Managing "complex" environments (a new take on the old Cynefin model)

I recently heard a talk on managing complexity which made good use of the Cynefin model (pronounced Kin-eh-vin) originally developed by Dave Snowden. I'm told that Dave was always at great pains to say it isn't a simple 2x2 model. But now, by incorporating something about the brain, I'm going to modify it to make it exactly that. Sorry Dave!

The horizontal dimension is about the predictability of the environment - predictable at one end and unpredictable at the other. Without defining the other dimension, Dave produced a model which had four domains (plus the central area as a fifth domain).

My insight when listening to the talk was to realise that the other dimension was all about the type of thinking needed - whether it needs to be "Fast" or "Slow" (per Daniel Kahneman). At one end we have pure Fast (System 1) thinking. At the other we have not just Slow (System 2) thinking, but both Fast AND Slow - ie a mindful approach. My new version of this model is therefore shown below:

Why I found this insight helpful was that it made me understand how difficult it is in Complex and Complicated environments if we are NOT mindful, ie we lose our System 2. If we get threatened by the unpredictability of Complex environments, System 2 is closed down, and they seem (and soon become) Chaotic. And if tiredness or overload causes us to switch off System 2 in Complicated environments, we can treat them as if they were Routine (or Simple / Obvious) - with inevitably bad consequences.

So the mechanisms for approaching each environment appropriately are our usual ones involving awareness and mind management:
(a) be aware of your internal state (Is this a time to keep your System 2 on - ie be mindful?)
(b) recognise the predictability of the situation (Is it full of "problems" or are they "dilemmas"?)

Very pleased to have been reminded of a neat model - please google it to find out more...

Developing the 'eye' of leadership

"The 'eye' of leadership" is actually the title of a book by Nigel Nicholson (Professor at the London Business School) - though he writes it as "The 'I' of leadership". Nigel is someone I'm lucky enough to have worked with quite a bit and what I really like about his book (and his whole approach) is that he doesn't say leadership is this or is that, but rather that leadership is a ongoing dynamic process of paying attention - in his model to "Seeing", "Being" and "Doing". This fits with my personal experience of the reality of leadership, and it also fits the way I work as a coach to leaders, or in designing leadership development programmes.

The model I use, for what I call "learning by experience", has the same 6 pathways, but a slightly different construct, involving "Seeing", "Feeling" and "Thinking" as the loops between "Knowing" and "Doing". (NB You can click on the picture to enlarge it)

The message in both our models - supported by neuroscience as much as personal observation and theorising - is that you need to focus on "Seeing" (ie "Perception") as the key to success.

Practices every leader should practice

A couple of weeks ago I was working with a large multi-national on a development programme for their senior leaders from around the world. It was specifically focused on dealing with a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous world - the world we all seem to be faced with these days! What we worked on were essentially the three thinking practices that I have recommended for many years to the executives I coach - and I realise I have never posted about them before. So here they are:

1. Focus attention on the inner world. This means looking at the assumptions, beliefs, biases and blind spots which distort our perception, and hence constrain our thinking and our actions. It means paying attention not only to your own inner world, but also to that of others you interact with, and to the the collective inner world of the organisation. This allows you to be more aware of habitual patterns of thinking or action, giving you the option of interrupting automatic processes and making more intentional decisions.

2. Take another's perspective. We all believe we do this all the time, but actually it is harder than we think. Often we get stuck in our own heads, and simply project our thinking onto others - so we don't really look from their perspective, we imagine they are seeing things as we do. I find I need the explicit help of dialogue with other people, or specific thinking tools, to really shift my point of view.

3. Use the power of the non-rational. I would usually combine this with both 1 and 2. I am talking here about listening to what your body is telling you, and using pictures, imagery, and metaphor to understand (and communicate) complexity. In complex situations the non-rational right brain often understands much more than the rational left brain can cope with.

All these ways of thinking (practices) are things we can get better at by repetition (practice). With practice they take less effort and you become more fluent and effective in their use. So don't let them be one-off experiences on a programme. Practice, practice, practice.

Breathe to choose (and vice versa!)

