Leveraging Personality Type to Improve Leadership Effectiveness

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Leader Type

This guest blog was written as a companion to the podcast with Belinda Gore, Building Leadership Self-Awareness Using Personality Type. In the interview and the blog, Belinda explores how she uses the Enneagram to help leaders build the self-awareness that enables them to perform effectively.

This post contains some excerpts from the Innovative Leadership Fieldbook by Maureen Metcalf and contributing author Belinda Gore.

Let’s start with the example of Ken, an experienced leader who was making a job change. He realized he was navigating uncharted territory and would no longer be working with the team he knew well and trusted. He would work with new people who didn’t know who he was or how he worked. Because starting a new job is stressful, he must also know his patterns and signs of stress. To help him manage this transition, he revisited his personality assessment to refresh his memory on navigating his stress and understanding his new team better. He found this tool very useful in the past and expected it would be equally valuable as he stepped into a high-visibility role.

When the 65 members of the Advisory Council for the Stanford Graduate School of Business were polled several years ago on the topic of what is most important to include in the school’s curriculum, there was an overwhelming agreement that the most important thing business school graduates needed to learn was self-awareness and the resulting ability to reduce denial in their perceptions of themselves and their actions.  Pretty impressive.  All the tools of the MBA trade—forecasting, strategic planning, financial analysis, among many, many others—were determined to be LESS important than learning self-awareness skills and the ability to reduce denial. This speaks to the emerging recognition that we highlight in Innovative Leadership:  Leaders can derail the most progressive initiatives toward an organization’s sustainable success through their personality quirks and biases.

The name “Enneagram” derives from the Greek for nine (ennea) and a figure (grama). Hence, the Enneagram symbol of a circle with nine equidistant points around the circumference.  The symbol itself is ancient. Using the symbol as a map, we can describe patterns of personality and highly effective pathways for personal change.  In my experience using the Enneagram system as a psychologist and leadership coach over the past twenty-three years, I find it more robust than any other system I have encountered. Many organizations are familiar with DISC, MBTI, Strengths Finder, and other systems, and training in these models has given employees at every level of organizations a foundation in models for self-awareness. I have found leaders at every level able to readily learn the richer and more versatile information the Enneagram offers.

The following section describes the enneagram types.

Type 1—Reformer: The Rational, Idealistic Type

I am a principled, idealistic type. I am conscientious and ethical and have a strong sense of right and wrong behavior. I can be a teacher, crusader, and advocate for change, always striving to improve things but sometimes afraid of making mistakes. Well-organized, orderly, and fastidious, I try to maintain high standards but can slip into being critical and perfectionistic. I typically have problems with resentment and impatience.

At My Best: I am wise, discerning, realistic, and noble. I can be morally heroic.

Type 2—Helper: The Caring, Interpersonal Type

I am a caring, interpersonal type. I am empathetic, sincere, and warm-hearted. I am friendly, generous, and self-sacrificing, but I can also be sentimental, flattering, and people-pleasing. I am well-meaning and driven to be close to others, but I can slip into doing things for others ‘ needs. I typically have problems with possessiveness and with acknowledging my own needs.

At My Best: I am unselfish and altruistic and have unconditional love for others.

Type 3—Achiever: The Success-Oriented, Pragmatic Type

I am an adaptable, success-oriented type. I am self-assured, attractive, and charming. Ambitious, competent, and energetic, I can also be status-conscious and highly driven for advancement. I am diplomatic and poised, but I can also be overly concerned with my image and what others think of me. I typically have problems with being overfocused on work and competitiveness.

At My Best: I am self-accepting, authentic, and a role model who inspires others.

Type 4—Individualist: The Sensitive, Withdrawn Type

I am an introspective, romantic type. I am self-aware, sensitive, and reserved. I am emotionally honest, creative, and personal, but I can also be moody and self-conscious. Withholding myself from others due to feeling vulnerable, I can also feel scornful and exempt from ordinary ways of living. I typically have problems with melancholy, self-indulgence, and self-pity.

At My Best: I am inspired and highly creative and can renew myself and transform my experiences.

Type 5—Investigator: The Intense, Cerebral Type

I am a perceptive, cerebral type. I am alert, insightful, and curious. I can concentrate and focus on developing complex ideas and skills. Independent, innovative, and inventive, I can also become preoccupied with my thoughts and imaginary constructs. I can be detached yet high-strung and intense. I typically have problems with eccentricity, nihilism, and isolation.

At My Best: I am a visionary pioneer, often ahead of my time, and able to see the world in an entirely new way.

Type 6—Loyalist: The Committed, Security-Oriented Type

I am reliable, hardworking, responsible, security-oriented, and trustworthy. I am an excellent troubleshooter and can foresee problems and foster cooperation, but I can also become defensive, evasive, and anxious, running on stress while complaining about it. I can be cautious, indecisive, but also reactive, defiant, and rebellious. I typically have problems with self-doubt and suspicion.

