Are you confused about leadership?

Wednesday September 11, 2013 The word "leadership" is often used in a variety of contexts with different meanings. Adding insult to injury, many of these meanings describe very different things, like skills, specific actions, values or people. That is, often when we use the word leadership when we mean: ·         The top management of organization (as in "Leadership's approval is required to move forward") ·         The skills to communicate a strong vision on a subject so that people will follow (as in "She exercised leadership to make it happen") ·         The courage to take responsibility and step up with passion to do something risky (as in "We need some leadership to deal with this issue") To make matter worse we often hear that "everyone is a leader" (is this really true?), that leaders are born not made, and that a community need to produce "collective leadership" to solve its problmes… I wonder why the word is becoming so confusing and what this confusion means for all of us trying to exercise leadership in our organizational life day after day.... Different Ideas about "Leadership"... From a casual conversation on the subject with friends or in a class of an MBA course, it's easy to verify how people ascribe to different "models" or ideas of what leadership is and what it should be like. Some hold a more traditional idea with one person solidly in charge. Others are more contemporary in their views and see leadership as shared between people. These different models create different expectations of behaviors, values, actions and skills. So different people will call leadership different things based on their existing personal paradigm of what leadership is. They will recognize it when they see it, based on their implicit expectations. Consider the examples of a speech given by the founder of a small company who created, owned and operated for 30 years a successful business, or the buzz in a room where a participative problem-solving session is taking place. It is often difficult for the same person to recognize both as "leadership in action". Person A will fully recognize the founder speech as a great way to exercise leadership, and the group session as nothing more than a nice, different way to meet; person B will see the group session as a powerful expression of collective leadership and the speech as nothing more that the expression of a charismatic individual – not necessarily a leader. Reconciling different "Leadership Ideologies" Those different leadership ideologies can be reconciled using the concepts of direction (overall group mission and goals), alignment (coordination of action within the collective group ) and commitment (willingness of group members to put personal interests secondary to that of collective interest and benefit). The concepts can help us with a more generalized model of leadership that incorporates the traditional leader-follower theories with more modern idea of distributed leadership.  Articulated by Wilfred Drath in his book "The Deep Blue Sea" they offer us a renewed view of leadership where "practicing leadership would no longer necessarily involve leaders, followers, and their shared goals but would instead necessarily involve the production of direction, alignment, and commitment." Paraphrasing Drath, the question to ask to recognize leadership in action is no more "Is what is happening in the room right now matching my way to recognize leadership?" but instead "Is what is happening in the room right now a contribution to creating direction, alignment and commitment?" If the answer to the question is yes - regardless of our idea of leadership or the way direction, alignment and committment are achieved - we might say that leadership is present. So leadership might involve traditional roles and relationships, but alternate processes might also be involved. Some "Food for Thought"... 1. Do you agree with the idea that there can be multiple ways of accomplishing the outcomes associated with leadership? 2. What is your leadership "ideology"? 3. What "leadership in action" you are unable to recognize right now due to your preconceived notions about leadership? 4. What are ways to learn about different "leadership ways"? 5. How do direction, alignment and commitment manifest themselves in complex systems? Good luck in all you do! Adriano Pianesi | ParticipAction Consulting, Inc.

Can We Slide on the Learning Curve?

