Innovating Leadership:
Co-Creating Our Future

Resources:

The development thought leaders Mike mentioned include Bob Keegan, Susanne Cook-Greuter, Bill Torbert, and Terry O’Fallon. Here’s a selection of their books to get you rolling on your development path:

• An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization by Bob Keegan.
• Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization (Leadership for the Common Good) by Bob Keegan.
• Postautonomous Ego Development: A Study of Its Nature and Measurement (Integral Publishers Dissertation) by Susanne Cook-Greuter.
• Action Inquiry: The Secret of Timely and Transforming Leadership by Bill Torbert.

Our host Maureen Metcalf posts a newsletter every week on LinkedIn. You can subscribe here.

Maureen’s latest book is Innovative Leadership & Followership in the Age of AI. You’ll find details about it at https://bit.ly/LeaderInAI. Her other 10 books are available on Amazon here.

Books we’re reading for fun or personal development right now include:

• Everyday Ubuntu: Living Better Together, the African Way by Mungi Ngomane. Hardback (https://amzn.to/48Doh6j) and audiobook (https://amzn.to/48YCRF4)
• Nerve: Lessons on Leadership from Two Women Who Went First by Martha Piper & Indira Samarasekera. Paperback (https://amzn.to/3tOtzg4) and audiobook (https://amzn.to/41OYdT5)
• Jilly Truit murder mysteries by Beverley McLachlin:
  • Full Disclosure – https://amzn.to/46TxW6Q (paperback) https://amzn.to/46VDL3Q (audiobook)
  • Denial – https://amzn.to/46YCbhs (paperback) https://amzn.to/3GJc0AA (audiobook)
• Women and Leadership: Journey Toward Equity by Sherylle J. Tan & Lisa DeFrank-Cole

NOTE: As an Amazon partner, we may make a small commission from books you buy through these links.

Other episodes you’ll enjoy:

Guest(s):

Guest(s) Bio:

Michael Morrow-Fox, MBA, EdS, is a consultant with the Innovative Leadership Institute experienced in health care, education, banking, government, and non-profit management.

Michael has over 20 years of experience in leading technology and human resources operations, as well as and several years of full-time university teaching. Michael uses this background to blend his real-world understanding with current theoretical models helping his clients reach goals beyond their current thinking.

Michael has experience managing a 50 million dollar technology budget, helping a technology startup company get off the ground, overseeing an international nonprofit organization achieve ‘best place to work’ status, and leading organizational education for a city government. Michael’s strengths are not in what area he works, but in how he helps others work. Michael’s project management, process excellence, problem-solving, and human performance management skills help companies form truly innovative strategies.

Michael has served as a full-time university faculty at Capital University winning a Department of Education FIPSE Grant and George Mason Program Excellence Award, as the Director of Technology Strategy for the OhioHealth Hospitals, as the Vice President of Operations for a technology start-up serving American Express, as the Vice President of Talent Management Training and Development for the American Heart Association, and the Manager of Organizational Education for the City of Greensboro, North Carolina. Michael has held Project Management Professional (PMP) Certification since 2002, he has worked on Six Sigma Black Belt initiatives since 1999 and has been a Six Sigma Green Belt since 2006. His Bachelor’s degree focused on Industrial Psychology and Employee Counseling, his MBA focus was on Organizational Leadership, his Educational Specialist Degree is in Educational Leadership, and Michael is working on his Doctoral dissertation in Educational Leadership.

Michael is a contributing author of Innovative Leadership for Health Care, Innovative Leadership Workbook for Emerging Leaders and Managers, and the Innovative Leader Guide to Transforming Organizations.

Transcript
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Unknown Speaker 0:00
There are some leaders who very clearly see the very big picture, who understand complexity, know their own weaknesses well, and follow principles rather than rules. They’re called post conventional and our guest, Mike Morrow Fox has studied them deeply for his doctorate and consulting practice, he’s teased out several ways we can all grow and develop toward post conventional perspectives. It’s not easy, he warns, but he shares them in this episode. Are you up for the challenge? From assessing where you are now to guiding your growth, this kind of personal development is part of how we help leaders progress. You’ll find more online at innovative leadership.com