It's a while since my last post, and it's a slightly odd title. So let me explain... I've just come back from a week at Tai Chi summer training. There are many things I get from Tai Chi, but one of the things I want to pick out relates to how we react to people and situations. What most people associate with Tai Chi is the Tai Chi form - a set sequence of movements performed slowly and smoothly, practised alone or perhaps in a group. However we also practise more martial (2 person) work. In this, the idea is to engage with another person and mitigate any challenge they present without losing your balance (which almost always results in you being "pushed" over).

It's pretty easy to see how this might be a metaphor for interactions in business, and something you might want to be able to do. I'm not going to try to describe in detail how our practice works, but one "secret" of success in this 2 person practice is to avoid over-reacting. It turns out that it is not the other person who pushes you off balance, but your own over-reaction which takes you off balance. They then simply take advantage of that. Similarly, you do not push them off balance, you simply wait until they over-react and take themselves off balance, then use that to your advantage. Simple!

You don't have to take up Tai Chi to use this Tai Chi secret in your everyday life. Avoiding over-reaction is something you can do very quickly in many situations - just by breathing. I've written many times about how your limbic reacts instantly to people and situations, and it is the limbic that has the tendency to over-react. When it sees a situation or person as a threat, it doesn't hesitate, it stimulates your sypathetic nervous system into full scale physical response - often with unhelpful consequences. In particular it shuts off the PFC which means you lose the capacity to imagine positive outcomes or see new options for action. But slowly breathing out instantly switches on your para-sympathetic nervous system to calm the limbic, and re-enable your PFC - giving you back your ability to make better choices.

Clearly it helps if you practice paying attention to your breathing (eg via mindfulness type practices) and the more you put this into practice in stressful situations, the more automatic the response becomes (which is why we do the martial arts practice). But there's nothing to stop you using this reframing thought right now. You don't breathe to relax and stay calm, you breathe to give yourself the advantage and more choices of action. So first choose to breathe!

The ABC of self-awareness

My last post on acronyms proved really popular, so here's another! It came out of a conversation with my friend Yda Bouvier (www.bouvierltd.com) who regularly works with groups on "being your best" - all about self-awareness and self-management.

A is for Attention. You need to be able to direct your attention with a particular focus "in the moment" and also to be able to hold your attention there. Both of these are skills that are developed only by doing, hence the value of a mindfulness practice.

B is for Body. The best place on which to focus to increase awareness (and help in self-management) is the body. Our conscious / rational thinking can block out non-rational data (eg feelings, intuitions etc). Focusing on the sensory data in your body brings this non-rational data into your consciousness. Some body-based mindfulness practices can be helpful here as well.

C is for Courage: This is my favourite. In reality, what often stops us being self-aware is that a part of our brain doesn't want us to see ourselves! It takes courage to look at ourselves "warts and all". I truly believe that often, as a coach, one of my key roles is helping people find the courage to reflect using a brutally honest, rather than an ego-protecting, mirror. Again, practicing self-reflection makes it less scary - you could say it builds your courage.

Nothing very new here, but as a development practices "to do" list I love its clarity.

Feeling and doing GREAT

This is a theme I have posted about before, and talk about a lot, ie the two dimensional nature of success, the connection between the dimensions, and the true direction of the cause and effect. In this post, prompted by a TED video I have just watched (link at the end), I want to focus on the practical steps you can take to feel great, and therefore increase your chance of doing great, at work.

First a quick recap. We know that we literally think better when we are feeling good. Strong negative emotions (fear, anxiety, anger etc) diminish our capacity to think. They can of course help us to act, eg keep us going when we are exhausted or drive us to tackle something dangerous which clearer thinking might lead us to avoid. However, my assertion would be that in the world of business, especially at the more senior levels, thinking is more important than doing.

Unfortunately we are highly tuned to negative emotions - much more than positive. Our neuro-physiology is designed (by evolution) to be particularly sensitive to potential threats. And in our modern world we are constantly triggered by the negative inputs that are fed to us at work and in our wider personal life. So it's hard to feel good!

