The Heart of Engagement : Leadership Development, Management Education, Retreat Facilitation & Executive Coaching : Mike Cook : AMJ Group

“I am feeling constrained by my current mindset!” Who says that to themselves? Probably nobody, but who says “I am not happy with my results?” or “I have a problem and nothing I know is working to solve it!” Statements like these may seem more familiar.

If you are anything like me, and I am betting you are, when you are facing the frustration of not producing a result or are producing one that you wish you were not, it usually takes a while to get to a point where you will consider that the unresolved issue has something to do with you. For me, I am aware that the result is eluding me but if he, she or it would shape up, the issue would rapidly disappear, I just know it!

When I do get around to considering myself as part of the unresolved problem, I can be fairly self-reflective. However, at this point, often the best I am able to do is blame myself and wrestle forward with the now further frustration of knowing the solution lies outside my current field of vision. So maybe I ask for help and maybe it arrives in the form of a trusted friend who can see what I cannot. With the aid of their perspective, I can craft a one-off solution to my problem. I move on from this point with the dread of knowing that, unless I can take my friend with me everywhere, I will likely find myself returning to the cul-de-sac of my own mindset at some future point.

Until now that is!

This past week I participated in a remarkable program developed by a pair of researchers in adult learning, Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey. Over the past twenty years, this creative pair has developed a process for self reflection and action that is based on the notion that the real reason people don’t change has more to do with what isn’t visible than with what is.

• No doubt, as managers, or maybe even as friends, we have had occasion to witness people struggle with change to a degree that tests reasonableness. As with any situation which defies our imagination or ability to understand, we may have defaulted to telling ourselves unflattering stories about the motives or character of the other party. This would come along of course once we have stopped assuming that it might be we ourselves who are ineffective providers of advice or coaching. But we know better than that!

When you show up for the class to learn to facilitate the (ITC), Immunity to Change Process, you might go in as an experienced coach thinking, “This will be such a benefit to my clients!” Kegan and Lahey have of course seen you coming. Remember, they have been at this for twenty years. While they are no doubt amused by your naïveté, they are gently compassionate (they don’t actually laugh at you … with you, maybe) and allow you to experience for yourself that reading their book and understanding the process they have designed is not the same as participating in this process yourself. OK, so I should have seen this coming but….never mind!

Once through the process with your own revelation in hand, it becomes obvious why Oprah Winfrey picked up on this process and has shared it with her larger audience through her magazine as Step One in her 2011 Feel Good Challenge. (Trust me, the women in your organization or wives of the men you employ read Oprah and share it with their husbands.)

Let me end this little missive by saying that my forty year professional career as both an HR professional and later as a coach-consultant has been a continuous pursuit of methods and practices for taking suffering out of the everyday working experience. I have learned tools, encountered training, acquired skills, developed my own and the like. I believe that the knowledge and insight acquired in working this past week with Bob Kegan and Lisa Lahey will become the cornerstone of my practice moving forward and serve as the frame within which all my other learning can now find a home. Like true masters of their craft they made it look easy. As someone who knows better, I thank them for their contribution to working people everywhere.

• What change have you struggled with repeatedly? Maybe it is time to do yourself a favor and take a ride on the ITC.
  

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 I ask you to consider that if you are a manager your greatest contribution might be made while not being noticed.                                                                                                           

“A manager (sic) is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”

Lao Tzu- Chinese Taoist Philosopher, 600 B.C. – 531 B.C.

After 25+ years of working, reading and studying the topic of manager’s development the quote above is still my favorite when it comes time to characterize how managers need “to be” as they perform their roles. The great Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu advised that the fundamental character of a “good manager” (He actually said leader but please allow me the poetic license!) is one of making a contribution or adding value while being invisible; i.e., transparent, transmutable and permeable.

Not being noticed! This may be a tough concept to digest, especially if you are uncertain of your own vision as a manager, are constantly spoken to about “your numbers” like you actually meet them, or you have a personal need to be in charge. I struggled with all of this myself for a long time, especially needing to be in charge. It took me a while to realize that a personal need of mine did not qualify me as a manager!

