In yoga today we did a pose known as The Dancer.  Our instructor, Joy, told us the pose is typically depicted as the dancer standing balanced on a small object while surrounded by a ring of fire.  The fire represents chaos and the small object is the ego.

I think this is a key question for many of us today.  How do we stay balanced in the midst of chaos?  What helps us stay balanced?  Is it having a purpose?  Is it staying centered and rooted? Is it continually learning and growing?

Lori Zahn, founder of Perceptive Leaders, recently wrote a post about using these chaotic and uncertain times as an opportunity for learning. I liked it so much, I asked Lori’s permission to repost the whole article and she graciously agreed.  Thanks Lori and happy reading everyone.

MOVING FORWARD: From Resilience to Realistic Optimism
by Lori Zahn

Recently a relatively new manager asked me how he could get more candid feedback from his employees.   This particular manager is a superstar in the eyes of his own manager and he had received good feedback from his peers and direct reports on a 360 assessment.  But he is genuinely interested in continuing to grow and develop and wanted to solicit input and suggestions from his people.

This situation is intriguing to me because I have seen it repeated with numerous leaders and managers.  In the leadership development field, we lament the fact that many managers aren’t open to feedback.  Yet those who are often struggle to get it!

Here’s a quiz for you: Which of the following tools is the most powerful for motivating employees?
•    Support for making progress in the work
•    Recognition for good work
•    Incentives
•    Interpersonal support
•    Clear goals

If you are like 95% of managers who responded to a Harvard study, the answer may surprise you.  Most managers believe that recognition for good work has the most impact on employees’ emotions and motivation.  But a decade-long study from Harvard shows that support for making progress is actually the most powerful lever, especially for scientists, engineers, programmers, marketers, and other knowledge workers.

For more than a decade, researchers from Harvard tracked the emotions and motivations of knowledge workers by having them keep detailed diaries of their days. By analyzing the diary entries, the researchers discovered that employee emotions, perceptions, and motivations fluctuate every day.  Lead researcher, Teresa Amible, writes, “We found that the most common triggering event for a ‘best day’ was any progress in the work and the most common event triggering a ‘worst day’ was a setback.” Amabile and her colleagues named this phenomenon the progress principle and they detail their research, findings, and implications for managers in their new book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work.

I have a goal. I’d like to see a new term gain popularity in the field of leadership development.  The term is Solutions Architect and here’s why I think we need it:

The Problem:

Despite the fact that I have worked in leadership development for more then 15 years,  I often struggle to describe what I do.  Consultant seems to vague. Trainer is far too limited.

A few years ago I was talking with some friends about the work I do.  I explained that I like to work with clients at the very start of the project to discover their needs, tease out and describe the end goals they have in mind, understand their culture, and then create a solution that will get them to their goal. Many of us who work in the field learned the ADDIE model: Assess, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate.  Personally I like to work on projects that run the whole way through from Assess through Evaluate.  My particular skill set and interests make my sweet spot Assess & Design. The problem is that somehow in our field we’ve ended up using “Designer” to describe the Development phase!

We all know the world is changing faster than ever.  A lot of that change is being driven by technology and social media.  I just came across this new “Did You Know” video about social media. Some interesting and surprising tidbits!

Definitely worth 4 minutes and 19 seconds of your time.

I just finished working on the design of a leadership development program for senior leaders of a multi-national company.  As I my partners and I collaborated with the client’s internal HR team we had lots of good conversations about what this group of leaders did well and where they needed improvement.  One thing that surprised me was that this senior leader population needed to get better at delegating.  Now these aren’t brand new supervisors.  We are talking about directors, and senior directors who have been in leadership roles for years – decades in some cases.  Why haven’t they mastered delegation?

As we conducted focus groups with the target population, we quickly learned that the word “delegation” had a negative connotation.  Managers associated delegation with “dumping”.  In the words of one participant, “Oh, I’d never delegate to someone.  I give my people assignments all the time, but I don’t think it’s fair to just dump stuff on others just because I don’t want to do it.”

Coaching. Mentoring. Advising. As a leader you might engage people to provide any or all of these services. The challenge can be knowing the difference between them and choosing the person who best meets your needs.

Coaching vs. Mentoring

Steve Arneson, founder of Arneson Leadership Consulting, has been named as one of the Top 25 Leadership Coaches in America by Leadership Excellence magazine for three years in a row. In his book, Bootstrap Leadership, Arneson discusses the difference between mentoring and coaching.  Arneson writes:

If you have tried to get  a group of people to get moving on something, then you know that inertia often wins over action. The problem is compounded when one or more people resist what you’d like them to do.

Fortunately, there are ways to overcome inertia. One trick is to get people to take small steps rather than committing to a major change or approach all at once.  hen several people take a few small steps forward, momentum starts to build and it becomes easier and more natural to keep moving forward.

One of my favorite illustrations of this concepts comes from Jim Collins’ book Good to Great. Collins uses the metaphor of a flywheel as a metaphor for organizational change. Here is an edited excerpt of Collin’s description:

Leaders taking the helm of a team, department, division, or company often recognize that the organization’s existing culture may hinder successful strategy execution. Culture is often defined as the beliefs, values, norms and attitudes that form a group’s patterns of thought and action. Put another way, culture can be thought of as “unwritten rules about the way things are done around here.” Ultimately, changing a culture requires changing the ways that people feel, think, and act – which is a significant undertaking.

In my own work and research, I have identified eight best practices for culture change:

1.    Engage people in the process.

People commit to what they help create. The most successful changes happen when leaders actively engage people at all levels in all phases of the process and when there is a constant feedback loop between people on the front line and the leadership team.  Rather than hinting at the culture you want to see – be explicit about what changes are needed and collaborate with your people to implement the next seven practices.

A colleague recently sent me a link to Ben Zander’s TED talk from 2008. I’d heard of Zander, a talented conductor famous for his inspiring pre-concert speeches. I’d even read and recommended his book (The Art of Possibility) some years ago. Zander is always fun and inspiring to watch so I knew I’d enjoy the TED clip. What really struck me in watching this video this time around was a concept that Zander shares near the end. Watch the whole video if you can. If you are short on time, fast-forward to around 17:30 for some fabulous thinking on what it means to be a leader.

To me, Zander’s points illustrate exactly what it means to be an Energizing Leader. Imagine the impact we would all have if we remembered and lived by his three simple points:

• The conductor of an orchestra (leader) doesn’t make a sound. He depends for his power on his ability to make other people powerful.