CIMBA November 2009 Newsletter

This month's ABC gives me an opportunity to do two important tasks at the same time: (1) acquaint you with a very interesting book written by an even more interesting person, and (2) introduce you to CIMBA's new "Leadership Competencies" workshops. As most Just Listen - Cover

of you who read this column regularly know, and particularly readers who are also alumni of the MBA program, CIMBA has been on a determined mission to define, develop, and implement an effective leadership development system. From its beginnings, this mission has focused on personal intentional change as it relates to an individual's leadership skills. While we have always defined a "leadership competency" as being comprised of requisite skill and behavior components, we have largely centered our attention on the behavior component. In major part, this had been the consequence of an internal decision that could be basically stated (na�vely) as "The student can acquire the skill component on his/her own" and "The student needs assistance in acquiring the behavioral component." In conducting background research in an unrelated area, we found (quite honestly, almost by accident) that student behavior development was beginning to seriously outrun skill development in critical leadership competency areas. More directly, students were developing the ability to handle difficult, emotional situations but were unable to get the most out of the situation because they lacked the requisite skill component. In other words, I was wrong -- mastery of both the skill and the behavior components are necessary and sufficient conditions of acquiring a leadership competency. As most of you would predict, we sought a solution by looking to neuroscience and social psychology research and found that the successful acquisition of a leadership competency requires that they be learned together. That finding led us to develop our new "Leadership Competencies" workshops.

Depending on the leadership competency of interest, individual competency workshops vary in length from a half-day to two days. Among several others (currently, more than 20 in total), the leadership competency workshops include such competencies as issue resolution (centered on Kepner-Tregoe's Decision-Making and Problem Solving and Project Management tools and techniques), managing conflict, delegation, performance appraisal, feedback, and -- the book subject of this ABC -- communications. Each Leadership Competency workshop involves three players: (1) a "neuroscientist," (2) a coach or facilitator, and (3) a teacher or professor. It begins with a short overview of the neuroscience specifically related to the workshop's leadership competency. For example, if the leadership competency is "Managing Conflict," the workshop would begin with an overview of the neuroscience of managing conflict, with its roots in the SCARF model. The workshop then moves into assessments of the participant's understanding of the requisite skill required to manage conflict (essentially measuring whether or not they have had prior skills training) and ability to manage the requisite behavior or emotion. After these assessments, the workshop provides a series of exercises or processes whose purpose it is to elicit participant emotion specific to the competency. This part of the workshop is managed by a coach or facilitator. Directly after the exercises, participants undertake a reassessment of the behavior or emotional part of the competency. (Most participants in our beta tests were quite surprised by the results.) Participants are guided by the coach or facilitator in setting out the behavioral or emotional "issues" that he/she will need to take on with her/his coach during coaching sessions. The teacher or professor then provides participants with information on the skills or techniques that may be used in the effective practice of this particular leadership competency. The neuroscientist closes the workshop by explaining the neuroscience solution for managing the behavior/emotion. Students understand that achieving the leadership competency demands meeting both its skill and behavior or emotional requirements. Exciting stuff!

Our challenge in making the workshops a meaningful experience within the CIMBA leadership development system is to find support material consistent with our model of the leadership competency: leadership competency equals mastery of the requisite skill plus mastery of the requisite behavior. The vast majority of academic materials focus on the skill component part (something the instructional psychology literature refers to as biologically secondary information) with only a passive or implicit reference to the behavioral component (biologically primary information). Our approach requires that the material expressly bring the two component parts together through a strong foundation of neuroscience and social psychology research. After a fair measure of frustration in developing materials for our "Crucial Communications" Leadership Competency workshop, I was fortunate to meet Mark Goulston at our Neuroleadership Summit in Los Angeles. Mark is a psychiatrist, coach, and author who really understood and appreciated what it was that we were seeking. His solution: he simply handed me his new book, Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone. Does Mark have the real-world expertise to provide practical advice on crucial communications? He was a highly-respected FBI hostage-negotiation trainer. Need I say more? Given his science background, Mark is also very comfortable intertwining the skill component with the behavior component. He understands and relates very practically to our notions of a "Red-Zone Emotion" (read his description of it in his own words on page 17) and empathetic relationships built upon mirror neurons: effective leaders understand that people need to be "felt" to best facilitate communication and connection. I was particularly intrigued by his notion of a "mirror neuron receptor deficit." His in-depth understanding of the communication process takes him naturally to an implicit/explicit understanding of the neuroscience of insight and the power behind asking the right questions and influencing the environment by making the right statements. His understanding of emotional control within the communication process interconnects well with our understanding of the neuroscience of labeling and reappraisal. All totaled, the book matches perfectly with our needs for the "Crucial Communications" Leadership Competency workshop, is consistent with both our coaching methodology and personal intentional change philosophy, and has good science at its foundation. Although we have found Mark to be an exceptional author and thinker, I want you to know that he is an even more exceptional person. We look forward to long relationship between Mark and his thinking and CIMBA.