For a leader to fail to embody the values visible and productively is to fall at the very first hurdle when it comes to culture change. If you don’t do it then not only do you lose your ability to role-model what the values mean in day-to-day behaviour but, worse, you lose credibility from that point on. Without credibility, there’s no trust.

It’s not rocket-science but walking the talk requires first that the values mean something to you and second, that you have the courage, awareness and discipline to modify your default behaviour in accordance with them.

The reason why so many leaders don’t do this is the same reason that so many employees don’t want to do it either. It’s hard and it can be uncomfortable in practice.

Our experience shows that a commitment to walking the talk is a ‘win-win’ situation every time.

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Social media technologies really can make a difference here – but only if business leaders think of them as listening tools first and ways to communicate second.

Time and again we hear from people who believe that their leaders are going through the ‘engagement’ motions when all they want is for their experience to make a positive difference.

What are you listening to? And more importantly, why?

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And yet ‘us and them’ is also at the very core our economy.  After all, isn’t business all about how our business performs against the competition?

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Since each of us has a different point of view about what’s important in our organisation and why, its no surprise to find that teams – at all levels – are awash with personal agendas. They are, after all, what make us who we are and what gives us our unique approach to the roles we play in the organisation…aren’t they?

Having an agenda isn’t the problem but being unconscious about it is – especially at Board level. The hardest work for any team is to step back from the rush of  ‘business as usual’ and find the time to unpack and explore these different points of view.

We’ve found that working together to create a story about where the business is going and a Big Picture to represent that story can be an effective – and safe – way to explore the different agendas at play in a team and find the common ground they share.

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The first shows our tendency to put on armour and let our egos slug it out when we feel threatened, and how this gets in the way of service. The second shows the way we can collude to de-risk the language of change. The third shows how hard it can be to see things differently when our thinking keeps us “getting what we’ve always got”, even when we desperately want change. The last image shows what can happen when leaders and employees are willing to step outside their own comfort zones and have more adult-to-adult relationships.

The clash of egos

This picture was inspired by hearing a recent client talking about the behaviour of some senior leaders when faced with the need to create change in the organisation. When change is scary and brings up fear, it’s natural to deny or avoid this feeling and defend against it. The ego needs to be certain and right and on familiar ground. But to adapt to change we need to risk letting go of what we’re sure about to move towards something new. If we’re going to lead change, and genuinely serve people, there’s no place for ego. We need to be willing to drop the defences and to go first into the unknown…

Do you see this happing in your organisation? What would you like to do about it?

The Language Neutraliser

The way change is communicated has a significant impact on employees. We often hear corporate-speak that sounds like it has been through some kind of machine for squeezing out risk. Unfortunately, this also has the effect of squeezing out most of the meaning too.

It may be difficult to be honest with employees but, unless you are, they will see right through your words and become more cynical and distrustful. To gain trust and engagement, a leader needs to demonstrate the courage to to be honest about what is happening. No more euphemisms, no more de-risked expressions – just the simplest, most direct words possible.

What words or expressions have been through the “Neutraliser” in your organisation?

Do what you’ve always done and you’ll get
what you’ve always got

Einstein once said “problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them”. Faced with unprecendented pressure to change, this seems more relevant today than it has ever been, with organisations under huge pressure to perform better with less resources. For many people, this just means working longer and harder but even when they do, little seems to change. Why is that? It’s because most organisations are still doing what they’ve always done and getting what they’ve always got.

How can you make sense of what you don’t yet know? That’s the question. We think that the secret to change is when a leader is willing to imagine that the way forward lies outside of their current way of thinking about things. It takes real courage to ask “what is it that I’m not seeing here?”

Do you recognise this situation? Do your leaders have time and space to step back enough to look at it?

How can you engage a workforce when the organisation has to cut 25% of its combined workforce?

As a leader, you can engage the workforce with this difficult and painful issue through your willingness to get into an honest dialogue about it. The most important thing you could do is to use this situation to create a shift in understanding about what’s happening and why and what it means to each individual.

That means both the leadership and the workforce being invited to explore and question its familiar points of view.  For leadership, these might include “we can’t tell the truth about this, we can’t be wrong, we can’t NOT know…” while for the workforce they might be “we don’t understand the bigger picture, can’t see beyond the detail, it’s them versus us…”

The aim of this dialogue is to bring each side away from its familiar position towards common ground. It can only work if each side is willing to experience some discomfort in order to gain fresh understanding and shared purpose. Because of this discomfort, it also requires external facilitation to make sure that old defensive habits don’t reassert themselves when things get difficult.

What do you think is the answer?

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I noticed this paradox watching TV news recently, it is such a big issue I often feel powerless  at the impossibility of resolving it. How do you feel about it?

It feels difficult sometimes to work out what is the right thing to do. Holding the tension between conflicting interests and courses of action, having the courage  to take a risk and do what feels right in the service of others are leadership skills I admire. If we don’t take risks nothing will change!

Delta7 pictures are intended to start conversations about things that really matter. Try printing this picture, showing a friend and asking them what they feel about it, and see where the conversation take you…

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These two pictures were inspired by an excellent Quality and Equality lecture I attended a few weeks ago.

Marvin Weisbord, an elder statesman in the Organisational Development field, gave a fascinating talk about its history over more than a century. Building on the contributions of Taylor, Bion and Lewin, he took us through the stages of self-managed teams, systems thinking, group dynamics and lean working, up to his current focus on participative leadership and whole systems interventions.

Marvin shared so many great ideas that I found it difficult to chose which ones to visualize first  (which is my favourite way of learning!). Nonetheless, here are two pictures that seemed to me to be the most interesting and relevant.  The first was inspired by Marvin’s idea that the key building block of all change is the meeting that you’re in right now.  This is a core principle for us at Delta7 and it was good to hear it expressed so succinctly.

The second shows his thoughts on the type of leadership we need in the current complex environment.  In our “hurry up!” technological culture of “faster, cheaper, better”, the quality and rigour of leadership thinking can often go out the window. As our ancient human psyche is being pushed to its limits, we need everyone thinking and leading together in a more democratic way if we are going to  survive and create a better world.

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Clients often talk about the need for more adult-to-adult conversations where the leaders treat employees with respect and listen to and value their views and concerns.  Time and again, however, engagement surveys tell us that this just isn’t happening.  ‘Soft stuff’?  Hardly.  In my experience the ability to have these kinds of difficult conversations is the ‘hard stuff’.

This picture reminds me that the engagement gap is also between HR and the rest of the board. How can HR leaders engage with other leaders diferently?

What do you think?

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I was at a conference last month, organised by  CIPD on Employee Engagement. In a discussion around some of the Kingston Consortium research findings I heard someone say “What is the key to unlocking potential?”

So what does a successful employee engagement strategy look like?  What’s your experience?

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