[Strategy] Leadership Through Risk

A results driven organization is typically led by managers and supervisors out to minimize downside risk, maximize upside shareholder value and drain all the unique out of the pond called their product.

Consequences, results if you will, are inherently unknowable, and many organizational leaders, cognizant of that fact, seek to either avoid or accommodate employee disputes. They typically do this by handing off the responsibility to professionals in the human resources department, but then they do not empower these individuals to make real changes.

Because, that would be risky.

The paradox of risk in conflict is that if an organizational leader does nothing, it might get worse, or it might “go away;” and, if an organizational leader does something—anything—it might get worse and not go away.

This perception of leadership as a spot to squat was never an okay position to take, but many leaders are encultured and trained through looking and role modeling, and if organizational leaders have never done more than avoid or accommodate risk, future leaders will do the same.

The inability to take on a risky conversation, a risky conflict scenario, or even a risky business decision, defines many organizational environments and outcomes. There are two solutions to this:

Recognize that what’s underneath all of that risk is fear—fear is a powerful drive of conflict, but it’s also a powerful driver of attacking, accommodating or avoiding conflict. Most of the time, directness in communication is associated with courage because there is so little organizational courage. It’s not courageous to engage in a high-risk, highly emotional, conflict conversation, if you as an organizational leader are not “built” to handle it. It’s more courageous to say “I can’t handle it” and hand it off to someone in the organization who can.

Build an antifragile culture in your organization—antifragility builds on accepting the idea that there will be organizational conflict wherever there are two or more people. After that’s accepted, then comes the material fact of acknowledging that the culture has to build around, not managing the conflict through avoiding, accommodating or attacking, but through addressing, engaging and communicating assertively about the material facts and emotional content of conflicts. The last part of developing an atifragile ethic in an organization involves engaging with emotional labor in a meaningful way and figuring out how to recognize and reward that labor in an organization, beyond a once-a-year, alcohol-fueled bash.

Ultimately, the question that leaders both avoiding, accommodating and attacking risky conflict scenarios, and engaging with them effectively, is the same question:

What kind of conflicts do we want to have in our organization?

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Strategy] Leadership Through Apology

Much is made in the Western world of the importance of an apology.

When we start out as children—and our world is starkly black and white—apology comes, not from inside of us, but from outside of us. It is a statement we are compelled to say to others when we hurt them, under threat of punishment from someone in a position of power, i.e. a parent, a guardian or an older sibling.

These apologies are rarely meant, rarely come from a place of empathy about the situation or the other person harmed, and rarely lead to long-term resolution of conflicts, hurts, or injuries.

As we grow older, however, we become used to doing everything that we can to respond to conflicts through attack, avoidance, and/or accommodation. Interestingly enough, adults use all three of these methods to get around, get past and smooth over the need to either give an apology or receive one.

Then, this tendency scales to the workplace; a hard charging environment concerned only with the acquisition of revenue, the holding of power, the maintenance of position and continual growth. And when there’s a mistake made, a wrong committed, or an injury to a customer, a client or a partner, apology becomes a place for liability to lurk in the shadows.

There’s no room for apologies in this environment when people are hurt through conflicts there.

Just get over it, and move on.

But, what if the courage to apologize, much like the courage to take a risk and resolve a conflict in a different way, were a leadership competency, rather than a trapdoor for an executive leader to lose their position?

What if we thought about the process of risk, forgiveness, failure reconciliation, and apology differently?

As was pointed out last week, people get into disputes with other people, but because organizations and workplaces operate at scale, there is little room for the individual to get resolution—or apology—at scale. The only solution is to change the way we operate in organizations at scale, and to shift the conversation around conflict, disagreement, and even injury away from litigation and toward resolution.

The only people who can do that are the people at the top of the hierarchical pyramid. The ones that set the culture of (to paraphrase from John Wayne in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon) “No apologies. It makes us look weak.” The ones that promote, and expand, the image (the myth, if you will) of the hard charging executive.

