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January 2012 1.6
Greetings!
As homage to the New Year, this issue of the Unfolding Leadership Newsletter focuses on potential. You'll find:
- Reflective Leadership Practice -- leadership and liberated potential
- Leadership Links -- stimulating articles, videos and tools from across the web
- Leadership Edge -- links to articles from the Unfolding Leadership weblog
- Leadership Conversations -- Q & A with Greg Simmons, CEO of MetaStar
- Leadership for a New Year -- essays, reflections, lists
If you would like to review earlier issues, you can find them in the archive. As always, I appreciate your feedback and suggestions.
An Invitation
The Arc: Living the Full Story of Your Personal Power
You are cordially invited to register for The Arc Workshop, a two-day, small-group workshop for reflective leaders that will help you explore how you use personal power and the path to your own "conscious wholeness" -- the core of a meaningful life. You will learn to apply this knowledge to your immediate leadership challenges. In a turbulent world where we must all exercise leadership, being able to use your arc of personal power is an essential and liberating practice and an investment in your own potential.
The workshop takes place March 2-3, 2012 at the Talaris Conference Center in Seattle. The cost is $350. For full information, please download this pdf brochure. You're welcome to link to the brochure via your social media accounts and forward this information to others. I invite you to call me at 425-922-2859 with any questions or to discuss how the workshop may fit with your leadership development goals, or email me. To register, please send an email and I'll reply with further details.
Wishing you the best of success in 2012,
REFLECTIVE LEADERSHIP PRACTICE
Leadership and Liberated Potential
In a time when many are focused on survival, it may seem somewhat rose-colored to emphasize the liberation of human potential. Yet potential is precisely what can free us from the darker days of winter, one not just physical, but at the moment both economic and political, as well. It is our own potential in the midst of tough times that can most give us hope, renew us, remind us of our most fundamental dignity, our vision of what is possible for ourselves and our world.
A few days ago, on December 18, Vaclav Havel died. Havel, the Czech playwright, dissident, and president, is best known as a leader of the "velvet revolution," the non-violent coup that wrested his country from Soviet control. As I read eulogies for him and learned more about this remarkably modest and courageous spirit -- a man who espoused living in truth in a time and place where obedience was the rule -- the more I understood his sense that our potential is as much an obligation as an opportunity. In a very long 1975 letter to the secretary general of the Communist Party, Havel outlined the reason leaders of his country were failing to create a good society, a good life for those they governed. Certainly, the letter contains a great deal of political invective specific to totalitarian control, but it also contains moments of brilliant insight that apply more universally, including a resounding call that we are all responsible for creating a society that is good for us. Read this fascinating and complex letter for its attack on fear, apathy, and hiding in consumerism, themes that not-so-strangely resonate today. What he implores us to find is a compelling and ongoing hope, an indomitable belief in the best of what is within us, a process of self-empowerment based on a desire to honor and dignify the human spirit.
As we turn into the New Year, it is a great time to stop, to pause for one or two beautifully unfettered moments and appreciate all that we are and have -- but then also to look into our own potentials and decide how best we can honor what we've been given, and how best to honor the greatness of all those we find ourselves among.
To share in Havel's spirit, please read his poem, "It Is I Who Must Begin" found via the photo link at the bottom of this page. (With thanks to Greg Simmons for suggesting it.)
LEADERSHIP LINKS
Readings & Tools to Help You Lead
* Is it "Business" or "Betterness"? Umair Haque, frequent Harvard Business Review blogger and recently named one of the world's most influential management thinkers, throws down the gauntlet with his Kindle Single, Betterness: Economics for Humans. Well worth the $3.00, particularly if you are tired of the same old vision-mission-strategy talk that misses the true potential of what great organizations are all about. You don't need a Kindle to read it -- you can read it on the Cloud or download the free Kindle Reading Application. For a sample of the book, try this Fast Company excerpt.
* So What Company Is Actually Doing It? Here's one example of a possible future, Gary Hamel's HBR article,"First, Let's Fire All the Managers." In it, he describes Morning Star, a leading food processor, that demonstrates how to create an organization that combines managerial discipline and market-centric flexibility--without bosses, titles, or promotions.
