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Articles and Commentary

The trouble with Marks Meta-verse

If you were hanging around in 2006 you would have come across an idea called Second Life which offered an online universe in which you could meet others, build, buy and sell and explore. Some used it as a meeting point, as you could sit around a table beside a waterfall and conduct a virtual meeting. It was the next big thing. It wasn’t though. Second Life is still going however many figured out that interacting with real people was a superior experience.

Roll around 2022 and we have Mark Zuckerberg’s “new” idea to create an alternate universe, a metaverse to interact with others. Perhaps he is assuming that the people who did well with Zoom and similar through the pandemic will take to the Metaverse.

Perhaps its Mark’s robotic persona or his brilliant but perhaps impractical mind, or maybe it’s me. I don’t get it. Sure, it’ll be fun to try out. But then? If the vision is that people want to live their lives on-line, then this is mistaken. If the vision is to hook people into spending their lives as an Avatar then this is dangerous.

Zoom fatigue is a thing. But some people prefer Zoom – those not confident with people or who are sensitive to interactions with others can prefer to be at the other end of a screen if possible. However, while Zoom and the other tech did well through the pandemic when it was necessary, it’s not ideal. It negates the power of person to person interaction and the human connection so necessary to happiness and our feeling of belonging that drives a team to be greater than the sum of its parts.

We also communicate mostly through body language and a lot of this is missing with remote interacting. From a leadership perspective, belief and passion that power purpose, trust and motivation are diluted considerably by remote connection. This is why hybrid models of working must include real connection time in the schedule for teams and groups that work together. All of the problems of remote working will be made much worse by using avatars to communicate.

I was a fan of Facebook. The original idea was to connect people and allow them to stay connected over long distance. This was a good idea. But its been skewed now by misuse, bad algorithms and intentional polarisation. It replaced “the internet” which has become a search engine but also a purveyor of porn and similar. Is Facebook saveable? I don’t know. But creating a Metaverse to replace it is doing the opposite of connecting people.

Aidan Higgins BE MBA
Leadership and Teamwork Specialist and
Founder and Director at Adeo Consulting Ltd
Author of Lead From You

2021-11-10T15:02:18+00:00November 8th, 2021|Culture, Discussion, Leadership, Motivation, Team Performance|

Leaders. Post Pandemic Stress will need time and empathy for many.

Stress is like holding a glass of water at arms length. Its ok for a little while when necessary but it gets painful over time and you will need to put the glass down and take a rest. You can pick it up later of course. This is a popular adage and quite accurate.

This last 12-18 months there are many who have been holding too much for too long. Assuming your organisations are well run your people were operating close to a stress line before the pandemic hit. The change, constant worry and media misery will have caused many to stiffen up in resistance while doing their best to carry on contributing. We have also seen workload increases and resources dropping so many are doing far more with less.

I am hearing from people that many are at the end of their rope. The last thing your people need now is pressure from you and your organisation to “catch up”. What your people need is time under less pressure, to recover, to get their bearings, to feel safe again. Some recognition too of effort and loyalty would not go amiss. The last thing they need is a leader trying to fill the hole in his or her year end figures.

Think long term and think sustainably. Get your mind into 2022 and beyond. What will happen if you think about spreadsheets and burn out what’s left of your people? On the other hand what will happen if you take care of them and show that you and your organisation genuinely care about them in the aftermath?

Your care needs to be tailored to the individual – some will have suffered more than others due to many factors – personality, financial, home life etc. Some will be dying to get back to work and some will have crawled along the street, exhausted, just to get to the office. There’s an opportunity here, don’t miss it.

Our Leaders need some joined-up thinking to implement the new greener program for government.

Delighted to see a new government forming at last. I am hoping the words match the deeds in the coming months and years. However there seems to be a lack of joined up thinking about actually getting a Green Plan for Government done. Laudable and way overdue targets will be difficult to achieve without coordinated system change. There is a huge amount of good will but a lack of ability get the good work done. Business that has a positive environmental impact keeps getting blocked by poor regulations and inefficiencies in our public bodies. Look at these examples.

Do you know how many Croke Parks full of clean water we dump into storm drains every time it rains? This with regular drought emergencies and a proposed pipeline from the Shannon? Do you know how much it costs to pump and then treat a litre of water from, say, a well in South Wicklow, to the reserve in Blessington and then to a home in Dublin? I worked as a consultant for a few years with a company that provided rainwater harvesting and stormwater management solutions. Our high quality solutions were cheaper, easier to maintain, made from recycled materials and bio-filtered stormwater before returning it to the water table in pure form. There were loads of other benefits like reduced flooding etc etc. Blocking both solutions were projects specifying only concrete tanks which were blocked within a year, (so environmentally friendly!) and some councils refusing to deduct the charges for water supply when the client were collecting their own rainwater – effectively blocking investment. Other technologies such as porous concrete (that lets rainwater through into the ground) and similar also get no traction in this country. Is it lack of interest or vested interests?