At My Best: I am internally stable and self-reliant, courageously championing myself and others.

Type Seven—Enthusiast: The Busy, Fun-Loving Type

I am a busy, outgoing, productive type. I am extroverted, optimistic, versatile, and spontaneous. I can also misapply many talents, being playful, high-spirited, and practical, becoming over-extended, scattered, and undisciplined. I constantly seek new and exciting experiences but can become distracted and exhausted by staying on the go. I typically have problems with impatience and impulsiveness.

At My Best: I focus my talents on worthwhile goals, becoming appreciative, joyous, and satisfied.

Type Eight—Challenger: The Powerful, Dominating Type

I am powerful, aggressive, self-confident, strong, and assertive. Protective, resourceful, straight-talking, and decisive, I can also be egocentric and domineering. I must control my environment, especially people who sometimes become confrontational and intimidating. I typically have problems with my temper and allowing myself to be vulnerable.

At My Best: I am self-mastering, and I use my strength to improve others’ lives, becoming heroic, magnanimous, and inspiring.

Type Nine—Peacemaker: The Easygoing, Self-effacing Type

I am accepting, trusting, easygoing, and stable. I am usually grounded, supportive, and often creative, but I can also be too willing to go along with others to keep the peace. I want everything to go smoothly and be without conflict, but I can also tend to be complacent and emotionally distant, simplifying problems and ignoring anything upsetting. I typically have problems with inertia and stubbornness.

At My Best: I am indomitable, all-embracing, and able to bring people together to heal conflicts.

One advantage of the Enneagram is that it is organic. The nine personality styles are formed through characteristic ways of balancing the three primary centers of intelligence in the human body. While we typically think of the brain as the center of intelligence, advances in neuroanatomy have demonstrated that there is also a complex system of nerves in the solar plexus region that forms the center of body intelligence and a third complex system of nerves in the center of the chest, known as the heart center of intelligence.  These three centers are aligned with the three major parts of the brain:  the belly center is aligned with the reptilian brain stem, responsible for instinctual behavior and home of the autonomic nervous system that controls arousal and relaxation;  the heart center is aligned with the mid-brain where we encounter the mechanism for fundamental emotion as well as mirror neurons and limbic resonance that account for our capacity for empathy; and the head center is aligned with the cerebral cortex, which includes the analytical and logical left lobe as well as the holistic and intuitive right lobe.

The key to identifying a person’s core Enneagram type is to look beyond behavior to the factors motivating that behavior. Through awareness of motivation, we can predict how leaders and organizations sabotage their best efforts and find the line of least resistance toward getting back on track.

By harnessing the capacity to see your leader type and conditioning objectively and nonjudgmentally, you can foster better insight into your own experience without the strained effort that can stem from self-bias. You discover that the unique patterns that shape each type are genuine and natural and generally do not change much over time. In the most basic way, they reflect who you are most innately.  The goal with the leader type is to build self-awareness and leverage strengths, not try to change who you are. Understanding the natural conditioning of the leader type is a crucial stage in developing leadership effectiveness and comprehensive innovation within the organization.

A recommended resource for identifying your own Enneagram personality type is to take an online questionnaire.

About the Authors

Belinda Gore, Ph.D., designs, develops and delivers leadership, assessments, workshops, and coaching. She is a key thought leader in developing the Innovative Leadership framework.

She is a psychologist, executive coach, and experienced seminar leader skilled in supporting her clients in high-level learning. With 30 years experience in leadership development and interpersonal skills training, she is known for helping teams discover strength in their diversity to achieve their mutual goals and works with individual leaders to access their natural talents to maximize effectiveness and personal satisfaction. Her clients have included senior leadership in global companies, senior and middle management in corporate and nonprofit organizations, and entrepreneurs. She will lead our new service line, which is focused on helping leaders and their organizations build resilience. She will also offer leadership team development, board development, coaching, and Enneagram assessment.

Maureen Metcalf, CEO and Founder of Innovative Leadership Institute, is a renowned executive advisor, author, speaker, and coach whose 30 years of business experience provide high-impact, practical solutions that support her clients’ leadership development and organizational transformations. Maureen is recognized as an innovative, principled thought leader who combines intellectual rigor and discipline with an ability to translate theory into practice. Her operational skills are coupled with a strategic ability to analyze, develop, and implement successful profitability, growth, and sustainability strategies.

Maximizing Team Interactions: Moving Beyond the Lowest Common Denominator’s Reign

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Building Thriving TeamsThis blog is drawn from a paper by Jim Ritchie-Dunham & Maureen Metcalf, Co-hosting: Creating Optimal Experience for Team Interactions, Integral Leadership Review, November 2016. Jim and Maureen also recorded a podcast.

Christopher, the CEO, walked into a planning session to get his full team on the same page for how to move key initiatives forward for the upcoming year. His leaders were all in alignment on the core purpose of the organization and how to accomplish it. During the discussion, everyone gave unbiased input to move the organization forward, irrespective of personal interest. Christopher was highly skilled at understanding the point of view of all participants and synthesizing the various points of view of his trusted leaders to create solutions everyone could support.