Unknown Speaker 0:56
this is innovating leadership. CO creating our future. I’m your host. Maureen Metcalf, founder and CEO of the innovative Leadership Institute, where we help leaders be future ready, helping us in this mission. Today is Michael Morrow Fox, and today we’re going to be talking about developmental perspectives. So Mike, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me, especially on this wonderful topic. Let’s jump right in, what is a developmental approach to leadership, and what we call, in our books, developmental perspectives. This is a great area to talk about. I’m very excited about it. I will say it’s fairly complex. Being complex, those people who know it well will be very upset by the fact that I’m going to simplify it, and those people that don’t know it so well will be very upset by the fact that I am going to give too much information. So if I do this correctly, everybody should be upset, but what they will get is a good overview of kind of the developmental approach, which is really interesting, because what it does is look at maturity, which we know about, from youth through early adulthood, happens all the way throughout our lives. And that maturity, like we think about with young people being rebellious because they’re working on their identity, and then as they move into early adulthood, they start to work on relationships and give up that rebelliousness. The same thing continues on that maturity into later adulthood, also has stages and levels and characteristics, and we can apply those stages, levels and characteristics to leadership, and that’s where we’re going here. There’s been developed a leadership development framework which has that name for some people and different names for others. It has the stages and levels. We’re not going to talk too much about those stages and levels in particular, but a little bit about how I increase my developmental maturity, what the advantages are. And if I’m somebody who’s a leader, and I’m an early leader looking to develop to be better, or a late stage leader looking for something that’s really going to help at my level, or someone who oversees leaders, and I’m wondering, who do I hire and who do I grow? Hopefully this will give you some answers. We’ve talked about leadership development using terms like horizontal and vertical development. Can you fill us in on what is horizontal, what is vertical, and why do I care? That’s a great question, and is really a key concept when we talk about development as it relates to developmental maturity as a leader, when we think about horizontal development, we think about broadening what I know. It increases my knowledge. It increases my understanding. It’s generally technical information. So when I first started out as a leader, and then I started to get involved in things like PowerPoint or some of the other technologies. Those really helped me communicate and understand what I was doing, and they were important horizontal development understanding and capabilities as I went down in my leadership Road, vertical development is really different, because vertical development actually changes our capacity to no one understand. One changes our understanding, but the other changes our capacity to understand. Bob Keegan, who was a thought leader in this area, used an example. He said, you know, a horizontal development is like filling a glass with water, more and more water really helps. But he said, when you do vertical development, it’s like going into a completely new glass. It’s changing what holds the knowledge and information. So the vertical development, I can think in particular, of somebody that I coached who talked about their own vertical development and saying, when I first started my leadership journey, I was learning about all of these tools and things to do. And then later on, I realized that if I wanted to really be effective, I needed to have lunch with people and listen to them and have them get to know me, because the stuff I was learning wasn’t really getting across until we started to relate. That’s vertical development.

Unknown Speaker 5:00
Those sorts of vertical learnings as I start to mature in the way I make meaning and view the world, that’s what we’ll really look at when we talk about an increased maturation. Can you give a couple more examples of the difference between someone who has developed vertically and someone who hasn’t? You know, I think in particular, we’ve just come out of covid, and covid was a wonderful incubator for transformation. When my business was involved in covid, I had to do things in completely different ways. And actually, interestingly enough, we initially did our podcasts in person, because we thought that was the only way I used to go to Columbus and go to the public radio station and rent the studio, and that’s how you did it. Today. We don’t do them in person because we couldn’t get in person during covid. So we learned a different way. The technology developed, our mindsets developed, everything changed, and it gave us an opportunity to do things differently that actually has sustained. If I think about one of the clients that I’ve had that was involved in the restaurant business, and I look at how someone who has what we’ll call a conventional developmental maturity, a little bit earlier stage developmental maturity, versus someone that has a post conventional developmental maturity, somebody who’s later on in their journey, and how they approached it when the restaurants were told to close and business was no longer there. I had one client, and what their management and leadership team was asking, how quickly can we do something? What’s the budget going to look like? What will be the logistics of the kitchen? How will we get our menu out? And they asked a lot of the basic questions that led them to do some minor work on takeout business. I had another customer, and they started to ask questions like, Is there a strategic partnership that we can use now that will allow us to do takeout quickly and easily and also into the future? Maybe make that a large portion of our business. Can we leverage technology? Can we reinvent the business as a result of this? And as I participated in the two different discussions, one was really, really difficult, like, oh my gosh, we’ve got so much work to do. And how are we going to actually make money on this and everything else? And then the second group that was thinking post conventionally strategically as, what if this is an opportunity. Those were upbeat discussions. That upbeat Group. Today, I go to that restaurant, and it’s really easy for me to get take out there. They were an upscale restaurant, have you know, nice inside and serve alcohol for profits and that kind of stuff. And today, when I put in a to go order, which I use a different technology for, that they’ve partnered with one of those online services. It sends me a note saying, Okay, your order has been taken. I then drive up, and there’s little signs that says, 1234,