Did you know that right now that the people who plant forestry in this country are sitting idle at this moment because of regulation. The current regulatory and licencing system has presided over the worst year for planting nationally since 1949 with less than 3,000 hectares planted in 2019 – and 2020 may even be worse. Ireland already intends to increase its level of forestry by 8,000 hectares a year. This is vital in terms of achieving our carbon reduction goals of 7% per annum and was designated to offset some of the increase in CO2 from agriculture. The figures are way too low and the current rate of approvals of forestry projects is 50% of the required rate with, for example, 60,000 tonnes of timber stalled in one week alone in April. Farmers who are interested in swapping say, beef production, for more profitable long term carbon reducing forestry cannot get their requirements met!

The Covid19 crisis has forced a lot of people work to from home. The roads are empty, there are no CO2 /NO2 generating traffic jams and our carbon output has dropped. Why not make a visible effort to keep some of that benefit post Covid19. An initiative should be driven by government – rather than by announcements from big tech companies – incentivise people and companies to keep people working from home (if they wish it). Do it now. Provide a minimal level of broadband capability even if it means grant-aiding or subventing the provision of 5G and ramping up its rollout. Give people tax breaks to stop commuting and use broadband instead when possible. Companies are reporting improved performance, people are reporting improved life balance – why are we not supporting and encouraging this CO2 friendly approach when its in the national and international interest???

Much of the problem lies in cross departmental communication and co-operation as well as the culture and sometimes bureaucratic nightmare that exists within parts of our civil service. We have seen real leadership from our government in the last few months, can we please see more of it to address the climate crisis with good green business opportunities. All it needs is some joined up thinking.

Aidan Higgins BEng MBA of ADEO Consulting Ltd is a Leadership, Emotional Intelligence and Teamwork specialist and coach working with Leaders and Teams at all levels of the Private and Public sectors in Ireland. He has over 25 years experience working in various capacities with individuals, teams and organisations of all sizes.

2020-06-17T13:35:42+00:00June 17th, 2020|Discussion|

Leadership: preparing for the recovery.

Getting back together - take time to reflectThe leadership you show in this crisis will impact your recovery.

As we get through this crisis its important to remember to stay compassionate and keep humanity at the forefront of our decision making as much as possible. Remember sometimes very hard decisions have to be made for the greater good but there’s no reason to remove caring and empathy from the procedures. I remember meeting a woman whose best friends were people she had fired at one time because she kept the human connection even working with them to find new jobs. Its the right thing to do and you need to remember that there will be a recovery and a tough one at that and you will need trust in the bank to use a fuel to empower this recovery. Do the right thing, always.

Before the recovery there will be a reckoning.  Thats ok – just be ready for it.

These are tough times – for some far more than others. The stresses of the change of environment, the uncertainty of the future, the worry about mortality of self and loved ones and the coming economic tidal wave will generate an environment in the near future involving both fiscal hardship and PTSD. We are all doing our best to limit the fiscal damage but its only one element. The stresses which many have not experienced before will leave their mark long after the acute part of the Pandemic has passed. Think about the stresses of two parents trying to work in a house with several bored children. Arguments and harsh words. And stress – there’s still a mortgage and bills to pay. As schools resume and many go back to their place of work the stress, repression of emotion, anxiety and other elements will surface and we let go of the metaphorical breath and try to get oxygen back into our system. Think of those healthcare workers as every day they go to work with tension and worry at the risk of not only contracting Covid19 but of bringing it home to the people they love. I have seen the worry and bravery up close. Its hard to watch. Again there will be a price for this. Like radioactivity – you can be exposed to so much, after which there will be long term effects.

Help your resilience.

Ignoring this problem will not make it go away. Leaders need to prepare for its impact. Bring empathy and compassion to your people. Remember they are mostly not the same as you. They will all suffer and express suffering in different ways. They will have been through this with various levels of coping skills and experience of this sort of thing. Some will skip back to the workplace, some will run, and some will come in smoking from their experience. They need help now with their resilience to reduce the levels of their stress. No need to wait for it to blow up. Bring support, reassurance, care and realistic optimism to them now. Take the time to listen, to share experiences, to empathise, to get some oxygen in and to recover before you start into it again. Remember to also look after yourself. Taking time to think, breathe and energise yourself. Like the aircraft oxygen mask get your own on first so you can help those around you.

We have a short video we put together at ADEO Consulting with mindfulness tips to help resilience. I hope it helps.

Take Care

Aidan Higgins

2020-12-16T10:55:32+00:00May 15th, 2020|Discussion|

The Authentic Leadership we need in times of crisis.

Leadership in a CrisisAuthenticity in troubling times like these is key to engendering trust in those that depend on your decisions and perspectives. This trust is key to keeping your people focused and positive in a crisis and to reducing stress in times of uncertainty. Post crisis this trust will be key to rebuilding and in leading the recovery.

Authentic leadership is composed of four distinct components.

Self-Awareness (“Know Thyself”). A prerequisite for being an authentic leader is knowing your own strengths, limitations, and values. Knowing what you stand for and what you value is critical. It’s important to understand that self-awareness underpins the development of the other components of authentic leadership.

