Tag: Leadership development

Why should they trust you? Restoring Relationships Should be Top Priority for Today’s Business Leaders 

Posted on by Maya Mehta

Building trust is imperative for organizations, especially during times of economic uncertainty. When trust is present, it can help to stabilize relationships, foster cooperation, and increase confidence amongst teams, clients, and key stakeholders. While trust is the bedrock of team success, there is no doubt that building it is especially important during times of economic turbulence, where uncertainty and risk can cause team members and stakeholders to become cautious and resistant. 

Leaders should prioritize building trust because it’s good for morale. Even more so, it’s good for business. Trust generates resilience and confidence within any company, organization, or community among those key to its success. 

Trust strengthens relationships 

So here’s what is obvious: trust is the foundation of any healthy relationship between organizations and their stakeholders. When those with a vested interest also trust a business, they are more likely to be supportive and authentically interested in its success. This can lead to stronger partnerships and boosted collaboration. 

Trust fosters resilience 

Building trust can help businesses weather economic uncertainty by creating a sense of ownership and belonging. When stakeholders have confidence in the relationship, they are more likely to remain committed and engaged, even during difficult times. Trust allows an organization to maintain momentum and overcome inevitable, unpredictable obstacles. 

Trust boosts confidence 

Economic uncertainty can create fear and doubt for businesses and their stakeholders. By building trust, leaders can help alleviate these concerns and boost confidence, increasing investment, stronger partnerships, and more significant growth opportunities. 

As many of us know, trust is not easily won by everyone. Part of being a leader is to engage your team and those with whom you collaborate in a way that demonstrates a genuine effort to connect and foster a positive relationship. If you are a leader, there are some concrete and specific steps that you can take to build trusting relationships in your organization. 

Step One: Identify the levels of trust in your relationships 

Let’s face it; some people are more complicated to work with than others. That’s okay. That’s life. Without playing the blame game, take time to note down mentally those relationships where trust is not there, whether it’s an adversarial one or one of indifference. 

Also note where the relationships are solid, those who you go to with ideas, possibilities, doubts, and concerns. Those are high-trust relationships, and it’s essential to put effort into maintaining them too. 

Step Two: Develop an approach and strategy for different relationships based on the level of trust 

Relationships with different levels of trust require different approaches. For example, strategies and methods exist to build trust with people with whom we do not connect or agree. It starts with connecting with people without judgment, valuing others’ points of view, and finding instances of agreement and similarities instead of differences. Part of any strategy that must deal with trust is an acknowledgment of what role you play within the relationship. Leaders who wish to approach building trust with intention must start with a willingness to let their guard down and be vulnerable. 

“I can create a high-trust environment any time I want. All I must realize is that I am creating the environment in which I live,” explained Peter Block in the article Trust in Whom. ”We are afraid of being naïve and a fool if we continue to trust in the face of others’ betrayal. Well, what is so great about being strategic and clever? And what is so wrong about being a fool? Maybe being willing to be a fool is the exact means of creating the high-trust world that we each long for.”

Step Three: Plan and practice conversations that matter

The starting point for action and change is conversation. The quality of how you are with others matters even more than the expertise you each bring. That said, holding trust-building conversations requires authenticity, vulnerability, and a learned communication skillset that takes practice. 

In a time of uncertainty, trust is an invaluable resource, and it requires action and intention from the side of leaders who depend on it to achieve successful outcomes. In Flawless Conversations: Building Trusting Relationships, learn how to plan for conversations that inspire not only a shift within your one-on-one relationships but can even empower broader transformation within your team, organization, and beyond.

Trust in Whom?

Posted on by Maya Mehta

Most of the time, we talk about trust as if it has its own independent existence. We can build trust; we can destroy trust. This treats it like it is an aspect of the relationship and is based on how people behave with each other. Are we trustworthy… are they trustworthy? I have trust, but in whom? We talk of others violating our trust; often, in the workplace, it is management who gets more than their share of the blame. We expect leaders to be congruent to walk their talk, and if they don’t, we think we have a “trust problem.” Or, if we are the leader, we are puzzled why the employees don’t trust us.

These assumptions frames trust as if it is determined by behavior. I want to offer another point of view.

Trust is more an expression of our own inner world, not an outside-in reaction to people and events as they affect us.

Trust is a State of Mind

Vaclav Havel, in his “Politics of Hope” book, writes about hope in a way that also applies to trust. Editing him slightly, he says something like this:

, “I should say first that hope is, above all, a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope in us, or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul, and it’s not essentially dependent on some observation of the world or estimate of the situation.”

As with hope, trust may be something that we carry within us. It is, in many ways, a projection of our own internal struggle onto those around us. If we distrust others, it is that we are asking them to carry a weight that we cannot bear within ourselves.