Does this scenario describe your normal business meetings? How is it different?

We want to explore the idea that groups can leverage the skills of individuals across five key perspectives and create an environment in which each participant operates at his greatest level of contribution. We call this the alchemy of co-hosting, whereby the co-host, in conjunction with the participants, invokes a very different mindset and process for the team to function.

The Challenge

“Less than one-third of U.S. employees have been engaged in their jobs and workplaces [since 2000]. According to Gallup Daily tracking, 32% of employees in the U.S. are engaged — meaning they are involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their work and workplace. Worldwide, only 13% of employees working for an organization are engaged.” – Gallup

Much of our work is done within teams of highly effective and highly compensated people. We have found that these teams often function at the level of the least common denominator. Many people, especially leaders, move from meeting to meeting all day. They often do this with little awareness of their specific role in the meeting and the value they bring. This is the culture of many organizations. When asking a cohort of vibrancy community members what they experienced in these teams, they suggested that while the participants were generally strong employees with good skills, they were often disengaged, and some actively disrupted the work or found ways to interfere with the meeting goals. In some cases, the participants did this as a passive-aggressive response; in some worse cases, they did it just for personal entertainment. So, what is the antidote to this high level of disengagement considering five key factors other than the highest rank present? How do we capture the highest input level from each person to create a higher level “field” of operation than any individual would have access to by working alone?

The Approach

We look at five different perspectives or measures of intelligence and then explore how the art of co-hosting can leverage all five intelligences of the participants to create an environment that calls forth the greatest possible capacity in the group.

The five perspectives are:

  • Leadership maturity – describes how adults mature throughout their lifespan, attending to ever-increasing levels of complexity in their thinking, emotions, and behaviors
  • State development – describes where people focus their attention, ranging from what is immediately in front of them to what is abstract and spiritual.
  • Years of experience
  • Skill to identify the perspectives in the room
  • Co-hosting skill – the ability to identify the perspectives in the room and create an environment and approach that leverages the maturity, state, and skills of the participants

It is interesting to note that each perspective is important for an organization to create holistic solutions to its many complex challenges. For that reason, it is important to recognize each of these perspectives and be able to identify, recruit, and create environments that genuinely leverage each of their gifts.

Integrating the five perspectives individually allows an effective co-host to create the “container” or space to leverage each to the participants’ greatest potential rather than the traditional lowest common denominator.

Summary

During this era of increased complexity and accelerated need for change, we must identify methods and processes to help us navigate our challenges. Optimally, these methods and processes would create the greatest impact for all involved—creating an optimal individual experience and a holistic solution for the organizations or groups involved.

We believe the solution integrates a solid process that integrates five key perspectives and a presence of being within the co-host to create the desired outcome. Both elements are critical.

We have an opportunity to enhance the experience and the impact we have in trying to solve problems. By building the capacity to co-host and using this process, we increase the probability of solving our most complex problems and enjoying the process. Knowing this is possible helps us regain hope that we as a society can resolve the mounting list of intractable problems we hear of daily on the news.

Authors

Jim Ritchie-Dunham is president of the Institute for Strategic Clarity, a global research nonprofit, president of Vibrancy Ins., LLC, a global consultancy and publisher, president of the private operating foundation the Academy for Self-Discovery Leadership, an adjunct faculty member in Harvard’s program in sustainability leadership, and Adjunct Professor of Business Economics in the ITAM Business School in Mexico City.

Jim authored Ecosynomics: The Science of Abundance (2014), co-authored Managing from Clarity: Identifying, Aligning and Leveraging Strategic Resources (2001), has written many articles on systemic strategy for academic and practitioner journals, and blogs regularly at jlrd.me.

As a student of human agreements, Jim Ritchie-Dunham brings over 25 years of research and insights gleaned from working with groups of all make-ups.  Jim named Ecosynomics, the emerging social science of the agreements that guide human interactions. Ecosynomics provides a framework rooted in economics and the sciences of human agreements that begins with an initial assumption of abundance, not scarcity, and a wider view of the human being.

Maureen Metcalf, CEO and Founder of Innovative Leadership Institute

, is a renowned executive advisor, author, speaker, and executive advisor whose 30 years of business experience provides high-impact, practical solutions that support her clients’ leadership development and organizational transformations. Maureen is recognized as an innovative, principled thought leader who combines intellectual rigor and discipline with an ability to translate theory into practice. Her operational skills are coupled with a strategic ability to analyze, develop, and implement successful profitability, growth, and sustainability strategies.

Maureen has published several papers and articles and speaks regularly on innovative leadership, resilience, and organizational transformation. She is the author of the award-winning Innovative Leadership Workbook Series and the co-author of The Innovative Leadership Fieldbook, and she is the winner of an International Book Award for Best Business Reference Book. She is also a regular contributor to Forbes.com.

 

Bad Bosses – Are You One?