Relational Transparency (“Be Genuine”). This involves being honest and straightforward in dealing with others. An authentic leader does not play games or have a hidden agenda. You know where you stand with an authentic leader. Because of this you can be trusted – if you say its going to be ok people are going to believe you.

Balanced Processing (“Be Fair-Minded”). An effective authentic leader solicits opposing viewpoints and considers all options before choosing a course of action. There is no impulsive action or “hidden agendas”—plans are well thought out and openly discussed. They are shared with and include followers. A fair leader can build consensus in the right way and bring people with him. People pulling together can make all the difference in a fight for survival.

Internalized Moral Perspective (“Do the Right Thing”). An authentic leader has an ethical core. She or he knows the right thing to do and is driven by a concern for ethics and fairness. The roots of authentic leadership come from ancient greek philosophy that focuses on the development of core, or cardinal, virtues. These virtues are prudence (fair-mindedness, wisdom, seeing all possible courses of action); temperance (being emotionally balanced and in control); justice (being fair in dealings with others); and fortitude (courage to do the right thing).

Sometimes it takes a crisis to bring out your authentic self.

Becoming an authentic leader is not easy. Hopefully you established your credentials before this crisis and so your people can trust you and you in turn can get the best from them. But sometimes it takes a crisis to bring out your Authentic self. Are you like Hal Moore, the “first onto the battlefield” and “the last to leave the battlefield” sort of leader? How do you show this?

When your people are operating in anger or anxiety they are, of course, not as effective. This at a time when a survival mode mindset and maximum effort is required. It takes a calm trustworthiness in a leader with a steady hand to help people with this. Remember you may not know all the answers but you don’t pretend to – you work with others to find them and then make the best decisions you can. It is as always, about caring for and empowering your people and showing humility and compassion in everything you do. Even the hard decisions.

It takes a great deal of self-reflection (getting to know oneself), and the courage to do the right thing. It involves a degree of selflessness. We are seeing during the Pandemic many authentic leaders stepping forward. And we are also seeing the opposite.

Soon you will be leading the recovery and how you lead now will prepare for a much more successful outcome.

2020-04-27T15:59:29+00:00April 27th, 2020|Authentic Leadership, Discussion, Employee Engagement, Leadership|

Unleashing the Power of Mindfulness in Corporations

MindfulnessVolatile markets, challenging consumer demands, and the technological disruptions resulting from digitization and Industry 4.0 are producing unprecedented rates of change. In response, companies have worked to increase organizational agility, hoping to foster innovation and shorten go-to market cycles. Yet organizational experiences and sociological conditioning often impede true agility. As a result, many of these efforts fall short of their objective to manage the uncertainty generated by change. But another movement—mindfulness—will help companies overcome these challenges.

Mindfulness is a centuries-old idea that has been reinvented to address the challenges of our digital age. In essence, mindfulness describes a state of being present in the moment and leaving behind one’s tendency to judge. It allows one to pause amid the constant inflow of stimuli and consciously decide how to act, rather than react reflexively with ingrained behavior patterns. Mindfulness, therefore, is perfectly suited to counterbalance the digital-age challenges of information overload and constant distraction.

The benefits of mindfulness are both clear and proven. Mindfulness programs help leaders and employees reflect effectively, focus sharply on the task at hand, master peak levels of stress, and recharge quickly. On an organizational level, mindfulness reduces sick days, increases trust in leadership, and boosts employee engagement. What’s more, mindfulness helps to unlock the full potential of digital and agile transformations. New processes and structures are just the starting points for these transformations.

Not surprisingly, interest in mindfulness is growing, especially among digital natives: in the past decade, the rate of increase in Google searches for mindfulness has outpaced that of all Google searches by a factor of four. Furthermore, years of scientific research and modern forms of teaching have fueled its popularity. Now, mindfulness apps even come preinstalled on smartphones and tablets.

Yet integrating mindfulness in the corporate context can be challenging. Some companies encounter vocal skeptics; others struggle with entrenched ways of working. Even leaders and employees who are eager to try out mindfulness find it hard to get started. To unleash the power of mindfulness, companies will have to embrace a holistic approach to corporate agility.

AGILITY REQUIRES COPING WITH UNCERTAINTY

To support their agility efforts, many companies have applied “cosmetic” digital-age solutions, such as hackathons, agile meetings (for example, short daily standup meetings to discuss progress and obstacles), and new visualization techniques and creativity tools.

However, most companies have not yet created an environment that truly prepares them to reap the rewards of agility. Often, their ways of working have been shaped by a tradition of emphasizing functional excellence over agility, as well as systems that favor expertise over open-mindedness. Two inhibitors stand out:

  • Resistance to Change. As the pace of change increases, employees will have to continuously adapt to evolving circumstances. In most organizations, however, the existing ways of working leave employees unprepared to do so. They may therefore respond with reflexive resistance, a defense mechanism to avoid the discomfort of psychological uncertainty. Organizational politics and poor communication about the purpose of making changes only strengthen this resistance.
  • Overvaluing Expertise. Many employees think and interact at work by applying expertise that they gained before the digital age, when efficiency, not agility, was the overarching objective. Such an approach encourages closed-mindedness.

