Coaching Tip: The Leadership Blog

Transforming Culture

Given the deepening problems of today's postindustrial society, does humanity have the awareness and transformational leadership capacity to assume responsibility for species survival?

The greatest hindrances to democracy are not terrorism, a despotic ruler or controlling special interests---they are apathy, hopelessness, and cynicism.  Fortunately, this pattern is being interrupted by an aware individual who is open to a wisdom-based approach to solving problems and engages in both personal and social transformation simultaneously.

Transforming culture is not simple nor easy.  It takes more than prayer, good intentions and meditation.  It takes more than going to protests, signing petitions and lobbying for peace.  The cultural patterns are deeply embedded; they will not move outside people's comfort zone without serious intervention, awakened consciousness and civic participation.

War propaganda relies on selective social agreements about history, the identities of the hero and antihero, and the belief that war is an acceptable way to resolve a problem.  If one of these three components is missing in a society, it is much more difficult for the powers-that-be to wage war.

States that did not engage in heroic battles, annex territory, expand empires, or defer to powerful rulers were not considered important by historians with our particular cultural bias.  Such stories did not fit our profile of advance civilizations or states; hence, they have been omitted from most of our history books.

So, do partnership models that thrive without warfare actually exist?

The answer is yes.  The former city-state of Dubrovnik in Croatia was an alternative model to the accepted ideal of empire, but very few people outside of the Balkans know anything about it.  Consciously created in the 1200s as a state that would neither engage in warfare nor conquer territory, the founding city council members decided to have no monarch or long-term rulers.  The council would elect one of its members as governor for a mere thirty days; that way, long-term personal goals and temptations of power abuse were averted.  The council members also focused on building good diplomatic relations with the known world at that time and had embassies in fifty cities.

Dubrovnik became a major port on the Adriatic Sea and excelled in trade, diplomacy and civil society.  They built a plumbing system that would make the chamber pots of Europe seem primitive.  They outlawed slavery in 1416, before any other European state.  They built the earliest quarantines to protect their citizens from the plagues sweeping Europe. 

Their most significant accomplishment was a legacy of more than six hundred years of peace up to the end of the Dubrovnik city-state in 1808.  With no statues of rulers, generals, sports figures, or celebrities, heroes were in very short supply in old Dubrovnik.  Without the need to conquer or create enemies, to set up classes of divine-right rulers, or to create heroes of mythic stature, Dubrovnik placed a higher value on its citizens and civil society.

The background for this posting is the Culture and Mythos Series that Praxis Peace Institute initiated in February 2005.  It consists of lectures, workshops, discussions and research groups and covers a two-year period.  Praxis Peace Institute will convene a six-day conference, "Transforming Culture: From Empire to Earth Charter," in Dubrovnik, Croatia, June 4-10, 2007.  For more information, visit: www.PraxisPeace.org 

Source: Shift at the frontiers of consciousness, Institute of Noetic Sciences, Sept-Nov 2006

Developing Business Relationships

Over the years, I have discovered success is powered by three things: know-how, reputation and a network of contacts. 

The formula for success = your human capital (what you know) times your social capital (who you know) times your reputation (who trusts you).

You can take away all my money and even my customer list, but if I can keep my smarts, my business relationships and reputation, I'll get it all back and then some. Having knowledge, social capital and trust is the ultimate security blanket in good times and bad.

According to stereotype, women are better at developing relationships than men.

But that's not true in the corporate world, says Carol Gallagher, author of Going to the Top. Women tend to put their heads down and finish their work, assuming they'll get noticed, she said. "The guys are out playing golf and networking," she says.  The men gain valuable connections. They also learn about big-picture strategic issues, knowledge that helps them climb to the top.

Women burn out, Gallagher says. It's well-known that women do more housework than men. But women also tend to stay in the office, while men are more likely to be out networking and building connections. "Women are fried, exhausted, at the end of the day, the week, the year," Gallagher says. "The men are having more fun."