We see this beginning to happen with Zappos, and the growing interest in implementing a holocracy system in organizations. A system where there is flattened hierarchy. This is the beginning of rethinking how we redesign organizational myth and culture, but for apologies to be effective, and for the act of apologizing to be an effective leadership competency, there must be three things evident before a mouth opens to give a statement:

Sincerity—because the distance between the person affected by a conflict (whether external stakeholder or internal stakeholder) and the person who can give the organizational apology is long, the issue of sincerity in an apology becomes paramount. The only way to close this distance for the leader is for them to actually do some emotional labor and engage with humility.
Humility—because of the nature of organizational cultures (governments, businesses, etc.) arrogance is “baked in” to the structure of the organization, its culture and its ways. This is something that the person giving the apology has to break, but this also has to be reinforced by all of the people down from her in the organizational chain. When the leader is humble enough to apologize, but the mid-level manager is not, the chain of apology is broken.
Acceptance—because of the nature of power in organizations (power over, not power with) and because of how leaders perceive the products of power (i.e. money, time, etc.) there is little ability to accept the idea that an apology when given might not be accepted by the other party. This puts the organization (a group of the many) at the disposal of the injured party (a group of the one). This lack of ability to accept an unpredictable outcome (and not having built an antifragile organization in the first place) creates the environment where the default thought is “We’ll just go to litigation.” Which is the ultimate power play.

For organizations to continue to develop, scale and grow successfully in the 21^st century, leadership training, competencies and even research has to shift in favor of increasing leaders’ development in the three above areas, before an apology-based culture is even considered.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] The Psychology of WellBeing

Conflict in the workplace doesn’t have to reduce overall career wellbeing.

But we think that it does for three reasons:

We think that work (and by extension careers) should be utilitarian pursuits, focused on drudgery, repetition and boredom. Which is an attitude remaining in the Western Culture from our agriculture and industrial past.
We don’t really believe that work (and by extensions careers) can change. We have thoroughly accepted the idea (pushed by industrialists, politicians, and the media) that “that’s just the way that it is.” And we are so trammeled in our cages of fear of being fired, that we will do anything not to make changes that will affect our wellbeing positively.
We frame material promotions and financial advancements, in the workplace as metrics of approval and signs that we are accomplishing good work. Partly this is because of the way that we think work should be. It is also partly because the value of work relationships cannot yet be monetized.

So, we believe these three things about work at varying levels in varying positions in the organizational hierarchies we find ourselves, and then we are surprised, disappointed and frustrated when difficulties, confrontations and conflicts arise.

What’s the way out?

We have to let go and stop thinking of ourselves as hostages to the workplace.

We have to do the dance with fear, increasing the tension between difficulty, confrontation and conflict, in order to accomplish material changes that will bring about the career wellbeing we crave—and that will change the cultures of the organizations we currently inhabit.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] You Are Doing Great Things, I Know It…

Performance evaluations, feedback, criticism and “suggestions for improvement” in people’s performance all serve as ways to separate leaders from followers.

We had a conversation this week about caring (see here) and we keep coming back to the idea when we think about how leaders should encourage their followers’ hearts. Most of the time, people analyze what we do—as either leaders or followers—and then make judgments about our performance. Often this judgment is then equated with a person’s character, wisdom or ethics.

But organizations and institutions can’t—and don’t—care. Only people do. And in order to encourage people to continue to follow, leaders must care about the people that they are leading, enough to guide them through the necessary risks to execute the mission.

Performance evaluations, feedback, “suggestions for improvement,” criticism, and many other forms of feedback are often used as a cover for the vulnerability that really caring about followers requires.

“But what do you do if people aren’t doing the ‘right’ thing and screwing up the process?”

This question is a corporate variation on “How do you tell the truth in grace to someone?” and it’s an excellent one. Here are three ideas:

Know what you care about as a leader and why—Some leaders care about process more than people. If that’s the case, recognize and praise the process, rather than attempting to recognize and praise the person.
Be genuine with yourself as a leader—Some leaders struggle with self-awareness. But feedback, criticism and other forms of “improvement” lectures don’t work, and can often be seen as blameing and excuse making. Being genuine with yourself means care about what your role is before caring about your followers’ roles.
Seek to understand first—Some leaders are self-absorbed, narcissistic and vainglorious. Harsh sounding words, yes, but in a world where genuine recognition of others is the only way to effectively encourage a heartful followership, a leader must seek to understand their followers’ hearts—and care about them.

