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Heather Plettwww.heatherplett.com
LEADwith your paint clothes on
changing paradigms &inviting more creativity, chaos, courage,
authenticity, curiosity, contemplation, and doodling into our leadership
how
to
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction - Page 3
#1 Get Messy! Embrace the Chaos - Page 9
#2 Take Risks & Embrace Fear - Page 14
#3 Model Creativity & Foster it in Others - Page 20
#4 Don’t just THINK outside the Box - JUMP out of it! - Page 26
#5 Be Patient, Waiting Observantly - Page 31
#6 Pause & Reflect - Page 37
#7 Doodle your way to Success - Page 41
#8 Bring your Curiosity - Page 44
#9 Allow for Mistakes and Be Prepared for Failure - Page 48
#10 Get out of your Left Brain and into your Right - Page 53
#11 Bring your Passion & Vulnerability - Page 58
#12 Kill a Few Sacred Cows - Page 64
#13 Be a Storyteller & Storycatcher - Page 68
#14 Have FUN! - Page 75
References - Page 78
About the Author - Page 79
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INTRODUCTIONHow to Lead with your Paint Clothes on
* * * * It’s time for a new paradigm.
It’s time for fresh perspectives and new ways of thinking.
It’s time for LEADERS to start thinking more like ARTISTS.
* * * * The language of art is not very familiar or comfortable in the land of office cubicles and management meetings. Even in churches and community centres, where it might be more expected, it feels like a foreign tongue. It’s not that we don’t like art - it’s just that we don’t speak the language of art in places where there are more “serious” matters to discuss.
Even though the industrial revolution was 300 years ago, our corporate culture is still shaped largely by an industrial paradigm. Productivity rather than creativity is the highest good. Think about it... “total quality management” might be great for a factory where you’re counting widgets, but does it really work in a modern business context where you’re more likely to be exchanging ideas than manufacturing widgets?
* * * *“Language creates our reality, and the language of most
organizations originated in the Industrial Revolution. So we are still being informed through language that was
most relevant to a world that existed 300 years ago. There is no language for being stewards of imagination.”
- John Huss (speaking to Michael Jones in “Artful Leadership”.)* * * *
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If it’s not the industrial revolution shaping our language and culture, then it’s the language of sports or warfare. We’re taught to compete, be strategic, and focus on peak performance. We serve as officers, and work in teams. Those are the metaphors and framing narratives we’ve adopted, and we rarely question how our metaphors of choice might impact our culture.
Think about it - how often have you used these words in your business transactions?
Those are largely competitive words, given meaning by their connection to sports and warfare. Sometimes they’re the right words to get the job done, but not nearly as often as they’re used. Most of the time, they just serve to get us stuck in old paradigms.
Competition, productivity, peak performance - those are the paradigms that, when unchallenged and not tempered by other ways of seeing the world, allow us to accept greed, waste, discord, and destruction. When we look at things like global poverty, power imbalances, climate change, and the breakdown of public discourse in our political arenas, it’s not hard to see that we need new paradigms - ones that will lead us instead into collaboration, unity, community, healing, regeneration, and even sacrifice for the common good (and not just sacrifice for the people on the same team as me).
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Whenever I’m learning something new, or need new ideas to re-energize me in something I’ve done for a long time, the first place I visit is the bookstore. I have spent many hours standing in front of the leadership section in bookstores across Canada and in the United States. Hoping against hope, each time I’ve visited I’ve imagined myself finding just the right book to help me navigate the complex journey of leadership. Surely one of them would fit my leadership style and help me grow as a leader (and help grow my influence in the areas I feel called).
I bought many of those books I stared at, read everything I bought, and always I was left feeling at least somewhat dissatisfied. Why did I feel so much like a foreigner in the land of leadership? Why did it always feel like those books were speaking a dialect I wasn’t familiar with? I was pretty sure I was doing a reasonably good job at leadership (and sometimes I even shone), and yet every time I’d stand and stare at all of those leadership books, I felt like an outsider.
And then one day, staring at all of those books, I knew what was wrong. These books weren’t written for or about leaders like me. They were written by leaders whose paradigms fit in that word cloud above - the paradigms that we have learned to accept blindly without challenging. They were written for people who are comfortable with (or have learned to adapt to) the narrative of sports, warfare, and the industrial revolution.
I was indeed an outsider - I was the artist (or the glee club member, perhaps), trying to fit in with the sports team.
How art classes changed my leadership paradigm
A few years ago, when I was a busy national director for a non-profit organization, I found myself in one of those stuck places. None of the old patterns of leadership were working anymore, and no books or workshops were filling the gap for me. I’d immersed myself and my team in team-building exercises, coaching practices, and strategic planning sessions, and yet something was clearly missing. We were not functioning nearly as well as I knew we could.
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Around the same time, I started taking art classes. Before that, although I’d always been a fairly creative person, I’d suffered from an irrational fear of paint tubes. I’d stood many times in front of racks of paints, brushes and canvases in many art supply stores, and yet I’d always gone home empty-handed. Quite frankly, I was scared and insecure. I didn’t know which paint to use with which brushes. I wasn’t sure what would happen if I used the wrong paint on the wrong canvas. Worst of all, I didn’t know how to find out without making a fool of myself in front of the knowledgeable artists who work in art supply stores to feed their art habits.