Sources: www.CoachThee.com and www.Forbes.com 

Context versus Character

As we get nearer to elections this Fall, political advertisements and commentaries frequently become focused on the character of the candidates. The political campaign process plays on our oversimplified "good guy/bad guy" perceptions. 

There is something in our perceptions that make us instinctively want to explain the world around us in terms of a candidate's essential attributes or character: "he's a _____ _____."

The mistake we make in thinking of character as something unified and all-encompassing is very similar to a kind of blind spot in the way we process information.  When it comes to interpreting other people's behavior, human beings invariably make the mistake of overestimating the importance of fundamental character traits and underestimating the importance of the situation and context.

We do this because we are more attuned to personal cues than contextual cues. 

Yet, character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstance and context.  The reason that most of us seem to have a consistent character is that we are really good or really lucky in controlling our living and working environment. 

Imagine yourself in one of the hostile environments on planet earth for a sustained period of time and consider how your character might change.  Create that image before you go to the polls this Fall to discover how important the situation is in affecting the character of the people living through periods of difficult and structural change.

Play Ball!

Ball games provide excellent leadership examples and the end-of-the-season games highlight the benefits of strong leadership.

As baseball's World Series begins this week in Metro Detroit, the turnaround accomplishments of the Detroit Tigers president & CEO, David Dombrowski, and first-year manager, Jim Leyland, demonstrate effective leadership from the opening day forward.   

Personally, the World Series takes me back to the days of my youth when my grandfather took my brother and I to New York City to be entertained by the many baseball stories of Casey Stengel, manager of the classic New York Yankees from 1949 to 1960.

Today, with the college football season at its peak, here in Ann Arbor we are enjoying watching the University of Michigan team play up to their potential.  That wasn't the case last season or a few years before that, when long-time coach, Lloyd Carr, and his staff were ineffective in putting together a conference winning game plan.  However, rather than walk away from the game, Carr decided after last season to shake up his coaching staff and make it to the top of the Big Ten Conference in 2006. 

And, except for those college coaches not invited to March Madness, we all love to watch the NCAA college basketball season-ending tournament. 

The leadership lessons of each season's winning and losing efforts helps players, coaches and fans better understand what it takes to be a winner in sports and in life.   We all begin to recognize that seeing ourselves clearly does many things:

• It allows us to control impulses and select the most appropriate behaviors.

• It shows us how to avoid reacting in negative and potentially self-limiting ways.

• Knowing our strengths and limitations makes us more understanding of others.

• Gaining an understanding of issues reduces conflict in ourselves and in others.

Being aware of the affect of your personality and default behavior on the people in your life helps you to engineer a better communication and leadership style.

Find Good Places to Think

In a damaging blow to our beliefs about the democracy of human effort, science has another whopper: When it comes to brain development, the playing field isn't equal.

This radical new hypothesis is based on the nascent, but increasingly irrefutable, science of neurogenesis, the process by which the brain creates new neurons.  Until recently, modern neuroscience was predicated on the idea that all brain neurons emerge during prenatal and early postnatal development, and the number of brain cells is then fixed for life.   But the research of Elizabeth Gould, a professor of psychology at Princeton University, turned that theory on its head.

Her laboratory's observation of marmosets demonstrated that the primate brain is always creating new neurons.  What's more, her team went on to prove that the structure of our brain is incredibly influenced by our surroundings.  Put a primate under stressful conditions, and its brain begins to starve.  It stops creating new cells.  The cells it already has retreat inward.  The mind is disfigured.

The implications of Gould's observations are monumental.  In situations of chronic stress, like living in impoverished conditions or being low in a dominancy hierarchy, the production of neurons stops.  No new neural pathways are created, the brain suffers, and the perceived truism that we are all able through hard work and effort to achieve congruent levels of acumen is kaput.

The takeaway?