Unknown Speaker 7:52
I get a little note. Text it to me, and the note says, what space are you in? And I say, I’m here. I’m in space one, and the next thing I know, someone magically appears and brings me the food, and it’s such an easy process that we now eat at that restaurant more. We now find getting takeout is easier than it is to go into the restaurant a number of times. And although there’s no covid, what they did during covid actually enhanced their business. There is a winery here in town, when covid hit, for this winery, a lot of their business was prefaced upon selling wine bottles during tastings. They were a small group, and they had a very small building, and they couldn’t put anybody in the building, so they started having tastings outside, at tables with fans. They had so many tastings and sold so much wine that they now have a huge building that they’ve built for their tastings, and the owner swears that during covid is actually when and why they’ve grown their business so substantially so that post conventional, different way to think. It’s not thinking through the how do I take this hill? It’s what Hill Should I take? How can I make it better? Sort of thinking that is really the difference in that vertical growth if I’m a leader, and I wonder if I’m post conventional what kind of markers would I look at? There are a few things. First of all, there are assessments that I can actually do about my developmental maturity. And so I can Google those assessments and take a look at those assessments and have someone do them for me. But I can say that there are three major areas of differentiation between being someone who is at the higher end of developmental maturity, which fits for those strategic tasks, and that large thinking. I certainly don’t want to be someone who loves gardening and who is great at doing horticultural work, but really trying to get myself involved in those sorts of things that are post conventional. Because for me, on a regular basis, I’m going to be frustrated if we spend too much time in the strategic and everything else I want to get to the work that I’m going to be doing. And conversely, if I am post conventional, I don’t want to be.

Unknown Speaker 10:00
Doing horticultural work. I want to be thinking about how I bring the beauty of horticulture to many, many buildings. And so I may be working on a committee with the local government. So very, very different. But the three areas that are really differentiators between conventional and post conventional as I go on my maturity journey is the first one is, is that, because my ego is stronger, because my meaning making is broader, I am actually testably significantly better with complexity. Now you know about the differences between complexity and complicated, right? Let’s share that with our listeners. Yeah, so complicated things have a lot of parts going on. It’s very complicated to get our kids to school and to all of their routines that they have to go to after school and all of the stuff that we have to do to run a household That’s complicated. We have to talk about who does what when, and make sure that a kid isn’t sitting on the side of the road for several hours while we’re shopping and supposed to be picking them up. But complex is different. Complex is falling in love, staying in love.

Unknown Speaker 11:08
There’s no real rules on that. It doesn’t just say you go there this time I go there that time. It’s something that I have to kind of invent, and it’s got not only moving parts, but those moving parts are unknown. It’s not like I can figure out the process and go through it. So as I’m better with complexity, I’m better at dealing in those ambiguous situations where they’re in really a rule book, where I have to have the confidence and the comfort level to really figure it out. So are business leaders determining which direction to go during covid is an example. Those that thrived worked well with no rules, and those who did not thrive, because it wasn’t predictable and there was no best practice, often struggled. So the difference between conventional, I have a path, and post conventional, I create the path really showed up for leaders at that point in time. That’s a great encapsulation. The thing about covid that’s interesting is none of us had a choice during covid. All of a sudden, we either transformed or we struggled. What is a little bit less easy is, what if my business doesn’t have a covid, but it’s got a problem? Do I transform, or do I continue to figure out how to get the daily stuff done and not transform? A lot of people are very happy to have their email inboxes clean and their tax sheets completed and be moving towards getting their bonuses, but not thinking about well, is that enough, or if I continue to run the business in this way, am I really going to be anywhere a year from now, two years from now, five years from now, and if I see that it’s starting to not work? Is it okay for me to put aside some of those emails and really figure out how to do something differently, creating my own burning platform? That’s going to be particularly interesting as we talk about this whole age of AI, and how do I position myself to thrive in a place where we don’t yet know the rules? We know some things, but there’s probably more unknown than known, other than we’re all trying to figure it out together. So more akin to covid than implementing a computer system. It’s a really great point. And it’s especially important because when we talk about higher leaders, people who are in higher positions, executives, C suite folks, they have the ability to turn up the threat or turn down the threat level for new endeavors. So it becomes so important when a leader says, Hey, this is new. It’s not completely known. We’re going to figure it out. And when the leader then tells other leaders, hey, when people are trying things, if it doesn’t work out, tell them it’s okay. We appreciate they’re putting themselves out there, and don’t let it go too long. But don’t cut it off. We need everybody trying something new at this point. That’s a really good point that you raise in terms of in AI, I will go as far as the threat level is at my company. And if people say, We want you to do great with AI, but don’t make any mistakes, I’m not going to do so great with AI. It is interesting. As we put together the course for helping leaders navigate through this, there’s a whole module on risk awareness and risk management. Your point is really crucial. There are real risks, especially if I’m a financial services firm or a healthcare related firm. I am ethically and legally bound to protect privacy and protect the investments of my clients, and if I’m not using these tools at some point, it will also be a disadvantage to my clients. You’re exactly right, and when we talk about this complexity issue, we’re talking really about a maturity issue, a developmental maturity issue, because I can’t get my company comfortable unless I’m comfortable, and I can’t establish guardrails for my company unless I’m comfortable, saying I’ll know when I hit the guard rails, and I’ll help you come back off as I think of guard.