Now, lest you marvel at my ridiculous fear, let me just assure you that I’m not a particularly fearful person. I went sky-diving for my 40th birthday, and I’ve traveled to some of the most dangerous places in the world. And yet, art supplies stressed me out. (Funny, isn’t it, how the little things can trump the big things?)
Finally, I decided to make “fearless” my word for the year, and the first thing I did was tackle my fear of paint tubes. I signed up for an art class, and though I went through some stress when the supply list wasn’t very specific and I bought the wrong things, I survived the experience relatively unscathed.
Not only did I conquer my fear, but I fell in love with art. I fell in love with my paint tubes (and I have lots of them by now), my brushes, my failed attempts, and my successes. I fell in love with the messiness, the risk-taking, the ambiguity of not knowing what would emerge, the delight in watching something new take shape, and the whole delightful, contemplative process.
It might sound strange, but I fell deeply and passionately in love with my paint apron. Whenever I wear it, I look at the world differently. Whenever I wear it, I am more open to new things emerging. I dare to get messy. I dive into the process. I let go of the results, and I just create.
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I didn’t see it coming, but my new-found love of art-making changed my leadership journey. I brought my creativity and “paint clothes attitude” more fully into the way I lead, and things shifted. I still felt like a stranger in a strange land, but now I started seeing myself more as an explorer in that land, navigating my way to wonderful new possibilities. Suddenly I could see that those old paradigms that I’d tried to fit into weren’t meant for me and that was okay.
And then, when I realized it was okay for ME to be a different kind of leader, it started to dawn on me that there were other people feeling just as disenfranchised as me who were looking for a new paradigm too.
Now, a few years later, that same art practice has helped me jump into the world of self-employment (and a new form of leadership that is less about position and more about influence) with boldness, messiness, creativity, and a new paradigm. And I want to take you on that journey with me. Perhaps this new paradigm is what you’re seeking too.
Learning to lead with my paint clothes on
As I learned more and more about art, and recognized how it had changed me, it occurred to me that we as leaders and influencers in business, government, community, family, and non-profit have a lot to learn from artists.
* * * *“The development of the
imagination represents the next frontier in leadership
development.”- Michael Jones
* * * *
Some of the questions I’ve asked myself lately are: “What if leaders learn to think more like artists? What if artists had more influence in the world of business, government, and non-profit? How might the language of art change the culture of leadership?”
I might not figure out the answers to those questions in my lifetime, but I can explore what it means to think more like an artist and “Lead with our paint clothes on”.
* * * *
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Before you get started, here are some things you should know:
• A leader is not merely someone who has a formal leadership position. A leader is anyone who has influence and/or is willing to step forward to impact positive change, whether at the board room table, the kitchen table, or in the middle of the woods where there is no table at all.
• In each section, the last page includes both personal exercises and group exercises that you can do with the people you lead or influence (or belong in community with). In order to get the most out of this experience, I highly encourage you to work through at least the personal exercises. I have allowed space on the page, but you may also want to write some of the longer answers in your journal.
• Speaking of a journal, I believe that is one of your most valuable travel companions as you travel this journey of learning to “lead with your paint clothes on”. Keep a journal close by so that you can jot down notes, write about things you’re wrestling with, or simply do a page of doodling (you’ll find out later why that is valuable). As I tell my students when I teach “Don’t assume that the only person in the room with wisdom worth writing down is the teacher. When you think of something interesting or noteworthy, add it to your notes. Your own wisdom is worth remembering too.” I have two journals - one that I write in and one that I use as an art journal. You can combine the two, or keep them separate - your choice.
• Throughout this book, you will find a variety of quotes that I have gathered in my own learning journey. Most of the quotes come from the books and blogs that are listed in the reference section on the last page. I have read all of those books (and visit the blogs regularly) and would highly recommend every one of them.
• In the writing of this, I’ve found that I often have to resist the use of the words “team” or “teamwork”. They are so embedded in my vocabulary, they show up whether I want them to or not. If we’re going to offer a new paradigm that steps away from competitive sports and warfare related language, then we need a new way to talk about teams. It’s not that teams aren’t valuable, it’s just that teams are largely for the purpose of competition rather than collaboration. For that reason, I speak of “communities” rather than “teams”.
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SECTION #1 GET MESSY! EMBRACE THE CHAOS!
Comfortable with the mess
Paint clothes are not meant to be pristine and polished. Paint clothes get dirty. In the world of art, daring to get dirty leads to big, bold, beautiful art - art that shakes us up and makes a statement. Art studios are messy, creative places, with paint spatters all over the floor, stacks of paints and brushes on every bare surface, and ideas and inspiration everywhere you look.
But who wants dirty when you’re running a business or trying to lead a team?
“Messy” is not a state that seems particularly attractive when you’re a leader. We all put a lot of effort into maintaining order and structure. We want our org. charts to have neat little boxes, our action plans to have clear objectives and goals, and our financial data to stay black and not to have too many messy dips or unpredictable curves. (Don’t get me wrong - there is value in all of those things, but if we let them restrict us, they become our prison.) There is too much uncertainty in “messy” and so we learn to avoid it like the plague. We fill our calendars with orderly meetings, we jam our plans into neat little boxes, and we try to wrangle creativity into restrictive strategic plans.
