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                                            September 2015                                         4.1

 

This September, 2015 edition of the Unfolding Leadership Newsletter focuses on leadership and transparency.
  • Reflective Leadership Practice -- "On Leadership and Transparency"
  • Leadership Links -- a few related articles and links from across the web
  • Leadership Edge -- links to recent posts from the Unfolding Leadership weblog
  • Leadership Conversation -- Q & A with Deborah Seaman, organizational consultant
  • My Leadership Binder -- More resources to foster reflective learning
If you would like to review earlier issues, you can find them in the archive. As always, I deeply appreciate your feedback, comments and suggestions. Feel free to email me anytime.

Wishing you the best for your reflective practice!
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REFLECTIVE LEADERSHIP PRACTICE 
On Leadership and Transparency

"Lack of transparency" is a common negative perception of leaders and leadership teams.  Having done years of work on trust levels in organizations, I can tell you that when things are not going well and morale is low, this is often cited as a core part of the problem -- founded on beliefs that seem to equate sharing more information with honesty and integrity.  This also often gets wound up with perceptions of particular leaders, relationships and individual reputations.  "Transparency for me is not so much about sharing the company's financial plan or secret competitive strategy," a colleague told me. "We need it because my manager has a 'stone face,' and we never know what's really going on with her."

I'm not here to sort out exactly where the line between sharing and not sharing gets drawn in any given corporate circumstance or human relationship -- but, for sure, I can tell you finding that line is not always easy. I remember a conflict years ago between a boss and subordinate I was asked to help mediate.  At one point, the boss -- attempting to "just be honest" and to report what others had told him -- expressed his concern that the employee might be operating in a "deviant" manner.  But what did that word, deviant, mean?  The boss was not good at explaining and the employee heard it in that moment for what it certainly seemed to be: strong, generalized criticism of a moral nature.  It took quite a long while for the two to regain a more solid footing in their relationship. 

The point is that while transparency is, generally speaking, a very good thing it requires paying attention to what is behind the swinging door.   If being "open" is just an excuse for being judgmental, you might want to check out the judgments more closely and the motives for making them.  Which means, in essence, that the first part of transparency is being fully transparent with yourself.  What beliefs and assumptions are you holding onto?  What is your actual emotional state, your emotional reality?  Why?  

It seems to me the fundamental leadership question around transparency is this: how can openness be used as a path to create safer conversations about sensitive, risky issues?  Considered in this way, transparency becomes much less about what I have to say about 'you' and much more about sharing a more genuine 'me.' It's about my own vulnerabilities and limits, my own projections onto others, my own unfulfilled needs and how they can get expressed in more constructive ways. Certainly, it is sometimes hard work to answer these questions about oneself.  It is also "heart work."  

In contrast to the above example where seeming openness drove people farther apart, I recall a client leader who began a strategy session with a nervous team of managers by thoughtfully telling the story of some of the greatest successes and also mistakes of his career. His manor naturally invited others to talk more openly about the challenges they, too, faced in their work but without feeling judged.  This contradicted the expectations of the team (they expected him to be directive and critical) and led to a deeper discussion of the "real" problems, in turn making the strategies they came up with more real, as well.

I've watched good leaders over time disclose their concerns and insecurities in a way that was truly liberating.  Sometimes it began with an apology; sometimes with an invitation to get some feedback in a genuine way.  Sometimes the leader's openness was a sensitive expression of what others in the room were thinking and feeling, and it just needed to be said. Sometimes it was about acknowledging facts others were not aware of.  The "sharing" in this kind of transparency, indeed, had nothing to do with the "financial plan or secret competitive strategy" nor voicing negative views of others.  It had to do with our humanness and the need to find a safe, connected space with each other to do our best work and be our best selves.


LEADERSHIP LINKS  
Readings & Tools to Help You Lead  
 
* Transparency and Outcomes.  Forbes contributor, Glenn Llopis outlines the basics of openness and the positive results in his article, "5 Powerful Things Happen When a Leader is Transparent."

* But That's Not the Whole Story.  Then there's this!  From John Brandon via Inc., "Why Transparent Leadership is Overrated."  Apparently, the author's previous article, "Five Things Smart Leaders Never Tell Their Staff" created a "firestorm" of attacks.  Here's his explanation.

* Transparency and Culture.  Buffer is an example of a company working to make transparency a core aspect of the way people relate and the way work gets done.  Leo Widrich's Fast Company post summarizes an emerging culture in, "Why Transparency is Your Biggest Untapped Competitive Advantage."

* Are Discrediting Comments About Others Examples of Transparency or Manipulation?  Author, economist and "slayer of zombies," Umair Haque describes exactly how to undermine your enemies in  "How to Bully People Like Donald Trump" (or "The Four Principles of Trumpaganda") on Medium. This is not a political diatribe, per se, and the point isn't to emulate the techniques Haque describes.  Rather, it is a call to see through the shadows and to understand the "foundational challenge of being an enlightened person."