For some of us this image of the manager as invisible presents a paradox as we think about a) contributing b) while not being noticed. Perhaps our greatest fears are associated with not being viewed as valuable or important, as though it is us who needs to be valuable rather than value being produced is the objective.

What if as you pursue your role as manager your unexamined motives have you become visible, in fulfillment of personal rather than organizational needs. You may now be “in the way”, a limit to what can be accomplished; you are the narrow spot in the road, the lid on the jar and very likely a bit of a pain in the arse and not just to others but yourself as well. If you make the role about you, you are apparent in ways that detract from the production of value.

If you yield to any of the following fears you are probably more visible than necessary and getting in the way:

● an unwillingness to trust others work completely

● an unwillingness to give up control

● an unwillingness to depend on others

● an unwillingness to not seem always buried with work.

● an unwillingness to not be viewed as “in the know.”

● an unwillingness to let go of today and focus on “the future” or even be freed up to do so.  

Consider these words from Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, “…The primary job of the manager is not to empower, it is to remove obstacles.” It will be pretty hard to be focused on removing obstacles if you are constantly yielding to one of the fears mentioned above. Truthfully you may be so fearfully occupied in the present that you don’t see the potholes in the road ahead.

The best way to become transparent, transmutable and permeable is to become obsessively interested in the future. Become intensely knowledgeable of how the business will likely profit in the future, focus on how the work being done around you will affect that future profitability and notice what obstacles you can observe and intentionally remove in service of the mutually important objectives of employee, client and shareholder satisfaction? What can you see about the way your company has always done things that might no longer be creating value? You cannot see these things from the present, you must move to a future focused perspective and when you do you’ll disappear. But don’t worry; it will probably be a relief to a lot of people and who knows, you may find you like your new found invisibility as well.

• What could you let go of today and get out of the way?
• Where is there an immediate opportunity to remove an obstacle?

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“What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.”

Lao Tzu , Chinese Philosopher

--The Space Between--

“Long-term commitment to new learning and new philosophy is required of any management that seeks transformation. The timid and the fainthearted, and the people that expect quick results, are doomed to disappointment.”

- W. Edwards Deming

 Often in my coaching I am torn between the practical (Try this and let me know how it goes!) and the inspirational (Think about this and see if anything opens up for you!) To have any value whatsoever both ways of thinking/seeing must be related or connected by something I call “The Space Between.”

Lao Tzu and W. Edwards Deming are both leadership theorists.They are mainly known to us now by their legacies. Lao Tzu, a philosopher, left us a couple of thousand years ago with a complete contextual perspective on leadership and living life. Dr. Deming, the father of the quality movement across the world, was a mathematician who created a comprehensive, systemic , practical yet also philosophical approach to developing and sustaining economic value. He is also gone now, since 1993.  

What draws me to these two sources is that they saw life through different eyes. Both views comprehensive, neither complete unto itself. When considered as complimentary perspectives their views point to the need for both a long view and a measured and detailed approach for any endeavor. Life in general or life in business  was to be “measured” in order to be appreciated, measured as successful in terms of both the quantity of achievement and the quality of interactions that took place on a day to day basis. Neither was very interested in “top line” success stories, they wanted to dig deep, get down to what really mattered. They were concerned with enterprises lasting for as long as they added value and understanding the process of doing that.

Both these men also saw that without profound knowledge and a worthy vision, whatever the endeavor came down to putting in your time, like a “life sentence.”  In Deming’s world profound knowledge meant developing a deep understanding the process by which you were creating value. For Lao Tzu the knowledge he was recommending we develop was knowledge of ourselves.

Where do I make the connection between the admonitions of the crusty mathematician and the poetic if at times enigmatic counsel of the Chinese philosopher? In the Space Between.