Wednesday August 7, 2013 Have you noticed? In organizations nobody is against learning per se. And no one denies the benefit of training. I have also noticed that the word TRAINING is increasingly synonymous with: • a quintessential technical solution for big problems • a failed technical solution to re-occurring problems Here are a few examples I have collected in the last months from newspapers, the internet and in general public discourse to explain what I mean. Training as the quintessential "technical" solution for big problems Examples of "Training as the silver bullet" for solving big problems. ·         "Better training for teachers" to solve to the nation's failing public schools system ·         "Increased funds for training" to solve high unemployment rates and poor GDP growth ·         "Training" to minimize abuse from caregivers in nursing homes It makes you feel mighty as a trainer, doesn't it? Yet it's interesting how use of the rhetoric of training as the panacea for many problems, hasn't protected training programs to be the first victims of budget cuts and reduced spending. So which one is it? Is training essential or expandable? And of course we are not disputing whether  throwing training at a problem really helps solve it.What if we do? Training as a failed "technical" solution to re-occuring problems Obviously when the use of training doesn't produce the results expected, training is seen as the bad guy. ·         "Poor training" is the cause of failed expensive software implementations across federal agencies ·         "Lack of training of the intervention personnel" is the reason for weak responses to natural disasters ·         "Staff lacking training on the guidelines against torture" is the reason for human rights abuses Do we need a Training Anti-defamation League to respond to these allegations? Or are we facing the difficulty of admitting that training was simply not the right solution in the first place? Maybe the issue was a little bigger than simple lack of knowledge or skills. So What? Unreasonable expectations and lack of accountability or clear definition of the boundaries of training responsibilities can kill the best training work before it even starts. So be careful with training in organizations: it is work highly controversial, highly visible and often not fully understood. As a manager or training provider, what can you do to ensure the success of training? I have three suggestions: • THE PAST Clarify the history of the problem and what has been done in the past to solve it, asking, "Why have past solutions failed to address this problem?" • THE FUTURE Define the issue with all stakeholders, asking them the key question, "What will success look like?" • THE PRESENT Set a meeting for debriefing the training experience and  reflecting on its strengths/weaknesses, asking questions like, "What have we accomplished with this work that was not done before? What is possible now?" Good luck with your training work! Adriano Pianesi | ParticipAction Consulting, Inc.

 

The contract

Wednesday July 17, 2013 A word from the lead, the followers written by William Ayot : "...And in the end we follow them not because we are paid, not because we might see some advantage, not because of the things they have accomplished, not even because of the dreams they dream but simply because of who they are: the man, the woman, the leader, the boss standing up there when the wave hits the rock, passing out faith and confidence like life jackets, knowing the currents, holding the doubts, imagining the delights and terrors of every landfall: captain, pirate, and parent by turns, the bearer of our countless hopes and expectations. We give them our trust. We give them our effort. What we ask in return is that they stay true." I wish you good luck in fulfilling your aspirations.

What does it mean to learn "how to think"?

Wednesday June 5, 2013 "There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: "Look, it's not like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me.'" And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. "Well then you must believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive." The atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man,all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp." ...the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people's two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy's interpretation is true and the other guy's is false or bad. Which is fine,except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hardwired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Plus, there's the whole matter of arrogance. ....But religious dogmatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's unbeliever: blind certainty, a closemindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up. The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too. Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realist, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real. Please don't worry that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self..." By David Foster Wallace

Why is it so Hard to Be Wrong?

Wednesday May 8, 2013 We all know that we make mistakes. And we often repeat the mantra "to err is human." Why, then, do we go about life never thinking that we might be wrong? Well, I tested this concept in one of my classes, and asked my students if they could think about something they were wrong about in the past few years. 85% of my respondents answered yes, pointing out mistakes of inexperience, and of omission. Then I asked "if they could think about something they were wrong about right now.  Aside from a few jokes ("Ask my wife!") a stunning 100% of my students were unable to answer the question. This is how it is to figure out where we err in the present. This opens up a fascinating question: why is our ability to be wrong and to admit it is only valid in the past? What does this say about our fallibility as well as our ability to be right? "Being Wrong" as a Doorway to Understanding It is clear that we like to be right And for a competitive society being wrong spells trouble, social exclusion or simply losing. It is easy to see the difficulties to hold a contrarian approach to being wrong, when our entire society celebrates the victories of visionaries leaders that were never wrong, when the image of failure is often equated to not getting it right. Yet, embracing our ability to be wrong, embracing it as a a founding character of our human experience holds the key to the treasure of expanding our understanding in a new dimension. Holding the healthy doubt that we might not be right, might very well prove the healthier "statement of faith" in the capabilities of the human race. Why? Becasue it would stop any of the easy attribution that we are quick to make when we disagree with someone. It is clear that we like to be right. And for a competitive society, being wrong spells trouble, social exclusion or simply losing. It is easy to see the difficulties in holding a contrarian approach to being wrong when our entire society celebrates the victories of visionary leaders, and the image of failure is often equated with not getting it right. Yet, embracing our ability to be wrong holds the key to the treasure of expanding our understanding of, ironically, success. Holding the healthy doubt that we might not be right, might very well prove the healthier "statement of faith" in the capabilities of the human race. Why? Because  the act of stopping the easy and untested attributions ("he doesn't know what he is talking about!" or "She is not listening to me!") that we are quick to make when we disagree with someone is the necessary condition for learning something in the process and getting a better overall "picture" of the issue being discussed. "Wow! How fascinating...May be I am wrong" We've all done it. When someone disagrees with us we think he doesn't have access to the same information that we do (attribution of ignorance), or that his brain—f he has the information and still disagrees with us— is truly pea-sized (attribution of stupidity). Worse, if he has the information and the intelligence to analyze it, he has an evil plan to take over the world (attribution of evil). But try this instead: next time you are faced with a difference of opinions, stop and think "Wow! How fascinating...maybe I'm wrong." This will open a new awareness that as human beings we see the world as we are, rather than as it is. And with this in mind exploring how different perspectives shed a light on the complexities of everyday organizational and personal life brings us closer to the understanding of ourselves and of our world. Adriano Pianesi | ParticipAction Consulting, Inc.