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Bad Bosses Mike Morrow-Fox and Maureen co-write this blog post as a companion to the podcast recording on Bad Bosses.

Bill comes into the office. He is swamped by the work he must accomplish –  preparing for a high-visibility client meeting, meeting with his executive leadership, and consolidating information to create his monthly reports. On top of this, he has seven highly competent direct reports. He’s grateful that his team is so effective because he doesn’t need much time with them. He really likes his team and wishes to do more mentoring, but for now, he needs to keep his head down and finish his work. As we read in the article, his approach is ineffective because he is not actively engaging them.

In a January 2016 article published in the Gallup Business Journal, ‘Gallup has been tracking employee engagement in the U.S. since 2000. Though slight ebbs and flows have occurred, less than one-third of U.S. employees have been engaged in their jobs and workplaces during these 15 years. According to Gallup Daily tracking, 32% of employees in the U.S. are engaged — meaning they are involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their work and workplace. Worldwide, only 13% of employees working for an organization are engaged.’

Bosses play a major role in employee engagement and disengagement. Engaged bosses drive engagement, while disengaged bosses drive disengagement and, even, active disruption.

Let’s start with a definition. What is the difference between a leader and a boss? Leaders set the cultural tone and strategic vision; bosses are the employee’s conduit to the larger organization.

We understand that there are some obvious characteristics that would make anyone a bad boss, like throwing temper tantrums and micromanaging. We’re going to talk about subtler differences.

Bad Bosses Great Bosses
Let employees “do their thing” Develop their employees, including discussions on strength-based leadership data
Protect their departments Facilitate cross-organizational collaboration
Are customer-focused at the expense of other needs Are priority-focused, helping employees self-manage competing priorities
Are busy with day-to-day operations Are busy with continuous improvement
Recognize their employees to reward them for completing an assignment Recognize their employees as a regular part of development and connection with the mission
Put on a good game face Are authentic and compassionate: “Someone at work cares about me.”
Tell their employees “how.” Tell their employees “why.”

‘If your manager ignores you, there is a 40% chance that you will be actively disengaged or filled with hostility about your job. If your manager is at least paying attention, the chances of you being actively disengaged go down to 22%. But if your manager primarily focuses on your strengths, the chance of your being actively disengaged is just 1% or 1 in 100.’

The number one action great bosses take is regularly taking time to engage with their employees and focusing on employee strengths during these interactions. Great bosses also have regular conversations about employee development, again focusing on employee strengths more than deficiencies. Going back to Bill in the opening story, he would likely have dramatically improved their engagement if he had allocated time each week to talk to employees, discuss their projects, and build on their strengths to help them continue to thrive. It seems rather easy, yet it is not common.

Most of us have had bad boss experiences and found a way to cope until we changed jobs or the bad boss rotated out. The question we pose is, what cost do you incur if you happen to be less involved than your employees need you to be, or if you are primarily focused on correcting and giving guidance rather than balancing guidance to improve performance with helping employees improve their strengths?

 

References:

Rath,T.,& Harter, J. (2010, July). Composite of several submissions. Servant Leadership Focus Newsletter, Volume 4, Issue 7.

Mann, Annamarie, and Harter, Jim. (2016, January). Gallup.com Business Journal.

Photo credits: www.flickr.com creative commons Arpit Gupta

About the authors:

Maureen Metcalf is the Founder and CEO of Metcalf & Associates. She is an executive advisor, a speaker, coach, and the author of an award-winning book series focused on innovating how you lead. She is also on the faculty of universities in the US and Germany.

Mike Morrow-Fox, MBA, has over 20 years of experience in leading technology and human resources operations for health care, education, banking, and nonprofit organizations, as well as several years of university teaching. His bachelor’s degree focused on Industrial Psychology and Employee Counseling and his MBA focus was on Organizational Leadership. He is currently completing his Doctorate in Educational Leadership. He is a contributor and thought partner for several of the innovative leadership books.

 

Mergers & Acquisitions: Five Key Drivers to Deliver Value

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Mergers and acquisitions

Not a well-understood concept here…

Today’s post is a collaboration between Maureen Metcalf, Carla Morelli, and Laura Hult, focusing on mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and identifying key factors that drive success and failure. The post is a companion to a podcast with the authors. They are seasoned veterans who have participated in many transactions and seen similar themes. This post and its companion podcast provide insights and make recommendations to improve the probability of success for your next transaction, whether you are acquiring, selling, or involved in the integration.

Research Indicates that Mergers and Acquisitions Often Fail to Deliver Desired Results

The Financial Times Press’ A Comprehensive Guide to Mergers & Acquisitions: Managing the Critical Success Factors Across Every Stage of the M&A Process says that though studies have historically set the rate of M&A failure at 50 percent or more, recent years have found it to be as high as 83 percent. One might conclude that executives and boards would eschew M&A to achieve growth and profitability in favor of less risky alternatives, but that has not been the case. Despite the warning signs, the number and dollar value of transactions has increased yearly for the last 20 years.