However, some people can stay less triggered than others, and here's the good news, we can all train our brains to be less triggered. Here is the magic (actually scientific) formula for training your brain. Create a GREAT daily routine:

G = Gratitude: Think of three good things that happened today, ie "count your blessings"
R = Re-framing: Deliberately choose to see positive possibilities from upsetting events
E = Exercise: Use it to stimulate the brain to produce the chemicals which make us feel good   
A = Altruism: Do something out of compassion, eg buy a Big Issue tonight
T = Time Out (or In): Practice a mindfulness-based meditation that helps you regulate emotion 

It's pretty simple. As you will probably realise, all these practices simply involve consciously choosing what to pay attention to. Practicing this literally changes the way our brain sees the world. It's a better place than we fear it is!

PS Here's the video - only 12 minutes: http://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work.html

Performing at altitude!

I've had a long break over the London 2012 summer, so it's a while since I've blogged. But I think I have a good insight to kick of this new season - at least, it has been really helpful to me!

In the last two weeks I have been working on programmes with very senior participants who appeared far less skilled than you would have expected from people at their level, especially around building relationships, understanding the politics of the situation and exercising influence without direct authority. What became clear in our work was that they already used these skills in getting to where they were, but something was now de-skilling them - that something being what you might call the "altitude" of their situation.

Let me explain the reference. I am not a rock climber, but a friend who is once told me that climbs are rated for difficulty on two measures. One is technical difficulty and the other is "exposure" - essentially a measure of how scary it looks and feels. You could call it the fear factor. Climbers recognise that what seems easy at one height becomes almost impossible at another. Even without going into the brain science, we all know this from experience. Imagine walking along a bench one foot wide but only one foot off the floor - no risk, no fear, so no problem at all. You know that you'd probably even be happy to jump up and down, joke around, stand on one leg etc, all without falling off. Now imagine that was the one foot wide top of the parapet surrounding the viewing platform of a great tower - you probably wouldn't even get up there, and you certainly wouldn't mess around.

So take this back to the senior executives / partners I was working with and look at some of the key skills they needed to use but weren't. One of those skills is keeping your attention focused on the other person when listening. Not exactly a new concept for them. But what happens when you suddenly realise how important this conversation is? Let's say the other person is a global CEO of your key client, you only meet him once a year, other people are watching how you do - you'd better not screw it up! It's hard not to start thinking about what you are going to say to impress them, what you have to offer, how you are doing so far etc. In other words, all your attention is on you! So guess what, you've already screwed it up!

Another skill is seeing things from another perspective - again, not rocket science and something every successful executive can do. But what if the stakes are really high? Ultimately the other person's view is something you're imagining, whereas your own view is the reality you see. Are you really going to trust your imagination over your own perception? No way! So your ability (or agility) is gone and you are stuck in your own world view with no sensitivity to how it looks to others. Again, that's not a recipe for success.

The last example is the skill of using non-rational data, in other words your senses and your intuitions. This is also something that nearly all successful people can do to a greater or lesser extent. But for many, it is yet another skill that deserts them just when they need it most. When the situation feels high risk, we may sense that a particular action is right, but we won't actually take it until we have checked out our instincts with rational analysis. And that brings two problems. One is that the moment for that action may have passed before we've finished thinking. And the other is that our rational brain is not well equipped to give us the right answer. So what we feel is reducing the risk of getting it wrong is actually increasing that risk. 

So what? What can you do about all this? Well, I suppose the benefit of this insight is that once you recognise the true problem, you can find the right solutions. You don't necessarily need to learn new skills, you need to do two other things. Firstly, you need to work directly on the fear factor, by learning how to monitor your state and use appropriate techniques to manage it. Secondly, you need to make sure that certain skills you do have become such ingrained habits that they do not desert you even at altitude - and you do this through conscious developmental practice.

It sounds like the approach of a top athlete, doesn't it. Which is not surprising, because they know better than anyone that once you have reached a certain level, it is not your technical skills that limit you, it is your ability to use them when it matters most.

The neuroscience of self-fulfilling prophecies

More and more I find my coaching is as simple (or hard) as helping people take a different perspective and/or change their focus of attention. Last week I was discussing this with a colleague (a proper neuroscientist with a PhD etc) and she gave me a neat neuro-biologically informed explanation of how to discover what change is required by thinking about your strengths.

The basic neuro-biology is that we literally see what we focus attention on, and are correspondingly "blind" to what we are not focusing on. So changing perspective and shifting our focus of attention are actually both about altering our perception. Once we see / perceive the situation or the person differently we can act / react differently. So far, fairly obvious.