What can we Learn about Leadership from Great Paintings?

Wednesday April 17, 2013 I have always loved art and great paintings in particular, their powerful rendering of a single, frozen moment of life has always fascinated me. It is a powerful and fascinating language. Sometime ago I stumbled on this great quote from the Mexican painter José Clemente Orozco: "Art is knowledge at the service of emotion." I started thinking that this knowledge can be used to facilitate the development of our leadership abilities. If this is true, then we can legitimately ask, "What is the  depiction of leadership in art teaching us about leadership, authority and leaders?" I'm convinced that the answer to this question can enhance our understanding both of individual works of art and of the profoundly human interactions that lie at the core of the leader-follower relationship, and of the difficult work of leadership. So I gave it a try with three great painters: Giulio Romano, Paul Klee and George Caleb Bingham. Giulio Romano "The Battle of the Milvian Bridge" (1524) THE OLD PARADIGM OF "LEADERSHIP" I like this beautiful fresco in one of the rooms that are now known as the Stanze di Raffaello, in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican in Rome. It represents in clear terms a lot of an idea that is still so prevalent in today's organizations: the archetypes of the knight on a horse or the Lone Ranger that fights the bad guys, charging into the future to deliver the promise of unending happiness. Indeed Constantine's victory gave him total control of the Western Roman Empire paving the way for Christianity to become the dominant religion for the Roman Empire and ultimately for Europe. Click here to see "The Battle of the Milvian Bridge" Paul Klee "The Conqueror" (1930) THE OLD PARADIGM OF "LEADERSHIP WORK" In the "The Conqueror" by Paul Klee, a painting of evident parodist intent, the leader is alone, running with a weird, almost solid banner to incite and guide others in the fight. Klee, who was himself a soldier for many years, seems to decompose the image of the traditional leader through lines, circles and other shapes. "The Conqueror" overall carries the strong message of the end of an era, where conquering and leading men in battle, motivating and influencing people to do or to perform, has lost much of its appeal as  leadership work. With Klee, an expressionist and surrealist with a knack for the use of abstractions, we are shown the inadequacy of our idea of leadership work based on the old paradigm and are invited into a space, a blank space - like the one in the canvas - where a new leader-follower relationship might emerge. Click here to see "The Conqueror" George Caleb Bingham "The County Election" (1852) THE NEW PARADIGM OF "COLLABORATIVE LEADERSHIP" This work pictures collective intelligence in action, the American democratic system in progress. The story takes place in a small Midwestern town in the mid-nineteenth century, when the rituals of voting were still taking shape, particularly in the frontier. George Caleb Bingham - known as "the Missouri artist" for the state where he lived and worked - recognized the responsibilities as well as the rights of citizenship. In "The County Election," he presents a raucous voting party as an enactment of democracy, bringing together a variety of residents in a rural community to make decisions for the common good. I like this image because it pictures the new paradigm of collaborative leadership, of people engaging together in the messy work ahead in order to make progress on the difficult issues of the day. I also like it because it reminds us how leaders "from every seat" can take responsibility for action rather than waiting for the "designated authorities" to act. Click here and scroll down to see "The County Election" Click here for a more in-depth exploration of "Leadership and paintings" based on my current research.