Failure Results from Management’s Lack of Knowledge or Unwillingness to Face Facts

“The primary reasons for failures [are] related to the fact that it is easy to buy but hard to perform an M&A. In general, many mergers and acquisitions are characterized by a lack of planning, limited synergies, differences in the management/organizational/international culture, negotiation mistakes, and difficulties in the implementation of the strategy following the choice of an incorrect integration approach on the part of the merging organizations after the agreement is signed. Most failure factors indicate a lack of knowledge among senior managers for the management tools that enable coping with the known problems of M&A.” Another management shortcoming is an unwillingness to accept information that negatively impacts post-close projections, whether it be market data, synergies, or cultural challenges. Deal teams often find themselves looking for creative ways to meet expectations. Not meaning to mislead, they are still well aware that the scenarios being modeled are more than just a stretch. The post-close result often falls far short of the mark.

Human Factors are Among the Most Important to Consider

Human factors almost always significantly impact a deal’s success and the amount of additional cost and effort required to recover when they were not sufficiently considered. The five human factors below differentiate successful deals:

  1. Understand the “why.” The buyer and the seller need a clear understanding of why they are initially engaging in the transaction (referred to as the rudder), such as ensuring the business moves forward when a founder retires. As the deal progresses, use the rudder and be open to refining the “why” as the deal unfolds, like realizing that another key motivation is the well-being of employees who helped build the company.
  2. Select an advisory team for both skill and philosophical fit. Advisors play a key role in the deal’s success, and their approach is as important as their skills are. A competent, “bulldog” attorney who takes no prisoners and is more adversarial than the buyer wants to be, for example, is likely to generate wariness and ill will on the seller’s part, eroding the trust and open communication that enables thorough diligence and comprehensive, realistic integration planning. In addition to the advisory team, engage someone to be a sounding board for critical decisions, which can step back when other participants lose their objectivity.
  3. Maintain resilience. The M&A process is physically and emotionally exhausting. To ensure enough physical energy and mental clarity to make tough decisions, buyers and sellers must manage their energy and find ways to rejuvenate. This will be different for different people but should include making conscious choices about physical well-being, managing one’s emotional state, managing thinking (remaining positive), and looking to a trusted advisor for support.
  4. Build trust among the team. Trust takes time and energy when both are scarce. It is particularly important to create an atmosphere that allows people to constructively deal with negative information rather than “creatively” work around it. If the team is selected based on skills and mindsets that align well (similar values and overall approach), it can work through most issues. Addressing them quickly and openly is critical to sustaining a strong team, which is required when challenges arise – and they always do.
  5. Proactively plan and manage the integration. Value is only realized when the organizations are successfully integrated. The most successful integrations have cross-functional integration teams comprised of representatives from both organizations. In addition to keeping the team aligned via regular meetings, progress should be reported at the highest appropriate organizational level (from steering committees to boards of directors, depending on the company’s size and transaction) on a cadence that provides visibility and a forum for decision-making when needed.

Managing human factors increases the likelihood of value being realized: people are complicated, and building a team that has the capacity and inclination to attend to them is a differentiator in an industry where many still focus on the technical elements of the deal.

Authors:

Maureen Metcalf, Founder and CEO of ILI, is an executive advisor, speaker, coach, and author of an award-winning book series focused on innovating how you lead. She is also on the faculty of universities in the US and Germany.

Laura Hult works as an outside counsel focusing on corporate finance. She represents private equity funds and financial, strategic, and lifestyle companies as buyers and sellers. Laura structures negotiates and protects investment value in M&A transactions and has represented investors and lenders at every level of the capital stack.

Carla Morelli is a leader who steers people and organizations through complex change, including global M&A transactions. She delivers business-critical results that balance structural needs with human inter-dynamics; her ability to integrate multiple perspectives and mesh the “balcony view” with a detailed understanding of what is required for an initiative to succeed consistently unlocks potential where other approaches have failed.

Reference:

Weber, Yaakov; Oberg, Christina; Tabra, Shlomo. (January 2014), The M&A Paradox: Factors of Success and Failure in Mergers and Acquisitions, Financial Times Press

Photo credit: www.flickr.com Dan

Leadership 2050 Competency Model

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Leadership 2050This blog is a companion to the Voice America show to air on October 13, 2015. In the radio show, we discuss the strategist competency model reflected in the table below. This discussion brings the competency model to life as Mike, Susan and Maureen discuss the model and provide current examples of each competency. This model was published in Leadership 2050 as well as in the Innovative Leadership series.

“The qualities of effective leadership can be paradoxical – requiring effective leaders to be passionate, unbiased, detailed and strategic, hard-driven and sustainable, fact-focused and intuitive, self-confident and selfless – all often at the same time. Such complexity is rarely found in leaders even under optimal conditions. As we move toward 2050, new contexts and conditions are poised to emerge that will create challenges beyond the abilities of most leaders or a single nation to manage. This powerful contextual shift – a time of great stress and constraint – has the potential to drive a new and more complex stage of human culture and consciousness to meet these challenges.”, according to chapter twelve of Leadership 2050, written by Susan Cannon, Mike Morrow-Fox and Maureen Metcalf.