It is more an attitude about myself, an estimate of my own capacities. For example, if I do not have faith in management, a more accurate statement is that I am not happy with the way I act or feel when I am around management. It is my response to their power that bothers me. My caution. My speaking in generalities. My quickness to back down in the face of an indifferent or controlling act on their part. My short-fused cynicism may be more the source of my distrust than anything they do.

Distrust is too often a projection onto powerful others of our own ambivalence.

Anytime, Anywhere

If trust is my goal, then I must come to terms with my own shadow: the power I give to others, the denial of my own ambivalence about participation, the fact I do not walk my talk, have silenced my own voice, have left behind my own faith and innocence. Trust is the willingness to go public with all of who I am. If I could ever really believe this (rather than write about it), then my “problem” might fade. Why we think it is the task of people in power to create a high-trust environment I no longer understand.

I can create this environment any time I want. All I must realize is that I am creating the environment in which I live. We are afraid of being naïve and a fool if we continue to trust in the face of others’ betrayal. Well, what is so great about being strategic and clever? And what is so wrong about being a fool? Maybe being willing to be a fool is the exact means of creating the high-trust world that we each long for.

If you want help to create a better environment anytime you want, check out our newest program, Flawless Conversations: Building Trusting Relationships, to learn how.

Facing the Virtual World

Posted on by Maya Mehta

We now work in a virtual and digital world, with all of its joys and sorrows. Technology is credited with bringing the world closer together, spreading democracy, changing the nature of business, and supplying round-the-clock connectivity. Geography has been made irrelevant. It is mesmerizing to grasp the world in a handheld device, much smarter than we will ever be.

Here are some aspects of this life that Human Resource (HR) practitioners deal with every day:

  • Teams are made up of people who have never been in a room together. This gives rise to the question, “How do we build a team that never or rarely meets face-to-face?”
  • The well-defined workweek is no more. People are online and in touch and reachable most of their waking hours. And expect you to follow suit. If you ask people to leave their cell phones at the door, 40 percent say that this is not possible.
  • We work at home. Our bedroom has become our office. Technology allows us to move our residence/office anywhere and have more control over our time.
  • Speed is a value in and of itself. If something is quicker, it is attractive. If we are quicker, we are attractive. Slow food is considered a revolution. Fast food is a value proposition.
  • Controlling costs is now the dominant value for most organizations, replacing the priority once given to the customer and the employee. Almost every job and function (except top management) can be outsourced to reduce labor and benefit costs. Travel and training are cut on the rationale that current audio and video technology approximates the sights and sounds of being in the room together in real-time.

The virtual world is sold on these features. More individual freedom. Work at home, learn at will, and control your own time. Get the information you need on demand. Be a global citizen.

The challenge is to address the human and workplace consequences of the technological and cultural forces that constantly drive us toward speed, control, efficiency, and short-term results.

Choices for the Future

Organizations that will truly thrive over time are creating a future that transcends these pressures. They will focus on making the choice to (1) act in service of the long run and (2) act in service to those with little power. In this way, they create an alternative narrative, one centered on creating high performance by putting the future in the hands of each member of an organization.

HR can help leaders transcend these pressures by developing leaders who give priority to building relationships with peers. Real relationships, not virtual ones. HR is a stance for leaders that gives more choices to people close to the work. It is the realization that human values take priority over shareholder values. HR clients are all members of the organization, not just top management.

There are more important values than speed and scale, and costs. Organizations are human systems first and technical processes second. Important learning requires face-to-face relationships where all learning is social.

Adapted from Stewardship: Choosing Service over Self-Interest, 2d ed. (San Francisco: Berrett-Kohler, 2013). 

Learn more tips in our eBook Engagement By Design: The Virtual Hour found on our articles page. 

How To Reimagine Workplace Politics

Posted on by Maya Mehta

The first rule about workplace politics is that nobody will tell you the rules. But everyone somehow knows how the unspoken web of power dynamics works. Or do they?

This fake certainty is one reason we must reimagine workplace politics.

Managers often spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about how to deal with difficult employees, peers, or bosses. At first glance, this appears to be a normal function of living in the workplace, a closer look reveals that this is more about workplace politics.

The game of workplace politics becomes a tool for negotiating your own position to avoid getting resistance from others in response to your actions. Given enough time and experience, with a non-nutritious sprinkling of gossip, you eventually learn to play the game. You learn to speak the “right” way, to the “right” people, in order to get the “right” reaction. The worst part of all this is it works.

So what’s the problem?

The problem with workplace politics is that it becomes a game where you achieve short-term goals by acting in a way that is not an example of the world you want to live in.

There’s a winner and there’s a loser, and playing the game means that you are simultaneously both.