Of what value are tools and skills without a project to fulfill? Of what value is a vision without a path for fulfillment? It’s small wonder that Dr. Deming spent much of his professional career exasperated. He had designed tools to fulfill profound economic visions and what he found for clients were often business leaders that had little sense of Mission and a strong desire to simply hit their numbers. Lao Tzu would call this an absence of leadership. For leaders they would say there is always the Mission. Mission is the name for the Space Between. Without Mission there is no real need for application of tools and skills, no need for all that we inherited from Dr. Deming. Without Mission a Vision comes off as a pipe dream, or worse a manipulation, there is no sense of connection to anything beyond the immediate.

Have you named the Space Between for yourself or for those who report to you? Do you truly have a vision for yourself, as a professional and as a person, which calls forth a Mission, which begs for learning in the way Dr. Deming described it? And what about for the people who report to you? Have you shared it with them in ways and language they find meaningful?

•  What are your projects between now and the time you become a butterfly?

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                                            “A long journey requires lots of mango.”

  Dan and Chip Heath, ‘Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard’

How many of us have heard these questions:                                           

• "Could you do that training in one day instead of two?"
• "I thought these people had been trained?"
• "Can we get by pushing that training off to the next budget cycle?"
• "Why would I take time to go to an outside development session?"
• "You’re kidding; you think I need a coach? My results are great!"

Have we been discouraged by the attitudes behind these questions? Yes! Will there ever come a day when the rhetoric about employees being valuable assets of any company is matched by the actions when a quarterly objective is in doubt? Maybe! Training budgets have long been among the first things to get sacrificed when the going gets tough. We all know that the mindset enforced by the language of accounting (employees as expense on the balance sheet) continues to hold sway over the reality of employees as assets. For now that is. You can have something to do with how long this view holds its power.

I know a CFO who flatly states that he hates to spend money on anything. I have asked him how he feels about investment. “Investment, why I love investing, it is one of my favorite things to do”, he says. “Nothing makes me happier than seeing an investment grow.” When I follow that question up with another about how he feels about investing in employee development he gets a sour face and says “It’s not the same thing! Employees are an expense of the business.” But I am his coach and he thinks that it is going well.

There is at least one company I know that annually accepts awards because of the percentage of the annual budget that is committed to employee training. If you back out the amount the company spends on new hire training because of high turnover in certain positions and just focused on employee development the same company would be far from award winning. However, the very same company is currently searching for a director of leadership development.

Let me clearly state my own vision: Every employee has the potential to be developed into a more valuable contributor than they are today. I firmly believe that it makes sense to think that any employee’s last day on the job should their most valuable whether they have been with a company one year, ten or even twenty. This is an uncommon view that I have been working to make common for twenty five years.

Today I am more excited about the future of employee development than ever. The very fact of the constant change all our organizations now face gives us the opportunity to realize the fullest value of every employee in ways that the non-global economy never did.

This realization will require a shift in thinking by those of us in leadership positions - especially positions where decisions are made about how best to invest our company’s money.

When we

• ask our trainers to do “hurry up” training,  
• we relate to development like it is something that gets “done” rather than something that gets started and sustained,  
• relate to coaching like a remedial activity,  
• think development is another word for training,
• act as though development is something others might need but exclude ourselves from the need for periodic revitalization,
• or when we decide that training and development budgets can be slashed without consequence,

we are making it clear to our employees that there is still a ways to go before we authentically act like they are the company’s greatest asset. But it is a process we are involved with, one that requires patience and reinforcement when progress is in evidence.

The words in the opening quote to this post refer to a process of animal training described by the authors of “Switch…’. Mango is the treat used by trainers of monkeys learning to ride skateboards. The Heaths are making the point that reinforcement plays a big part in bringing about the learning of complex skills. They could have as easily said “A long journey requires lots of patience” and the quote would have been equally apt but not as intriguing perhaps! Their point, and the point here as well, is that there will be no moment when your company finally recognizes employees as its most valuable asset and begins to habitually invest in development as if this were so. There is a process and those who lead it will need to be persistent and bring along lots of mango.

Where in your company do you see signs that senior managers, especially those responsible for resource allocations, are inclined more towards employee development now than in the past?

Have you told them that you appreciate what they are doing?

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