The competency model is based on the seminal research of Susann Cook-Greuter in her Leadership Maturity Framework (LMF) along with other researchers. Susann’s LDF framework lays out levels of leadership maturity. The Strategist Competency Model is based on the level in her framework called “Strategist” and correlates with “Level 5 Leadership” in Jim Collins book Good to Great. The following table

Strategist Competency Model

 

To become a more innovative leader, you can begin by taking our free leadership assessments and then enrolling in our online leadership development program.

Check out the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership, Co-creating Our Future, via iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible,  iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.  Stay up-to-date on new shows airing by following the Innovative Leadership Institute LinkedIn.

Four Ways Understanding Developmental Perspective Improves Organizations

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Transformation

This series started with a discussion of different developmental perspectives. Now we turn to applying your understanding of this concept to transforming your organization or improving its effectiveness.

Developmental perspective not only helps you as an individual leader create your growth path, it is also important in transforming your organization. The key to high performance is to align people and roles, considering their developmental perspective. Different organizational functions are best filled by people at different developmental perspectives. We call this their “fit” for the role, or more precisely, how the qualities associated with their developmental perspective align with requirements specific to the job. Both leaders and organizations need to support the health of all employees from a developmental standpoint and create an environment where each individual is in a role where he best fits and can move toward achieving his fullest potential.

For you to be successful as a leader over the long run, it is essential to understand your proper “fit” within the organization—which includes understanding who you are and what you value, where you belong in the organization, and where you belong within the broader team and community stakeholders. It is also important to apply this concept to others as you make hiring decisions, assign people to roles, determine individual roles within a team, and communicate with others. Importantly, the goal is not merely to build an organization with all people at the “highest” developmental perspective, rather it is to select people for roles that allow them to function as effectively as possible individually and collectively. Your organization will be effective if it supports success for people at all levels and aligns them to roles that fit their capacity. Organizations that perceive one perspective as “better” will be less effective than organizations that leverage every perspective and design an organization where all levels can thrive concurrently and are working toward a collective goal of organizational success using a broad range of skills and perspectives.

You can use this developmental model with organizations in several ways:

  1. Make staffing and succession decisions using developmental perspectives. Considering developmental perspective along with past performance and technical and industry skills, align people to the roles that have the best “fit.”
  2. Improve communication skills by applying a general understanding of developmental perspective to guide leaders in improving interpersonal effectiveness. Instead of simply communicating with others as ourselves, we recommend communicating with them based on their perspective. Understanding the perceptions of others from a developmental standpoint can dramatically improve interpersonal effectiveness. This applies to staff, peers, bosses, clients, family members, and other stakeholders.
  3. Improving management and leadership by applying an understanding of developmental perspectives allows a leader to clarify the needs of employees. For example, Expert employees want clear and specific directions and guidelines so they can do their tasks “right.” Individualists want the freedom to determine the best approach to accomplishing tasks. Trying to manage these different developmental perspectives using the same approach will result in frustration and lost productivity.
  4. Comparing the organizational developmental level to your developmental level will help you better understand the organizational culture. Organizations develop along the same trajectory as people: they start with the need to establish basic rules and infrastructure and then move to more complex functioning as they progress through the organizational lifecycle. Understanding the culture will help you because, as an innovative leader, you are continually aligning your intentions and behaviors with the culture and systems of the organization. While we do not address organizational maturity in this book, if you are interested in learning more, you may reference Action Inquiry: The Secret of Timely and Transforming Leadership by William R. Torbert, included in the references section of this book.

It is helpful for you to understand your developmental perspective and the perspectives of those around you. You will not be testing everyone in the organization, but you will rather have a sense of the levels of key jobs or roles within the organization and use this understanding as input when designing your transformation initiative. Understanding how to apply this model effectively can greatly improve your communication effectiveness and interpersonal interactions with people who function at different perspectives.

photo credit: www.flickr.com Bryan M Mathers

How Does Developmental Perspective Connect with Level 5 Leadership?

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Innovative Leadership Developmental PerspectivesIn the previous blog post Leadership 2050 – What Does the Future of Leadership Look Like? We referred to Strategist, also known as Level 5 Leadership, as referenced by Jim Collins in his best-selling book Good to Great. In this post, we will present the foundation of developmental perspective (one of the five key elements of the innovative leadership framework). We will start with the basics, and then, during the next five weeks, we will explore the five most common developmental perspectives. Since people grow through perspectives or levels, we will walk you through the levels ending with strategist.