Unknown Speaker 15:00
Rails and walking in a ravine every day. I know when people have hit a guardrail too, because there’s damage. So how do I how do I know I’ve glanced the guardrail without denting or killing my car and all of the passengers in it? Hopefully, what’s happened to me is is that I’ve gone down a pathway of developmental maturity long enough that I’m at a later stage, and I have a sense with that sense. I’m not going to get it right all the time, but I’m going to have a sense as to when I should push the gas and when I should push the brakes. And it’s that sense that really is that maturity level, just like when I talk with someone who’s 25 about relationships, it’s a very different conversation that I had with them when they were 15. And when I take a look at rebellion and growth and those sorts of things, for a 25 and a 15 year old, they’re really, really different. The same thing is true for somebody who is post conventional versus conventional. I can talk with 240 year old individuals, both of them have 115

Unknown Speaker 15:56
IQs. Both of them have the degrees in business, but they have very, very different comfort levels with the way the world operates, and very different meaning making, and that’s dependent on their vertical journeys. Why does this matter? If I have a high IQ, isn’t that good enough? It’s pretty good in many circumstances. I think, yeah, that’s a lot. I also think that people will through their educational levels and their experience levels, that’s also really good stuff. But the challenge is, you know, they tell the old joke that everybody’s heard, but I’ll remind you of it because you think of it differently. Of of two kids who are taken by their parents to a psychologist. The mother says, You got to work with my kids. One of them is always pessimistic, everything’s awful. The other one’s always optimistic, everything’s good, and I need them to have clear vision. And the psychologist says, I got this. And he takes the first kid, and he walks the first kid into the room. In the room is a room full of unbelievable gifts and food and all this stuff. And the kid starts crying, and he says, Wait a minute, wait a minute. Look at this. And the kid says, I am He says, Well, what’s the problem? And the kid says, well, with all this stuff here, I’m going to have a hell of a clean up. He takes the second child after that experience into a barn, and the barn is filled with horse dung, horse dung everywhere. And he walks into the barn, and he gives the second child a shovel, and he says to the second child, okay, clean it up. And the second child says, Yay. And he says, Yay. This barn is full with horse dung. Why are you saying yay? Says with all this horse done here, there’s got to be a pony somewhere. I know many of you have heard that, but if you think about that, it’s not the external world that’s causing me to look a certain way. It’s the way that I look at the external world. So when we take a look at developmental maturity, what we’re saying is looking at the world a little bit differently. It’s not necessarily walking into a barn full of horse dung and saying yay, but it may be working into a barn full of horse dung as someone who sells fertilizer and saying yay, and that’s the type of thing that I find with my clients, is, is that the way that they look at the world sustains throughout the level of circumstances. That’s what makes them better with complexity. That’s what makes them better with transformation, even when it’s not called for immediately. It gives them an ability to see the larger picture of systems and time horizons, which allows them to operate in that complexity. As you give the example of the two children going to a psychotherapist the phrase meaning making, how I interpret what’s happening in front of me. That story illustrates very well the meaning making. That’s part of what we work with as people, helping leaders become more complex in their thinking, taking their self awareness and helping them evaluate the way they make meaning of the world and shift it. And your coaching self comes through on that. I hear the work that you do as a coach, that you’ve done as a coach, coming through, because that’s really it. What we do as coaches is we sit down with folks and figure out, how is it that they make meaning, and how can we help them to see a broader picture? Thank you for pulling that forward. So let’s go on to the next one. The next one is inclusion. But it’s not necessarily the inclusion we often think about. It’s inclusion in terms of when I move into the later post conventional areas, I become more self aware. I know there are things I don’t do so well, and so I’m not feeling that badly that I don’t do them so well anymore. I now find somebody to be included who can do them for me. If I’m not great with understanding spreadsheets, I ask my boss, Hey, would you mind giving that over to Jerry? Because Jerry’s really good with spreadsheets, and I’ll work with him to figure out what’s going on. But I no longer have to be perfect. That self awareness of what works and what doesn’t work allows me to then divvy off those tasks to the team that need to be divvied off. I start to get a natural focus on team when it’s not so important that I’m rescuing everything. I start to take a look at who can do things really well and who needs to grow. And I start to really embrace teams significantly more. I start to have an ability as a post conventional person.

