https://app.themindlab.com/course/release/3995-the-mce-leadership-collaboration-challenge-c6p
“Effective Leadership in a world of escalating complexity”
Bob Anderson – CEO and founder of the Leadership Circle
CEO’s around the world: two themes are emerging
1. CEO’s grappling with a world of increasing complexity
2. How do they develop creative capacity in an organisation to meet these challenges?
Many CEO’s talk about being over their heads
Anderson mentions:
1. BOB Johansen – futurist
https://www.leadershipnow.com/leadingblog/2017/09/5_leadership_literacies_you_wi.html
5 Leadership Literacies You Will Need in the Future
FUTURIST Bob Johansen tells us in The New Leadership Literacies, that over the next ten years the world will become explosively more connected. Anything that can be distributed will (including covid-19). To help prepare leaders for the future, he offers a list of five new leadership literacies. He encourages us to expand on them, to draw our own insights and create actions to improve our leadership in the decade ahead.
1. Looking Backward from the Future: The present is too noisy to give us much in the way of insight. Looking back from the future gets us out of the present day noise. Johansen says we need to look ten years into the future and then looking backward from the future. The future rewards clarity, but punishes certainty. Having clarity and being certain are two different things. Clarity is simple. Certainty is simplistic. We can get stuck in the present and the issues of the day.
2. Voluntary Fear Engagement: Gaming allows the user to engage in risky or unknown situations in a low-risk, even fun way. Johansen believes that “gaming will become the most powerful learning medium in history.”
e.g. The military uses simulations to train soldiers.
Business needs to learn how to do the same. Gaming will allow users to learn in low-risk immersive experiences that allow them to prepare and practice.
3. Shape-Shifting Organizations: Shape-shifting organizations grow from the edges, and it is at the edges where diversity and innovation thrive.” Distributed leadership will be the way of the future.
4. Being There Even When You Are Not: In shape-shifting organizations, leaders will need to have their presence felt no matter where they are. They will need to find more and varied points of contact. “Mixed-reality experiences will be able to be shared across distances.”
5. Creating and Sustaining Positive Energy: “If leaders are going to thrive in a future of extreme disruption, they must not only manage their own energy, they must encourage, model, and reward positive energy in others.” Good health and fitness play a big part in that scenario. “Extreme fitness—physical, mental and even spiritual (though not necessarily religious)—will be required for most leadership roles.”
What Leaders Need to Do: Leaders must make a disrupted world more hopeful. “Globally, a large number of people will be lacking in hope and unable to achieve a sense of meaning in their lives—and they will be very connected through digital media.” That hole needs to be filled with a positive hope and shared meaning. “A world of continuous disruption will be too much for many people to process—and many people will be susceptible to simplistic and dangerous calls to action.”
Fear is created by a lack of exposure. Leaders will need to be exposed to more globally and be willing to learn from a wide variety of sources. Johansen cautions: “It’s one thing to believe you’re right and have clarity about a future direction. It’s quite another to believe everybody else is wrong. Clarity can degrade into certainty.”
2. Ron Heifitz talks about “Waves of Adaptive challenge.” You don’t know you’re in one when you are going through it. We have to evolve at an ever accelerating rate.
The leadership imperative – how do we evolve leadership at this rate of change? Anderson says “The organisation cannot perform at a level higher than the consciousness of the leadership.”
But what does this mean?
Computers: With each ‘leap step’ we were able to adapt to the increasing complexities of the operating systems.
Consciousness is the operating system of the mind.
Children evolve as they grow up. Adults can also evolve.
Robert Kegan has developed a three stage model of development: reactive, creative, and integral.
This explains what makes a leader effective. We already see it in action.
e.g. Reactive – Sarah Palin
e.g. Creative – Anita Roddick
e.g. Integral – Aung Sun Suu Kyi
The self-concept: How do we move from reactive to creative?
Belief system: need approval, validation to feel good. Larry Wilson: you want to be part of something great but need a safe way to do it. No way to achieve purpose and vision if you constantly want to be liked. The creative displays an internalised sense of purpose which is focused on strategy and action.
We need to make that shift from reactive to creative:
Outside in OS to an inside out OS
Q. What would you do if you could?
“I want to lead. I want to be a change agent. I want to be liked.” Caught in a belief system which holds you back. Approval, validation, - puts us in as Larry Wilson says in a ‘play not to lose structure.’