 The Importance of Developmental Level/Perspective

We believe a solid understanding of developmental levels and perspectives is an important foundation for leadership development. Developmental perspectives significantly influence how you see your role and function in the workplace, how you interact with other people and how you solve problems. The term developmental perspective can be described as “meaning making” or how you make meaning or sense of experiences. This is important because the algorithm you use to make sense of the world influences your thoughts and actions. Incorporating these perspectives into your inner exploration is critical to shaping innovative leadership. We will look at the five most common of those meaning-making approaches in greater detail in this blog series.

Leadership research strongly suggests that although inherent leader type determines your tendency to lead, good leaders develop over time. Therefore, it is often the case that leaders are perhaps both born and made. How leaders are made is best described using an approach that considers developmental perspective.

The Leadership Maturity Model and Developmental Levels/Perspectives 

Innovative Leadership Hierarchy of NeedsThe developmental perspective approach is based on research and observation that, over time, people tend to grow and progress through several very distinct stages of awareness and ability.   One of the most well-known and tested developmental models is Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs.” A visual aid Maslow created to help explain his hierarchy of needs is a pyramid that shows levels of human needs, both psychological and physical. As you ascend the pyramid’s steps, you can eventually reach self-actualization.

Developmental growth occurs much like other capabilities grow in your life. We call this “transcend and include” in that you transcend the prior level/perspective and still maintain the ability to function at that perspective. Let us use the example of learning how to run to illustrate the development process. You must first learn to stand and walk before you can run. And yet, as you eventually master running, you still effortlessly retain the earlier foundational skill that allowed you to stand and walk. In other words, you can develop your capacity to build beyond your basic skills by moving through more progressive stages.

People develop through stages at differing rates, often influenced by significant events or “disorienting dilemmas.” Those events or dilemmas provide opportunities to begin experiencing your world from a completely different point of view. The nature of those influential events can vary greatly, ranging from positive social occasions like marriage, a new job, or the birth of a child to negative experiences, such as job loss, an accident, or the death of a loved one. These situations may often trigger more lasting changes in your thinking and feeling. New developmental perspectives can develop gradually over time or, in some cases, emerge  abruptly.

Some developmentally advanced people may be relatively young, yet others may experience very little developmental nuance throughout their lives. Adding to the complexity of developmental growth is that the unfolding of developmental perspectives is not predictably evident along the lines of age, gender, nationality, or affluence. We can only experientially sense indicators that help us identify developmental perspectives when we listen and exchange ideas with others, employ introspection, and display openness to learning. In fact, most people naturally intuit and discern what motivates others and causes some of their greatest challenges.

To further examine developmental perspectives, we will talk about the assessment tool we use, the Maturity Assessment Profile (MAP), and its conceptual support, the Leadership Maturity Framework (LMF). Susann Cook-Greuter created this developmental toolset as part of her doctoral dissertation at Harvard. We will use the MAP and the Leadership Maturity Framework as the foundation for our developmental discussion. The MAP evaluates three primary dimensions to determine developmental perspective: cognitive complexity, emotional competence and behavior.

3 Dimensions of Developmental Level/Perspective

  • Cognitive complexity describes your capacity to take multiple perspectives and think through increasingly more complex problems. This is akin to solving an algebra problem with multiple variables. For example, a complex thinker can balance competing interests like employees’ desire for higher pay with customers’ desire to pay low prices and receive good service.
  • Emotional competence describes your self-awareness, self-management, awareness of others, ability to build and maintain effective relationships, and capacity for empathetic response.
  • Behavior describes how you act; this dimension generally describes your actions.

A sense of time, or time horizon, is another essential feature in developing perspective. For example, if a leader is limited by their developmental perspective to thinking about completing tasks within a timeline of three months or less, then optimally, this leader should only be leading a part of the organization that requires short-term tasks. On the other hand, if a leader can think and implement tasks with three-year time horizons, then that leader can and likely should be taking on a role that includes longer-term tasks. This could be a leader responsible for overseeing the implementation of an enterprise-wide computer system, where the migration may take substantially more time, and the process is more complex. 

Elaborating on this example, there will be components of the team primarily responsible for the more tactical, hands-on part of the installation and who demonstrate shorter time horizon thinking. They are held accountable for certain tasks within the plan but will not be responsible for designing the more strategic portions nor be charged with the daily decisions that impact the overall budget. 

Further still, imagine that one year into the project a key member of the team takes another job and the Project Manager (PM) becomes responsible for finding a suitable replacement. The PM must consider all options when selecting a replacement. The most effective staffing solution for the project will need to account for potential changes over the next several years and how they will impact overall project cost, outcome quality, and team cohesiveness. Time horizons and developmental complexity are directly applicable to innovative organizational decisions.

Leadership 2050 – What does the Future of Leadership Look Like?