Transparency and One-to-One Communication Skills.  Stanford coaching expert Ed Batista summarizes Richard Francisco's scale of human interaction, where Level 5 (talking about our feelings about each other) often gives us the most trouble. This is a valuable model for cataloguing risks and considering how best to connect authentically.  I encourage you to follow Ed's links in the piece for the full picture. See "Five levels of communication."

* Transparency and Social Change. Here is John Metta's powerful exploration of "why I don't talk about race to White people." His heart-felt description of how discrimination works in a "thousand small ways" gets to the essence of the systemic double-binds that keep people shut down, shut up and shut out of their possibilities.  Read it slowly: "I, Racist" on Medium.


LEADERSHIP EDGE
Personal Essays from the Unfolding Leadership Weblog

Contagion  It's usually around 3 AM when the dream begins. It is the middle of the night, both inside and outside the dream, and I am again being chased by Nazis.The dream has many variations. In a few there's a distinct figure of power that captures me and from whom I must escape, but in most versions there is just a gut wrenching feeling of deep dread as a Nazi army approaches, a sense of social chaos where everyone suddenly panics. There are screams in the street. We are being overrun and if you don't run now you'll be lost...I trace these dreams to my inheritance... Read More...

On the Discrediting of People  The central means by which informal power is maintained in an organization is all too often through the discrediting and exclusion of people. This creates a tight circle of control and a culture based on generalized performance anxiety, competitions, fixed mindsets, and fears of scarcity. Because it's "culture," these factors tend to be felt - but are spoken of only in the background. They may not even be that obvious in group meetings where people must show up and look cooperative. Many good things may seem to be going on. Programs are getting carried out, people are being served and helping each other - at least on the surface. But underneath it, the discrediting and exclusion of people still works effectively as a control mechanism. Perks still flow to the best discreditor..... Read More...
 
The Horse  I stopped along a country road to take a photograph. I had been down by the river under the mountain, but the shadows had grown longer and now on my way home the mountain was immersed in late afternoon light. At first, two horses galloped to see me, but they soon wandered off, distracted by the lush grass along the fence and under the trees. Then one, the one with a little white mark, trotted back, sticking her head over the fence. I rubbed her between her eyes and apologized silently for not having an apple or handful of hay...I know I could write here as if the whole experience of meeting the horse was an intellectual one.... Read More...
  
On Cosmology We are all connected to mystery through our inner worlds. Each of us possesses that subjective interior window. The question is what we have chosen to do with the mystery we find there. Religions mostly attempt to reframe it into an adaptable cosmology convincing enough to spread virally, becoming a shared reality and belief system, a "shared truth" projected onto both inner and outer experience. Science does pretty much the same thing... Read More...

Leadership Is a Field I believe leadership is a kind of psychic field where noble acts take place, acts of self-affirmation, trust, love and ethics. When the field is there, the right things occur, the right things come out of our mouths. Our deeds are part of a greater story. When the field is off, we stumble.
I was once doing some management training work in a very isolated location. To the west, a big snow-covered mountain hung behind the outpost like a dark cape. Scrub pines and junipers ran down the mountain's flanks to meet cold plains to the east below... One day, after a session, a woman named Ingred stayed behind to talk...Read More...


LEADERSHIP CONVERSATION
Deborah Seaman Encourages Learning Through Safety and Transparency
 
Debby Seaman is an organization development consultant with a broad background in training, facilitation, consulting, and personal coaching.  Among her many versatile areas of expertise (including change management, strategic planning, team development, and conflict resolution) a favorite is teaching people about their communication styles. As a gentle, affirming presence she is especially known for her capacity to listen, to hear unnamed strengths and concerns and to deeply and optimistically support her clients.   In a recent conversation, we focused on a training event in communications she offers to Stanford University staff - a workshop she has conducted several times for the University and for which there is now a waiting list.
 
Debby has conducted her work for the past twenty years as principal and owner of Seaman Associates, with a variety of clients in the Seattle area, such as the University of Washington.  Previously, she was Director of Organization Development and Training at Harborview Hospital in Seattle.  To learn more about Debby and her work, please feel free to directly contact her via her email.  Her LinkedIn profile is here.
 
Q. Debby, I'm especially interested in why the workshop for Stanford staff seems to beso successful.  What do you believe is behind that?
 
A. To begin with, the whole area of communication styles is so important to us. These days people in every workplace are expected to excel at interpersonal communications whether or not they've ever been trained in the basics.  Research suggests that the failure of as many as 80% of people who don't succeed in their jobs has to do with their inability to relate well to people who are different from themselves. Communication styles are like different languages and the question is how well are you translating your language to others.  People understand communication is vital and what I'm offering is straight-forward way to improve skills in this area, based on the premise that we can at least temporarily adjust our particular communications.
 
Are you using any special tools as part of this class?
 