Can Leadership Be Taught?

Thursday March 28, 2013 Carl Rogers once said, "I realize that I have lost interest in being a teacher. . . . I am only interested in being a learner, preferably learning things that matter." Leadership is something that matters to me as an educator and as a leadership practitioner. But can leadership be taught? Have you ever been taught emotional intelligence by an instructor that uses PowerPoint slides? When I started teaching leadership, I vividly remember facing the challenge on how to make my content match my way of teaching. When teaching leadership, this call to congruence—how what I am teaching is demonstrated in how I teach it—was the major headache of my work. It forced me to explore a fateful inquiry that led to a powerful discovery: for the congruent educator teaching leadership needs to be in itself an act of ... leadership. So when asked to design a leadership course, I decided that, rather than teaching or preaching, I would rely on evoking, naming, reminding, recognizing, questioning, acknowledging, and affirming. I stopped asking "How can I teach?" and instead started asking "What if leadership is already in the room, and my work is to give it the space and freedom to manifest itself?" I discovered a methodology called "Case-in-point", straight from the Adaptive Leadership framework developed by Ron Heifetz, Marty Linsky and others at the Harvard Kennedy School and started experimenting with it... Teaching Hands-on Leadership Using The "Case-in-point" Method With this approach, In front of our eyes, the group dynamics of the class provide powerful material for reflection in real time, helping participants in a day class, leadership retreat, or university course to develop their ability to innovate and adapt to changing circumstances in their organizations. Case-in-point has allowed me to learn and practice leadership experientially in a way that is aligned with my purpose as an educator. And in teaching leadership using Case-in-point I can use in its practice all I learned from other frameworks. In fact: ·         As an Action Learning Coach (a process to learn and take action to solve a tough problem) I use the capacity to leverage the power of great questions in order to learn in real-time as individuals, as a team, and as an organization. ·         As a World Café Host (a methodology that allows large groups to deepen their inquiry through important questions in a setting that promotes informal conversations and authenticity) I bring into it the artistry of hosting conversations that matter. ·         As an Open Space Technology Convener (a meeting process rooted in participants' passion and responsibility in which attendees create their own meeting agenda and run the meeting in real time) my Case-in-point practice is informed by the trust that groups know how to self-organize for the greater good and by the power of systems to naturally exhibit the distributed leadership that makes change happen. I continue to find that Case-in-point provides me with the best  way to teach leadership experientially and encourage you to explore its power. Read more about "Case-in-point" in my article published on March 2013 in THE SYSTEM THINKER

What do you do when ... you don't know what to do?

Wednesday February 20, 2013 Some call it being lost. Others call it a chance to be resourceful. For many, it is not a good place to be. I've come to believe that is an important component of the improvisational art of leadership work. So here is a reflection (in the form of a poem) that I hope will benefit those of us that like to be always in control. When You Get Lost Tell me what you do when you get lost Tell me Tell me what you feel How things look to you What happens in your head What you say to yourself Tell me Can you see anything when you get lost Can you hear what's about you Do you perceive life at all Tell me Tell me what scares you most when you get lost Can you draw from deep inside What you use to hold you up Do you move yourself differently Tell me Tell me what you do to reach that special calm Can you direct a prayer When do you know to wait When do you know to risk Tell me Tell me what you do when you get lost Tell me Then tell me How you know When you not lost no more Tell me -Carol Prejean Zippert