Unknown Speaker 20:00
Person to more broadly communicate. So with my boss, I can communicate and say, what should we be doing, and why should we be doing this, and what’s the real purpose? And then I can have the next call be with one of my direct reports and say, Hey, here’s the vision. This is why we’re working hard, and this is why it matters for you. So I start to be able to have a broader communication and the last one on that inclusiveness is I get more feedback because I asked for it, and I get more from my feedback because I’m more able to embrace it. I have less defendedness. So I get more and get more from feedback. And with all that inclusion, in terms of knowing what I don’t do, being comfortable with it, getting with the team, more broadly, communicating and getting feedback. That’s a second real advantage to being at the post conventional level, that feedback just doesn’t hurt anymore. My inability to be perfect doesn’t hurt anymore, and I can do things on a much broader level. It doesn’t make it fun, but it doesn’t hurt as much

Unknown Speaker 20:58
like you’re not as old as me.

Unknown Speaker 21:02
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Unknown Speaker 21:47
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Unknown Speaker 22:06
And my wife will tell you, I still think I know everything. So tell me I don’t know. Maybe you

Unknown Speaker 22:13
do as I listen to the facets of inclusion and try to draw that into why do I care? It sounds like I will actually be more productive, because I won’t be swirling about someone didn’t like something, or, How do I avoid all of those feelings that for me are dramatically less and my team can be more engaged? I’m looking for opportunities for people to grow, even knowing they’re going to make mistakes. I’m looking for opportunities to offload things I’m not good at, and fortunately, I have a team that is good at some of those things, and so they get to grow. They feel more engaged. Yeah, it’s a great point, and you illustrated, well, just exactly that, how that inclusion can be a benefit. Let me say that as we talk about these, we’re talking about them in both zones. So we’re talking about them. Theoretically, this is what the researchers find. But then we’re talking about them actually, the people who are at the post conventional levels, in the higher positions, tend to get better results. Meanwhile, I’ve not seen a whole lot of research on it, but you can extrapolate from some of the research too. If I’m at the conventional levels, I may be actually able to get really good and better results at my level, if I’m functioning in the non executive realm, if I’m trying to get the day to day stuff done. So part of what I’m going to do is work with someone and make sure I have the right match while I’m growing. There’s nothing worse than being post conventional and doing day to day, or being conventional and trying to operate in a strategic realm that makes me take in acids every 30 seconds. This creates the opportunity to ask a couple of questions, the idea of fit for role, and the other that often people will say, okay, so if that’s good, if everyone on my team is post conventional isn’t that better? And the answer is absolutely no. So let’s talk about fit for role, and why more advanced developmentally. To stack the deck doesn’t work. There are capabilities, and the capabilities actually are subsumable, meaning that if I’ve learned algebra, it doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten basic math. I learned basic math, and then I learned algebra, and then I know both. So it would seem to happen from there that, well, what we want to do is make sure everybody gets to algebra. But the truth is is, if I need basic math every day, and I love basic math every day, I probably need somebody who’s going to be doing basic math tasks really good at basic math, not somebody who’s really good at algebra, because if I’ve learned algebra and I love algebra, I don’t want to be doing basic math anymore. I want to be doing algebra. If we have an all post conventional team, we’ll talk a lot about what if? We’ll talk a lot about possibilities. We’ll have these wonderful meanings, but there’s got to be somebody who figures out.