"The mind is like a muscle: It swells with exercise...escaping the downward cycle of stress," writes Jonah Lehrer in Seed (Feb/March 2006)

Source: "The Incredible Growing Brain" by Laine Bergeson, Utne, July/August 2006

Fearful Voters

For twenty years, researchers have been exploring how people manage the fear engendered by intimations of mortality.

Reminded of the inevitability of their own death, people try to quench, or at least manage, the resulting "existential terror" in several ways.  They become more certain of their worldview or faith.  They conform more closely to the norms of their society.  They show greater reverence for symbols of their society, such as flags and crucifixes.

All of these make people feel more secure and, crucially, a part of something larger--something that will outlive them.

The latest research shows that because violent political acts are brutal reminders of death, they make conservatives more hostile toward those perceived as different, and more supportive of extreme military policies, according to a study in April's Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Bringing Terrorism Front and Center in Voters' Minds

On the weekend before Election Day 2004, al-Jazeera broadcast a videotape in which Osama bin Laden, addressing the U.S., tore into the Bush administration.  Four days later, the president won re-election.

Which brings us back to the effect on voters of a terrorist attack and its brutal reminders of mortality.  Although some voters would feel betrayed by incumbents who failed to protect them, researchers say, these days that trend would more likely be swamped by a surge toward candidates perceived as hawks on national security.

In the upcoming election, expect the unexpected to occur around Halloween and scare voters into voting booths across America.

Source: Science Journal, The Wall Street Journal, October 13, 2006

Social Intelligence

Columbia Business School has introduced a new program that teaches the importance of a more empathetic and sensitive leadership style in globalized business.

Students learn how to read facial expressions, body language and posture, and get coaching on their brain's "mirror neurons"-- how what they're thinking and feeling can affect others.

Daniel Goleman, whose new book "Social Intelligence" is being taught in the program, points out that "while women are, in general, better at reading emotions, men tend to be better at managing them during a crisis.  Women tend to be more sophisticated in reading social interactions but also tend to ruminate more when things go wrong."

Neenu Sharma, an MBA student in the new Columbia program, says the moral of the story is that leadership works best with both sexes involved.  "You need the woman there to know what's actually going on but you need the man there to deal with the critical emotions at the time."

Source: Maureen Dowd, The New York Times

Women: Promote Yourself

The best route for a woman to reach the corporate boardroom is to promote herself.

Corporate boards are seeking additional female members to benefit from more-diversified decision making.  However, the numbers tell a story of slow progress.  Women held 14.7% of board seats at Fortune 500 companies in 2005, up from 13.6% in 2003 and 6.9% in 1995, according to a report from Catalyst, a New York-based nonprofit group that researches women's career issues.

Landing a board seat requires a more subtle strategy than a job search, says Wendy Alfus-Rothman, an executive coach in New York.  "If you want a job, you can pursue a company, but you can't apply quite the same directness with boards, because they want to find you," she says.  "If you want to be on a board, you must be invited to the party."

To be discovered as a board candidate, women may need to change their mind-set.  While strategies for landing a board seat are pretty much the same for men and women, women typically are less comfortable carrying out some of them, says Ms. Alfus-Rothman.  "It's not always in their nature to be self-promoting," she says.  "Women hope the world will figure out how brilliant they are through their work, when in truth, it's their job to get the word out."

Source: Path to the Top, The Wall Street Journal, October 9, 2006

Spirituality@Work

First, some definitions: To be spiritual is about relating to, consisting of, or having the nature of spirit which is not tangible nor material.  Spirit is defined as the vital principle or animating force or energy traditionally believed to be within living beings.  The soul is the spirit in man and is often conceived in religions as an immaterial entity that is immortal, separable from the body at death, and susceptible to happiness or misery in a future state.

Leaders of organizations, who are concerned with positively affecting the soul and providing employees with the freedom to practice their diverse religious beliefs, may decide to manage the workplace environment with spiritual sensitivity.