Think about it, it’s like sawing-off a tree branch while you’re sitting on it!

So why get better at a bad game? The answer is to make a better game…because it is possible to reframe workplace politics as an act of service for the future you want to create.

Workplace Politics as Usual

The traditional rules of workplace politics center around managing and manipulating situations, information, and people to your own advantage. Tactics include being very cautious in telling the truth, selectively invoking high-level names to gain support, closely managing relationships, and paying great attention to what the people above you want.

A sea of books will tell you that you’ll gain attention, move up the ranks, and pull your own strings by mastering these strategies. And you probably will. But in the process, you perpetuate a patriarchal cycle that actually coerces you to surrender your power and autonomy. By “playing the game” you effectively exchange your freedom for dependence on those with power over you.

But what other option is there?

Choosing an Entrepreneurial Path

Reimagining workplace politics could mean changing your mindset. It doesn’t mean you have to start your own business. Instead, the solution here is to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset that reimagines workplace politics in a positive way.

An Entrepreneurial mindset is a path to reclaiming the freedom and accountability that has been surrendered to the unfulfilling game of workplace politics.

The outcome is a powerful yet non-manipulative way to negotiate power and relationships within your organization. It is a move away from obligating compliance to inviting collaboration.

This transformation shift comes down to you making three fundamental choices.

1. Possibility Over Maintenance

Firstly, the path of positive politics chooses possibility over maintenance. Much of traditional workplace politics is preoccupied with safety for fear of losing ground. The more you move up, the more energy you expend to avoid losing what you have. And so decisions become more and more driven by a desire for maintaining. What this really reflects is the choice to be led by others.

The antidote, or key to reimagining workplace politics is for you to choose possibility. Making a commitment to building something great carries real risk. It is dangerous. But the first step in being political in a positive way is making the choice not to just maintain what you have, but to reach for unreachable possibilities.

2. Courage Over Caution

This leads us to the second choice, which is courage over caution. There are hundreds of ways that corporate culture drives an atmosphere of caution. Here are just two of the more pervasive ways: Performance reviews and high-pressure presentations to top management. These two are designed to produce extremely measured and conservative behavior. This makes perfect sense when you realize that the aforementioned “Maintenance” requires caution. But striving for greatness requires courage.

Working for a better future always requires courage. And it mostly comes in small steps. Usually, you are the only one aware of the risk you are taking. But your choice for self-assertion and risk is the antidote to caution and maintaining what we have inherited or amassed on our own.

3. Autonomy Over Dependence

Thirdly, the entrepreneurial mindset must choose autonomy over-dependence. A culture of maintenance and caution thrives on breeding dependence.

When your aim is to scale the political ladder, you implicitly agree to a kind of parental contract. Their job is to lead and reward and your job is to listen and obey.

But autonomy is the attitude that declares my actions are my own, and I help create the organization I am a part of. By choosing autonomy, you are recovering the freedom you willingly surrendered to play the game. You are recovering what you once gave away, not taking back what was taken from you. This is something you can do without asking permission.

The entrepreneurial culture does not take effect in top-down programs or C-Suite announcements. The only way to change the game is to act in small ways that affect a new culture in recurring moments.

In a way, the only culture that really exists is what happens in the room, the meeting, the conversation you are in right now. By making the choice to pursue positive workplace politics, you will embody the culture you want to create and the short-term goals will take care of themselves.

[Adapted from Peter Block, ‘Twelve Questions to the Most Frequently Asked Answers,’ The Flawless Consulting Fieldbook and Companion: A Guide to Understanding Your Expertise, 2001 and Peter Block, The Empowered Manager, 2017]

Learn more about Flawless Consulting.

A Short Version of My Misunderstanding of Gestalt

Posted on by Maya Mehta

In October 2019, Designed Learning marked the 40th anniversary of its founding with a webinar where Peter shared some thoughts on the origins of the company. It all began with a workshop, he said, that was grounded in a simple belief: relationships are decisive. What hasn’t changed over the years is this basic belief that relationships are decisive, not convenient, not rewarded, not comforting. And so it turns out that your ability to engage in honest, authentic relationships has everything to do with business performance.

In this blog post, Peter reflects farther back, into the origins of that simple belief that gave Designed Learning its footing.

My affection for Gestalt began sixty years ago. It took me to a weekend workshop in a barn in New Hope, Pennsylvania. It took me to Esalen Institute at Big Sur, California. Of all the different therapies I explored, it was the most efficient. Brutal, to the point, and absent of analyzing the world, one of my continuing resistances to living.

So it began as a long and personal journey to make sense of my life.

Then it became the foundation of my consulting work in organization development. Whenever I was lost and had no idea what was happening, I would go around the room and ask, “How do you feel? What do you want?” I did it often enough that I wrote a book on consulting that was mostly organized around these questions.

