Through successful intervention as a leader you will gain reward, recognition, increased self esteem and the motivation to move on to greater challenges. The characteristics of the difficult challenge you face as a leader are shortage of time and resources, feelings of pressure/frustration/inadequacy and the real and perceived expectations of you by others. Intervening in ways that create time and resources, reduces pressure and gets others to help you will make you more powerful as a leader, increase your success and make life more enjoyable.
This paper argues that developing your own awareness skills, understanding the 'figure' you are creating and noticing what stage you and others are at in an 'experience cycle' will guide you to the right intervention for success.
First some definitions of what I mean by 'figure' and 'experience cycle'. In this paper a 'figure' is the image your brain picks out in a situation and can be seen against a background. To illustrate: if you look at a garden border and pay attention to a rose, then the rose would be the 'figure' and the border its background. In a leadership context, a figure might be 'retain my star traders' or 'deliver all my projects ahead of plan' or 'achieve integrity paying prisoners for work in my prison' or 'create a global service delivery capability'. As part of our design we are always automatically picking out figures against backgrounds in everything we do.
At first we use our senses to notice something. We then become aware of some emerging 'figure' and mobilise energy towards an increasingly strong figure. We then go into action to achieve the figure (successfully or unsuccessfully) and withdraw ready to start another cycle. We all do this and are continuously in a multitude of experience cycles in our daily life and in our leadership experiences. The choice we have is the speed we go through them and the energy we apply to each one. Creating awareness around the figure in play and the stage you are in with your cycle of experience is one of the most powerful interventions available. With this awareness we can take positive steps towards successful action.
The human capacity instantly to see a figure is useful for a protection inspired reaction to something but it also means we do not see or sense a lot of other information available to us. This is important when the figure we see is different to that seen by those who need to help us as this difference will often lead to resistance rather than alignment. Spending time heightening awareness and building a common figure can mean the energy we do expend can be so much more productive than that dissipated in resistance or opposition.
It is worth illustrating with an example. Consider the CEO of an asset management business within a larger corporation having shared services. If the CEO has as his figure "retain my best traders" and the HR director of shared services has as his figure "implement corporate pay policy", you can imagine the resistance and energy exchange that will occur when the CEO wants to retain a trader outside the corporate pay policy. The point about raising awareness is that if you make available more of what is available across those who are going to impact a situation, you will get a more productive outcome when contact occurs. In the above example contact has occurred when the CEO and HR director connect on the trader retention issue.
So how can we raise awareness and reveal what is available to us? In any circumstance we have a number of tools available to us to heighten our awareness. There is what we sense (eg see or hear), what we feel (happy, sad, frustrated, excited), what we think (the meaning we are making of data) and what influence is taking place.
In many organisations what we think and the influences occurring are the only tools used. Often what we think is the only focus and little attention is paid to what others who need to help us are thinking. Using all four tools in the awareness stage of the experience cycle will increase the chances of an aligned figure creation so that the energy, action and contact phases will be so much more productive. The resulting energy applied will be seen more widely as positive than is the case when awareness is not fully exploited.
Leaders have a continuous flow of difficult challenges. As they occur and the figures emerge we need to turn our awareness full on. This means holding off firming your figure too soon and considering some of the following:
Senses
• What can I see or hear in relation to the possible figure?
• What do I observe in those that can help me (arms folded, eyes focused on me, walking away,...)?
• What can those who can help me sense?
• What can we share with each other about what we sense?
Feeling
• What do I feel about the possible figure?
• What do those who can help feel about the possible figure
• What can we share with each other about what we feel?
Thinking
• What do I think the figure is?
• What do those who can help/hinder think the figure is?
• What can we share about these thoughts and sets of meaning making?
Influencing
• What influence is already taking place?
• What can we share about this?
The answers to these questions are going to give you much more information for the shaping of your figure than an automatic choosing would allow. In the conversations these questions cause you to have with others who can help or hinder, you are likely to build alignment more easily around an agreed figure. The subsequent energy you will all then apply will be much more productive. It will also be a much more enjoyable experience.
Consider the Director recruited to "create a global service delivery capability". In the current organisation there are a number of leaders with their own firm figures on what this might mean for them. Many of these figures will be very different to that of the new kid in the playground. Unless this Director spends a good amount of time raising all dimensions of awareness at the awareness stage of the experience cycle, there is a high likelihood that action and contact will fail or consume massive amounts of negative energy in resistance.
A number of things are going on here. The first is to recognise where we are on an experience cycle. Forming a firm figure too early and going into action with it too early will lead to resistance and the potential for a highly negative energy exchange. Forming a firm figure early is a human reflex we need to notice. The second thing is the importance of raising awareness by using all the tools available (senses, feelings, thinking, influencing). The third (and an important thing to note in respect of the subject of this paper) is that raising awareness as described above is a powerful intervention used by the most successful leaders.
The intervention you are making involves those who can help you and will start to motivate them to help you. From this you are adding resource (them) to your challenge and reducing resistance (frustration/inadequacy) and changing their perception of you.
Many difficult leadership challenges you face have you driving energy, action and contact to a very different figure than that seen by those who can help you. This arises when the full potential of the awareness stage of the experience cycle has not been exploited. The difference in figure will lead to negative energy, frustration, possible failure. In companies the world over this is going on between CEO and other Board Members, business and function, different functions in an organisation (HR, IT, Finance). As we are just as human away from work it is also taking place in all our interactions there.
I hope this paper has given you some insight into successful intervention as a leader. If I have made you stop and think about the figures you create yourself and where you are in an experience cycle then this intervention has been successful. If you are interested in understanding how this could help in your organisation please give me a call.
Len Williamson
Leadership Coach
The Owl Partnership Ltd.
Tel: +44(0)7802 323 061
Email: len@theowlpartnership.com
web: http://www.theowlpartnership.com
The Better Mix.