The interesting bit is that by thinking about your strengths you can quickly identify what you habitually pay attention to, hence what you will typically be blind to and how you will tend to mis-interpret what you do see. Knowing where you habitually focus attention makes it much easier to shift it elsewhere. And knowing you have a (literal) blind spot is an essential first step towards seeing what is in it!

The easiest way to explain this is with an example.

Suppose your strength is that you are decisive and action oriented. This suggests you pay a lot of attention to looking for decisions to be made and actions to be taken. As a result, you see lots of decisions to be made and lots of actions to be taken. You are literally blind to other possibilities. So you carry on making decisions and taking actions - because that's all there is to do! From another person's perspective, of course, you may appear to be over-using your strength - they may see you as too dominant and/or too hasty.

Take this further, if you mostly pay attention to decisions and actions you will only see those aspects of other activities (or other people) that affect the decisions and actions you are paying attention to. Nearly everything else - even a suggestion that you pause for thought- will be seen as either a challenge to be overcome or a delay to be avoided or ignored. And, of course, if all you are seeing is your decision or your action, it's actually true - that is the self-fulfilling prophecy, ie "What You Get Is What You See".

So how do you get to see a more complete picture? The answer is to shift your focus of attention. Practice asking yourself: "What if a decision or action wasn't the only thing needed right now, what else might be needed?" or "What if this other activity / person was not just a delay or a challenge, what else might it / they be offering that is helpful?". It's that simple.

However, if your brain is telling you that even pausing to think is a delay, it won't necessarily be easy. That's why you have to practice!

Do you suffer from premature commitment?

Sounds like just a cheap joke, but it's a serious problem for anyone in business (and it can often affect personal relationships as well). I'm talking about recognising when you commit yourself to an opinion, a decision or a course of action. And my point is that being too quick to commit undermines your leadership impact, so it's worth paying attention to.

I was triggered into posting this by a recent discussion on a programme with a participant who had been working on being a better listener. He thought he was getting better, he said, but it took a huge effort, sometimes didn't work, and he wasn't sure it was worth it. What was clear as he talked to me was that his order of doing things was:
1. Work out what he thought needed to happen
2. Talk to others to show he was "listening" to their objections and getting their "buy-in"
3. Do exactly what he originally planned
To be fair to him, this is not an uncommomn approach. And yet it inherently undermines the idea of "listening".

So we talked about changing the point at which he committed to his view of what should happen until after he had talked to people. Just by this mental move of the timeline, the listening becomes genuine - it is data gathering for your decision. And if you have internally not yet committed, this will be detected (in subtle and largely unconscious ways) by those you are listening to, so it will be seen as genuine. Which is a good example of the simplest way to communicate your good intent being to make it the genuine truth!

The same mental discipline of delaying your commitment is essential for leaders in playing the political game. As I have written in previous posts, politics is something you do before you commit yourself, not something you do to influence events after you have committed. The activities of the political game provide essential data to inform your decision. Those who don't play the political game sometimes criticise those who do for always "waiting to see which way the wind is blowing". What they are really saying is that they prefer to make decisions before they listen! Which is a surefire way of ending up simply "pissing into the wind"!

Talking about feelings vs speaking with feeling

It's amazing how often we make exactly the wrong choice about which of these to do!

Let's look first at talking about feelings. Sometimes we think we should do this when we feel something is (emotionally) important to us. And yet it can sometimes fall strangely flat so that other people just don't seem to engage with it. This is actually not surprising. As a physiological effect, when you name an emotion you reduce your own (and others) emotional response to it. It seems that in naming it you objectify it, so that you do not experience it. For example, in saying "I'm really excited" you lose some of the feeling of excitement. So you don't want to name the positive feeling, you want to talk with excitement about what is making you excited. You DO want to name your negative feelings! For example, saying "I can feel I'm starting to get really angry" actually lessens the anger. Yet in many management meetings I've been to, it's the "I'm excited" comment that gets said a lot, and the "I'm getting angry" comment that is taboo. With predictable consequences!

