“This was the best experience of my professional career: the program you designed kept external interventions to the minimum and allowed us to share our own experiences, learn together and from each other. We now feel that our future does not depend from consultants but is entirely in our hands!” This was one of the most moving feedback we received in our career this week when my partners Tritia Neeb, Ben Clayton-Jolly, Michael Newman and I ran a “Leadership in action” development program with one of our most cherished client.

Inversely, one of our other partners still vividly remembers the Management Conference he recently witnessed; The purpose was to engage the top 300 leaders of the organization and the management team had heavily invested in it: 5 stars hotel, top external speakers (paid a fortune), the “big guys” flying on the compound by helicopter to provide a feeling of power and success to the rest, a rather generous take-away gift under the form of Ipads… If that wasn’t an obvious willingness to engage and celebrate, what else could it be?

It was a disaster… The whole style of the conference went a bit like on the short clip here below where a new leader (Rolo Lee/John Cleese), in charge of a new strategy has been parachuted to engage the whole organization… The  meeting switches people’s energy into passive consumption then silent and disengaged obedience.

Very different are some of the sessions we recently were invited to, in several parts of the world, by different clients. The executive teams had chosen much simpler (and cheaper) residential areas but with a strong informal style and intimacy conducive atmosphere and service.

Leaders were clear about what was non negotiable and presented it in a didactical style (explaining how and why they had come to such conclusions) and invited rapidly their people to join them in co-creating clarity, meaning and ownership about how the new strategy, organization or culture would be implemented. Leaders were not “broadcasting” but constructing, they were connectors rather than directors (as Gerd Leonhard would say).

They were no prestigious speakers: their time was allocated to engage people into talking to each other and get to know each other better.

When observing those conferences where openness and transparency were truly lived, I can’t prevent myself from thinking to the arrogance of a  Personal Assistant, a few years ago, intruding into our debate with her boss (who rapidly agreed with her): we were trying to encourage them to open up, build bridges with their people, show intimacy and approachability while engaging them into owning the strategy. In a shock, she replied: “Strategy is too important to be shared with employees…” There you are, this company is history today…

On my way to Zürich… Have a great week all and a good holiday for those of you taking some!
Didier

M.K. Gandhi used to say that “The only authentic religion is the universal fraternity amongst people”. I guess, if he were reincarnated today in South Africa, he may have added: “And these days football is the only thing which seems to connect people from the five continents, from all religions and beliefs for a too short month, every four years…”

One week into the World Cup (I am writing this on my flight to Toulouse on this very early Friday morning) some parallels with leadership come to my mind. I chose to comment on four coaches who I equally dislike: France’s Raymond Domenech for his aggressive stubbornness, Brazil’s Dunga for having betrayed the true spirit of Brazilian football, Switzerland’s Ottmar Hitzfeld for being so bloody stiff and apparently emotionless and Argentina’s Diego Armando Maradona who’s insult to religion and football is a trademark of shame (the infamous “Hand of God”). Mind you he now has his own church and cult in Buenos-Aires…

At the time I am writing, Domenech’s France has proven that it had nothing to do in South Africa (and should have let this honor to the Irish!) after a shameful display of inefficiency against lower seeded Mexico, Brazil definitely lost its status of most admired team by true football lovers after its pathetic display against the lowest seeded team of this Cup, North Korea. On the other side, Switzerland created the biggest shock into the competition so far by defeating ultra favorite Spain 1-0 and Argentina is practically qualified after crushing their 2^nd opponent 4-1.

There is something interesting in comparing the styles of Domenech/Dunga on the one side and Hitzfeld/Maradona on the other. They radically diverge on three themes: creating the ideal conditions for their players to excel, dealing with prima donnas and other artists and their level of authenticity.