Unknown Speaker 25:00
Okay, let’s get the job done. Who actually does the work? Who watches the schedule, who takes care of some of these details that need to be taken care of in a very nuanced way, because that’s complicated, and we need someone to take care of the complicated. So it’s really great to be at a conventional level, just as it is at a post conventional level. You just don’t want to be mismatched for your role. If everyone’s complex, we have these great conversations and don’t necessarily assign tasks, and then we get together and wonder why something hasn’t happened. For the complicated folks, they wonder why we haven’t done anything either. So having both together in a meeting, although more challenging at some points is actually dramatically more effective. That makes perfect sense. You know, there are things I really enjoy. I get together with folks and strategize. It’s a really interesting time for me. I’ve left a group of friends just a few weeks ago, and I was learning things that I just didn’t know and getting points of view that I’d never had. It was wonderful. But I can do spreadsheets and I do, I can do scheduling and I do, I can do general supervision and I do, but that’s not where I want to live. However, somebody who hasn’t done general supervision yet, who hasn’t done many spreadsheets yet, who hasn’t overseen the schedule yet, they may be really, really happy. Well, let’s give them that happiness. That’s where they need to be. So I think your point on fit for role is really a good one, and people should really pay attention to where is their passion, where is their joy as they go on this journey, be aware when I’ve outgrown a set of capabilities, and also be aware when I’m over my head in a set of capabilities, this construct is then very helpful for hiring managers. I need to know not only who has the technical skills, but also who has the complexity and inclusion skills to take an entry role, mid role, senior role, because both are required. Fit for role is appropriate for both Absolutely. What I would say is you don’t have to really have a huge, complicated knowledge of this subject in order to do well with it. So what I’d be asking developmentally from folks is, what have you done that you’ve loved, and if what somebody’s done that they’ve loved is worked with five groups to help them identify an ERP and then come in on an ERP system. And the job that I’ve got for them is scheduling. I’m going to say they’re probably a little advanced for scheduling. That’s not going to be great. They can do it. They’re smart enough. It’s not where I want them to be. It’s really thinking through and making sure somebody is not too far beyond or too far below, beautiful. Thank you. What’s the third we’ve got complexity and inclusion. The last one is a and it really falls similarly out of the first two. It’s a reliance on principles rather than rules. I get a comfort level because I’m more ego mature. I get a comfort level to say that’s not me, that’s not us, regardless of the rules. I remember when I saw somebody encounter this, that I was coaching somebody who was doing technology strategy work, and they were talking about capitalizing a project, and a number of finance groups came in and said, Well, you’ll have to deal, you know, with your auditing group, but here’s the way we’ve been able to capitalize this over time. And I talked with him afterwards, and he said, that’s great, but what they’re really saying is, I don’t want to take responsibility for doing something unethical, and you can probably get this past your auditing group, but it really is a shortcut. And he didn’t take the shortcut, son, young person, cut, but he knew in the long run that was not where his organization would want to be, and they ended up not capitalizing it. And as a lot of your listeners will know, capitalizing it can be a lot less painful than operationalizing it, because you have to go into the operating budget for that. And there’s a different pot that’s not as scrutinized and not as difficult sometimes in the capital pot, and they went the hard route, and it was the right thing to do. It’s that reliance on principles that long range thinking and the comfort to know what my principles are and how to stick to them, rather than saying, Well, what are other people doing? What are the roles? And not worrying so much about whether or not they fit into the larger reliance on principles. So is this another place where the covid examples fit, that there are best practices for a lot of things, and yet, when we’re in a context that doesn’t support best practices, I need to be able to think and manage my way through situations where there really is no precedent. Yeah, I think very much so. And it’s asking the right questions in terms of if my staff.

Unknown Speaker 30:00
Staff is virtual, and they used to all come in and be in a common space. What are the downsides and what are the upsides of being virtual? And from a principal point of view, holding on to the principle that I want to have an engaged staff, and for some people, what that means is giving up the notion of coming in, because now engagement means I get the chance to work from home in my pajamas, and it’s a lot easier on my family, and we figure out a way to make sure that we stay connected. But I’m no longer interested in coming in. And so the principle there is, if that’s what’s going to engage my team, if that’s what’s going to get them excited and help them work together in a more effective way. I’m more interested in that than any set of rules that says we should do it one way or the other. Many of us are just trying to identify our principles as, I think specifically of the work from home, the range of questions people are asking, some are, how quickly can I get them back? Because that’s what real work looks like everyone in the office versus I care about people wanting to be more healthy, and they’re more healthy working from home, but there’s an impact on my culture, and over time, I can anticipate that they think they’re happier, but I understand human nature will cause them to be disengaged after a year and a half. So how do we put systems in place that will allow us to give them what they think they want, and also anticipate systemically down the road what will change as their sentiment changes. As you’re looking at it, figuring out what my principles are and figuring out a strategy is what we’ll see in the post conventional realm. So hanging on to a set of principles and making sure that we’re meeting those principles is really what we’re looking for. You know, we’ve talked about engaged employees, but they tend to be more of a who we are, who I am, sort of thing, if who I am and who we are is caring and innovative, and that’s my principles, that we’re caring and innovative, that I’m going to use as a benchmark, what would caring and innovative people do? And how do we know that this is the caring and innovative thing to do? And it may be that when everybody else is staying virtual, we’re coming in, but we’re doing it a little bit differently. But I know that my principle is caring and innovative, and I have a comfort level with that. The farther I go down the developmental maturity rabbit hole, the more I actually know what my principles are, and the more comfortable I am to look at them as benchmarks, rather than look at a set of rules as benchmarks. I’m a listener. This stuff seems pretty cool to me, and I want to know where I am and how do I get to the next level. There are seven easy tips that people can follow if they want to go through this journey, seven recommended things that they can do, and they’re all doable. And actually, if I wanted to, I could probably get all seven going in one week. I may want to do less, or I may want to do different, but the first thing is get educated. So as I said, we’ve taken a fairly complicated piece, and made it simple as much as we can. If I get educated, I’m going to start Googling, and I’m going to look for the easy articles on leadership vertical development. Maybe I’ll look on leadership and an author like Bob Keegan or Suzanne cook Grutter or Bill Torbert or Terry O’Fallon, those are some real thought leaders that have done great research work around this. And if I look up those concepts, I’ll really start to understand what does this mean, and maybe where do I fit? I’ll get a sense of it. The Center for Creative Leadership talks about three things that I can do. One of them is I can put myself out there. They call them heat experiences. But a second tip is get involved in heat experiences. Look around my office, look around my workplace, look around my place of worship and my social groups, and figure out where can I do something that I’m not so comfortable with, where I’m just a little bit over my head. So if I’m not that comfortable expressing myself in public settings, maybe this is the time that I can have a heat experience and join Toastmasters. An example that that I recommend often is people join boards, nonprofit boards, perfect. You’re good at leading. Let’s see how you can expand your skills. But more than horizontal, there’s actually the vertical of stepping into an environment where I’m not the expert, and that’s great. I think the caveat with joining a board or taking a work project on is make sure that I’ve got somebody there for support, because as I get a little bit over my head in Toastmasters, there’s this wonderful infrastructure there that throw pennies in the tin and I realize I saying I’m too much. If I say I’m too much at the board meeting, they may think I’m not very capable. It’s really good for me to get some training wheels around that and make sure that as I take the heat experience, that I also have some support, a group, a trusted friend, where I can really do that well. A third one, which also comes from the Center for Creative Leadership, is what they call colliding perspectives, getting involved in structured.