To overcome these inhibitors, leaders and employees need to abandon traditional management styles and linear ways of working. They must rewire their established mindsets, cultivating the open-mindedness and clarity required to navigate through unpredictable environments. They must acknowledge that their business involves elements beyond their control and develop the capacity for self-leadership in an unpredictable environment. And to gain mastery over uncertainty, they must learn to walk in the fog, open their eyes wide to detect signals from all directions, and feel empowered to trigger rapid action.

MINDFULNESS FACILITATES NAVIGATION THROUGH UNCERTAINTY

Mindfulness enables people to radically strengthen their ability to adapt quickly to evolving circumstances and ambiguous situations and to increase the speed with which they learn new things. It creates mental agility and helps people look inward to find answers.

In their recent book, Altered Traits, Daniel Goleman, a Harvard psychologist, and Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, provide a scientific view of personal mindfulness benefits. They synthesize three proven benefits of mindfulness that, in combination, allow people to act more effectively in unpredictable environments:

  • Staying Calm and Open-Minded. Mindfulness practices, such as breathing meditation, are associated with decreased gray-matter density in the amygdala, the region of the brain that initiates a response to stress. This reduces the inclination to interpret an uncertain environment as a threat and thus react defensively. In this way, mindfulness improves mental agility, allowing attitudes to shift from “But we have always done it like that” to “Let’s see what happens if we try a new approach.”
  • Cognitive Ability. Mindfulness improves short-term memory and the ability to perform complex cognitive tasks. It also frees people to think outside the box, which helps them cut through complexity. In the context of workplace performance, proven results include a higher quality of strategic decision making and more effective collaboration.
  • Focus and Clarity of Thinking. As Nobel laureate Herbert A. Simon observed, “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” This insight, first articulated in 1971, is more accurate today than ever before. Maintaining a strong focus in this time of digital information overload, therefore, is essential. The regular practice of mindfulness routines can reduce mental wandering and distractibility. Mindfulness strengthens the awareness of both one’s activities in the present moment and one’s mental processes and behaviors (known as meta-awareness).

By delivering these individual benefits, mindfulness boosts the potential of corporate agility initiatives and agile transformations. It helps people to inspect and adapt their behaviors in short cycles, relax so that they can rewire established attitudes, and think clearly in the midst of overwhelming digital stimuli. In short, mindfulness facilitates navigation in the context of uncertainty and ambiguity.

THE CORPORATE WORLD HAS TAKEN NOTICE

East Asian corporations, such as Panasonic and Toyota, have long understood that the personal benefits of mindfulness can support business objectives. Indeed, mindfulness is the “zen” in kaizen,the lean-management concept of continuous improvement. Zen, one form of mindfulness, emphasizes deep insight through observation over know-how. It is about discarding preconceptions and developing fresh ideas to achieve continuous self-improvement.

For example, open mindedness through Zen underlies Toyota’s employee suggestion system and quality circles. The quality circles empower employees to adopt a “beginner’s mind” when observing work-related problems and to independently develop innovative measures to drive improvement. Unlike self-perceived expertise, which encourages closed-mindedness, a beginner’s mind is open and curious, with no preconceptions. The more quickly change occurs, the more employees need to adopt a beginner’s mind for problem solving.

A leading pioneer of corporate mindfulness is Jon Kabat-Zinn, who facilitated its democratization by designing a program called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. The course provides a simple and structured introduction to scientifically proven meditation practices. Similarly, Chade-Meng Tan has developed Search Inside Yourself, a course that combines meditation practices with emotional intelligence training—an approach he pioneered at Google.

More recently, companies in the West have turned to mindfulness to promote employee well-being and productivity. The movement began among startups in Silicon Valley and has been implemented by long-established companies across the US and Europe as well as by government bodies. These include Aetna, Beiersdorf, Bosch, General Mills, Goldman Sachs, Intel, Royal Dutch Shell, SAP, Target, the UK’s Parliament, and the US House of Representatives.

Many of these organizations embrace agility and aspire to cultivate a new form of leadership. Among the top executives who meditate and encourage their employees to follow their example, for instance, are Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and Google cofounder Sergey Brin. In fact, attending a meditation class is a popular way to begin the workday at many Silicon Valley companies, including Apple, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Over the course of many years, Bosch, a multinational engineering company that focuses on automotive components and consumer goods, has increased its agility through a variety of initiatives. These include creating flexible organizational structures, introducing agile development methods, and experimenting with new business models and technologies. In order to promote the success of these initiatives, the company realized that it needed to fundamentally change its approach to leadership. According to Petra Martin, who is responsible for leadership development at Bosch Automotive Electronics, “Mindfulness is an essential lever to shift from a culture of control to a culture of trust. Communication has fundamentally changed since we introduced our mindfulness training to more than 1,000 leaders in the organization.”

