed in learning and experimentation. They knew they did not have all the answers – or even all the questions. But they were confident that both were waiting to be found.  Their faith and hard work spawned an exciting time, a revolutionary intellectual movement – a paradigm shift – that changed forever how the world understood people, work, leadership, organizations, and change.  Their efforts gave rise to the organizational and applied behavioral sciences, and they developed a powerful array of ideas and practices for understanding and improving organizations – team building, change management, coaching, performance feedback, organizational design, managing diversity, empowerment, participative management, EEO efforts, to name just a few — that we have come to take for granted today.  Most important, they helped people like me believe in ourselves, our potential, and the potential of those around us.

Still Surprised challenged me to remember all that.  May it do some of the same for you!  It reminded me of the power, energy, and intellectual stimulation in a community of like-minded souls – and of how rarely we think to create those for ourselves.  But it’s never too late, and there is much work left to be done even as the days grow shorter for us all.   Contribution is what leadership is really all about.  What will yours be?