• Creating conditions for others to do and be their best: The two “D’s” (Domenech and Dunga) seem to have chosen their organizational schemes and tactics far more in function of their own preference and “ideology” (Domenech was a solid defense player not too bothered about constructing meaningful play; His tagline in the 70’s was “Football is war”. Dunga has never been an artist himself and was once stripped from his captainship in the national squad and withdrawn for one match through the pressure of his peers for his offensive and destructive comments as well as attitude on the pitch, creating tension and division.) Their strategies reflect their own mental maps rather than build on the capacities, specificities and needs of their players. There is no surprise to see disoriented and disengaged players on the field. Hitzfeld and Maradona, on the contrary spent a long time to try and understand where their players came from and built a scheme which allows these to do and be their best. Hitzfeld is aware of the relatively limited technical and creative potential of the Swiss team but knows of their cohesion, abnegation and courage. He built a not very spectacular and highly defensive strategy totally fit to his player’s capacities. Maradona after several trials and attempts to understand which structure and strategy would best suit his players seems to have found now the right alchemy.

• Dealing with strong egos: During his tenure, Domenech has been oscillating between an aggressive (insulting, attacking his players through “matamore” declarations to the press) and passive attitude (apparently giving up leadership to some of his “big mouths” in the crucial game against Mexico). Dunga found it easier to leave all the stars at home and embark only loyal and obedient although uncreative and limited players to a few exceptions. Maradona has invited all the best players Argentina can count on (to the exception of Riquelme who chose not to join for a matter of values and principles). But all the other stars are present. For having been an uneasy to coach prima donna himself, Diego Armando probably shows forgiveness when needed and an iron fist on a few non negotiable principles. Anyone who has followed the career of Ottmar Hitzfeld as a player (Basel) and highly praised coach of the Bayern Munchen knows that he is not a “softie”. But Hitzfeld has always shown respect towards his players, preferring to clean the air behind closed door. He chose to take on board some of the “enfants terribles” of the Swiss football whilst making the rules of the game extremely clear to them.

• Authenticity: There is something surrealist in listening to Dunga and Domenech commenting the results and style of their teams, to the point of wondering if they are not on another planet during games. They seem to be in total denial claiming that “all is under control, the team played well, we are progressing” and (like a famous CEO last Summer criticizing the press and consumers for not liking his products) blame the media for their negative coverage… How can such coaches hope to get the respect from their followers and create a truly high performance culture? Lencioni’s five dysfunctions of a team (quoted in an earlier post) suggest that great results are first based on authenticity and transparency. So much for it when one thinks of Dunga or Domenech. They are very predictable and coherent in their ideas and denial of reality but that is a far call from authenticity. Suffices to see the highly secretive trainings during the World Cup to confirm that transparency isn’t their cup (!) of tea… Maradona and Hitzfeld through very different styles (explosive, exuberant, dramatic for one, highly guarded and reserved for the other who prefer to let his affable and press friendly second in command Michel Pont under the spotlight) are authentic leaders. When their teams don’t do well, they will openly admit it and avoid pointing individual failures: there is no “public execution”. They take responsibility and accountability for what happens under their command. This creates trust and respect from the players and is highly visible on the pitch.

Football is an art, not a science and there is always something unfair in commenting after the facts. Most probably Switzerland’s journey in the Cup will end before the finals, a miracle could still save the French, Brazilians might suddenly rebel against their coach (as their wonder team did in 1970) and choose to play as… true Brazilians and Argentina could hugely disappoint us. Others will come and explain why with very good observations.

I find the four-yearly World Cup though a fascinating moment of communion around the globe and thought it interesting to try and draw, hopefully appropriate comparisons between our corporate life and the world’s most played sport.

Finally a quieter week within Switzerland with several Board/Team meetings and the 100^th anniversary of the high school which provided me with the chance to meet many of my still actual and hopefully future friends. Have a great week all!
Didier

Synchronicity may be seen as a pure coincidence, or an esoteric “was written in the stars” sort of blessed encounter or the fact that we create our own flourishing environment by continuously sharing, listening and being curious. Such a fortunate moment happened this Saturday when, on the one hand, I was proud to be invited in Macolin (Switzerland national elite sports’ center) to hold a three hours dialogue about leadership with some of the country’s sharpest sports coaches. On the other hand, on Tuesday, I was preparing in São-Paulo a session with Dalton Sardenberg (my partner in crime at Fundação Dom Cabral) and one of the institution’s three “living legend” directors, psychoanalyst Mozart Pereira. Reviewing the conclusions of the work done in common with 14 Brazilian CEOs, Mozart declared: “A frequent mistake about leadership is to see it as a sort of individual privilege attached to the job. This is wrong and corresponds to the old Maya/Aztec way of grasping leadership. In the “Open Economy”, leadership is a process!” The reflection went on and here are some of the key points which were made in both meetings about the process of leadership:

• Leadership must flow freely between the members of a team, like the ball in football, basketball, handball or rugby, like the puck in ice hockey. In such sports, which player “holds leadership” during a given game??? The one who happens to drive the ball! If other players remain passive spectators, the temporary leader will rapidly loose the ball. His partners should create opportunities, in a supportive way for him to use his leadership (the ball) at best and in the interest of the whole team. The ball is the leadership.

• Leadership can be measured as a process: for Mozart, the speed by which the dialogue (think of the ball or puck analogy) changes “owner” and the diversity and number of “players” taking a part in the game (the dialogue) are great indicators of the richness or dysfunctions of the leadership process.

It is way healthier for a leader to consider leadership as a shared process rather than a selfishly guarded attribute:

• Leadership as a process engages people far more; they are encouraged to talk, share, explore, challenge and support

• It is far less exhausting; the leader isn’t alone anymore to “carry the burden of leadership” which gets increasingly shared and co-owned by the whole team.

So why do so many leaders still relinquish to consider leadership as a process in which they should involve as many people as possible?

• An interesting H.B.R. article[1] may provide an answer, egocentrism, sometimes narcissism get in the way and the leader simply can’t let go of leadership which has become part of his identity.

• We also see wonderful leaders who have fulfilled their dream in building an outstanding business, incapable of letting go of their baby and hanging on the leadership as long as they can, sometimes even designating weak successors as a way to stay in charge behind the scene.

• Other leaders fear that they may loose the respect their seniority and experience are due, by letting go of the leadership symbolic attributes. In this case it more a matter of “territory” than anything else.

• Also too common is the fear to allow mistakes, forgetting very often the number of failures it took them to bring the business to the high level of success they placed it.

• The lack of trust is another classic: Yes, autonomy and co-leadership have to be earned (through results). But such leaders frequently forget that it is their duty to enable and develop their team members to be able to succeed in co-running leadership and taking successful initiatives: Leaders have the followers they deserve! (and followers when they lack courage to challenge and collude with the autocratic boss also have the leader they deserve!)

The summary of all this is that such “die hard” lonely leaders have an anxiety about “loosing it” coming from a misconception between the fantastically powerful and developmental “Leadership as a process” and their responsibility of manager. Using the human body analogy, all the parts of the body are working together in a harmonious leadership process. However each organ is still fully responsible for their part of the business and one of the brain’s task is to coordinate the various signals it receives and decide which one will have the priority. Leadership as a process is not anarchy (absence of leadership) but polyarchy (leadership in the hands of all, united behind a shared Purpose). Lt. General Van Riper’s “in command but out of control” says nothing different.

How do “die hard leaders” more or less subtly proceed to keep leadership in their sole hands?

• They cultivate distance and discourage intimacy. It is lonely at the top and they like it to stay like that: they can see come from a distance all the “would be leaders” seeking to steal their treasure…

• As a way to discourage initiative and development of other leaders, they will punish mistakes, preferably through “public executions” as a way to warn other rebels that the old man is still in control.

• They will not admit their own “temporary incompetence”, pretending to be always fine, excelling at finding great excuses why their own failures were in fact part of the plan, and through their punishing attitude, they will ensure that nobody else starts to admit their own doubts, questions or temporary incompetence.

• They will clearly show that feedback, challenge and support are unwelcome by denying, refusing or permanently self justify.

It is time to stop leadership of being “a privilege and honor, enthusiastically sought by the ambitious, and jealously guarded by the articulate, charismatic, informed and intelligent few to be inflicted on the inarticulate, uncharismatic, misinformed and unintelligent many” as an ex-colleague of mine crafted it elegantly. Leadership is a process of development which directs our teams and enterprises on the way to becoming (more of) an intelligent organization.

