INSIDE THIS ISSUEGrow Team Leadership ................ 2

Assess Leadership Culture .......... 2

Trends Drive Team Growth ........... 3

Build a Coaching Culture ............. 3

Evolve Practice of Leadership ...... 4

POINTS OF INTEREST “Collaboration is the process that creates an ecosystem; greed destroys it.”

“The work is to change the conversation.”

“Companies with a strong coaching culture show higher employee engagement and revenue than their industry peer group.”

“Performance of an organization depends highly on the level of consciousness of its leadership.”

“What are your best collaborative experiences?”Asking this question, I frequently hear sports or performing arts stories. Sometimes I hear of teams winning in the market, or groups facilitating growth and transformation. Most often the stories are from the past. Today, many teams and groups are overwhelmed reacting to problems. Stuck in a state of reactivity, they’re unable to develop the competencies needed to create better outcomes.

80% of work today is done through teams. Effective teams, groups and organizations have a shared understanding of interdependence and collaboration, and consciously develop their capacity to create better outcomes.

Collaboration is the process that creates an ecosystem; greed destroys it. – Margaret J Wheatley.

One of my stories is from HP. We’d created a new printer category, and were redefining how they were connected and used in offices. A strong competitor emerged as Compaq entered the market. We were challenged to win the hearts and minds of network administrators and value-added resellers who defined and implemented office networks using primarily Compaq servers.

The urgent competitive threat helped us focus on what was critical for our customers. Collaboration across boundaries was facilitated through cross-functional teams. Hard work and openness to learning generated a sense of camaraderie and flow. Over two years we created new products, services, channel partnerships and software solutions. Shortly thereafter, Compaq exited the printer market (for more reasons than what we had accomplished).

The most powerful force in any organization, the one others emulate and count on, is the executive team. Additional teams guide and facilitate the core delivery of what organizations provide. The capacity to survive and thrive is dependent upon the effectiveness of these teams. Which teams are most important to your organization? How effectively are they operating right now? What is being done to help them improve?

Today’s Context requires Leadership Growth

What once was an operating environment of relative stability, certainty, simplicity and clarity has been replaced by situations full of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. This change in context is transforming the nature of power in organizations and societies.

Power becomes entrenched as a result of barriers that shield incumbents from rivals. … Over the course of the last three decades, however, barriers to power have weakened at a very fast pace. They are now more easily undermined, overwhelmed, and circumvented. – Moisés Naím, The End of Power (2013).

Traditional operating models with bosses, authority and hierarchy are crumbling. To lead effectively in this more complex environment, requires developing greater capacities in how we make sense of and act in the world around us. continued on page 2

Cultivating Leadership that WorksEvidence-Based Methods to Accelerate Organizational Effectiveness

August 15, 2017 Volume 1, Issue 2

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“The work is to change the conversation - or more precisely to have a conversation that we have not had before, one that has the power to create something new.”

Start by Assessing Team Leadership Culture

By assessing team leadership culture first, a common ground for development is established for all team members. The Leadership Culture Survey™ enables organizations to:

Assess actual and desired team leadership cultures, compared to a normative data base.

Measure the amount of energy being put into creative behaviors that accelerate outcomes vs. behaviors that hold teams back.

Identify the degree of balance between achievement and relationship competencies. Set the stage for team and individual growth and development.

By knowing where we are and where we want to be, we generate creative energy to close the gap.

Today’s Context requires Leadership Growth (continued)

We spend so much time as individuals and leaders trying to undo things in ordertofixthemandcreatebetteralternatives.…Wechangetheplayers, wefocusonspecificbehaviors,wecreatenewincentivesystemsforthe same people. All for naught. The hard-to-accept news about emergence is that once a culture or pattern of response has emerged, you can’t work backwards. – Margaret J. Wheatley, Who Do We Choose to Be? (2017).

Acting out of reactive tendencies limits us to attempting to return to a prior status quo. We urgently need to develop creative competencies in our leaders and teams to generate better outcomes. Robert Kegan’s Stages of Development framework provides a roadmap to leverage. We continue to develop as adults, if we choose to, through a series of sequential stages that shift the way we make sense of ourselves and the world around us. As we transform our meaning-making, we handle greater complexity with more creativity, collaboration and ease.

The future of our organizations and communities depends on developing leaders’ capacity to compassionately and gracefully handle increasing complex, emerging situations. We need to develop leaders who operate with presence and catalyze collective leadership effectiveness in teams, organizations, and our communities.

Theabilitytodevelopleaderscapableofnavigatinganincreasinglycomplex world is a strategic priority and a competitive advantage. – The Leadership Circle.

Grow Team Leadership EffectivenessSteps to build a culture of team leadership effectiveness are:

Clarify values, intentions, and principles for behavior that establish a common identity. Use a shared language of leadership that is known by all. Review progress and facilitate ongoing learning. Commit to a long-term, systemic process of development.

If we have any desire to create an alternative future, it is only going to happen through a shift in language. If we want a change in culture,forexample,theworkisto change the conversation – or, more precisely, to have a

conversation that we have not had before, one that has the power to create something new in the world. – Peter Block

Using a proven model and methodology aligned with stages of adult development, builds the use of shared language, and facilitates new actions for individual and team effectiveness.