Power of the Past: My Story as a Leadership Educator

Wednesday January 9, 2013 INTEGRAL LEADERSHIP REVIEW - Particles magazine - Published with permission   I grew up and was educated in Rome, Italy. Here are a few flashbacks about my life as a learner in the Italian school system: ■ Elementary School, 1972: Maestra Arena would consider any question from the class as a personal insult and refuse to answer. ■ 12th grade, 1977: Signor Pumo would simply not acknowledge our presence in the class as we walked in and would make fun of the students with low grades. ■ High School, 1986: Signora Bondi would lecture for hours, then she would draw a name from a little box, bingo-like, to select the student that would have to parrot back what she had said. Alas! The Italian didactic style – being more theoretical and less interactive than that of the U.S. system – conditioned my thinking about teaching and learning at an early age. These experiences provided a powerful paradoxical teaching experience that has guided my life as a leadership educator across the Atlantic. (link: clik here) Adriano Pianesi | ParticipAction Consulting, Inc.

Shall we feast on our lives in 2013?

Wednesday December 12, 2012 I love poetry and want to take this opportunity to wish a great 2013 to all my friends who read this blog. I want to do it with the verses of Derek Walcott, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992, the first Caribbean writer to receive the honor. I use his poems in my work with groups and find his verses graceful and energetic at the same time. This one touches on the theme of getting to know ourselves without reservations, with loving care and an open heart.  Enyoy! To your personal homecomings! "Love After Love" The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life. - Derek Walcott

Can you Stay in the Questions?

Wednesday November 14, 2012 I came across again this lovely quote of Rainer Maria Rilke from "Letters to a Young Poet". Those are words of wisdom, shared with a man  - the young poet - confused about his future, having to choose between a military career or the life of the artist...I wanted to share these words with you. "... if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge. You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within you the possibility of creating and forming, as an especially blessed and pure way of living; train yourself for that -- but take whatever comes, with great trust, and as long as it comes out of your will, out of some need of your innermost self, then take it upon yourself." I'm trying to figure out what "Live the questions now" means for me right now. What does it mean for you? What does it mean for your organization? What would happen if those questions were finally asked? What would be like for your organization to live the questions? Adriano Pianesi | ParticipAction Consulting Inc.

 

The answer to HOW is ....WHO.

Wednesday October 10, 2012 Asking questions gives such a powerful leverage in some organizations, and yet the ability to ask critical questions and to listen might not be considered critical organizational capabilities. Why is that? Organizations assume that employees do not need to learn how to listen and/or how to ask questions. And those are - in my opinion - two of the greatest delusions organizations live by. I see constantly organizations struggling with complexity, that same complexity that requires more listening in order to uncover new perspectives. An inquiring heart that allows one to ask the right questions: nothing is more critical in the workplace. Two very bad lessons... The quality of our listening to each other is not great. We are usually focused on our impressions, interpretations, perspective, and opinions of what and whom we are listening to. We are often unable to create the silence and the internal "clearing" that empties "the cup of our being" to refill it with the speaker's. Yet we were terrific at doing this as children. Think about the complete focus of a child on every single word as you tell him a story. Think about the questions children ask: what does it mean to be free? Why are people poor? How expensive is a tree?.. And many of our questions go for the techniques, steps, formulas that will deliver us—never for the intent, or the bigger picture, or the meaning of it all... Yet we used to be great at doing both as children. Think about  the complete focus of a child on every single word of yours as you tell him a story...and think about the questions children ask: what does it mean to be free? Why are people poor? How expensive is a tree?... Somewhere, somehow we learned two very bad lessons: 1 That listening is not communicating. 2 That solving problems is not about asking great questions. Deep down we have the capacity to ask deep, great questions. We have the capacity for deep, emphatic listening. It is available to us right now. Not tomorrow, not after practice, not after attending this class. We haven't forgotten, we simply do not remember it anymore. And we need to be reminded of that. Today, will I have the courage to be myself? We can bring back this ability to really talk and to really listen if we want to. It's all about our willingness to notice. And ultimately it's about a much bigger question—about how we decide to be in the world. Not just at work but everywhere. It's about answering the key question: Who am I? For this reason the answer to the HOW question (how to do something) is WHO. The question we should always ask, especially when we learn a new technique or skill, is actually "Who am I? Who do I decide to be today? How will I be myself in the world? How will I show up to meet the many challenges of the workplace? Today, will I have the courage to use this new skill and to be myself doing so in a world that tries constantly to make me anybody else? Go ahead. Remember. And answer.