* * * *“Many of us - parents and teachers and CEOs - are deeply devoted to eliminating all remnants of chaos from the world. We want to organize
and orchestrate things so thoroughly that messiness will never bubble up around us and threaten to overwhelm us
(for “messiness” read dissent, innovation, challenge, and change). In families and churches and corporations, this shadow is projected
as rigidity of rules and procedures, creating an ethos that is imprisoning rather than empowering.”
- Parker Palmer
* * * *
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But you can’t impact change if you never embrace the chaos. You’ll get stuck in old patterns that will eventually break down or, at the very least, not produce any better returns on investment than what you’ve seen in the past.
Creativity and growth do not happen along linear, orderly paths. You can’t box creativity into an org. chart or template.
Chaos is an important part of the process. Chaos is where creative ideas are born. It’s what gives birth to ingenuity and new paradigms. We’ve all heard the saying “necessity is the mother of invention”. I would add that “chaos is the mother of invention.” And perhaps “lack of control” could join chaos in that role.
Chaos feels uncomfortable. There’s no solid ground to stand on. There’s nothing familiar to rely on. But chaos is absolutely necessary, and the sooner you can learn to embrace it, the sooner you will welcome the transformation.
Like the caterpillar who has to give up everything familiar, surrender itself to the cocoon, and deconstruct into a gooey messy chrysalis before it can emerge as a butterfly, you as a leader have to be willing to lead your people off the cliff of the familiar and enter into the chaos of un-knowing before you can emerge as a stronger, more beautiful organization.
What the Change Curve teaches us about Chaos
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I remember when I first saw the above change curve. I was in the middle of a life transition of some sort or another and it was a really uncomfortable place to be. I kept wondering why I was struggling so much to adopt the change when I normally pride myself in being an adaptable person. When someone showed me the change curve, it felt like they’d lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. “Oh - you mean I’m SUPPOSED to feel like this? You mean it’s NORMAL to go through temporary excitement about the potential for change, and then suddenly find yourself plunged into the depths of resistance, followed by a whole lot of up and down chaos? What a relief! I’m not crazy!”
Fortunately, the chaos period is not the end of the road and it doesn’t last forever. In the grand scheme of things, in fact, it’s just one small period in the whole process. Once you’ve gone through it, you’ll have found the bottom and the only place to go from there is up.
Of course, it’s important to remember that graphs like this don’t tell the whole story. Each story is unique and varies in its own way from the graph. Sometimes, just when you think you’ve come out of the chaos, you find you have to go even deeper than you anticipated. If that happens, take a deep breath and hang on for the ride. Reassure those that you lead that this won’t last forever, find ways of supporting each other, and keep going. Soon, the shift will come.
* * * * “When a leader fears chaos so deeply as to try to eliminate it,
the shadows of death will fall across everything that leader approaches - for the ultimate answer to all of life’s messiness is death.”
- Parker Palmer
“Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.”
- Edgar Degas
* * * *
Ask yourself and the people you lead “What are the old patterns that we’re stuck in? What changes need to be adopted in order to move out of those stuck places? What chaos will emerge if we attempt to make that change? How can we support each other through the chaos without loosing good team members and feeling completely lost?”
Don’t fear the chaos. Embrace it. Learn from it. Let it serve as your teacher. Remember that it is necessary and helpful if positive things are to emerge.
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* * * * “Bill Gates once pointed out that the reason why kids get the hang of computers more quickly than
adults do is that kids can tolerate confusion better. After all,
everything is new and confusing when you're a kid. Adults, on the other hand, often prefer to avoid
the discomfort that goes with learning something
new.”- Barbara Winter
* * * *
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Exercises for Section #1:
Personal exercise in embracing the chaos:
I feel like the ground has shifted beneath my feet when...
It helps me survive chaos when I...
I am most hopeful when...
Group exercise in embracing the chaos:
Together with the team you lead (or influence), hold a group art-making session where you all don paint clothes and get messy. Encourage the group to paint intuitively, not focusing on the result, but enjoying the process. Talk about how this process of letting the painting emerge without directing it too carefully is reflective of times when you are going through organizational change, unsure of what the final outcome will be.
* * * *
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SECTION #2 TAKE RISKS & EMBRACE FEAR
When you have to give up control
Stepping off the precipice of solid, familiar ground and into the chaos of uncertainty and change brings up a lot of fear for the people you are leading, and possibly even more so for you as their leader. (Admit it - even as a leader, you’re allowed to have fears - it comes with the territory.) Leaders are supposed to be in control. You can’t control chaos. You can adapt to it and learn to navigate through it without falling apart, but you can’t control it. Losing control is a scary thing.
* * * *“The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.”
- Julia Cameron
* * * *
Every artist has to learn difficult and frightening lessons in surrender. Every leader has to learn those same lessons if they want to be creative and think like an artist.
It’s much easier to follow the status quo - “the way things have always been done” - than to surrender to the unknown. “Let’s create a new policy that will help us figure out how to handle this situation and respond to it in exactly the same way every time it comes up.” Have you heard those words before? I have. Policies can serve valuable purposes, but they can also put straight-jackets on creative people.