In the short run, caring about people and building relationships is the only way to go for a leader. Celebration and rituals, combined with the importance of symbols, done with authenticity and heartfelt pride in ones followers, can do more to cement long term growth than any amount of money, service development or process change.

Encouraging the heart requires caring about people and creating long term, value based relationships.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Strategy] “Yes We Can!”

“Yes we can!”

Boy, isn’t that a catchy phrase.

The word “we” is synonymous with enabling others to act, but there are a couple of other pieces that go along with that word:

There are two kinds of power—Many leaders resort to “power over,” when they lose faith or trust (more on this in a minute) in their followers to accomplish the goals that leaders have articulated. Leaders with bad visions (i.e. Hitler, Stalin, etc.) do this more often than leaders with good visions (i.e. Steve Jobs, Moses, etc.). But “we” creates the second kind of power, “power with.” It empowers followers to see the vision and implement it in their own way.
Trust is always an issue—When leaders “let go” and truly begin trusting “the masses” to move a vision forward, some followers aren’t going to get the message right. Some followers are going to be deceitful and self-serving. And some followers are going to fall away when it gets to be too hard. Martin Luther King, and Gandhi both experienced this, but it did not diminish their faith and trust in their followers.
Carrying capacity increases—A leader who doesn’t have to control the “scope creep” of a spreading vision, is not really a leader. Part of acting on a vision is that when action starts, so do reactions: from friends, enemies, circumstances and opportunities. How does a leader know when to say “yes” and know when to say “no”? Well, when the number of followers increases because of trust and empowerment, then the ability to say “No, I can’t right now…but give it to Sally over there” becomes a statement of collaboration, rather than a principled rejection.

We without empowerment, trust and collaboration is just a word with smoke but no fire and followers can easily become cynical when its overuse transforms from inspiration to cliché.

“Yes we can!”

Ok. How will you?

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Strategy] It Is Easier…

It is easier to sit and wait for a situation to change because of external circumstances, than it is to do the hard work of failing.

It is easier.

Just like it is easier to ignore conflicts in your midst and act like nothing is going wrong inside of your organization, your family, your neighborhood, or even your country.
Just like it is easier to shrug your shoulders and let “someone else” do the hard work of confronting, challenging and changing your world (in the social sciences we call this the Bystander Effect).
Just like it is easier to put your metaphorical head down, plow forward and only look up when the week is over, the client/customer seems “satisfied” or the “job is done.”

The hard emotionally challenging work of trying and potentially failing is not for the faint of heart. It requires commitment, perseverance, grit, resiliency, accountability and a sense of responsibility to the people, the process, the change and the outcome.

Leaders in organizations that honor this hard, emotional labor flourish. Those in organizations that don’t, falter and eventually quit—quite trying, quit failing, even quit caring.

In our most recent presentation to a corporate group, we encouraged the leaders in the room to lead and to take up the mantle of failure in three ways:

Understand yourself first—We keep going back to it, but from understanding conflict, to understanding leadership, to understanding communication: physician heal thyself.
Care about the process—People don’t lead who don’t care about people, relationships, or processes. This is a tough realization and a man in the presentation came up to us and said “I realize after you said that people don’t lead who don’t care, that I often tell people that I don’t care and that ‘it takes a lot to offend me, so don’t even try.’ Maybe I should change that.”

Yes.

Build relationships—In any organization, whether it’s a family, a neighborhood or a company, we can only successfully lead through building relationships with people, not processes. People change before things.

One last point: Commitment, ethics, integrity and character in challenging the process must be in place before leadership through challenging the process can truly begin. Teach and nurture commitment and leadership will follow.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Strategy] Going Viral

Enthusiasm, just like content, can go viral in an organization.

Leaders must be the “Patient Zero” in this scenario; caught by a vision, an idea of what could be in an organization, they then inspire to get constituents to strive alongside them.

Is this always a positive act?

No.

Steve Jobs is lauded for being a visionary leader on projects and product development at Apple, but he was (from all accounts in his biography) a horrible human being. But, he’s in good company: Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Martin Luther, and even Moses and Winston Churchill all had bad habits, poor temperaments and sometimes lacked the words to inspire their followers.