I once told a friend that I felt guilty making a living off of two questions. He said, “What else is there?”

The value of the questions is their power to value experience over intellect. The argument between science and religion is incomplete. What completes the conversation is experience. The existence of God, the empiricism of Science: interesting but inconclusive. What is interesting and conclusive is that if you aspire to act on what you know, this can be found in your own body. This is the ultimate challenge of any therapy, intervention, strategic planning: will you act on what you know? Gestalt is unrelenting on this question.

This is the essence of freedom, of relationship, of a fully lived life. These are central to changing organizational culture. The dominant narrative of system living is that predictability, consistency, and control produce high performance. A childish myth. Mostly they produce fear, isolation, and compliance.

Asking how you feel and what you want, collectively, in a context of support, is the essence of transformation. We learn and shift our thinking and our relationships with others at the citadel of our own experience, put into words in the presence of others.

If you care about transformation, or learning, or creating an organization that delivers on its promise, put best practices aside. Pay no attention to learning from history. Pay no attention to learning from your elders. Or what your precious children taught you. Pay no attention to what gives you bliss, or joy, or letting the ocean remind you of what a small and lucky being you are. These are fine comforts. So are a pillow and socks that fit.

This is not cynicism. It is the expression of faith. Existential faith.

Gestalt for me is an unsentimental version of a life. It demands we accept our own human landscape. That freedom occurs when you understand that no one is watching. That understanding and judgment are the booby prizes. It ends the need for violence in its more subtle forms of self-improvement and trying hard.

Two years ago, at the end of a workshop that I ran which went well, I declared to a participant that this experience was so different, more powerful, than other groups I had led in the company. I said that I wondered why. He said, “Peter, can’t you just enjoy this experience, and stop trying to analyze everything?”

Evidently not.

 

Excerpt by Peter Block from Gestalt Practice: Living and Working in Pursuit of wHolism,” Mary Ann Rainey and Brenda B. Jones, eds. (Faringdon, UK: Libri Publishing, 2019).

Peter Block is an author, consultant and citizen of Cincinnati, Ohio. His work is about empowerment, stewardship, chosen accountability and the reconciliation of community.

CONSULTING COMPLEXITIES: Our Love of Leadership

Posted on by Maya Mehta

This post on how our love for leadership ultimately undermines consulting effectiveness continues our series looking at what interferes with our capacity to serve, even in the face of our best intentions. It speaks to the industry as a whole, though both internal and external consultants will recognize the tensions between doing what is popular and providing genuine service to a client.

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We have been in search of leaders since the late seventies. Before that, we were in search of managers. We now have a leadership development industry fueled more by training and presentation than by consulting. The industry is led by authors and ex-chief executive officers who, in many cases, have found more meaning teaching leadership than providing it. The headliners come not only from private industry, but also from politics, sports, and the government.

The high end of the leadership industry is really a seminar and workshop business. At the top, the pay is good, the hours are reasonable, and the expectations are pretty low. No one asks about the financial return to the organization as the result of a celebrity presentation. They just wish the celebrity could have stayed around longer.

The number of leadership sessions offered within companies and as public conferences keeps growing. I have even been the beneficiary of this trend.

One large company required a week of training for the top two thousand executives. Forty sessions ran for fifty executives at a time. Monday was globalization, Tuesday was finance, Thursday was product innovation, and Friday was a talk with the top. Wednesday was a day on empowerment, and I had written a book on the subject. So I showed up as the centerfold of the week and talked about creating an empowered workforce, a subject of greatest interest only to myself and those sitting in the back of the room who sponsored the program. The empowerment interest has now been converted to agility, innovation, and thinness.

Though some of the participants seemed somewhat engaged in what they were learning, most were going through the motions—there only to get their ticket punched. When I finally withdrew from the program, I received from the support staff a special goodbye present: a t-shirt with a slightly cynical message on it about the true impact of the effort.

The consulting complexities built into working with clients on leadership development is that the effort holds on to the belief that organizations are the creation of those who run them. Training the organization’s leaders becomes the centerpiece strategy for improving it. In fact, there is little evidence that training leaders has any impact on organizational change, and there is little accountability for the investment made in leader training.

This is in sharp contrast to the way training at lower levels is scrutinized. Train supervisors for two hours a week for six weeks and we are asked to defend the investment. Send the top management team to a university for four weeks, and the question of value received is limited to asking the participating managers whether they liked the program. Four weeks in Cambridge, Charlottesville, Evanston, Palo Alto—what’s not to like?

The ethical challenge for internal and external consultants alike is how best to serve the client without colluding in what is essentially a form of elitism, perpetuating the notion that organizations will forever live in the shadow of its leaders.