Fear is the catalyst for a lot of policies, a lot of rules, and a lot of traditions. It’s easier to avoid fear if we can at least pretend we have some certainty about what to expect. It’s human nature to search for patterns and to try to mold the world to fit those patterns. We want predictable, safe, and consistent.
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The safe road may be the easiest road, but if you want growth, if you want new results that you haven’t seen before, if you want exciting ideas for new products and services to emerge, then the safe road is not for you.
Last summer, at the end of a women’s canoe trip, we found ourselves at the foot of an impossible-looking portage. In order to get to the next lake and (eventually) back to our vehicles, we would have to carry our heavy canoes and camping gear up a nearly vertical incline, up a muddy, rocky, narrow path through the trees. From where we stood, it looked treacherous and impassable.
It was getting late, and though we’d tried to find the easier path, we’d been unsuccessful. We had little choice if we wanted to make it out of the wilderness before dark.
Our intrepid team of women did what we had to do - we picked up our first load, and headed up the path. It was one of the hardest things any of us has ever done, but inch by inch, we succeeded. And then we went back for the second load and did it over again. The air was full of hoots and hollers at the end of the path when the last load made it safely back into the canoes in the next lake. We celebrated by diving into the pristine lake to clean the mud and sweat from our skin and soothe our aching muscles.
That canoe trip taught each of us women that we are more powerful than we’d thought we were. That’s the beauty of challenging your fear and choosing the “road less traveled” instead of the easy path.
A leader with paint clothes on shakes a loaded paintbrush at fear, and then begins to paint. Stepping into the fear is one of the only ways to get past it. You can’t avoid fear all together, but you can learn to dance with it, embrace it, and let it lead you into brave new worlds. And you can learn to help the people you lead do the same.
* * * * “Openness doesn’t come from resisting our fears
but from getting to know them well.”- Pema Chodron
* * * *
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“The things we fear most in organizations—fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances—are the primary sources of creativity."
— Margaret J. Wheatley
* * * *Embracing fear
No explorer ever landed in new worlds without learning to embrace fear (and learning to portage through many more difficult trails than the one I conquered). No inventor ever did anything innovative without first challenging the fear of making a mistake or looking foolish. Fear is often the first indicator that we are onto something unique and possibly earth-changing. Fear points us toward the “road less taken” and that’s the road that leads to innovation, exploration, discovery and invention.
Do you want innovation and new worlds, or do you want the status quo? Do you want creativity and edginess or do you want policies and procedures? You decide.
We cannot escape fear. We can only transform it into a companion that accompanies us on all our exciting adventures.
As a leader, one of our most important tasks is to serve as a model for those we lead. If we are letting fear restrict us from discovering new lands, the people we lead will be quick to learn from that model, and they too will let fear restrict them.
If, on the other hand, we model courage and we embrace fear - despite how vulnerable it makes us feel - then the people we lead or influence will be more likely to follow in our footsteps. On our canoe trip, I clearly remember the two women who led our group - with resolve, they picked up the first (and heaviest) canoe and headed up the path. Inspired by them, the rest of us followed.
A leader without courage is no leader at all.
Courage doesn’t mean you have no fear or that you do an exceptional job of hiding your fear from those you lead. Courage simply means that you acknowledge the fear and then step forward into the unknown.
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On that canoe trip, our leaders were as reluctant as the rest of us (and tried the hardest to find the easier path), but after we’d all acknowledged the fact that we had no clue how we would make it to the top of the pass with all that we needed to carry, they simple got up and started moving. That’s courage.
* * * *"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas.
I'm frightened of the old ones." - John Cage
* * * *Do it! Embrace fear!
First, turn a mindful eye on your fear. What does it feel like? Where do you feel it? In your throat? Your stomach? Your chest?
Next, try to decipher what that feeling is trying to tell you. Is it trying to protect you from getting hurt? Is it signaling something bigger than you’ve ever done before?
Just what are you afraid of? Failing? Losing face? Getting hurt? Not being able to pick yourself up again if it doesn’t work out? Looking like you’re showing off if you succeed? Having people tell you you’re becoming “too big for your britches”?
Now, go out there and try it. Start small - take an art class, sign up for karate lessons, ask for a raise - just do something that will help you take one step in the direction of your dreams.
Once you’ve done that, try it with your team. Lead them through some exercise that’s just slightly outside of their comfort zone. Offer them a safe and supportive environment for challenging their fears.
* * * *“Take a risk a day - one small or bold stroke that will
make you feel great once you have done it.”- Susan Jeffers
* * * *
A word of caution
Although I have included the above quote, I would suggest one word of caution though. You don’t ALWAYS have to be fearless. You don’t ALWAYS have to challenge the status quo. Sometimes the fear is valid and you can draw back from the risk and
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wait until it seems more wise to move forward. If you push yourself and others too hard and you might find the breaking point.
I used to teach leadership workshops on “The Leadership Challenge” by Kouzes and Posner, and I highly recommend their work, but there was one place where I found myself disagreeing with them every time I offered the workshop. They suggested challenging your staff to tackle something new and scary every week. I don’t believe that’s wise. Sometimes, it’s okay to accept the status quo for awhile.
