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COACHING FOR LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT 135
Our twentieth-century management and leadership vocabulary, with its now-antiquated images based primarily on military, hierarchical, and production-line concepts, has become too impoverished to allow us to see re-ality, think possibility, and communicate with significance. A leadership workshop for women executives provides a case in point. I opened the week by inviting the women to define “power” and their relationship to it. Each group’s discussion immediately descended into an overwhelmingly negative vortex. These senior executives saw “power” as masculine, manipulative, Machiavellian, and overly hierarchical. As the group verged on the edge of re-jecting entirely their leftover notions of misused twentieth-century power, one very senior executive from a prominent global organization confronted her colleagues: “Unless you can tell me that the world is perfect, your com-pany is perfect, your community is perfect, and your family is perfect, don’t
tell me that you’re not interested in power.”
For this group of executives, the vocabulary of leadership had become so corrupted that we couldn’t discuss one of the central tenants of leadership: power and influence. To shift from the limitations of twentieth-century per-spectives to the type of vocabulary we need to discuss and enact twenty-first-century leadership, we need to shift our very understanding of core words and concepts. Without such a shift, seeing reality, thinking possibility, and communicating significance would remain impossible.
For me, one highly effective means for creating that shift is by using the arts and artistic processes. For example, after my initial failure to create a twenty-first-century discussion of power using the traditional approach— words—I decided to try an alternative approach: visual images. This time I started by writing the word “Power” on a flipchart and asking everyone to respond with what first came to mind. The now-expected barrage of nega-tive connotations ensued. Next, I invited them to use new tools, a mountain of art supplies, to create their own image of power. The only rule was that the process had to be nonverbal. They could neither talk during the exercise nor use any words in their artwork. After completing their power images, I asked them to sign their name, as artists, so they would own their visual def-initions of power.
As we discussed each image, the most robust, positive, and owned defini-tion of power emerged that I have ever witnessed. By changing the vocabu-lary—from traditional words to artistic images—we had changed the nature of the conversation, and with it, our very understanding of each leader’s relation-ship to power.
Most coaches are well versed in chaos and complexity theory because it has been so helpful in allowing us to understand the turbulent, not com-pletely knowable world in which we live and work. Using those principles, we
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coach executives to understand that learning organizations need to be flexi-ble, inclusive, innovative, and quick in dealing with an unpredictable future. Yet rarely do we give executives the new behavioral capabilities we say they need to deal effectively and spontaneously with rapid change.
Unfortunately, the words of even the most brilliant lectures, while defi-nitely increasing leaders’ understanding of turbulent environments, often fail to improve those same leaders’ actual capability to lead when con-fronted by chaotic, rapidly changing situations. By contrast, improvisational theater techniques demonstrably increase executives’ capabilities to lead in such twenty-first-century environments.4 To excel as an improv actor, you must respond instantly to what’s going on around you; you can’t rely on pre-planned strategies or lines. When I introduce managers working in interna-tional joint ventures, for example, to improvisational theater techniques, it immediately shifts their understanding of how leadership, teamwork, coop-eration, and flexibility really work.
In one classic improv exercise, the managers tell a story by having each in-dividual rapidly add one word to the narrative in turn. Typically, the first at-tempt at building a story is painfully dry, nonsensical, and completely lacking in leaps of creativity or surges of energy. The reason is simple: between turns, each person is focusing on deciding which word to add, rather than listening to their colleagues. By the time the narrative reaches them, their carefully chosen word no longer fits.
Only by letting go of preplanned strategies and focusing on the flow of the unfolding story can each manager become able to contribute to the story in a way that brings it to life. As the story becomes more coherent, surprising, en-ergized, and fun, the executives viscerally understand what they need to do differently. Being successful in a spontaneous, chaotic, interdependent, team-oriented environment requires observational, listening, and input skills, much more than our traditional talking, doing, and more output-oriented skills. Leading effectively in turbulent environments requires a mode of teamwork that cannot be learned except through direct experience.
Leaders are most intensely out of their comfort zone and into a learning zone when areas of leadership are explored that draw heavily on artistic and creative processes, reflection and the symbolic aspects of leadership. Po-etry can hold ambiguity and paradox in ways that our dehydrated business vocabulary cannot. David Whyte, often referred to as the poet of the cor-porate world, reminds us that: “Poetry is the art of overhearing ourselves say things from which it is impossible to retreat.”5 Similarly, with music, Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, teaches us: “A symphony is about getting all of the voices sounding together, which is what leadership is really about. It is not about winning or losing—but about
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sounding together.”6 Exceptional leadership demands a level of inspiration, perspective, courage, understanding, and commitment that transcends day-to-day management; twenty-first-century leadership demands approaches that transcend the accepted practices of twentieth-century organizations.