I offer The Leadership Circle®’s model and methodology as it connects creative leadership competencies with underlying and motivating habits of thought that reveal individual and team operating effectiveness, and facilitates growth and development.

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Four Trends Drive Team Leadership Growth

Four trends are driving the shift from individual to collective team leadership:

Increasing interdependence and complexity. Customer experience being the new competitive differentiation. Ongoing specialization in the workforce. Workforce demographic transitions.

The market environment is increasingly interdependent and complex, making deterministic tops-down approaches ineffective. The continuous emergence of new factors to integrate and creatively work in real time, requires adaptable core leadership principles shared across teams in organizations.

Quality, availability and price are no longer sufficient to differentiate products and services. With so many providers to consider, buying decisions are based on the best experience. Any significant problem can go viral. Experiences are delivered in the moment by adaptable people, teams and systems.

Specialization creates experts with more knowledge in smaller niches. Fewer people grasp the whole system. Leadership across areas of expertise is crucial to deliver a good experience. Organizations depend on teams of experts. When systems aren’t enough, access to people to make it right is essential.

Boomers retiring and Millennial growth in the workforce requires a shift in leadership knowledge and approach. Millennials grew up in activities with coaches and teachers helping them learn and grow. Developing multi-generational teams that coach each other to raise collective performance is a growing challenge and opportunity.

How are these trends impacting your organization?

Build a Coaching Culture

Recent studies across high performing companies with a strong coaching culture show higher employee engagement and revenue above their industry peer group. Leaders create a Coaching Culture when they:

Commit to a Growth Mindset. Have experience being coached themselves. Develop coaching skills as a leadership competency with their leaders. Use coaching with their leaders and leadership team. Establish Internal Coaches and Facilitators to develop people and teams across the organization. Invest in an ongoing Coaching Program structure and process.

Organizations that develop a coaching culture can expect:

Teams to be more productive. Staff engagement increases, leading to higher productivity. Relationships and positivity improve. Leadership development accelerates.

Leaders who develop their coaching skills improve their ability to:

1. Listen to understand.2. Improve communication and collaboration.3. Give feedback.4. Identify and resolve conflict.5. Develop better relationships with their teams.6. Lead collaborative, accountable teams.7. Empower others through solutions focus and accountability conversations.

How might you accelerate your teams’ development with coaching?

“Companies with a strong coaching culture show higher employee engagement and revenue.”

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Cultivating Leadership that Works

Evolve the Conscious Practice of Leadership

Cultivating Leadership is a choice we all have available to us. It is a journey of continually developing what is needed to agilely respond to the complexity of the environment we face. It requires curiosity and a commitment to learning and growth for ourselves and those around us.

Our collective challenge is to evolve the conscious practice of Leadership to bring new generations into leadership positions at a sufficient stage of development to effectively deal with today’s situations. Research by The Leadership Circle® and presented in Mastering Leadership (2016) concludes,

not only is Leadership Effectiveness highly related to Stage of Development, but business performance is strongly correlated to Leadership Effectiveness. Taken together, these two studies strongly suggest that the performance of an organization depends highly on the level of consciousness of its leadership.

Their data shows that, nearly 75% of managers operate out of a Reactive Mind, with only 20% operating at a Creative level or higher. Their observation is that

ReactiveMindisoutmatchedbythecomplexitiesoforganizationallifetoday.Thelevelofcomplexityleadersface daily is more suited to Creative Mind or higher. Most of us are being challenged daily to evolve to a higher order of mind. This developmental shift from Reactive to Creative, should be seen as a strategic imperative in any organization that wants to thrive long-term.

The capacity of our organizations and communities to survive and thrive depends upon making the choice, and investments necessary, to evolve our conscious practice of leadership.

AboutFor over 30 years Tom has been assisting executives and professionals create a better future. He partners with leaders to help them make sense of their situations, create plans, resolve barriers holding them back, and take action to pursue the outcomes they want to achieve.

Tom is the Founder of Generative Leadership Group, LLC, a Senior Executive Coach with the Goodstone Group, and a practitioner of The Leadership Circle®. As a partner in Leaders Who Coach LLC, he develops leaders coaching skills, and helps build coaching cultures in organizations.

He is an experienced leadership team facilitator and coach. Over a twenty-eight year career at Hewlett Packard, he led strategic change initiatives in marketing, business development, supply chain, and mergers and acquisitions. He grew up working on his family’s avocado and lemon ranch.

Tom earned his BA and a MS in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University. He holds an ACC credential with the International Coaching Federation. He serves on the Professional Coaching Association of Idaho Board, and the Idaho Academy of Leadership for Lawyers Committee.

Generative Leadership GroupGenerative Leadership Group offers a systemic and thoughtful approach to building capabilities and competence within teams to confidently lead in the face of uncertainty and complexity. Based in Boise, I collaborate with industry leaders to offer solutions to clients in greater scale as needed.

For more information, or to explore how Generative Leadership Group can help you achieve your goals, contact us at 208.274.3505, or online at www.GrowLeadershipToday.com.

I welcome hearing your thoughts and suggestions regarding the content presented here. - Tom Hardison

Tom Hardison

Generative Leadership Group, LLC

732 S Gray Eagle WayBoise, Idaho 83712

208-274-3505GrowLeadershipToday.com

tom@genleadgrp.com

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