At software company SAP, mindfulness has become a key ingredient of corporate life for employees and executives alike. More than 6,000 employees have taken two-day mindfulness courses that focus on meditations complemented by the practice of self-mastery and compassion. In addition, internal mindfulness trainers offer guided meditations during working hours and a multiweek mindfulness challenge, including meditation “micropractices,” such as tuning out of a busy workday for a few minutes to focus on one’s breathing. “For many managers, it has become the new normal to open meetings with short meditations,” says Peter Bostelmann, the director of SAP’s global mindfulness practice. Participants in the mindfulness program report increased well-being and higher creativity. What’s more, mindfulness has promoted significant measurable improvements in employee engagement and leadership trust indices. Bostelmann has seen a significant shift in how corporate mindfulness programs are perceived. A few years ago, some leaders ridiculed the concept of mindfulness at work. Recently, however, executives of other companies—including Deutsche Telekom and Siemens—have sought Bostelmann’s advice about how to adopt mindfulness concepts at their companies.

Aetna, a US health insurer, has trained 13,000 employees on mindfulness practices, resulting in a reported reduction in stress levels of 28%. Annual productivity improvements, a secondary effect, are estimated at $3,000 per employee. Aetna launched the mindfulness initiatives gradually, starting with brief meditations in executive-team meetings and then continuing with yoga and meditation classes for all employees. “We have demonstrated that mindfulness-based programs can reduce stress and improve people’s health,” says Mark Bertolini, Aetna’s chairman and CEO.

HOW COMPANIES CAN INSTILL MINDFULNESS

To fully capture the benefits of mindfulness, companies should customize their mindfulness programs. While it is valuable to begin by determining the objective of mindfulness interventions, many organizations have also achieved good results by starting with a small pilot program, such as providing a mindfulness course to senior leadership.

For some companies, mindfulness will become a paradigm for organization design and employee well-being. In terms of adopting mindfulness generally, organizations can start by experimenting with four types of interventions: leadership training, meditation training, mindfulness micropractices, and mindfulness coaching.

Leadership Training. As management guru Peter F. Drucker observed, leaders need trained perception fully as much as analysis. Well-designed leadership courses address this need by combining actionable mindfulness and emotional intelligence practices.

Even customized mindfulness leadership courses share common elements. Leaders should learn how to integrate formal and informal mindfulness practices into everyday life. Formal practices are often guided meditations, while informal practices include mindful listening exercises and simply paying attention to the task at hand.

By instilling self-awareness, self-regulation, and compassion, mindfulness courses address the psychological root causes of multiple leadership challenges. And because these courses also encourage the natural development of skills for managing time, change, and conflict, training programs dedicated to establishing these skills might become obsolete.

At Bosch, a one-year agile leadership-training curriculum involves three modules: leading oneself, leading teams, and leading the organization. The self-leadership training focuses on mindfulness and involves regular guided meditations, conscious-communication exercises, and courses to help leaders avoid the pitfalls of multitasking.

At a multinational engineering company, some leaders openly expressed skepticism about the value of mindfulness. The company converted these skeptics into believers by explaining the concept in layman’s terms, sharing scientific research about its effectiveness, and inspiring senior leaders to become change agents. Today, mindfulness is the new normal for the company, and leaders pause for meditation in the designated silent room before making major decisions or having difficult discussions.

Meditation Training. In addition to training executives, organizations should evaluate whether to offer training opportunities to all employees. Many individuals are willing to try out meditation but struggle to understand where to start. A half-day to full-day course can introduce basic practices, such as breathing or body scan meditations, so that employees can subsequently continue on their own.

To reinforce their training courses, some organizations—including Google, LinkedIn, and Twitter—offer guided meditations during working hours. Google has also established silent lunches and silent rooms, where employees can go to readjust their mindsets in the midst of an intense working day.

Mindfulness Micropractices. Repetitive practice of basic skills is essential to promote mastery: think of pianists playing scales throughout their careers or baseball players taking batting practice before every game. Similarly, employees who complete a meditation program need to continue practicing, through micropractices, to truly master mindfulness. Seasoned meditators report transformative mindfulness benefits once they have mastered the seamless integration of mindfulness practices into everyday life.

Organizations should invest in creating a culture in which meditation micropractices are not just tolerated but are actively disseminated by mindfulness change agents. Small workshops can also help to integrate mindfulness in a nonintrusive way. These workshops can teach approaches such as Elisha Goldstein’s STOP practice, in which participants learn to stop, take a breath, observe (thoughts, feelings, and emotions), and proceed. Beyond promoting mastery for mindfulness practitioners, micropractices can serve as an easy starting point for skeptics, who often experience surprising benefits after a few sessions.

Mindfulness Coaching. The principles of mindfulness can also help teams collaborate more effectively. For example, if team members master the ability to listen to one another with undivided attention and without interruption, they promote freer and more creative thinking. And a team culture that values appreciation over criticism helps to build transparency and openness. In her 2015 book, More Time to Think: The Power of Independent Thinking, Nancy Kline proposes that people offer appreciative comments five times as often as they do critical remarks.