* How We Limit Ourselves. Stanford coaching expert Ed Bastista shows us the irony of being lost in our own Corn Mazes and Mental Models. "Our mental models," he writes in this smart, personal article, "often amplify [our] constraints and make them seem more daunting and more powerful than they truly are."
* Clever Communication. From Learning 3.0, here's a clever posting that uses its own message to structure this communication. See The Six Hats of Creative Communication or -- Using De Bono's Tools for a Unique Message Effect. It got me thinking about how to creatively use different mediums to expand the potential impact of any important message.
* Talk About Human Potentials. There's always been something about playing the guitar well that has seemed to me to defy human possibility -- yet great players do it every day. Bret Simmons, Associate Professor of Management at the University of Nevada makes a great link to leadership in "Leaders Are Master Learners."
LEADERSHIP EDGE
Personal Essays from the Unfolding Leadership Weblog
"The Politics of Professional Despair" Recently I have found myself in conversations with good people slipping into a kind of professional despair. This seemed to be the contradicting underside of the public face they need to exhibit. They have learned to keep silent and pretend a certain optimism in order to maintain position or stature -- while privately leaking despair about the nature of their organizations within the context of society at large. In one case, a colleague wrote... Read More...
"On Personal Power" So why focus on personal power? Isn't that just another name for assertiveness and self-confidence? No, I don't think it is. Personal power is the result, I believe, of at least four different capabilities coming together in a way that transforms situations and people, and leads also to a sense of great personal fulfillment. Sometimes changes do come from asserting what you or I might want and need, but it would be a great oversimplification to say that's all there is to it...Read more...
"Solstice" I was moved recently by an electronic card I received celebrating the solstice: well wishes and an image of apples still hanging from a leafless tree; snow falling at dusk; a somber but not heavy light. It's good to know that behind the human hubbub of this season, old cycles continue. In a world of linear thinking -- strategy, goals, progress, accomplishments -- the soul can still find its ancient patterns of activity and rest, outer and inner fruitfulness...Read more...
LEADERSHIP CONVERSATIONS
Greg Simmons Releases Potential by Asking for Feedback and Undoing Privilege
 Greg Simmons is CEO of MetaStar, a Madison, Wisconsin health care quality improvement organization that mostly does business through government contracts. The company employs about 80 people. He has offered leadership to this organization for 32 years, the last 25 as CEO.
Q. Greg, you've been with a single organization, MetaStar, for a long time. What does that mean to you as a leader?
A. I think I've been fortunate to have a work family as much as a home family. Although we as staff don't socialize per se that much, it would certainly be hard for me to imagine MetaStar without the particular people who are here. I have a deep appreciation for how our organization is really a living organism. Because I'm a fish in this water I don't notice that all the time, but I know that a deep interdependence is here. I don't think we even know just how powerful that interdependence is.
Q. How does that affect how you see your role?
A. The interdependence means that we are all part of the same system. It's not about higher and lower, heroes and culprits. I don't believe leaders are somehow in a place above others at all, from which we watch them work. As leaders our job is to make sure the mission is recognized and then actively remove the barriers that prevent people from doing their best work. We've worked hard here to remove as many barriers as possible and as a result that "best work" has had tangible results for our clients. We can easily see the improvements in care we are responsible for. That's what we celebrate.
Q. When you talk about barriers, what does that mean in terms of your own presence as CEO?
A. To me it means recognizing that for people to do their best, I need to be operating at high levels of trust, vulnerability and openness. There's nothing more vulnerable than asking for feedback in a place for which you have been given overall responsibility. Fifteen years ago or so, when I was in my mid-forties, I learned about Shadow work and leadership blind spots -- and at the time I honestly think I was terrified by what I felt I didn't know about myself. So I started asking for that feedback from staff and my Board in a big way. What I've learned about the process is that it does not matter so much whether the feedback is perfectly accurate -- it is true for the people giving it to me. And quite honestly, what I've learned about myself -- and keep learning -- has been invaluable.
Q. Other than fear of what you didn't know about yourself, why did you embark on this personal learning effort, Greg?
A. Some people call it a "mid-life awakening." For me, I realized I was entering the second half of my life, and I wanted a more real, authentic experience with the people I worked with. I didn't want to just feel I was going through the motions with my relationships.