Artists and leaders face similar challenges: to see reality as it is, without succumbing to despair, while imagining possibilities that go far beyond cur-rent reality; to have the courage to collude against illusion while articulating possible futures previously unimaginable; and to inspire people to surpass themselves, individually and collectively, for the benefit of all. The world needs better leadership, and the people within organizations and communi-ties are hungry for the change. They no longer want the narrow, circum-scribed leadership of the twentieth century, nor its outcomes. And yet those who choose to truly lead in this journey should not dismiss the risks. When-ever a paradigm shifts, those who have the most to gain from the old ways hold on extremely tightly.
q Albert A. Vicere
Coaching for Leadership Depth
Dr. Albert A. Vicere is Executive Education Professor of Strategic Leadership at Penn State’s Smeal College of Business and President of Vicere Associates Inc., a con-sulting firm whose clients span the globe. He is the au-thor/editor of several books, including Leadership By Design and The Many Facets of Leadership, and more than 80 articles on leadership development and organizational effectiveness. His article “Leadership in the Networked Economy” won the Human Resource Planning Society’s
2002 Walker Prize for the most influential article of the year. He can be reached by phone at (814) 233-1120, by e-mail at a.vicere@vicere.com, or via the Internet at www.vicere.com.
ver the years, I have had the great fortune to work with scores of busi-ness organizations and to spend time with their leaders. The best of
those leaders share at least one very similar perspective—that the essence of
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their job is to get results and at the same time to build commitment to the or-ganization’s culture and values. But there is little doubt that today’s leaders must carry out those responsibilities in an incredibly complex environment. The current business climate challenges leaders to fulfill their responsibili-ties while directing their organization’s movement into a new economic order. This often requires not only the development and deployment of new strategies and business models, but also reformulation of corporate culture and values.
My clients tend to be business and HRD leaders from organizations like Cisco, 3M, Aramark, and Merck that are looking to build relevant leadership development initiatives to meet the challenge of today’s complex competi-tive environment. I work in partnership with those clients to design, develop, and sometimes deliver initiatives that help their organization to get results, shape culture, and develop leadership depth. As challenging as this work can be, there is nothing more inspiring or exhilarating than working in tandem with a team of clients to build momentum, ratchet up performance, and in-spire renewed leadership commitment across an organization.
The number-one critical success factor in my work is having a team of clients—on both the business and HRD side—that is visibly committed to leadership development as a driver of organizational performance. It really helps if the team is comprised of both business leaders and HRD experts. Early in the engagement, I try to facilitate discussion and build consensus within the team around a number of issues that are at the heart of effective leadership development processes. The goal is to have the team:
· Clarify core objectives for development based on the strategic impera-tives of the firm, including discussions around targeting key audiences for development; defining critical competencies and capabilities; creat-ing networks to share knowledge and leverage performance; enhancing communications and teamwork; refining organizational culture; and implementing business strategies.
· Select methods and approaches to be used for development, ensuring consistency with the company’s strategic imperatives and the overall learning/development objectives of the initiative. This could in-clude action learning projects, leader-led learning, classroom educa-tion, and other methods for promoting individual and organizational effectiveness.
· Build and maintain strategic partnerships with resources to help in initiative delivery. I am a strong advocate of leader-led processes in which client company executives play major roles in any initiative. But
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I also know the value that fresh eyes can bring to the table. My goal is to help the client team build a network of outstanding, committed partners for program delivery from both within and outside the com-pany. We work together to develop processes for recruiting and coach-ing people from within the company who are selected to be teachers, mentors, or coaches themselves. We also develop processes for identi-fying, engaging, and managing the involvement and performance of external resources that bring critical expertise and outside perspec-tives to the development initiative.
· Align leadership development processes with the organization’s human resource management systems. I work with the client team to ensure that the leadership development initiatives are tightly linked to the organiza-tion’s performance metrics and human resource management infrastruc-ture, including reward systems, recruitment and selection procedures, and succession and executive resource planning processes. This final step ensures relevance and impact for any development initiative.
In my experience, members of an effective client team must have a com-mitment to moving the organization from where it is to a desired future state. They need to have vision, to see the pattern of where the organization was, where it is now, and where it is going. They need a real feel for the peo-ple, the culture, and the political climate of the organization. And they have to know how far you can push and how hard you can push the people.
My most effective clients are patient and persistent, have a clear vision of the role leadership development can play in the organization, and are willing to be an active part of the process. Clearly, it helps to have senior executive sponsors who believe in leadership development. Without that level of sup-port and involvement, it is hard to maintain the credibility and momentum of the process. But even so, my most successful engagements have been those in which a core team of motivated individuals have made a commitment to make leadership development a key driver of business success.
From the experience I have gained while coaching teams to build high-impact leadership development initiatives, I have learned that success in leadership development starts with a commitment at the top. The initiatives are tightly linked to the company’s strategic agenda. They are viewed as a lever for communicating strategy, focusing behaviors, and driving change. They provide next-generation leaders with an opportunity to learn, practice, develop, and grow. And when done well, they drive business results, the best measure of success that I can imagine.
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