The Groan Zone: Can You Get Comfortable?

Wednesday September 19, 2012 A letter I sent to my students some time ago touches on the important issue of frustration during group work. How can we learn to be more comfortable in the "groan zone"—that time in group work where the conversation seems all over the place? "…As we discussed, we identified several issues that had prevented the group from making real progress as far as sharing and building new knowledge. The first issue that all of you have identified is the lack of purpose and the frustration that this causes you. Frustration comes from the Latin word frustra, which means 'useless.' I ask: was that moment in the conversation really useless? Is the frustration with the apparent lack of purpose of that part of the conversation simply the inability to deal with the time in group work called the 'groan zone'? Let me recap: we were talking about something very important. The questions on the floor were: • Is authority tasked to do the work of change? • What is the job description of a change agent? • What role is most effective to play in an organization in order to change it? All great points on very juicy issues. Yes, I could have intervened and told you =my opinions, but would that have helped? Paradoxically, I am not so interested in the content here, but more in developing the ability of each and every one of you to 'learn how to learn' from a group discussion. So the question becomes: what are ways in which we can manage the frustration of the groan zone in service of more effective group work? Three things to do to thrive in the "Groan Zone" I have suggested that you bring a different attitude to the conversation, that you slow it down by paraphrasing each other's point ('John, so you are saying that……' 'Liz, your point is' …. 'Have I missed something?') and that you work to acknowledge reality first and foremost. Different attitude. Would you rather win or learn? The point of a competitive discussion is "I win, you lose." If we bring to the conversation a different purpose ("I learn, you learn"), what would happen then? How do we change this? With intellectual humility. I would love to see this in action in our class! Without renouncing to advocating our own positions all together, but mixing it with them! Slow down the conversation. A second thing might be to recognize our defensiveness in action. We talked about the ladder of inference. Conflict is often the result of people dueling at high level of inferences and never recognizing that they do that. Catch yourself being hurt, cover up that you are being hurt, and creating a reaction to all this with a statement. This added level of awareness to your action is sure to be the best leadership lesson you might have learned in our class. Reality first. Ultimately making a difference by taking on a tough problem to make progress is done acknowledging reality. We have to acknowledge the forces at play in reality, the role that we all play in making it so, name a different reality and – in courageous conversations - calling spade a spade. This act is in itself a needed act of leadership in today's organizations. On this subject, here is a nursery rhyme from Dylan's book that describe what I am saying here: "There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile, He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile. He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse. And they all lived together in a little crooked house." Aren't today organizations so often "little crooked houses"? Leaders need to acknowledge the true reality of the organizations where they operate. Do not become "crooked" because you work in a "crooked organization". Reality first.

Does absence of criticism stimulate or hinder creativity?