Sometimes you have to rest and regenerate before you’re ready to step forward in courage again. On that canoe trip, for example, we were much more prepared to tackle the treacherous path because the day before had been a day of relaxing, swimming, and wandering on the island where we’d camped. Sometimes it’s better to retreat than to advance, and ALWAYS it’s better to advance when you’ve had sufficient retreat to prepare you for the advance. (More on that later.)
That being said, if we ALWAYS retreat instead of advance, we’re letting fear keep us in very small lives.
* * * *
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Exercises for Section #2
Personal exercises in challenging fear:
When I am fearful I...
The things I am most fearful of are...
The last time I challenged fear was...
I demonstrate courage when I....
Group exercise in challenging fear:
Each person in the group sits facing a partner. One person will be the inquisitor and one will be the respondent. The inquisitor asks the question “What are you afraid of?” Once the respondent has answered the question, the inquisitor says “Thank you. What are you afraid of?” Keep going for about 10 minutes, then switch. Often what emerges after a few minutes of asking the questions is an indicator of the real fear. This may be the place you then have to begin. What is that fear pointing you toward?
* * * *
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SECTION #3 MODEL CREATIVITY & FOSTER IT
IN OTHERS
A model wearing a paint apron
Once you’ve learned to embrace fear (at least a little bit more than you did yesterday - these things don’t happen overnight) and you’ve taken one tiny step over the precipice and into the fear, you’ll be ready to encourage more creativity in those you lead. Once they get used to you leading with your paint clothes on, they’ll be brave enough to put their own paint clothes on too.
When I first got my paint apron, my daughter Maddy’s eyes lit up. (She was 7 at the time.) Seeing mom ready to create was just the invitation she needed to dive in and create too. The first thing she asked was “Mom, can I decorate your paint apron?” And so she did - painted my name and a happy face on the front of it.
Both Maddy and I had fun that day, and we’ve been having fun together ever since. She now has her own paint apron and we do lots of creative projects together. Most recently, we each created big wall murals in the little hallway leading to my basement studio/office. I painted my “tree of hope” with a list of things I want to do when I am more fearless, and she painted her favourite character from Harry Potter - her own reminder of how to be more fearless. (It’s Ginny Weasley, by the way - Harry’s love interest. Hence the red hair.)
Just as my paint apron and my creative choices in life influence my daughter and inspire her to be more creative and more courageous, your creativity and paint-clothes attitude will inspire the people you lead (or parent). Let them see you take risks, embrace fear, and get comfortable in the chaos. Let them see you challenge the status quo and try new things that have never been done before. Before long, you’ll all be thinking a little more creatively.
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A leader unafraid of being outshone
Some leaders I’ve known (and probably some you’ve known too) have been threatened by people who show more potential and creativity than they believe they have themselves. Some even get in the way of their staff’s creativity and pour cold water on their efforts at innovation. “That will never work” is the fastest way to kill enthusiasm and make sure everyone gets stuck in old paradigms. That is not effective leadership. That is letting your fear and insecurity limit the potential of both yourself as a leader and the people you lead.
* * * *“Imagination is more important
than knowledge." - Albert Einstein
* * * *As Albert Einstein suggests, the imagination of your staff is more valuable than their knowledge. Knowledge might get you good test scores in school, and it might help maintain the status quo, but it won’t help you build a better lightbulb. To do that, you need imagination.
To foster imagination among those you lead, you have to create an environment where it’s safe to share it and safe to test new ideas.
Early in my leadership career, one of the greatest pieces of wisdom a mentor offered me was this: “Lead with the assumption and hope that those you lead will outshine you some day.” I haven’t always been able to live that way (occasionally I give in to the very human temptation to want to outshine the people I lead and prove myself valuable), but I’ve tried. When I’ve succeeded, and when my staff have been allowed to shine in even brighter ways than I have shone, we have all benefited.
* * * *“Is it possible that by trying to fit people into our organizational structures
we have taken unfinished and fluid human beings, capable of innovation and improvisation, and changed them into something rigid and fixed?”
- John Huss
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Because we don’t want robots
In the era of the industrial revolution, managers wanted compliant people who knew how to pump out widgets, didn’t ask too many questions, and were loyal, methodical, and even robotic. If that’s the kind of staff you want, then I hope you’re working in a factory, because that’s one of the only places where it will serve the greater purpose. (I once saw an ad in the help wanted section of the newspaper, looking for someone willing to work in a “heads down environment”. Clearly that organization valued compliant workers.) In most environments, you want staff who are innovative and know how to take initiative. Sometimes those are the riskiest people to hire, but in the end, the risk is usually worth it.
Someone wearing paint clothes will be comfortable inviting creativity from people around her. There is humility in wearing your paint clothes (whether literally or figuratively) and letting it impact your attitude will help you to embrace whatever your staff has to bring to the table.
* * * *“The achievement of excellence can only occur if the
organization promotes a culture of creative dissatisfaction."
Lawrence Miller
* * * *Creating a safe environment for creativity to shine takes work. You have to learn to trust the people you lead and demonstrate that they can trust you. You also have to make sure they trust each other.
If there is anyone in the group who regularly pours cold water on other people’s ideas, that person has to be challenged to bring a more positive approach to staff meetings, or they need to find another place to work. Creativity doesn’t grow if there is no trust. One of my greatest mistakes in leadership was allowing negativity to fester too long and not challenging it before it managed to kill a lot of good ideas and energy.