Contrast that with speaking with feeling. This is what we do when we allow our feelings to show in what we say and how we say it. Colloquially we say we are speaking from the heart. This intensifies the emotional impact not just on you but also on those listening to you, through the power of limbic resonance. This ability to speak from the heart is something all good leaders need to develop. Yet too many still see that being business-like and professional means speaking without feeling. Even worse, they can try to talk in a business-like way about things they actually feel strongly positive about. Oh dear! Perhaps they are afraid the feelings will overwhelm them or others. But if the feeling is getting too strong, and becoming overwhelming, you can always use naming to bring it back under control.

So to paraphrase a famous prayer, you need courage to speak from the heart (ie speak with feeling) when it's helpful, humility to acknowledge your emotions (ie talk about feelings) when they are not, and wisdom to distinguish between the two situations.

What are you afraid of?

I've been musing a lot about fear in the last week - it's always present in our work (and in our lives) but often below the level of our conscious awareness. I've been focusing on it more consciously because of a series of workshops I've been giving looking at behaviour from a neuro-biology perspective. Fear (avoidance of threat / danger) is one of the primary organising principles of the brain.

Fear can be a useful stimulant. At reasonable levels, it certainly mobilises us to action. Unfortunately, the brain chemicals which stimulate action have the side effect of disabling new thinking. So we are energised to act, but on instinct or habit rather than by conscious choice. This is why people rarely find original or creative solutions under stress or in a crisis - they simply do more of what they have always done. Look at the Financial Services industry in the last few years (or European politicians in the last few months). Part of a leaders job is to decrease, not increase, the fear. Yet few seem to know that this is what they should do, let alone how to do it.

Fear is decreased when we recognise it. Too often we attempt to suppress fear by denial, or by using another covering emotion like anger, which only makes the brain's fear response stronger. To really free ourselves from fear, we should actively look out for it and name it when we feel it. It seems that in recognising our fear, we are also recognising that the threat is in our head rather than external. As the old phrase goes, "there is nothing to fear except fear itself". In other words, what we fear is our interpretation of the situation rather than the situation itself. This is why re-framing also works so well as the second step in reducing fear - it changes our view of a situation so it is not a threat but an opportunity.

Fear can even be what stops some people coming to coaching or from exploring their deeper issues within the coaching. For example, there are the generic fears associated with the Centaur character styles, ie fear of looking foolish / vulnerable, fear of the coach's disapproval, fear of being seen as ordinary / worthless, or simply fear of being seen at all. (I've only listed four, as the fifth style's fear - fear of being ignored / deprived - is not likely to stop them entering into coaching, though it may stop them resolving their issues and thus ending the coaching.) Like a leader, part of the coach's role is to recognise and help decrease the fear, so as to enable new thinking.

So I believe coaches and leaders both have to be comfortable with fear. What are you afraid of?!

A strategic conversation is not a conversation about strategy!

This was prompted by some work I did on a programme for global relationship partners in a professional services firm who were being encouraged to have more strategic conversations with senior management contacts at their clients. Hearing the usual responses of "But I'm not an expert in strategy" reminded me how often people confuse a strategic conversation with a conversation about strategy!

I would define a strategic conversation as any conversation which makes a significant impact on the other's long term thinking and hence future actions. Since thinking and decisons are driven by emotions, you could also say a strategic conversation is one which has a significant impact on how the other person feels. Some examples would be:
(a) A coaching conversation = using a balance of support and challenge to help someone change habitual patterns of thinking and hence open up new strategic possibilities, which neither you or they anticipated.
(b) A heart to heart conversation = personally connecting by sharing what you truly think and feel rather than hiding behind your role and task agenda, or by showing empathy. The strategic impact is in deepening the relationship and building trust.
(c) A difficult conversation = daring to raise an issue that everyone else is avoiding, eg a conversation about a problem person in their management team that they aren't dealing with, or even the bit of the strategy that you just don't get ("the emperor has no clothes").

Sometimes, these all go together! Certainly, what's common to all three is that they are:
"Real" - you reveal who you really are, and invite the other to do the same
"Risky" - you expose yourself, a sign of trust and an invitation for them to trust you
"Relational" - you presume a desire for a deeper relationship, an invitation to build it

And how do you prepare for these strategic conversations? Not by learning about strategy but by:
(1) Awareness of who you are (at your best) and what gets in your way when you avoid the strategic conversation which might show it.
(2) Focus of attention on the quality of the interaction (or connection) rather than the content.