Wednesday August 29, 2012 Alex Osborn, a partner in the famed advertising agency BBDO published a book in in 1948 called Your Creative Power. In a chapter on "How to Organize a Squad to Create Ideas," he wrote: "Creativity is so delicate a flower that praise tends to make it bloom while discouragement often nips it in the bud," We all know the rules: no criticism or negative feedback. Brainstorming seems like an ideal technique, a feel-good way to boost productivity. But there is a problem. Brainstorming doesn't work. In a test at Yale University in 1958 solo students competing against a brainstorming group came up with roughly twice as many solutions as the brainstorming groups. Psychologists have summarized the science: "Decades of research have consistently shown that brainstorming groups think of far fewer ideas than the same number of people who work alone and later pool their ideas." But if brainstorming doesn't work, the question still remains: What's the best template for group creativity? Want Something Novel? Turn Up the Heat Most research and advice suggest that the best way to come up with good solutions is to come up with many solutions. Freewheeling is welcome; but researchers added that when the "debate" condition "is added as a rule – not just don't be afraid to say anything that comes to mind even if is critical of someone ideas, but you should debate and criticize each other's ideas – things improve dramatically. Most studies suggest that. When a group received no further instructions on the process of generating ideas, leaving them free to collaborate however they wanted, the results were telling: the brainstorming groups slightly outperformed the groups given no instructions, but teams given the debate condition were the most creative by far. On average, they generated nearly 20 percent more ideas. And, after the teams disbanded, another interesting result became apparent. Researchers asked each subject individually if he or she had any more ideas about the topic debated. The brainstormers and the people given no guidelines produced an average of three additional ideas; the debaters produced seven. Those studies suggest that the ineffectiveness of brainstorming is due to the very thing that Osborn thought was most important. Is imagination inhibited by the merest hint of criticism? Apparently it can thrive on conflict! According to number of studies, dissent stimulates new ideas because it encourages us to engage more fully with the work of others and to reassess our viewpoints. This weird notion that the most important thing to do when working together is stay positive and get along, to not hurt anyone's feelings is just wrong. Maybe debate is going to be less pleasant, but it will always be more productive. True creativity requires some trade-offs. The template for group creativity I have always thought that criticism – and conflict - allows people to dig below the surface of the imagination and come up with collective ideas that aren't predictable. And recognizing the importance of conflicting perspectives in a group raises the issue of what kinds of people will work together best. So the misconception behind brainstorming is that there is a particular script we should all follow in group interactions. But when the composition of the group is right—enough people with different perspectives running into one another in unpredictable ways—the group dynamic will take care of itself. All these errant discussions add up. In fact, they may even be the most essential part of the creative process. Although such conversations will occasionally be unpleasant—not everyone is always in the mood for small talk or criticism—that doesn't mean that they can be avoided. Hard to admit, but we have been wrong for so long – pleasant brainstorming sucks. The best template for group creativity is an open conversation and a reasonable degree of diversity of opinions. When I read these studies a long time ago, those ideas changed my concept of what creativity and innovation were all about. I hope they can be helpful to you too. Adriano Pianesi | ParticpAction Consulting, Inc.

Logging on, dialing in and ...dozing off in your webinars?

Wednesday July 25, 2012 I used to hate webinars: just plainly boring affairs where we log on, dial in and ...doze off. You probably know about this kind of webinars. You may have attended a few yourself. Perhaps you found them boring and un-engaging, with no chance to interact or ask questions to a guarded speaker. Did the speaker drone on as you – yes, you! – checked your email? Good news: we are not talking about that kind of webinar. Yes: there is another way! Why "THE ART OF ONLINE HOSTING"? As a facilitator, a trainer and an adjunct professor working primarily face‐to-face, I have noticed that the one‐way nature of most webinars and web conferences misses an opportunity to engage an audience and draw on the wisdom of the group as well as the knowledge of the guest speaker, salesperson or instructor.                                                                                                             As the use of web conferencing extends to management training and leadership development, interactive workshops and collaborative meetings, the requirements of webinars shift from pushing information out to pulling ideas and knowledge in through many‐to‐many collaboration and interaction. This requires a new look at the design and facilitation of webinars and the technology tools used to deliver them. This requires a shift from Powerpoint to POWERFUL. From presenters to hosts. Face‐to‐face workshops employ a wide range of collaborative learning techniques from case study analysis and group problem solving to role plays, inquiry circles and brainstorming.  Unfortunately as training programs and workshops have moved online they have become less interactive, limited by assumptions about technology choices and participant engagement. What are the opportunities of "LEADERSHIP 2.0"? The opportunity presented by a more interactive and collaborative approach to webinars is to reclaim the many learning methods used in face‐to‐face workshops and adapt them for a virtual environment. In addition, we can take the opportunity that web conferencing technology offers as a chance to redefine the meaning of learning together, of being an educator, and of being in the world. I see interactive webinars as an opportunity for more learning, shorter meetings, greater participation, and more ongoing collaboration. But also as an opportunity to update the work of learning (and teaching) as we know it, online and offline; as an invitation to join in defining the new exciting possibilities of "Leadership  2.0" ... Check out our new website for The Art of Online Hosting