Facilitation by a coach is essential to capture the benefits of mindfulness in teamwork. Agile teams typically already have scrum masters or agile coaches, and these individuals can become mindfulness coaches as well. Similarly, executive teams could benefit from mindfulness coaches to enable authentic communication and effective teamwork.

UNLEASHING THE POWER

Companies that undergo a transformation through mindfulness are seeing positive returns both on an individual level and on an organizational level. As leaders and employees develop the open-mindedness and clarity required to navigate through unpredictable environments, the organization becomes well positioned to unlock the full potential of agility. For companies that have not yet successfully embraced mindfulness, the imperative is clear: follow a well-designed, holistic approach to implement this centuries-old solution to digital-age challenges.

Original article from BCG’s Christian Greiser and Jan-Philipp Martini is  here

2020-03-06T11:35:38+00:00February 15th, 2020|Discussion|

Leadership Emotional Intelligence continues to be the top priority as change pressures increase.

Emotional Intelligence is the key Leadership SkillIt was over a decade ago that a survey by Stanford’s Graduate School of Business found that Emotional Intelligence skills such as vision, building relationships and developing people are more important to leadership success than typical leadership traits, such as external/market orientation, financial acumen and planning. This continues to be the case. We have seen the evolution and popularization of programs for Self Awareness, Self Control and Empathy, (all components of Emotional Intelligence) and also Mindfulness (a practice  we teach alongside Emotional Intelligence) as part of Leadership development globally. Working with Leaders at all levels we know that knowing what Emotional Intelligence is (competencies) and becoming an Emotionally Intelligent Leader are two very different things – it takes time to be the change that true understanding brings.

A very recent survey on Leadership at Henley Management College found that “Leadership today is complex, challenging and demanding, with leaders facing ‘wicked problems’ as highlighted by Grint in 2008 – problems with ’no right answer’ and often leaders look for the ‘least worst solution’ where there is no possibility of achieving a classic ‘win-win’ outcome.” their survey also found something we have come to know; that “everything moves faster because technology ensures that there is almost instant communication and 24 hour media coverage, with coverage of leaders’ decisions and actions transmitted worldwide in minutes. This creates a new challenge where it is almost impossible for an individual leader to deal with all the strategic issues in their organisation, so leadership has to become more devolved.”

They found too that Personal leadership development is individual and cannot be forced and that Leaders need time to achieve real personal change – often months and sometimes years. We would agree with this 100% at Adeo Consulting and this is why we work with leaders over time to create insight.

Knowledge communicated and understood by a client is not the same as insight which comes when true understanding is reached with a combination of mental clarity, experience and gut knowing.

We often start a relationship with a client for a 4 month program with extends to a relationship that last for years. Change takes time and when its deep change guidance is often needed.

Its been said to me; “Don’t mention Emotions to our leaders or they will run a mile”. You can imagine the industries and old school companies where lack of emotion is perceived as an asset. Such a skewed perspective is understandable given the way our education system works. But as I often say “Emotion is just information, and this information can be used to your benefit or ignored”. One should also consider what happens if your competitors get on board and you don’t? Leadership gurus such as Bill George continue to push the value of Emotional Intelligence – “Leaders Need a High Emotional IQ to Succeed”. The high level concepts of Emotional Intelligence and the lists of potential benefits have been around since the early 1990’s even before Goleman popularised the concept in 1995. That’s over 30 years and what has happened since is a massive increase in popularity after thousands of research papers and implementation in thousands of Organisations. One of Golemans studies done at Harvard (on Leadership Competency Models) found that 80%-90% of Leadership competencies are Emotional Intelligence Competencies. As he said “the Sine Qua Non” (something absolutely indispensable or essential) of Leadership. So true.

How Teamwork Powers Mindful and Effective Leadership

More effective teamwork results from a leader’s investment in their personal development of self-awareness, emotional self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.

This is one of the findings from my in-depth interviews with 42 leaders exploring the role of mindfulness in strengthening their leadership capabilities. The study also included use of the Emotional and Social Competency Indicator (ESCI) model developed by Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis, and found all twelve of the leadership competencies present in the participants. Teamwork was the competency most highly referenced by the participants, who provided detailed descriptions about the value they had received from focusing on cultivating their own, and other’s capabilities to be better team members.

Teamwork is defined by cooperative rather than separate, or competitive work. It also includes working towards common objectives, and taking ownership of both positive and negative outcomes. Individuals with strength in this competency will be able to build and maintain working relationships, in addition to promoting an environment conducive to input from teammates. They will also be:

  • Supportive of other teammates or group members
  • Involved in facilitating cooperation
  • Appreciative and respectful of others’ opinions and suggestions

The leaders I interviewed linked teamwork to a variety of benefits, including greater innovation, employee autonomy, and business growth. They also reported that their improved ability to develop effective teams resulted in stronger relationships between teammates, and greater loyalty to the organization. Finally, participants credited mindfulness with helping them understand their own role in being a good team member in the context of relationships with subordinates, peers and superiors. Leaders tied these improvements to their effectiveness, directly attributing career success to the combination of greater team capabilities, and the willingness of others to help them.