Paris, Brighton/Hove and Amsterdam are on the menu this week. Have an enjoyable week too!

[1] M. Maccoby “Narcisistic Leaders: the incredible pros, the inevitable cons” (January 2004) Harvard Business Review

I recently commented here, on the ways to bring teams from a “languishing” to a “flourishing” state. We have seen (http://blog.enablersnetwork.com/2009/11/01/marcial-losada-explains-his-research-for-our-blog-readers/) that, during his research, Marcial Losada could predict the success of their strategy, by observing an executive team’s style of dialoguing: an equal level of external vs. internal focus, similar times spent exploring and advocating and a minimum three to one ratio of positive to negative behaviours were a solid predictor of promising output.

Beat Blaesi, Executive Director for Leadership Development at the Julius Baer Academy, showed me this week an interesting model[1], offering reasons to why teams may dysfunction:

1.- The main symptom is the lack of trust between team members, due to their incapacity to “lower their guard” and hiding their vulnerability. This lack of authenticity is rapidly “sniffed” by human beings and immediately interpreted as “playing games” and having (indeed) something to hide. This is particularly damning in the “Open Network Economy” we are heading towards (I intend to explore quite a bit around this theme in the near future).

2.- The consequence of this lack of trust is the fear of conflict or the “artificial harmony” that takes the team over. On the contrary, when the team functions following Losada’s prescription, its participants engage into “unfiltered conflict”.

3.- The conflict avoidance provokes the lack of commitment, of which the main symptom is neutrality. People just pretend. On the opposite, an engaged team will commit to a decision and action plan.

4.- The consequence of non commitment is the avoidance of accountability, which translates into average standards for performance, “settling for mediocrity”, silo based measurement (“at least I save myself and my team!”) whereas a flourishing team will actively mind each other’s business and hold each other accountable for delivering.

5.- The terrible impact on business ends up being an inattention to results instead of a focus on achievement of collective results.

Chris Parker with whom I co-authored our latest book[2] studied the behaviours capable of breaking such a vicious cycle and claims they are eight “Value Building Behaviours” (to be compared to Losada’s Positive Behaviours):

• Listening actively, which provides a sense of respect, recognition and importance to my team members
• Asking open questions, which enables them to express and explore more while this shows my interest for their opinion
• Summarizing, which ensures that the discussion doesn’t loose focus
• Supporting, whereby I recognize the merits in at least some aspects of my partners’ views
• Challenging, where I share my doubts, concerns, questions and disagreements
• Clarifying, instead of jumping to judgement and conclusion
• Asking for a time-out when I think we are getting off track
• Reviewing the process of our discussion and asking for/giving feedback about how I behaved towards others and how they made me feel, in order to avoid planting seeds of resentment which will make our next meeting more difficult and tense.

It is not the wrong strategy which destroys business value but inadequate behaviours, which block people, prevent them from opening up, limit their capacity to explore and create, make them defensive and refusing to admit “temporary incompetence” to hide themselves behind their ego and stick to the wrong, value destroying strategy.

Brussels, Courchevel (yes you can work there too) and research work on the impact of the new “Open Network Economy” on strategy, organization and leadership will keep me busy next week. Thank you for your increasing support and for sharing this blog as widely as possible…

Didier

[2] D. Marlier & C. Parker (2009) Engaging Leadership: three agendas for sustaining achievement (Palgrave-Macmillan)

Impressed by the quality of some replies of yours regarding the post “Power of Words” and quoting Marcial Losada’s groundbreaking research, I went to him directly and asked to comment and summarize his work for our mutual benefit. Marcial was kind enough to respond and here it is:

“For the benefit of the readers who are not familiar with Meta-Learning (ML), here is a very brief introduction. ML has three variables (dimensions) and 3 parameters. The variables are inquiry-advocacy, positivity-negativity (P/N), and other-self (or external-internal orientation). The three parameters are connectivity (the critical, control parameter), negativity bias and resistance to change (system’s viscosity). The model is driven by a set of nonlinear differential equations that have the same mathematical structure as the Lorenz model (the one that generates the famous butterfly-shaped attractor and is used in many branches of science). ML accounts for 92% of variance in a system’s (couple, team, organization) performance. The best linear models only account for 30% of that variance.