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Wizard of OzThis blog post was created by Susan Cannon, Maureen Metcalf, and Mike Morrow-Fox to explore what leadership looks like in 2050. You can read a more in-depth analysis when a full chapter is published by the International Leadership Association Building Bridges series in 2015. Current research on future trends indicates that increasing complexity, accelerating change, and near-constant uncertainty are ahead. This level of challenge will most certainly exceed the capability of any nation or leader to manage it. Historically, such times have catalyzed cultural evolution. As each new stage of human culture has emerged, the requirements of leadership have shifted accordingly.   In the next 10-35 years, we expect a new and more complex stage of culture to emerge, “Integral” culture, bringing with it a new paradigm of technology and economy. This will require different leadership skills than in the past. We will refer to those skills as Strategist skills based on the work of developmental psychologist Susanne Cook-Gretuer. Research shows that Strategist Leaders have a lens that facilitates consistent, innovative problem-solving during stress and constraint.

We are not certain that L. Frank Baum never published a leadership text. Yet, his Wizard of Oz provides a rich metaphor emphasizing the intensity of change and the urgency of leadership that characterizes the next thirty-five years. With Dorothy on her bicycle, a Kansas storm provides the first antagonist of his drama. The sky darkens, the winds strengthen, and the world becomes an overwhelming, hostile milieu.   As we gaze forward, our barometer of change foretells meteorological twisters and technological tornados that will be forceful, formidable foes. Dorothy turns to The Great and Powerful Oz, leader of the Emerald City, who appears to have situational control of his empire. However, his true leadership limitations became apparent when routine answers, distancing conventions, and dismissive formalities were challenged.

The smoke and mirrors that had so well served The Great and Powerful Oz are no match for complex problems demanding transformational answers. Our survey of the future shows that many of the upcoming challenges are as daunting as the return to Kansas from the Emerald City. Just as Dorothy requested of Oz, our leaders will need substance over presentation, and ability as well as tools. Given the challenges before us, effective leaders soon and beyond will not just need to “KNOW” about innovation, sustainability, and inclusion; they will need to “BE” innovators, transformers, and coalition builders. Come the year 2050, none of us will be in a metaphorical Kansas anymore.

Much like Dorothy learning to make her way in the new world of Oz, the need for leadership shifts accordingly as each new stage of human culture emerges. While already underway in small pockets, in the next 10-35 years, we expect this shift to grow in significance. This shift will require (and catalyze) what developmental researchers call “Strategist” leadership skills. Strategist Leaders have a developmental lens that facilitates consistent, innovative problem-solving that endures during times of stress and constraint. They are roughly aligned with the Level 5 Leader referenced by Jim Collins in his best-selling business book Good to Great. The authors have established a Competency Model to help develop the Strategist Leaders that society and organizations will require to navigate this new cultural paradigm effectively.

Strategist leaders are uniquely prepared to navigate the complexities of the coming global interconnected world both behaviorally and developmentally. Strategist leaders have also been linked to attaining the highest business results. In a study of CEOs, researchers David Rooke and William Torbert found that strategists had the greatest ability to create transformational results for their companies. These transformations included profitability, market share, and reputation over four years.

Equally as important as the behaviors and the results, the key to the effectiveness of the Strategist leader is that these behaviors are not born of external prompting or skill mimicking. They are intuitive, innate actions arising from developmental maturity. Strategist leaders don’t have to examine innovation because they are innovational, they don’t need to ponder transformation because they are transformational, and they don’t need to study collaboration because they have become collaborative. This ‘being’ rather than ‘acting’ facilitates a clarity and consistency that endures during times of stress and constraint.

Author and developmentalist Ken Wilber claims that while only about 2% of the world population has reached the Strategist level, it could potentially reach 10% within another decade. However, this is not a foregone conclusion. Much will depend upon the conditions and environments of influential institutions such as business, government, nonprofits, and education.

photo credit: www.flickr.com Brett Kiger

Embed Innovation Systematically Part 3, Reflection Questions – Eric’s Story

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Ziglar Success I’m Eric Philippou, writing this blog as part of my college internship at ILI. Congratulations! We have arrived at the final step in innovative leadership development. In this post, we will cover the second set of reflection questions to strengthen your understanding of embedding innovation systematically into your lifestyle. My answers are in italics for you to use as a reference to further understand the questions.

Embed change

Congratulations! This has been the final post for college students in the innovative leadership development series! Remember, innovative leadership and personal development are lifestyles. Once you have developed one skill/behavior to an ideal capacity, you must continue to focus on more areas to develop to strengthen your arsenal of skills as a person. Feel free to revisit my posts or purchase the Innovative Leadership Workbook for College Students. Good luck!

Photo credit: www.flickr.com Celestine Chua

Embed Innovation Systematically Reflection Questions Part 2 — Eric’s Story

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DaVinci self masteryI’m Eric Philippou, and I’m writing this blog as part of my college internship at ILI. Congratulations! We have arrived at the final step in innovative leadership development. In this post, we will cover reflection questions part 1 to strengthen your understanding of embedding innovation systematically into your lifestyle. My answers are in italics for you to use as a reference to further understand the questions.

Eric's embed change reflection questions

There will only be one more post for college students in the innovative leadership development series! In the next post, we will review the second half of the reflection questions.

Photo credit: www.flickr.com Celestine Chua