At a recent conference of industrial/organizational psychologists, I had the good fortune to sit in on a session about happiness at work. There were researchers from several countries, presenting studies on work-family crossover and spillover, the relationship between goal-setting and self-determination theory and other esoteric but immensely interesting (to a geeky organizational scientist like me at least!) research. The one I'll discuss today is on the crucial role that leaders play in ensuring their employees whistle at work.

David's reflections on the difference between a good and a great coach were just as quick to understand and easy to follow. One among his thoughts was what all us coaches need to do all the time and really well - help those we coach to hit the pause button and reflect. His four basic directions of reflection for us to ask questions to get the coachee to think on -

1. Look inward: What is most important to you? What values matter most and how are you manifesting them in what you are trying to achieve?

2. Look outward: What matters most to others? What expectations do they hold that you need to address in order to be successful at your endeavors? How do they perceive you?

3.Look back: What have you been trying to learn and what new things have you tried? What has worked well and what hasn't worked? What have you learned?

4.Look ahead: What will you do differently? What do you need to keep learning? Where are your opportunities to try new things?

If we commit these four to action, then they can spawn off several questions that will help us think every day, week, fortnight, month, quarter and year. I will leave you to discuss what follow-on questions make meaning to you and how often will you think about them. One that has worked for me on a quarterly basis is -

If I was to summarize my learning in the last 6 months into my CV, what would it look like?

In our pace of life, we think time has to be saved and not spent by admiring the bud that blossoms into a flower or the birds chirping. I think that's the wrong thing to do. It's taking a few milliseconds to enjoy such little pleasures that push us into the trap of being so overwhelmed with our current moment we have no time and effort to examine it in the context of the past and the future in terms of our personal and professional development.

What would your questions for yourself be? How often will you ask them and how much time will you give for yourself?

Reference -

 Hernez-Broome, G., & Boyce, L. A. (Eds.). (2010). Advancing executive coaching: Setting the course for successful leadership coaching (pp. 83-101). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

In our recently concluded strategic planning meeting (STRAP 2012), we had the privilege of listening to the CxO of one of our longest standing clients, Nordstrom. Coming from a very senior executive of a highly respected corporation, and one of our most steadfast clients, his insights on what made Infosys a trusted partner should be considered invaluable. He spoke about three "pillars" necessary for a strategic relationship.

Ok, now that you've scratched your head raw, how about taking a step back and thinking about why this all really matters to leaders and leadership??

"An hour of play" is perhaps far-fetched! Yet the quote lets us know that play was appreciated even during the time of Plato.

Recently, I was discussing a Serious Game I'm building with a colleague who is also a good friend, and his questions stimulated a myriad of new ideas.  As I spoke about how the gameplay follows the principle of scaffolding - meaning that it provides progressively difficult challenges- his interest seemed to grow.  He was so intrigued that he asked me a few critically important questions:

1.      What exactly is the difference between play, games and serious games?

2.      Why do we need to use "scaffolding" and have different challenge levels instead of just one gameplay standard throughout?

And the most interesting question he asked me was:

3.      What can we learn from the game world that can be applied in real world contexts?

A cornucopia of answers poured out of me, far more than the space in this blog provides.  What follows are some snippets of my responses.

How often have we mumbled in exasperation -"they just don't see it the way I do!" , we could have said this to other teams, colleagues, or peers. Much of this exasperation could be due to a difference in mental models. The deeply researched PDF is for the academically inclined, for a practitioner, here are the key thoughts as I see them

For many years, researchers have looked at a "group mind", a reference to how a group seems to think similarly to the members within the groups. While each of us think and act based on the perceptions , beliefs , thoughts and expectations, on occasion all of these could be common across a group and the group thinks and acts in a way that it has one mind. Researchers also differentiate between a group - collection of individuals whose tenure together and division of responsibilities may vary and a team which has many different members who are interdependent on one another. All teams  are groups but all groups are not necessarily teams!

We need to understand team mental models by understanding individual mental models. Mental models of perceptions, beliefs, thoughts and expectations help us make sense of our surroundings, and thereby act and behave. It is therefore vital for leaders to understand the mental models of the team they lead as well as the individuals within it. It really doesn't matter which comes first since today, we frequently learn from our team members as well as our leader.

The author looks at how when groups stifled the power of organized dissent within teams, they created horribly wrong errors. The Vietnam War and Pearl Harbor are two examples the authors go into great detail.

I suppose this ability to be comfortable with and dialogue with others who dissent from our thoughts must be very difficult. It certainly is easy for me to like people who agree with me all the time! It's even more tempting for me to work in teams of people like me all the time. This book however, shook me up on that.

I remembered a commentary on a famous debate that took place between two Hindu saints who were from different philosophical streams of thought. The commentator after discussing each sides arguments, reminded the reader on who the real victor in the debate was. It was the one who did not stick to his (or her) stand but amended one's own opinion to reflect shades of the other side as well so that the final solution had a greater appeal to a larger group.

This is easier said than done and I will be excited to hear your thoughts and experiences and of course you can disagree with me but do read the book!