Q. Do you think our view of organizational leadership is changing toward more or less of this type of personal work?
A. What I sense is that we go through cycles. Reflective leadership and the pursuit of vulnerability are hard and uncomfortable at times, and people will look for something simpler and more clear cut; formulaic responses such as the "Good to Great" phenomenon: if you just get the right people on the bus, do this, do that, it should work out. But such formulas leave behind the harder work, the work of genuine trust building that depends on the personal vulnerability of leaders. This is the work leaders must do to open themselves to find out how they are viewed and to gain better knowledge of what's really going on in their organizations. It all reminds me how in the 1980's and 1990's people searched for a formula for quality improvement work, but in the end found they had to embrace openness as a core principle. One of my favorite sayings is from a presentation by Peter Block: "Deep is fast." It means you can't get profound results quickly. Going deep, although it may seem slower and require a greater personal investment, is ultimately the fastest, most effective way to create genuine change.
Q. What would you say is the major challenge for top leaders right now and how can it be addressed?
A. There is a serious lack of trust in senior executives, and it doesn't make much difference whether that's in the for profit or not-for-profit worlds. The deck in many workplaces has been stacked to encourage people to take advantage of their organizations. Character issues are enormous. I believe the best thing to do -- what we've done at MetaStar -- is reduce the layers of apparent privilege, such things as incentive pay, bonuses, different pension structures for different levels, reserved parking spaces. We moved away from all of that. We also eliminated traditional annual appraisals years ago, replacing them with frequent feedback exchanges. And we try to keep money out of those conversations. Getting rid of all that stuff, getting it off the table, has enabled us to talk about what's more important, which is the work. It's enabled us to solve problems that might create mistrust someplace else, everything from how to smooth out the bumps between contracts by buying back vacation days to carefully considering the full effect of a potential employee termination on those invisible interdependencies I mentioned earlier. Those are the kinds of barriers that must be addressed. They are not always easy to talk about and they demand that you put privilege aside to solve them.
Q. What practices help you keep your own reflective growth process going?
A. It's a question of how do I turn that wheel of my own learning a little faster. I think of it as an investment account; investment in myself and my leadership. It's critical for me to take some time away, to read broadly, and attend a growth workshop or two every year. I think of it as an investment in myself, but more importantly, it's an investment in the organization. I'm not sure many leaders really understand how their own emotional health is critical. If we are not emotionally healthy, it's going to leak out into what we try to do with stakeholders and customers. If we can't operate with openness, trust, and vulnerability, others can be harmed. The leader's core ethics and personality can become the ethics and personality of the entire organization, influencing everything else people do.
Q. You mentioned that you are a reader. What's on your list these days?
Q. Would you be willing to share one of your own six word memoirs?
A. Sure, here's an important one for me: "A second wide and timeless life."
LEADERSHIP FOR A NEW YEAR
Essays, Reflections, Lists
* And For Sheer Retrospective. "The 10 Best TED Talks of 2011" at ReadWriteWeb offers a great selection -- the amazing music of The Ahn Trio is one of my favorites, but all the talks are captivating.
* A Reader's Bonanza. Here is Wally Bock's "Imagination Igniters: Books for Leaders," his list of lists of great 2011 leadership books. There's enough here to keep just about anybody going for the rest of 2012. Be sure to follow down the page to Bob Sutton's list -- it's a particularly good one.
* What's Your Answer? "Mastering the Art of Living Meaningfully Well" -- a more personal and reflective essay from Umair Haque of Betterness fame (see above) that asks what three things truly make for a good life. You can follow readers' responses via hashtag #3lessons on Twitter. * On the Value of Unplugging. Author, Pico Iyer, offers this incisive look at what the world has come to, and offers hope for what that could mean for us and our kids. Here is, "The Joy of Quiet."
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* Finding Peace. Click the video link at left to hear this beautiful meditation, "The End of Suffering" by Thich Nhat Hanh that has been set to music. Thich Nhat Hanh is a well-known Buddhist poet and human rights activist. He was a member of the Paris Peace Talks to end the war in Viet Nam and was nominated by Martin Luther King Jr. for a Nobel Peace Prize.
"May the sound of this bell penetrate deep into the Cosmos. Even in the darkest spots living beings are able to hear it clearly, so that all suffering in them ceases..."
From Graceful Passages: A Companion for Living and Dying.
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Click the image, find a poem
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