Are they going mad? Or were they always mad?!

This post was prompted by reading a review of "What is madness?" a book by Darian Leader (a psychoanalyst). I haven't read the book but was taken with what was reported as one of its basic premises, which is that there is a difference between being mad and going mad. People can be mad, ie have an internal world which makes no sense, but unless they go mad, ie do something which projects that internal world externally, we would never know it. So many people might be mad, but we only recognise it when they go mad.

Now I realise he is talking about real psychiatric disorders, but I found myself thinking about character styles in healthy people. We each have an internal world that makes perfect sense to us, and the internal world of others who share our character style would also make sense to us. But the internal world of those with different character styles would seem crazy. However we don't see it while their behaviour fits with what we can make sense of using our own internal model. So we don't realise their internal world is different to ours. We only notice their different inner world when they show it to us through unexpected actions, at which point we think they've gone crazy!

What you have to realise is they were "crazy" all the time (to you), just as you are "crazy" all the time (to them). So it's worth taking the time to truly undertand their inner world (and your own) so that their (or your) "crazy" action doesn't take you (or them) by surprise!

Politics needs a better focus than "limiting disclosure"

I'm prompted to post this by someone (another coach) saying that one of the key techniques to learn in politics is "limiting disclosure". I understand why they would say that - it seems very sensible - but I want to explain why I don't think it is very helpful. I'm picking up a theme of previous posts about politics that often the real issue is getting people to engage in politics at all. And that is about managing negative assumptions and an unhelpful mindset about politics, ie managing the (emotional) limbic brain not the rational neo-cortex.

I find that for many executives I coach, their mindset means the real issue is not disclosing enough. For example, they want a promotion, but don't disclose this to anyone - least of all anyone who could help them get it! Or they talk a lot about what "should" happen in the business, ie the speak their mind openly, but they say little about their true concerns, ie they say nothing from the heart. From the outside they look closed and self-serving - just like the "Foxes" they accuse others of being (see earlier post for the "political animals" model).

I've also reflected on the neurobiological impact of focusing on "limiting disclosure". Focusing on not doing something because it is dangerous represents a threat at the limbic level. The limbic response (which is quite unconscious) will both cause withdrawal, re-inforcing the mindset of "I don't want to play the political game", and will also literally reduce your ability to think creatively (using your Pre-Frontal Cortex) about what to do. Actions will be habitual rather than creative. And the habit is not to act politically!

A better focus, which addresses both these drawbacks, is "intentional disclosure". This is a positive (attractive) word so avoids the negative limbic response. It also encourages positive action to disclose, and to disclose the right things. Perfect!

3 lenses on preparing for meetings

After taking the whole month off for a variety of holidays (and variety is the word - the month started with a week of Tai Chi training and ended with a week in Ibiza) I am back and preparing for a number of coaching sessions later this week. So it struck me it would be good to write something about my learning around preparation - particularly for coaching, but equally applicable to any business meeting.

My approach mirrors the way I help clients to look at what is really going on by using three lenses. FIrst I pay attention to myself - how am I feeling, both physically and emotionally, what am I thinking about, what will I need to do to be able to be fully present (ie at my best)? Second I focus on the other person and wonder about what is going on for them. What do I know about who they are, their character style, preferences etc? I also notice how I am feeling about meeting up with them again. Finally, I think about the (coaching) context and the assumed roles we have taken in our previous (coaching) meetings. How helpful are they to achieving our mutual goals?

What I don't spend a lot of time on nowadays is thinking about my coachee's challenge. I maybe over-emphasise this point because I know that with my natural preference for problem solving and task achievement, I could easily become pre-occupied with it. And the purpose of coaching is not for me to work out my solution to the challenge, it's to help them work out theirs. Even in my consulting career, I learnt early on that content is only a small part of preparation. Some wise words from one of my early managers come back to me: "If you want to spend x% of the time on the client's agenda, only prepare (100-x)% of the content". I guess in coaching I now want to be virtually 100% on my client's agenda so I try to plan virtually 0% of the content.