Various studies of women leaders comment on the 'communal' characteristics of strong interpersonal skills, inclusiveness, persuasiveness, concern for the welfare of others, ability to handle adversities, being honest and realistic, being collaborative as the desirable qualities that they get to the workplace leadership roles (which are otherwise replete with leadership styles that are more 'agentic' - assertive, controlling, ambition driven). Remember the concept of the Level 5 leader proposed by Jim Collins - characterized by above all, humility and fierce resolve? To say that women leaders embody all that may be a stretch, but studies show that they are certainly better candidates given the right environment.

So that makes it somewhat simple isn't it? If these desirable behaviors were suitably recognized and rewarded, there would naturally be a greater representation of such women leaders at the top! So what accounts for the less than 3% women CEOs and less than 12% women on boards of companies across the world? That these same qualities that organizations desire at the helm of affairs are what derail a woman's career somewhere mid-journey? That these same qualities render them unsuitable to the competitive corporate race for success? That organizations are not quite ready to dismantle the traditional scaffolds of management and leadership ways for newer ways of accommodating such styles?

Even the best of our women's initiatives crafted carefully to support the career woman, focus on readying the woman for the intensely competitive, visibility seeking, network driven, individualistic corporate world - telling us how to overcome the odds, to sail through the challenges, to have faith and to persist, showing us examples of women (the handful) who have done it, and exhorting us to live up to the challenge! Showing us ways in which to 'adapt' ourselves to the demands of the leadership challenge. The irony of it.

Are we shining the torch in the right direction then? What are we doing about preparing the workplace for a better tomorrow, which has balanced perspectives (not through the affirmative action type of initiatives) and is welcoming of greater diversity in the (selfish) interests of bettering ourselves?

-- Henry David Thoreau

You have heard this before. Listening is important. Listening is necessary. People in your life, both personal and professional, have extolled the virtues of listening.  In the event that you have heard them, you might have put listening in that "things to learn and develop" bucket for most of your lifetime.  If you have not, it could be that you do not consider listening to be that important, or perhaps you do have the tools or resources to be a good listener.

Infinite loops are a sort of computer science purgatory for novice programmers.  Also known as recursion, when code calls itself repeatedly, it chokes the program and the computer can grind to a halt.

Leaders can think of formal rules that they write as a type of business code.  A code of ethics, policies, process maps, quality manuals and contracts create formal business rules. They shape the mental models of their employees (Day, Harrison & Halpern, 2009).  Ethical cultures with conscientious employees are good at following these rules. 

More important are the informal rules - the organization's culture, also created by leaders.  These values - about what's appropriate are created by how leaders role model the informal, unwritten rules that others must follow.  But sometimes the marketplace changes the rules of the profitability game.  And as the competitive landscape changes, some rules need to evove.

My colleague, Professor Bruce Avolio suggests that authentic leaders create a climate where rules can be challenged (Avolio, 2011).  I'm fortunate to work for Kris Gopalakrishnan, who in 2010 facilitated a senior leadership event for our top leaders where he encouraged leaders to challenge classic Infosys mental models, frameworks and paradigms.  This helped our leaders recontextualize our business and helped refine our current business strategy and organizational design.  We jointly reprogrammed the business strategy and structure into what we today call Infosys 3.0.

Lesser leaders might such avoid and fear such constructive confrontation.  Another colleague, Professor James Detert and his colleagues highlight the importance of leaders like Kris enabling followers to have a "voice" (Detert, Burris & Harrison, 2011).  Without voice, followers can follow rules, but like a lemming, have the business fall off of a cliff.  With a leadership climate of "voice", issues are raised and fairly addressed without fears of retribution.  Professor Bruce Avolio suggests that an ethos of leaders creating followers who take positive, proactive ownership for change is the ultimate leadership legacy (Avolio, 2011).  Are your rules stuck in an infinite loop?  Are you fully leveraging your voice?

References

Avolio, B.J. (2011).  Full Range Leadership Development, Second Edition. Sage

Day, D.V., Harrison, M.M., & Halpin, S.M. (2009). An Integrative Approach to Leader Development: Connecting adult development, identity and expertise. New York:Routledge.

Detert, J.R., Burris, E.R., & Harrison, D.A. (2010, June 8).  What's Really Silencing Your Employees. Harvard Business Review Blog Network. Downloaded February 10, 2012 from http://blogs.hbr.org/research/2010/06/whats-really-silencing-your-em.html

It was a VC for an hour and there were no ppts for folks like me to get glued on to the images. Whats more, the speaker was always seated and we never got to see his hands. All of this would have made me endlessly bored within minutes but i was completley glued to what he was saying. What he said made a big impact on me. More about that later but here were two simple presentation techniques I learnt -

1. He peppered his talk with many anecdotes, I did not know any of the people, but he said it slowly and conversationally and when it involved another person saying something, his voice changed as if they were saying it.
2. He smiled a lot! small things can make a big difference and this certainly did! I am sure his smile made me feel much more focussed on what he was saying than on the limitations of the logistics!

try these out when you have to speak next time! I sure am going to and may even have my speach video recorded and check if I did do what i wanted to!