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!

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!

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:

Last fall a client hired me to help design, plan, and facilitate a conference for her organization’s top 60 female leaders.  To be honest, at first I was surprised by the request.  I thought, “Do women leaders really need to meet in a forum separate from their male counterparts? Doesn’t doing so actually marginalize women leaders?”

It turns out, I wasn’t alone in my initial hesitation.  As part of the design phase I interviewed 27 of the women who would be invited to the conference.  Their responses to my opening question, “What is your response to the idea of Women’s Leadership Conference?” ran the gamut.  About 50% of responses were highly positive:

I know . . . I have been AWOL from posting for more than a month now!  I wasn’t playing or on vacation.  In fact, I had the good fortune of spending the last month facilitating leadership development programs in Paris, Houston, and DC.  It was a terrific month for two reasons.  For me, facilitating is both about sharing information and about helping participants learn from themselves and from each other.   In the past month I had the good fortune to personally spend time with and learn from dozens of leaders at all levels.

Here are some highlights:

A group of Plant Managers I was working with had an open and lively discussion about whether they needed to be “leaders” in addition to being “managers.”  The group’s ultimate conclusion was that when times are good, management may be sufficient.  But in times of change and in difficult times organizations need people at all levels who can inspire, engage, and motivate.  Given the fact that these plants face tough times ahead, participants realized that their own ability to lead is more important than ever.

Marshall Goldsmith is one of my favorite authors and leadership gurus.  I’ve shared his “feedforward”  concept with leaders for years and recently wrote about the idea in this article.

Feedfoward means giving people suggestions in advance about how to behave rather than waiting for them to fail and beating them up afterwards.  Anyone can give feedforward when they have an idea that may help someone else succeed.  For example, years ago my husband was about to present to his company’s executive leadership team for the first time. His boss gave him great feed-forward about how to dress, when to speak, how much detail to go into, etc.

While I usually talk about giving feedforward, Goldsmith also makes the great point that we can and should ask for feedforward.  If you have a behavior you want to change, try asking others for ideas and suggestions about how to succeed.   Most people who try this technique find that it is fun and they get great ideas.

On Friday I had the great pleasure of attending a presentation sponsored by Learning Tree International and featuring Bob Mosher.  Bob calls himself a Global Learning and Strategy Evangelist and I certainly came away from his presentation feeling like a convert!

Bob’s impressive experience includes turns as Director of Learning Strategy for Microsoft, Executive Director of Education for Element K, and several years now with LearningGuide Solutions.  I was excited and intrigued when Bob started his presentation by telling us that one of his three objectives was “to inspire us to go back to our organizations and help establish a holistic ecosystem which features dynamic learning.”

In a nutshell, Bob helped our group acknowledge that learning has changed.  People aren’t going to class to learn as much anymore.  Learners want rapid, adaptable, collaborative, self-directed learning at their moment of need.  He calls this shift Learning 3.0.