A simple example from a while back will maybe bring this to life. Preparing for my third session with a client, I noticed I was working much too hard thinking about their challenge and how they could make progress on it. I realised this was because I was feeling anxious about whether I was really helping - not my best state for coaching. I then also remembered that my client was very introverted (vs my extraversion), so there might be a lot going on for them below the surface and my "pushing" to make "better" progress wasn't going to help it emerge. I could also see its potential for creating the wrong dynamic between us - me taking too much responsibility in my role and them taking too little. As a result of this preparation, I relaxed and (with a quieter mind) became more receptive, I created space to find out what was going on for them (by sharing my anxiety and listening to their perspective), and we actually had a great session exploring some areas they had been reflecting deeply upon following our previous session.

So even in preparation, the power to change comes from what you become aware of because of what you pay attention to.

A framework for resilience

I went to the AC conference on "Resilience" with a couple of colleagues last week - we were particularly interested as we've delivered a few resilience workshops together during the last couple of years. We heard some great individual presentations but nobody set out an over-riding framework for resilience work. So, as we couldn't present our own framework at the conference, let me present it here!

We took our framework from some research on corporate resilience which identified the three pillars of resilience as:
(a) facing reality
(b) connecting with core purpose
(c) freeing up intentional thinking
We realised these applied equally to individuals, and tied together many of the areas of work which seem to improve resilience.

Facing reality can lead you into two well established areas of work. One would be about seeing reality more clearly by becoming more aware of the distorting filters through which you habitually see the world and yourself within it. The other would be about staying in the reality of the present, rather than constantly focusing on an imagined future. This might involve work on mindfulness practices.

Connecting with core purpose can lead you into work on values and life scripts. Speakers at the conference discussed the powerful impact of work such as writing your own eulogy or engaging in random acts of kindness.

And freeing up intentional thinking is, to me, all about managing the limbic brain's response to threat. The threat response literally reduces the functioning of the Pre Frontal Cortex - the mental sketchpad on which we do creative thinking (ie conscious thinking as opposed to automatic or habitual / routine thinking). Under threat we work on autopilot. A focus on reducing the threat response again takes you into many areas of work (physical, social and psychological) that were talked about at the conference.

Having a resilience framework doesn't necessarily change the work you might do with a client, but I find it helpful in giving it direction.

Are you a "push" or "pull" leader?

I was recently supporting the observer team on a programme where groups of consultants worked for a whole day on a business simulation exercise. There were many learning points, but one that set me thinking was about the assumption, which virtually all the participants made, about how a leader should lead their team. This assumption was that leaders should try to lead by rational persuasion.

This is undobtedly a useful approach, but it has limitations. So I shared with them, and will now share here, a simple 2 x 2 model of influence styles, which in this context can also be called leadership styles. One dimension distinguishes between "push" and "pull". The other distinguishes between "rational / impersonal" and "emotional / personal". So we get four styles (or families of styles):

Rational push: These are the "Persuading" styles - eg "You should do x because ..."
Emotional push: These are the "Requesting" styles - eg "I want you to ..."
Emotional pull: This are the "Attracting" styles - eg "Imagine how you'll feel when you've done x!"
Rational pull: This are the "Exploring" styles - eg "How would you deal with x?"

Too often we get stuck in the first, and far too seldom do we use the others - particularly rarely the last two. And yet here are two good reasons for trying them. (And yes, I realise I'm using a rational push approach right now!) Firstly, push approaches inherently tend to produce a defensive push back. And the harder you push the harder the push back. So these approaches often result in stalemate. The pull approaches are inherently less likely to produce resistance. Secondly, the emotional approaches produce connection via the right brain and limbic, whereas the rational approaches primarily involve the (non-connecting) left brain. That's why a leader who can clearly communicate an attractive vision will create the most strongly connected followers.

So try flexing your influence / leadership style. You might be amazed how much less effort it takes to pull rather than push!

Head spinning with DISC

I was working on a programme last week which uses the DISC model as an introduction to personality difference, in preparation for team working on a two day business case simulation. I like the DISC model in this context because it is simple (in both concept and language) and easy to remember (if you use the Red, Green, Yellow and Blue colours that is). But it is often dismissed as too simple. For example I've heard it dismissed as "simplified MBTI" - which is inaccurate on both counts!