Trust does not mean that there is no place for critique. If an idea needs to be improved, then only throwing positive feedback at it won’t serve anyone’s purpose. In the brainstorming period, people need to know that their feedback is valuable and that it is safe to offer it. But people often need to be taught to offer constructive feedback that doesn’t hamper creativity. And sometimes, even if an idea seems ill-advised, the person whose idea it was needs to be given enough leash to test it before it is assumed a failure.
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Dare to embrace creativity in your workplace.
Bring art supplies into your business meetings. Let people create when they are brainstorming or processing business decisions.
Hold a pumpkin-carving contest next Halloween or a tree-decorating contest at Christmas. Encourage spontaneous art-making when it emerges, whether or not it is connected to the work you’re paying people to do. Stretching their creativity is worthwhile in whatever form it takes.
Build an effective, vibrant community by encouraging people to try new things and not be afraid to fail.
* * * *“Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise.
All too often, when we say we want to be creative, we mean that we want to be able to be productive. Now, to be creative is to be productive
- but by cooperating with the creative process, not forcing it.”- Julia Cameron
* * * *
While I sit here writing about modeling creativity, one of my daughters (the 13 year old) is behind me at the table designing a shirt (with no pattern), and another (the 9 year old) is at the floor at my feet, creating a stuffed Voldemort (again with no pattern - just a fun idea in her head). As a mother (just another form of “leader”) I take great delight in their creativity and recognize it as a sign that I’ve been living up to my advice to model creativity and foster it in those we lead and influence. Many times they have witnessed me jumping into creative projects unsure of what the outcome will be but content to follow the muse and enjoy the process.
Every parent (and leader) knows that it takes effort and patience to put up with the mess of creativity, and to offer the right amount of encouragement and direction (and back off when necessary), but in the end, it is worth it. Last year, for example, my
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oldest daughter (the 15 year old) designed her own Junior High grad dress and it was stunning.
Some day, when my children outshine me (which they already do now and then - like that grad dress, for example), I’ll sit back and smile, knowing that I have done well.
* * * *
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Exercises for Section #3:
Personal exercises in modeling creativity:
I model a paint-clothes attitude among those I lead when I...
The last time I invited people into a creative act we...
I am going to try...
I like it when those who lead me model creativity by...
Group exercises in fostering creativity:
Lead a visioning exercise with your group. Bring old magazines, scissors, and large construction paper or poster board. Instruct everyone to flip through the magazines and cut out any image that jumps out at them. Tell them not to over-think the exercise, but simply to let their first instinct guide them to whatever appeals to them. Glue the pieces onto construction paper and (optional) add other elements with paint, markers, etc. After they’re completed, talk about what you see in your own collage and in other people’s. How does this help you see each individual vision and the collective vision of the group? What does this point you toward?
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SECTION #4DON’T JUST THINK OUTSIDE THE
BOX - JUMP OUT OF IT!
Embracing eccentricity
When an artist truly gives himself or herself over to the art form, he or she has to be prepared to be seen as eccentric. When making art that is interesting, authentic, and daring, an artist has to be prepared to do unexpected things, like painting giant cans of Campbell’s soup or clocks melting on trees. It’s not just thinking outside of the box, it’s being willing to jump OUT of that box at the risk of being made to look a fool.
* * * *“That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the
chief danger of our time."— John Stuart Mill
* * * *
Artists will tell you that making great art is always about surrendering to the muse and not about worrying what others will think. Once you start worrying about what others will think, you’ll only be able to produce the kind of watered down art that’s mass-produced for a Wal-mart crowd. You’ll be selling out to mass appeal, not seeking excellence.
Art often doesn’t make sense in anyone else’s mind but the artist’s (and sometimes not even there). Making that kind of art is a risky and vulnerable thing to do, especially since most of us have been programmed from an early age to believe that conformity is one of the highest goods. “But what if people will think I’m crazy?” must go through every great artist’s mind at least once. “What if I never sell a single piece of art because nobody ever gets it?”
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Van Gogh only sold one painting in his lifetime. The rest of the over 900 pieces that he painted were not sold or made famous until after his death. Sure people thought he was crazy, but what a legacy he left! If he hadn’t been willing to let people think he was eccentric, we wouldn’t remember his name. Do you want to make a mark or would you rather blend in?
* * * *“How willing are we to color outside the lines of the activity in which we are accomplished and secure? What would it be like to let our
creative energies run free like wild horses in new pastures?”- Thomas Ryan
* * * *
Letting go of self-consciousness
They say that the average adult draws at the same level as a nine-year-old, because that’s the age when we start feeling self-conscious and stop exploring the world of art. It’s also the stage where we stop taking our art to Mom or Dad to hang on the fridge. (I speak from experience - my nine-year-old still lets me hang her art, but my teenagers? Not so much.)
What does eccentricity have to do with leadership? Well, great leaders are those who are also willing to do radical things and challenge the status quo at the risk of being seen as eccentric. Leadership is not about being liked, it’s about inspiring people to action and positive change. People are not inspired by a leader who’s going to do things exactly as they’ve been done throughout history.