Experts say U.S. workplaces have become more religiously diverse, forcing companies to rethink everything from vacation policies to the cafeteria menu.  And though managers of all faiths are bringing a spiritual touch to the corner office, in the U.S., evangelical Christians are the most active.

Christian managers say there's no inherent contradiction between running a company--even a public one with its commitment to maximize shareholder value--and behaving spiritually.  And lawyers say it's generally not a problem to run a public company on faith-based principles, as long as the executives make those principles clear to shareholders, and make sure they don't follow faith to the exclusion of investor interests.

Skeptics say religion in the executive suite can alienate people with other beliefs.  Federal law prohibits discrimination in hiring or promotion on the basis of religion.  Employers may express religious views as long as staffers of different faiths don't feel pressured or unwelcome.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the organization is the 'gatekeeper' to the employees and workplace environment.  Without an enlightened attitude by corporate leadership, there is a good chance that their private evangelical religious beliefs will be pushed on employees to the exclusion of other faiths; with spirituality at work being downgraded to the boss' favorite flavor of religion.  Because most religions firmly believe that theirs is "the only way," it is questionable if most CEOs actually commit to paving the way for religious diversity in the practice of spirituality at work.

The Vital Core in the Practice of Spirituality@Work

I know of one exceptional company that actually provided for a corporate infrastructure, based on the 'servant leader' concept, and took a holistic approach to spirituality at work.  In a February 22, 1983 memo to all employees, the management team stated:

"For more than 50 years, this company has been developing into an organization with a special spirit and value system built around a unique group of people--the employees.  An underlying principle of the company's development has been to establish an environment which would maximize the opportunity for each employee to grow, develop and serve to his or her greatest potential.

To assure the perpetuation of the company and its ability to continue to serve these aims and ideals, individual ownership of common stock has been replaced by a new Capital Fund which is to be administered by a Board of Trustees to foster corporate growth and financial health and to see that employees are paid fairly and rewarded according to their contribution. 

The Trustees have the fiduciary responsibility to see that the corporate values of integrity, excellence and quality, equal opportunity and freedom of religion are maintained and that each generation of management is training its successors.  The Trustees elect the Board of Directors who establish overall policy and the Board of Directors elect the Officers and Managers who will implement the policies, manage and operate the company."

In the original by-laws of the Capital Fund (adopted on July 25, 1984), these specific sentences reflect the corporate intent:

"Provide equal opportunity for all employees and associates to develop his or her talents, attitudes and capabilities for the good of the person, the corporation and those in any relationship to the corporation;

Complete religious freedom is to be practiced within the company with no exclusionist pressure applied to support a specific religious viewpoint.  At the same time the spiritual impulses motivating individuals may be recognized and appreciated so long as they do not encroach upon the free will of another.  All employees shall be free to profess their opinions in matters of religion, without diminishing, enhancing, or in any way affecting their careers in the company.

Encourage and nurture managers to perpetuate the servant leader concept and select, train and develop later generations of managers in this concept;"

This servant leadership example illustrates that spirituality in the workplace is possible and may be helpful to others who wish to create and/or preserve the common sense concept of allowing moral values to transcend belief in a specific religion.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, October 9, 2006 and the original by-laws of an unnamed company's Capital Fund

Change hurts!

The hurting is not the woe-is-me kind of hurt, that executives tend to dismiss as an affliction of the weak and sentimental, but the actual physical and psychological discomfort....and...brain pictures prove it.

Watching different areas of the brain light up in response to specific thoughts has brought a new understanding to the corporeal mechanics of psychology in general and to our response to change in particular.  These advances are bringing a much-needed hard foundation of science to a leadership challenge that has long seemed hopelessly soft and poorly defined: change management.

For this story on The New Science of Change by Christopher Koch in the September 15, 2006 issue of CIO magazine, go to: http://www.cio.com/archive/091506/change.html