I'm not going to explain the model here - I have a feeling I did this in a previous post (and anyway you can Google it for yourselves). However, I will share a few thoughts which came to me as I mused on DISC while the teams were working away on their simulation.

Firstly, I find the most useful thing about the model is that one dimension is about whether you see the world as threat or opportunity (and the consequences on behaviour). Discussions around this can take you quite deep quite quickly and open up the possibility of change more directly than many other models (such as MBTI).

Secondly, it maps really easily to the Belbin model - the Belbin roles people habitually take will probably reflect their DISC profile. More interestingly, just as Belbin roles are all necessary in a team, so are DISC profile characteristics. And when there is a gap, a role (or a characteristic) can often be adopted by someone for whom it is not normal, but for whom it is quite an easy step.

Lastly, it is easy to see a connection to Centaur types (again, see earlier posts, my website or Google). Although it doesn't map exactly, you can see that Warriors and Wizards will typically be D's and C's (seeing other people as "threats"), and Poets and Good Parents will be S's and I's (seeing others as "opportunities").

These mappings and connections are not just for intellectual amusement. I find them useful in helping me move from using the DISC model as just another label to something which enables personal change through deeper awareness of what is really going on.

Change your role, change your script

For various reasons, Barry Oshry's ideas on systems dynamics (for details see the main website) have kept popping into my head in the last few days, as an alternative way of understanding what is going on and so generating new alternatives for action in response. He talks about the idea of roles in the system and how predictably we normally play out our roles - as if following a script.

For example, on a recent programme, we had struggled to get the group to take the initiative, to extend themselves or even to challenge each other to the level we'd normally expect. On reflection, it occurred to me that this wasn't just about their individual personalities - this was characteristic behaviour for a group of "oppressed bottoms". That opened up a whole new set of questions about why a group of senior people would unconsciously see themselves in this way, and what would help them change their role and hence their script.

Another role I saw in this case was that of the "self-righteously pissed off" client. That's where you can see something may is not going right, so you distance yourself from it so as to be clear that if it goes wrong it is entirely the other party's fault. The alternative script is to take the risk of getting involved to produce the outcome you want, even though this blurs the lines of responsibility for blame.

Interestingly, this latter dynamic (ie being self-righteously pissed off) seems to pop up in one to one relationships as much as in systems. Or is that just me! I find it can really help sometimes to notice how much energy I am putting into making it clear that a bad relationship is "their fault, not mine", rather than investing that energy in trying to produce the good relationship I want.

The leader's dilemma is a "Prisoner's Dilemma"

Most people have heard of the "Prisoner's Dilemma" in the context of using game theory to explore approaches to collaboration, negotiation etc. I'm using it as a way of introducing the use of two-chair / empty chair work to unblock empathy.

In it's original form, the story is that two prisoners are locked in cells with keypad locks (ok, I've modernised this bit). One prisoner has managed to find out half the code, the other prisoner has found out the other half, and they agree to share what they know. The dilemma is whether to share the truth. If you give the other prisoner the right code and they give you a false code, then they will get out but you won't. On the other hand if you are false but they give you the truth, you escape and they don't. If neither of you tells the truth, neither of you gets out - the lose-lose scenario. Only if both tell the truth do you both go free - the win-win scenario.

I used this recently as a metaphor for the leader's dilemma re connection. To connect emotionally with (and hence inspire) someone in your team, requires both parties to open up a bit and share their true thoughts and feelings. But many leaders hold back for fear of being the "loser" in this deal - they would rather risk the "lose-lose" scenario than risk looking foolish for their (one-way) openness.

There are two ways to use this metaphorical story to change your behaviour. The first approach is simply to believe in game theory, which suggests that the only logical action is to share the truth, because you do not lose anything by it. The other person might gain something and you gain nothing, but you do not actually lose. You could call this trust in logic the Mr Spock [from Star Trek] approach!

The second approach, which we could call the Captain Kirk approach, is to cheat! [For non Star Trek fans, he famously didn't believe in the no win Kobayashi Maru scenario, so re-programmed it the night before his test.] What I mean by "cheat" in this case is that you can try to find out their part of the code (ie what they are thinking and feeling) without them telling you. This is where the two-chair / empty chair work can help. And the goal is positive - it's to use what you learn in this way to connect and inspire, ie to set you both free.