Unknown Speaker 35:00
Interaction with people who have different ideas, and making sure that I can find those sorts of groups. So if there’s a book club at work, it would be good for me to join that book club and listen a lot, see what the different opinions are of folks, and really allow myself to figure out, how does somebody in a different way look at these things? If there isn’t a book club. Is there a meetup group that talks about stuff or something of that nature? But it’s elevated sense making is really hearing how other people make sense of the world differently and thinking through that. For some of us, that means going to holiday dinner,

Unknown Speaker 35:36
or that can actually be a de elevated sense making. But yes, good point, very. Good point. Different sense making, yeah, I get to elevate but, and actually, that was colliding perspectives. The next one is elevated sense making. And what they talk about with that is finding a mentor or a coach, someone who is developmentally further down the path, someone who just has a confidence and a comfort level and temperament, and you just get a sense okay, they have a confidence and a competence beyond mine, and can help me and that coaching, that mentoring, is really important. And I come to them and I say, here’s what I’m doing this week. How should I be thinking differently? How can I be thinking better? Coaching is a real fast track, and elevated sense making is a real fast track to moving my developmental growth as far as it can go, I absolutely agree, and a word of caution, because if I find a coach or therapist, both can help, but if I start working with someone who’s at a earlier level of maturity, it can also shut down my capacity. So how do you help someone identify the developmental maturity of the coach or therapist, especially if they’re not using a similar framework. That’s a great question. I don’t think there’s a terrific answer towards it, but there are some answers. One is, you might want to find a coaching group that uses this framework and so you’ll be guaranteed of it. You might want to find a mentor that’s aware of this and has been assessed or goes through it, but I think sometimes what you can do is you can kind of have a mentor and then have someone that you talk to about the mentor, and in the beginning, what you’ll look for is you don’t want someone who’s the choir and you don’t want someone who is giving you ideas that you feel like, yeah, that doesn’t make sense to me. You really want is somebody who’s challenged you in a way, so that when you leave, you go, how did they think of that? I should have thought of that. That’s where those good coaching and mentoring experiences exist. It’s a little bit harder, obviously in therapy, therapy is a little tougher road and tougher work to do. But when we talk about the developmental maturity road, the thing you’re really looking for is leaving somebody and going, I knew. I should have known that. How is it they always know that question or that answer? And I’ve had that experience myself with coaches and mentors, and I’ve had people who I’ve coached say similar things. And the inverse of that is when the coach or therapist is saying, there’s a best practice, there’s a rule, back to the very conventional rules versus principles, that just here’s the thing to do versus here’s how you make sense of it differently. How do you help me make sense of things differently than I had done as I walked in the office, perfect. My brain hurts, Yep, absolutely. Sometimes after talking to you, Mike, my brain hurts and