Should leaders be required to take “humanity” lessons before leading?

We don’t know, but without a shared vision—even if that vision comes from the mind of a flawed leader—followers won’t know where to go, and leaders will just walk around in circles by themselves.

How does a leader catch the virus of inspiring a shared vision?

Know your constituents—Know who follows you and understand and acknowledge their deeper “whys.” Steve Jobs did, and so does your local community organizer.
Know your vision—Know what you want to do and why you want to do it. Martin Luther, the Protestant Reformer, wanted an answer from the Pope about several things. So, he created the medieval version of a blog post and it went viral…
Know your own passion—Know when passion will wane and when it will wax. Moses went off to talk to God in the wilderness occasionally, leaving the people he was leading to their own devices. It helped him.

Speaking the language of virality is the key to spreading enthusiasm. And, in an era of increasingly fractured attention spans, leaders don’t have to go viral to the masses, just to the long tail of truly committed followers.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Strategy] This Moment of Clarity

Leadership requires faithfulness to be effective.

It is often to followers that the character of faithfulness is required to be demonstrated: Faithfulness to the leaders’ vision, mission, values and goals.

But rarely is it asked if the person leading the parade has to be faithful to the participants and followers in the parade, and to larger missions, visions and goals.

In order to develop faithfulness from within, leaders must be emotionally and spiritually clear about what their personal values are, as well as how those values either do—or don’t—fit with larger organizational values.

But how does a leader get such clarity?

Engage with self-awareness – Find out about what makes you tick as a leader, and why.
Develop a mentality of stewardship – A steward preserves first, maintains second and manages last. A steward also remembers that people come first, processes come second and money comes third.
Be a follower AND a leader – Earning respect is about honoring the accomplishments of others who came before your leadership; and demurring on the drawbacks and mistakes of those same others.

Leaders who aren’t internally and externally clear about where they are going, and about how their values align with the organizations and the groups that they seek to lead, can’t ever hope to be more than managers of the process to get there.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Strategy] Leading Through Obligation

If you are a manager in an organization of any size, with any mission or scope of responsibility, it is your obligation to lead.

Now, obligation is a loaded word, filled with the stresses of accountability, responsibility, and eating last in a world where everyone wants to eat first.

Obligation comes along with the word “honor,” which, as a verb, means to “fulfill (an obligation) or keep (an agreement).

There is a tacit agreement between leaders and followers: Leaders set a tone, provide a secure space for initiatives to be implemented and then codify action through words and deeds. Followers implement the initiatives as they are proposed, rally behind the leader in times of stress or conflict and promote the tone of the actions.

At least, in a perfect world.

Unfortunately, we live in a world of imperfection, mixed motives, lies and deception and selfish pursuits.

In this world, leadership is even more critical and, at the core, requires human leaders to sacrifice resources (material, emotional and even spiritual) in order to accomplish a greater good for their followers—even when they believe that the greater good is wrong.

This ability to sacrifice marks the difference between politicians and statesmen.
This ability to sacrifice marks the difference between role models and celebrities.
This ability to sacrifice marks the difference between leaders and followers.

A leader’s responsibility is not to chart a course for the followers and then blindly lead them there, in spite of everything.

A leader’s responsibility is to chart a course for their followers (after actively listening to their followers) and then convince, persuade, cajole and move the followers toward accomplishing those goals.

This process requires an understanding, and an acceptance of, the definitions of obligation, honor, responsibility, accountability, character and honor.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

Negotiating Innovation

There are all kinds of competencies that a leader has to have in order to be successful in an organization.

Unfortunately, we tend to focus on the flashy ones that look good on the resume, in the job description, or that can show up on the company masthead or in an article in an industry publication.

But the competencies that matter the most are those that don’t show up as prominently.

Conflict engagement and effective conflict management tend to be focused on developing the competencies that will maintain the organizational culture and reinforce the status quo.

Developing these competencies and reinforcing them inside an organizational culture, is the innovator’s dilemma and has been for many years.

Creating a culture focused on developing and nurturing effective, developmental conflict engagement practices—as part of a set of innovative, overarching leadership competencies—can seem like climbing up hill with a spoon.

But is there really any other way?

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/