Think about the story of the emperor’s new clothes. True leadership in that story was not shown by the emperor who’d been duped into believing that he was clothed by a cunning tailor who knew how to run a good scam. True leadership was shown by the young boy who dared to risk ridicule by saying “but Mommy - he’s not wearing any clothes!”
As I think back on the remarkable leaders/teachers/professors/thinkers who have influenced me in my life, the most influential are those who have dared to be eccentric. They’re the ones who would have stepped forward with that child to point out the emperor’s nudity.
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Think about some of the great leaders in history - Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela - every one of them was willing to be seen as crazy for the cause. Rosa Parks, for example, probably never thought of herself as a leader (she was a seamstress), but when she was willing to claim her seat on the bus, she risked being judged and abused and, in the meantime, she stepped bravely into the history books as a model for leaders everywhere.
Every one of those leaders knew that to impact change, they’d have to be willing to make a few enemies and paint a different picture of the world than people were used to experiencing.
* * * *“When all think alike, then no one is thinking."
— Walter Lippman
* * * *Leading with your paint clothes on is about letting go of self-consciousness and embracing a little craziness.
Dare to be eccentric!
Shake up the status quo. Throw paint on it. Turn the org chart upside down or put it into a giant circle instead of boxes.
Instead of a strategic plan, paint a giant mural on the wall and paint your intentions in wild colours rather than forcing them into restrictive little boxes.
At your next management meeting, dare to ask people about their dreams instead of their action plans. Martin Luther King’s monumental speech wouldn’t have made history if he’d started with “I have a strategic plan!”
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* * * *“We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop
trying to conform to our own or to other people’s models, learn to be ourselves, and allow our natural channel to open.”
- Shakti Gawain
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Exercises for Section #4:
Personal exercises in jumping out of the box:
The last time I felt foolish sharing a creative idea I...
When people think I’m eccentric I feel...
The craziest thing I can imagine doing at a group meeting is...
I haven’t done this crazy thing because...
I am going to dare to be eccentric by...
Group exercise in jumping out of the box:
Surprise your staff with an impromptu retreat. Take them somewhere they’d never expect to go together - to an art studio or to a go-cart race track. Encourage them to act a little crazy and let go of self-consciousness. Present a prize for the most innovative piece of art or the craziest go-cart driving.
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SECTION #5 BE PATIENT, WAITING
OBSERVANTLY
Wait! Leading like an artist is not JUST about taking bold moves
Though we’ve talked about stepping off cliffs, jumping out of boxes, and making bold moves (all radical, action-oriented things to do), there’s another side to having a paint-clothes attitude that’s equally important. It’s about all of those moments when big bold action is NOT what is called for.
(Whew! That’s a relief, isn’t it? Unless you’re an adrenaline junky, you probably don’t want to be jumping off cliffs EVERY day.)
The flip side to all that cliff-jumping is PATIENCE. Just like courage, and comfort with chaos, and the willingness to be eccentric, a leader needs patience. Boatloads of it.
Sometimes a leader (just like an artist) has to be prepared to wait for inspiration to hit, to be patient while the process unfolds, and to sit with the unknown for awhile.
Making good art is not about rushing the process or worrying too much about productivity. Good art takes time to evolve.
We are addicted to action, especially when inactivity means the money won’t flow. In most leaders’ minds, movement equals value. It’s hard to step away from that paradigm when we’ve been through many, many cycles of performance reviews, action plans, board reports, and productivity assessments.
It’s time to shake your dependency on activity.
Not getting anything accomplished is the greatest fear of any manager. We all want the gold stars at the end of the year when our performance review shows just how
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much we’ve completed and how much activity we’ve managed to lead our team through.
We need action that impacts the bottom line and gets the nod of approval from the board of directors. We want to be able to plaster the word “productive” on our foreheads and walk around feeling like we matter because of it.
And yet, inactivity and empty space is often just what is needed for creative ideas to emerge. To plant a young seedling, you first have to dig a hole, loosen the dirt, and make space for its roots to get their bearing. New ideas are the same way - they can’t grow in a space that is crowded with too much activity, too many meetings, and too many items on the action plan.
Sometimes creating space for something new to grow means getting rid of something old that’s gotten in the way. That can be scary too, especially if the old thing (product, service, etc.) still seems to have some productivity left in it. “What if we let go of X and then we have nothing productive to do and it looks like we’re just wasting our time? What will the board/customers/boss think of us then?”
* * * *“For the artist, waiting for nothing in particular, going fishing for an idea is how they spend most of their time. This also holds relevance for leaders
who find themselves in circumstances where they need to master their own capacities for waiting observantly and allowing the many
diverse threads to come together without acting.”- Michael Jones
* * * *
If you rush the process, you’ll ruin the product.
An artist has to be prepared to spend months on a masterpiece, walk away for a few weeks, and then come back with fresh eyes and new ideas of how to make the art work.
One of my art teachers talked about a piece that he’d been working on off and on for about ten years and still isn’t quite satisfied with. He’s not prepared to abandon it, because he trusts that something valuable is emerging, but he knows he can’t rush it to completion just because he’s impatient with the process.
Patience is not one of my most natural gifts. When I have a good idea, I love nothing more than rushing headlong into it. I want to see results NOW and I don’t want to wait until the idea has matured. Needless to say, my lack of patience has gotten me into trouble more than once.