How Leaders Create Cultures Conducive to Teamwork

Study participants demonstrated a working understanding of multiple leadership theories, such as Situational, Transactional, and Transformational. Their leadership behaviors, however, tended to be more reflective of the relational leadership theory and dispersed leadership approaches. Specifically, they understood the importance of being able to meet the needs of the people and groups they worked with, and realized that the definition of a good teammate may not be the same for everyone. They also knew that they, and members of their teams, may need to adapt
their behaviors in order to successfully align with the frequently changing goals of the organization.

Participants reported that investing in attentiveness to others had a powerful impact on the strength of their relationships. The HR head for a leading global manufacturing firm summarized this as “…the deepness of listening and relating to a person and helping them connect on an individual level so they feel valued and connected to you as a leader,” which he directly attributed to improved team performance. A leader with a Fortune 10 Firm also touched on the importance of being open to receiving feedback from his direct reports: “I asked for feedback and insights from the people that I work with, and therefore they felt comfortable giving it to me.”

The importance of following through on commitments to coworkers was also stressed by participants. For example, the senior legal counsel for a leading healthcare product manufacturer shared the positive impact that her previous managers’ interest in her work life balance had on their relationship. As a result, she made sure to care for her direct reports in the same way, and take on additional personal workload if necessary: “…I want to make sure that people when they’re o?, they’re truly o?…certainly something can wait or we’ll try to get something else done.”

Making certain to not be perceived by others as paying lip service to concepts such as participation, respect, and fairness was highlighted by participants. A Department Head for a major US Hospital Network illustrated this point when describing the way he interacted with a newly promoted manager on his team: “I’ve decided to allow space for her and her team to design the new model, and giving everyone space to have their own thoughts and ideas.” His comments echoed what other leaders had to say about the relationship between team performance and the leader
ensuring that each member feels valued and motivated to make continued contributions.

How to Create a Stronger Team

Leaders were consistent in expressing their belief that you need to pay careful attention to being a good teammate if you want to be a member and/or leader of a high performing team.
This includes study and refinement of team development activities, and active observation of whether or not your interactions with others make them willing to support you as a teammate. These aspects of cultivating teamwork were summarized by a participant who has held Controller and CFO roles for three leading corporations: “I’m being respectful and…really listening, really understanding where they’re coming from… and then reflecting.”

Some steps you can take to promote teamwork that were described by participants include:

  • Work with your team to agree on a formal description of a good teammate
  • Jointly design a plan to help each member become a good teammate
  • Create and maintain open feedback channels
  • Focus on a culture of improvement, aimed at learning from mistakes

It is also important to keep in mind that building trust with your teammates requires authentic and compassionate behavior on your part. This means
being available to openly discuss their fears and concerns, and working with them to find ways to manage these issues. Making a sincere e?ort to
help teammates manage stressful situations more e?ectively will also contribute to greater engagement, as will modelling the behaviors you expect
of others in the workplace.

Original Article by Matthew Lippincott (here)

2019-04-10T09:21:20+00:00February 15th, 2018|Discussion, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Team Performance|

Without Emotional Intelligence, Mindfulness Doesn’t Work

Mindfulness Emotional IntelligenceMindfulness has become the corporate fad du jour, a practice widely touted as a fast-track to better leadership. But we suspect that not all the benefits laid at its feet actually belong there. Our research and analysis has revealed a complicated relationship between mindfulness and executive performance—one that is important for leaders to understand as they seek to develop in their careers.

Mindfulness is a method of shifting your attention inward to observe your thoughts, feelings, and actions without interpretation or judgment. A mindfulness practice often begins simply by focusing on your breath, noticing when your mind wanders, and then bringing it back to your breath. As you strengthen your ability to concentrate, you can then shift to simply noting your inner experience without getting lost in it at any point in your day. The benefits attributed to this kind of practice range from stronger relationships with others to higher levels of leadership performance.

Take, for example, Sean, a senior leader at a Fortune 100 corporation.  He will tell you that mindfulness played a critical role in transforming his career. He had been experiencing a serious performance plateau that was, he learned, an effect of his micromanaging and intimidating his direct reports. Obsessed with hitting his quarterly targets, he had pushed his people as much as they could stand and his team’s output was at a standstill. He feared being fired, or having to quit because of burnout from anxiety overload.

And mindfulness, Sean says, saved him. After an intensive training in the practice, he was better able to stop himself when his impulse was to jump in and control, and instead adopt a more supportive style, letting subordinates take on more responsibility. As he got better at managing his own anxious impulses, the resulting atmosphere dropped the gauge on stress for everyone. His direct reports trusted him more and did better quality work. Instead of quitting or being fired, he was promoted.

