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Jimmy Carter and Leadership

3/27/2014

I saw Jimmy Carter speak last week at the Washington Post on his new book, "A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power." As a past President, Nobel Prize winner, and the founder of the Carter Center, Jimmy Carter is an example to me of someone who is still pushing the envelope. While you may not agree with everything that he has to say the following traits are signs to me of a great leader:

Pushing the boundaries - at the age of 89 Jimmy Carter is taking on an issue that many people have not been talking about or do not want to talk about - the subjugation and abuse of women. He is creating a vision of a call to action around the topic and pushing for the equality of treatment of women around the world.
Inviting others to join his cause - Carter is doing a large media blitz around his new book to push the cause and call others into to joining him. His book provides ways for others to get involved and really take a stand.
Leading by example - he is a model of behavior as he when he was Governor of Georgia he appointed more women and minorities to his staff, major state boards and agencies, and the judiciary than all of his predecessors combined.

How can you add some of these traits into your leadership style?

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Best Companies for Leadership

3/26/2014

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I recently attended the Hay Group's "Best Companies for Leadership" presentation at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. The Hay Group put out some great research (check it out here at: http://www.haygroup.com/bestcompaniesforleadership/). At this event they brought together a panel of experts, including the top company on the list Proctor and Gamble (P&G), to speak about the findings.

The head of Global Talent at P&G was impressive and as a leadership consultant I was thrilled to hear some of the best practices that they engage in to put them at the top of the list. Here is what stood out for me:

The culture has a tight tie between business strategy and leadership/organizational development - both building the business and the organization are important to the thriving of their organization. Systems, rewards, and incentives are all built to encourage this behavior in its leaders.
You get what you measure and communicate - data is hugely important in determining the long term effectiveness of a leader as P&G measures the "wake" that the leader left behind. This leads to a long-term view of leadership and not just a focus on short term effectiveness.

Advocacy Culture - leaders move ahead at P&G by having opportunities at challenging roles throughout the organization. Instead of a desire to hold onto top performers in a group, leaders advocate for their staff to get opportunities to advance to the next challenging role.

How can you begin to integrate some of these learnings into your organization? How can you take some these best practices and make them part of your culture?

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"Managing at the Speed of Change" Review 10

3/7/2014

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In the final section of the book Conner talks about the eighth and primary pattern of resilience. The resilience people show during change usually is from the ability to remain relatively calm in unpredictable environments and maintain their productivity and quality standards even during times of change. So what do they do to increase their resilience? Well Conner says they do two things: 1) they increase their ability to assimilate change by teaching themselves and their people the dynamics of change and how they can manage it; 2) they plan and prepare how they and their people will be affected by change so that when it happens it doesn't disturb them as much.

Conner says that resilience is seen by how people respond to stress and suggests that there are two kinds of people - the danger-oriented or opportunity-oriented people and that no is wholly one or the other, but fall on a continuum between the two.

Danger-oriented people - those who view change as threatening and feel victimized by it. They often lack an overarching sense of purpose in their lives, see things in binary ways, feel insecure during periods of unrest, and often respond to change in a reactive way. They often react by blaming and feeling overwhelmed.
Opportunity-oriented people -these people view change as a potential advantage to be exploited. They assume change is going to happen and invest in mechanisms to deal with change such as compartmentalizing the stress. They ask for help, have nurturing relationships around them, and achieve balance in their perspective.

He says the five basic characteristics of resilience are:
- Display a sense of security and self-assurance (positive)
- Have a clear sense of what they want to achieve (focused)
- Demonstrate a special pliability when responding to uncertainty (flexible)
- Develop structured approaches to managing ambiguity (organized)
- Engage change rather than defend against it (proactive)
  
  Only through raising the level of our resilience can we successfully assimilate the increasing rate of complexity and ambiguity in our lives. We can do this by understanding where we currently are in terms of resilience, understanding the seven support patterns to resilience, determining which support pattern needs to be leveraged, and then implementing it.
  
  Are you a danger oriented person or an opportunity oriented person? Do you possess the five basic characteristics of resilience? If not what can you begin to work on today to build up that muscle? Do you agree that resilience is the primary way to navigate through change?

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"Managing at the Speed of Change" Review 9

3/4/2014

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The next support pattern, synergy or the how well people relate to each other during change, is the subject of the next two chapters. Conner says that when attempting a change you need to look at the relationships between sponsors, advocates, and targets. He says there are three types of relationships:

Self-destructive - this is when two people interact they spend most of their time miscommunicating, blaming, or complaining about why they can't make headway on a task. Or one plus one does not equal two as the interaction does not generate enough resources to sustain itself.
Static - these relationships are about as productive as working by yourself or one plus one equals two. Sometimes these relationships are productive, but just as much they detract from individual's performances. Overall when change occurs, however, it drags this type of relationship down.
Synergistic - here individuals or groups work together to produce a total effect which is greater than the sum of their separate efforts. People in these relationships are confident that they can weather change and maximize their odds of success and therefore pursue change earlier than those not as confident.

Conner says that you can create synergistic relationships with two prerequisites: willingness and ability:

Willingness - this stems from common goals and interdependence. It takes hard work and perseverance to create, as well as teamwork. The willingness sometimes comes from the realization by leaders that they must work with diverse viewpoints to get something done. All must be able to work through conflict, divergent opinions, and different styles and realize that all of the diversity will lead to something much greater than working individually.
Ability - here employees must feel and act empowered to still provide their input and conduct themselves as key contributors to a team effort instead of being a victim and feeling like they have no options. Empowered people can influence decisions of leaders if they are in an environment where that input is valued. They also take responsibility for the situation that they are in and find ways to make changes to that situation if needed through providing their input into the decision making process.

Conner continues in Chapter 12 to discuss synergy by saying that an organization's speed of change depends on how quickly they can advance through the four stages of synergy of:

Interaction - this is the ability to have effective communications by being direct, clear, checking assumptions, and being consistent. It also comes through listening actively and building trust/credibility.
Appreciative Understanding - this is the ability to value and use diversity. This happens through understanding why others think the way that they do and being open to the natural conflicts that occur with diverse opinions. This requires an open climate, delaying forming negative judgments when diverse opinions are raised, empathizing with each other, and valuing diversity.
Integration - this is fostering empowerment even while strongly disagreeing with someone. This happens by tolerating ambiguity and being persistent, being pliable or flexible in their views, being creative, and finally being selective.
Implementation - the final step in a synergistic process is the implementation of a successful business. This happens through strategizing (or planning specific, actionable steps), monitoring and reinforcing (or overseeing progress and offering solutions to problems as they arise), remaining team focused (or continuing to focus on common goals and interdependence), and finally updating (or continuously updating action plans based upon changes in the environment).

Overall synergistic relationships and organizations are central to ensuring successful changes. Are your relationships synergistic? If not how can you shift the situation or environment to make it synergistic? If they are synergistic are you moving through the four phases of synergy well?

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Art of Leadership Blog

Jimmy Carter and Leadership

Best Companies for Leadership

"Managing at the Speed of Change" Review 10

"Managing at the Speed of Change" Review 9

Monica Thakrar

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