Unknown Speaker 38:19
but it’s the good hurts, like I went to the gym, not like it got smashed. I’m very appreciative. Having unpleasant experiences. Spending time with me is not unusual for anyone, so I appreciate your willingness to continue. Number five is get to know yourself and get to love yourself. Figure out as best you can, where you’re at, what you do, well, what you don’t do, well, forgive yourself for what you don’t do. Great, love yourself for what you do well. But really that self awareness is a really important path, and people don’t spend as much time as they should, or as much energy as they should, figuring out how to know themselves and love themselves. The sixth one is become curious. Watch for the differences in meaning, making with others, and again, you’ll have a sense, and the sense will be, yeah, they seem to be on to something. I’m concerned. Maybe it feels a little risky, maybe it feels a little this or that, or whatever, but look for how they view the world differently, think about things differently, and become really curious about that. And the last one is, get support. This stuff is not easy. We all want to be done. We all want to be the best, and so getting support as I go through that journey helps uncomplicated, helps it become a less complicated journey and an easier one for me to go through more quickly. And what we’re really trying to do here is figure out where do I bloom best and whatever my developmental maturity potential is, how do I achieve that potential the quickest and the easiest? There were certain levels that people hit, just gates, benchmarks, whatever, there were certain complications and questions that arise almost consistently.

Unknown Speaker 40:00
A coach who’s worked with this work on a regular basis, can help you say you’re on track. Help with the meaning making process. Help integrate what I’m learning. Just basically, am I on track? Yeah, I hear the coach in you again, because that makes such good sense and so correct. As we’ve talked about this, we’ve talked about the benefits of the process and kind of what the process is, and the differences between the way that I grow, but what we haven’t talked about is the disorienting dilemma, and the fact that in order to grow, I’ve got to get to a point where what I’m doing doesn’t really make perfect sense. In between not making sense and being very, very comfortable with where things make sense is a very uncomfortable place. And having somebody who understands that journey to say, no, no, you’re doing great. You’re supposed to hurt like this. There’s a good thing at the end of it. Allow yourself to go through exactly where you’re at. That’s a really good, good point. It’s fits and starts. It’s work, it’s personal, like leadership. The caveat for that is, if I’m a senior exec, I need to be working with a coach who also understands my business. It’s fine to say, Boy, this feels bumpy, doesn’t it? Hope you don’t run off the cliff, but you’ve got responsibility for millions or billions of dollars, and many executives really can’t afford a bad day, and yet, we’re suggesting go through these disorienting dilemmas so that they become better. How do I help you slightly unravel and still show up to work on Monday morning? Such a good point. And I think when we talk about getting some sort of coach and a mentor, support group, that kind of stuff. It’s really inherent in that and your emphasis on having the right coach with the right levels, because you’re really correct. One of the great secrets that you learn as you become an executive coach is the real challenge for executives. Is all executives go through a period of great demoralization. When I’m a general employee, I don’t quite understand, how is it with all the resources that they have, how is it that they go through great demoralization? But I can tell you, there is nothing more difficult than being an executive over a large set of resources and not being able to live your principles, not being able to be treated well, or treat others well. There are a lot of demoralizations, and having a coach that can understand what I’m going through and pull me back together, whether it’s a developmental crisis or a demoralization, or whatever, becomes very, very important. I appreciate you putting that level of complication with it. It’s not just a coach or a mentor, but it’s a coach or a mentor that knows what to see, that can deal with your level in within the organization, and that understands how to help you grow on a personal level, as well as on a technical level, and keep your business going at the same time, it’s hard enough to just keep our businesses going. It is so Mike, Where would people learn more about your work because you are, in fact, a significant thought leader. I appreciate that. I don’t know that I am, but through the innovative leadership institute, I think is the best way taking a look at their materials, getting in touch with the work that innovative leadership institute is doing. I have a really depth of gratitude for the authors that I talked about, the Susan Cook, grooters, the Bob keegans, the bill torvers, the Terry O’ fallons. And I think looking up those authors and some of their works has been, for me, really, really helpful. And so I think if somebody else were to do that as well as look at the materials in the innovative leadership institute, I think it’s a really good place to start. Thank you. Thank you. And for people who don’t know Michael, he’s just finishing his doctoral dissertation, so he’s read 1000s of articles by these and other authors. So when he recommends these, these are actually the top thinkers in our field, the information you’re sharing has been long earned, absolutely and it’s really fascinating. They do a great job. Thank you also to our listeners. We hope that you’re able to hear something that you can take away to develop your own sense of expanding perspectives and developmental maturity as the world unfolds and we move into the age of AI and just of higher complexity, each of us needs to elevate how we work, no matter what our level in the organization is, and so we are here to support you, whether through podcasts or engaging with us more directly. Well, I’m getting ready to go out and find a pony you.

Unknown Speaker 44:50
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