You can’t achieve purpose of vision in an organisation and have everyone like you.
Creative OS – strategy and action; focused on building an organisation you believe in. There is still fear but you are managing it; it is not managing you.
Leadership literature at the creative level:
· Purpose
· Vision
· Strategy in action
· Decisive action and
· Results focused
· Systems aware
· Self-aware
· Emotional intelligence
· Authentic
· Relationally competent
· creative
Only 20% of adults will work at creative or higher.
Anderson’s Leadership Circle:
· Integral – servant leadership
· From me to we
· Focus on the welfare of the whole system
When Anderson looked at leadership theories, he found a lot of fragments of great stuff that was largely unconnected. So he synthesised the literature to make the wheel. Anderson began to see how they fit together.
The top half is competency effectiveness including:
· David McClelland's Human Motivation theory states that every person has one of three main driving motivators: the needs for achievement, affiliation, or power. ... You can use this information to lead, praise, and motivate your team more effectively, and to better structure your team's roles.
· Peter Singer on empathy: Our emotions often motivate us to do what is right, but they are equally likely to motivate us to do what is wrong. In making ethical decisions, it is our ability to reason – not our ability to feel the pain of others – that should play a crucial role.
· Goleman (1995) identified self-awareness, emotional management, self-motivation, empathy, and relationship management as key aspects of EQ (emotional intelligence).
· Rogers (1940’s) called into question the psychoanalytical model of Freud and replaced it with his humanistic psychology. He talks about the “Phenomenal Field “ – the perceived reality of the individual as they respond to both external and internal experiences.
The bottom half is more about psychology/Cognitive beliefs and assumptions
There is an array of reactive level assumptions that can limit effectiveness
Competency and capability needs to marry up with consciousness itself. If we can do this, we can create effective leaders. If you can improve competency relationship on this score, you will improve leadership. Anderson did an analysis using his system of the highest performing and lowest performing corporates, and the data was telling: underperforming organisations will have leadership that is more reactive
Consciousness and competence merge together in effective leadership.
Zac Zenger and Joseph Folkman extraordinary leaders book
https://www.clemmergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/ExtraordinaryLeaderInsights-TCG.pdf
INSIGHT 1. Great leaders make a huge difference, when compared with merely good leaders.
INSIGHT 2. One organisation can have many great leaders
INSIGHT 3. We have been aiming too low in our leadership development activities.
INSIGHT 4. The relationship between improved leadership and increased performance outcomes is neither precisely incremental nor is it linear.
INSIGHT 5. Great leadership consists of possessing several “building blocks” of capabilities, each complementing the others.
INSIGHT 6. Leadership culminates in championing change.
INSIGHT 7. All competencies are not equal. Some differentiate good from great leaders, whereas others do not.
The 16 Differentiating Competencies:
Character:
1. Displays High Integrity and Honesty Personal Capability
2. Technical/Professional Expertise
3. Solves Problems and Analyses Issues
4. Innovates
5. Practices Self-Development
Focus on Results:
6. Drives for Results
7. Establishes Stretch Goals
8. Takes Initiative
Interpersonal Skills:
9. Communicates Powerfully and Prolifically
10. Inspires and Motivates Others to High Performance
11. Builds Relationships
12. Develops Others
13. Collaboration and Teamwork
Leading Change:
14. Develops Strategic Perspective
15. Champions Change
16. Connects the Group to the Outside World
INSIGHT 8. Leadership competencies are linked closely together
INSIGHT 9. Effective leaders have widely different personal styles. There is no one right way to lead.
INSIGHT 10. Effective leadership practices are specific to an organization.
INSIGHT 11. The key to developing great leadership is to build strengths.
INSIGHT 12. Powerful combinations produce nearly exponential results.
INSIGHT 13. Greatness is not caused by the absence of weakness.
INSIGHT 14. Great leaders are not perceived as having major weaknesses.
INSIGHT 15. Fatal flaws must be fixed.
INSIGHT 16. Leadership attributes are often developed in non-obvious ways.
INSIGHT 17. Leaders are made, not born.
INSIGHT 18. Leaders can improve their leadership effectiveness through self-development.
INSIGHT 19. The organization, with a person’s immediate boss, provides significant assistance in developing leadership.
INSIGHT 20. The quality of leadership in an organization seldom exceeds that of the person at the top.