A team is most successful when its members are well connected, is able to balance external vs. internal orientation as well as inquiry and advocacy, and keeps a P/N ratio within the Losada Zone (greater than or equal to about 3:1 and not more than about 11:1). We have taken measurements all the way from Finland to the Patagonia (where there is Methanex, one of the world’s largest methanol company) and I have never observed a team which reaches a 6:1 ratio (5.6 is the upper limit so far). In the Losada Zone, a team is able to flourish (and earn a lot of money as a side bonus) and to be “in the flow” (time doesn’t seem to go by and creativity thrives). Out of the zone, a team languishes visiting over and over the same old routines that keep them stuck, without ever getting to know the best of themselves. This is very sad and it is the main reason why I started a consulting business. I wanted to stop the pain (and make money as a bonus).

Marvin and Michael speak about the power of words and specifically about how, when those words are at least in a P/N ratio of 3:1, we find the best of ourselves. The power of language is indeed something that deserves our attention. Wittgenstein saw it as a prison. And he was right, because language can imprison us. There are two types of prison in nonlinear dynamics: fixed-point attractors and limit cycles. We get there when our P/N ratio (and the words that go with it) are outside the Losada Zone. But language can also liberate us (and Wittgenstein also saw this; he was no fool). Meta Learning is a liberating process whereby we dissolve limiting dynamics such as limit cycles and fixed points and evolve complex order dynamics (that I call complexors–complex order). Lorenz’s butterfly is a complexor and my high performing teams all have butterfly-shaped trajectories when I look at their interaction behavior in phase space. When we are in a complexor pattern we accomplish a great feat: we learn who we truly are and what we are capable of doing. Once you taste this fruit, you are able to transform knowledge into wisdom. You are in a kind of paradise from where you will not be expelled, unless you do that to yourself. When my high performing teams reach a complexor they stay there. I have measured them years later and they are still there. Sustainability is one of the greatest benefits of the training provided by the ML methodology.

I must end by saying that the power of words when viewed from the P/N ratio is much more that what we ever imagined. There is a fascinating study by Dr. Grazyna Rajkowska with chronic depressive patients who lose cerebral mass in the prefrontal cortex and hypothalamus. It turns out that the average chronic depressive has a P/N ratio of 0.5 (two negatives for every positive). I discovered a mathematical function that I call “gamma function” which links P/N to gains or losses in a system. The gamma function predicts a 30% loss of cerebral mass in chronic depressives. This prediction was corroborated by Dr. Rajkowska who measures the loss quite precisely using laser interferometry.

I find this astonishing. How can it happen? What is the mechanism by which P/N destroys cells if it is too low? In my view, the explanation goes back to Einstein formula relating energy to mass. To act on the cerebral mass we need energy (or lack of it to feed those cells in the case of depressives). When you look at the P/N pattern over time, you realize it is an oscillatory pattern, a vibrational pattern. Hence an energy pattern; its frequency increases as the P/N ratio does. This being so, we should also be able to predict the opposite effect: a gain when the P/N ratio is above the Losada Line (3:1). Richie Davidson did a famous study published in the Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Science on Tibetan monks doing loving-kindness meditation whose P/N ratio is 4:1 as shown by the differential activation of their left and right prefrontal cortex. My gamma function for that ratio predicts a gain of 30%. Richie discovered that gamma synchrony in the monks is increased by about 30%. Gamma waves are the fastest (higher frequency, hence higher energy) and they connect different parts of the brain which makes creativity and intuition available to us. In this case the gain is not so much in cerebral mass as it is on connectivity. I have shown in my paper, The Role of Positivity and Connectivty in Business Teams, that connectivity and the P/N ratio are mathematically equivalent. This might be the explanation at the brain activity level of Barbara Fredrickson’s findings that P/N broadens our thought-action repertoires.

So watch those words! You might be increasing (or decreasing) your cerebral mass. Perhaps we can start our next team meeting with a mission statement: let’s not lose cerebral mass today!”