Sean was one of 42 senior leaders from organizations throughout the world who practice mindfulness and whom one of us (Matt Lippincott) studied at the University of Pennsylvania. They too attributed a wide array of benefits to their practice, including:

  • Stronger relationships with superiors, peers, and subordinates
  • Heightened output
  • Better project outcomes
  • Improved crisis management
  • Increased budgets and team headcount
  • Being trusted with sensitive organizational information
  • Positive performance reviews
  • Promotions

One executive even reported that as a result of his mindfulness practice his co-workers stopped turning around and walking in the other direction when they saw him coming!

But mindfulness isn’t magic; what was the mechanism at work in these executives’ transformations? One tipoff: several executives in the study reported getting feedback from colleagues that described improvements in areas like empathy, conflict management, and persuasive communication. These, it turns out, are what one of us (Dan) has described as core emotional intelligence competencies.

This connection with emotional intelligence was underscored in the interviews Matt conducted with the study participants themselves. Rather than describing a direct correlation between their mindfulness practice and increased performance, the leaders talked about increased self-awareness that led them to change certain behaviors. Those behaviors tracked with those Dan describes in the Emotional and Social Competency Inventory (ESCI), an established rubric for gauging emotional intelligence. It is through improvement in competencies related to emotional intelligence, in fact, that mindfulness makes executives more effective leaders.

In Sean’s case, his mindfulness practice made him more aware of his own high levels of anxiety, and how that tended to impair his thinking. He realized that he had harshly high standards for himself at work, and held everyone else to these same rigid, perfectionistic expectations — for instance, that people, including himself, should be able to endure extreme workplace demands. By becoming aware of these tendencies, he also saw that while his workaholic ethic had gotten him his position, as a leadership strategy it no longer worked for him. Because it was well-nigh impossible for anyone to meet his unrealistic performance expectations — and he would berate them when they didn’t — there was a quiet rebellion brewing on his team and progress was at a standstill. With this understanding, he was able to identify two competencies where he could improve: self-awareness and self-management.

As a result, he adjusted his expectations to be more realistic, and sought his team’s input in setting their goals. These shifts led him to improve in other emotional competence areas as well. Sean began to listen attentively to his team members rather than just dictating what to do — ratcheting up his empathy. He adopted a more positive view of his direct reports and their abilities to reach targets, seeing them as allies rather than problems, an upgrade of the positivity in his outlook. He built trust by speaking of his own fears and vulnerabilities more openly, and spoke from his heart more, which inspired his team. We’ve seen in past research that improvement in these competency areas — achievement, conflict management, empathy, positive outlook, and inspiration — improve a leader’s effectiveness, and Sean’s case bore that out.

The exercise of mindfulness started Sean down the path of improvement as a leader; it allowed him to see where he needed to improve and allowed him to become self-aware enough to modify his actions. But the improvements themselves were in the realm of emotional intelligence.

We believe that by focusing on mindfulness-as-corporate-fad, leaders run the risk of missing other opportunities to develop their critical emotional skills. Instead, executives would be better served by deliberately assessing and improving their full range of emotional intelligence capabilities. Some of that work may well involve mindfulness training and practice, but it can also include formal EQ assessment and coaching. Other tools and approaches include role-playing, modeling other leaders you admire, and rehearsing in your mind how you might handle emotional situations differently. By understanding that the mechanism behind mindfulness is the improvement of broader emotional intelligence competencies, leaders can more intentionally work on all of the areas that will have the strongest impact on their leadership.

Original article in HBR by Daniel Goleman and Matthew Lippincott here.

From Burnout to Superstar: Mindfulness at Work for Next Level Leaders

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” – Viktor Frankl

Have you ever sat in a meeting, feeling like you might be called out as a fraud at any moment? Have you ever stared at a computer screen, procrastinating yet again, so afraid that your work won’t be perfect that you’re unable to even begin? If so, you’re in good company. The vast majority of elite leaders that I’ve coached in top-tier organizations have had these same anxieties at some point. Ironically, the more gifted the leader, the more paralyzing their fears can be. I believe that it is often the underlying fear of failure that drives many of the top performers to push themselves as hard as they do to achieve. They are rewarded early in their careers for their efforts, however, over the long run, these same tendencies can lead to burnout and even self-sabotage. Of all the cutting edge modern leadership research available, it turns out that the solution lies in the ancient wisdom of mindfulness practices.

Mindfulness is defined as “the practice of maintaining a nonjudgmental state of heightened or complete awareness of ones thoughts, emotions, or experiences in a moment-to-moment basis; a state of awareness,” according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Research shows that these mindfulness practices can decrease stress, anxiety and depression, while increasing positive emotions and vitality, all of which leads to enhanced performance.

Almost any activity can have a meditative effect, if done with intention and presence. Some of more common mindful activities include distance swimming, running, walking, surfing, being in nature, yoga, singing, dancing, painting, playing an instrument, or simply sitting and focusing on your breath.

Meditation and mindfulness is the secret super power of next-level leaders, allowing them to harness the gifts inherent in their drive to perform, while maintain the ability to stay calm and present, and to respond vs. react in any situation.

Original Article by Lindsay Sukornyk and Huffington Post here.

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