I use a very simple, intuitive approach to communication styles.  It's called "Winning Colors."  I believe part of the success of the class is that the whole process of identifying your own style is a non-threatening and intuitive way of responding to our natural curiosity about who we are.  There are no survey questions.  You get four cards just with pictures on them.  You place them in the order of your preference -- very quick and easy for people to do, and the results are disarming as a predictor of communication preferences. People hardly ever disagree with which of four styles they've chosen.  Behind this particular method there's considerable social styles theory that harks back to the work of Carl Jung and also David Merrill's social styles models.
 
Debby, I'm wondering how much information people actually get about their deeper conditioning in this process -- their individual psychology, so to speak.
 
To be truthful, I don't try to apply the information too aggressively in that way. Not everyone's curiosity about themselves goes that deep, and pushing doesn't help.  A goal for my class is ensuring that how people learn about themselves and their inherited temperament is a joyful process, not a threatening one. I'd be creating a very different feel to the class if the intention was to "mine" self-information in that way. 
 
But that doesn't mean the class isn't provocative. Basic questions are often the most exciting:
  • What are the strengths of your style (don't be modest)?
  • What are some areas for improvement?
  • What bothers you about the other three styles?
  • How do you deal with conflict?
  • To get the best results from you, what do you need from others?
I don't make it painful. I don't make it hard on people. I just offer what I believe are helpful answers to their questions.  I believe the learning design ought to reflect the best of adult learning principles: it should honor life learning, not just intellect; it should be a shared experience, with lots of variety and opportunities for application. For example, people actually get an opportunity to try out their least favored styles, just to see what that is like and how it could be helpful to them.  That's one of the most valuable parts of the workshop, where people get a chance to see what another style is like from the inside out as an exploration, not a criticism of their own approaches.
 
As part of this, I do also like to tell stories about my experiences.  I make it clear that I do this to offer examples, not in any way to get attention for myself.  By telling my stories, I also model the process of learning - how I tried one thing or another, and when it didn't work, I'd try something else.  I'll comment on how differently I might do things today than I did in the past.  All of this is to say I'm human, too.
 
So part of what you are doing - as an essential ingredient of creating the learning environment is developing a sense of real safety...
 
Very much so - this is so important. For instance, another thing I do to create safety is make visible my own biases and comfort zones. For example, from the very beginning I let people know the obvious, that I'm often speaking about human beings using generalizations and that generalizations are inherently dangerous and limiting. I let people know upfront that the information being presented is from a white, American, middle-class perspective. I'll offer to participants that their experience might be very different because of their own unique backgrounds and encourage them to share that difference in order to enrich everyone in the class.  Because I look older, I mention that so that people know I am perfectly okay with people asking about it.  If I am training at the University Washington, I might quip that "I am a recovering UW employee," and that always gets a laugh.  I set ground rules to make sure that those who feel we might need them are reassured.  In other words, I do everything I possibly can to minimize the space between myself and participants. After all, I am a person, too, and what I find when I am successful in this effort to reduce distance is that people relax in my sessions and engage more enthusiastically.
 
The bottom line is that the trainer's transparency and closeness to participants have great implications for whether and how people learn.  It that sense it really doesn't matter what my subject matter is. It could be communication styles or some other topic. This is the way I approach all of my work - by creating the safety needed so that the joy of learning can take over.
 
And, by the way, I believe this process is exactly the same for any type of leader, not just content trainers and facilitators.  Transparency and intimacy are what set up any environment for growth. When the trainer - or leader - avoids these qualities, others pick that up very quickly, and just as fast they are ready to shut down, so its vital we all work at openness and creating true safety for one another.


My Leadership Binder
More Resources to Foster Reflective Learning

* So If You Wanted to Build a Better Organization, What Would You Do?  Well, here are a few great ideas on how to create a more affirming and productive organization culture -- from the May, 2013 Harvard Business Review: "Creating the Best Workplace on Earth" by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones.

* Quick Tips for Recovery. Therapist Barbara Bouchet offers a helpful way to return to yourself after feeling threatened or overly reacting in her short, smart piece, "Don't Lose IQ Points Through Reactivity."

* A Deeper Question. Writer and technologist Gideon Rosenblatt probes the nature of our relationship to technology, especially our experiments with artificial intelligence, and whether it "will ever truly be capable of creating a vessel beautiful enough to carry the human soul" in his provocative blog post, "Soulful Machines."  

* Creating Room for People in Conflict.  Expert blogger Tanveer Naseer offers sage advice to those faced with team problems in "How leaders Create The Right Environment to Resolve Team Conflicts."  This is at the core of respecting differences rather than letting them become competitive, personal and explosive. 

* Just in Case You Actually Haven't Read ItHere's the link to the New York Times' controversial article, "Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace."  Once you've had a chance to digest it, you might want to review some of the "reaction articles" that explore, add to and challenge key points. Here are only a very few:

"Amazon's Cutthroat Culture: Cruel by Design?" from a WNYC radio broadcast with representatives of the Wall Street Journal and Netflix; 
Julia Cheiffetz's article on Medium, "I had a Baby and Cancer When I Worked at Amazon." 

You be the judge of the trends in corporatism, human metrics, feedback, opportunity and other aspects of how organizations are changing.  What a complex story it is!
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