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When I first became a leader, my mentor Gisele once told me “remember, it takes three years to change a culture.” THREE YEARS?! I did not want to believe her. I resisted it with every impatient bone in my body. I was pretty sure I could change things in a lot less time than THAT! But three years later, sure enough, some of the things I’d struggled with and almost given up on, finally started to shift. People had gradually gotten used to the new paradigms and the new ways of working were becoming embedded into our culture. Growth had finally begun to happen.
Recently I read an intriguing fact about Chinese bamboo plants. When you plant a Chinese bamboo, you have to be very patient. At first, nothing happens. There are no green shoots or any outward signs of growth at all for the first, second, third, or fourth year. The fifth year, a shoot pushes out of the ground, and suddenly it grows at astonishing rates – up to 40 feet in a year!
Though nothing seems to be happening for the first few years, the bamboo plant is busy developing its root system and preparing itself for its year of productivity. The same can be said for all of us and the communities we lead. Sometimes we need to let the seeds germinate. Sometimes we just need to be content with the process of putting down roots – for years if it takes that long. Through it all, we just have to trust that the day will come when we will sprout and remarkable growth will happen.
If you give up on things too soon, you’ll lose out in the end. Persevere. Three years from now (or five, if you’re like the bamboo tree), you’ll be glad you did.
* * * *“Just read biographies of a few of the great artists and leaders
and you discover that they spent much of their life waiting and preparing for the work they were called to do.”
- Michael Jones
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Artists learn the power of observation.
In order to create your own masterpiece, whatever it is, you have to spend a lot of time staring at flowers, listening to music, reading books, visiting art galleries, and basically just spending time observing beauty and soaking in the things that inspire you. Many of these things might be entirely outside of your chosen art form, but they still help to inspire your art, and they help build that root system like the bamboo plant. I always find, for example, that after I’ve been to a great concert, I come home inspired to write or paint. I’m not a musician, and yet good music brings out the artist in me.
Deep and meaningful observation takes time and patience. It may seem like unproductive, wasted time (and it’s hard to justify if someone is paying the bills), but every bit of observation helps build the masterpiece that eventually emerges. This book, for example, took years of observation before it was ready to come to fruition. Once the idea bubbled to the surface, it didn’t take long, but if you look through the list of books on the back page, and if you familiarize yourself with my leadership journey, you’ll realize that I’ve been thinking about these things for many years, since long before those thoughts began to come together in any meaningful way.
Leaders, like artists, have to be willing to be patient with the process. Creativity doesn’t spring up overnight. It has to be nurtured, coaxed out of hiding, and then given ample space to grow and flourish into whatever it is meant to become.
Leaders have to develop the observation skills of an artist. Ideas can be found everywhere - even far outside your field. Good leaders let themselves (and those they lead or influence) be inspired by good art, well-written books, nature, innovative websites, enchanting music, exciting new products on the market, and engaging conversations that may or may not have anything to do with the work at hand. I have been known to take my staff for field trips to art galleries, for example, without any clear goals - just to let them be inspired by art.
Good leaders learn to be observant and they don’t rush the process. Sometimes an idea pops up that was inspired by something you saw months or even years ago. Sometimes the subconscious mind is busy making connections behind the scenes that we aren’t even aware of in our conscious mind.
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Ideas take their own time to emerge. Don’t rush them. Instead, feed them with inspiration of every kind.
* * * *“Connecting with a bigger space accelerates our
leadership journey. To do so, we have to be willing to let go, even just a little, of what we think about who we are and what is possible.
Then a door begins to open, just a crack. We push open the door and step outside. The air is fresh, crisp, exhilarating. Our curiosity draws us
forward. The path ahead is unknown yet beckons us forth.”- Susan Szpakowski
* * * *
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Exercises for Section #5:
Personal exercises in patience & observance:
The last time I felt truly free to create, without any deadlines or expectations, was...
When I give myself space for it, I like to exercise my creativity by...
The last time I provided the people I lead with free time to create with wild abandon was..
I encourage people to exercise their powers of observation by...
Group exercise in patience & observance:
Take your staff to the art gallery or an afternoon matinee at the movie theatre. Let them get lost in the creativity of what they see. Don’t force them to draw lines back to the work at hand (or the action plan) but just let them soak in the beauty or artistry.
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SECTION #6 PAUSE AND REFLECT
Take a deep breath and... exhale.
Along with the need for patience and observation in the creative process comes the need for deep breaths, pauses, and times of reflection, contemplation, and meditation.
One of the first things I learned when I took up painting was that whenever I put my paint clothes on, I almost always get completely lost in the act of applying paint to canvas. My mind enters a whole new zone where the worries of the day are forgotten and the to do list becomes irrelevant. It has become my form of meditation, a quiet time for my mind to re-group and reflect.
An artist learns the value of sequestering himself in his art space and sitting quietly with creative ideas. Many artists also take up some type of meditation or mindfulness practice (either separate from or combined with their art practice) to enhance their art-making.
Wearing paint clothes means that you’re willing to slow down the pace of production for contemplation and reflection. This might sound counterproductive to the world of business, but often our meditation and quietness leads to great insight that we might miss in the rush of getting things done.
As any good meditation teacher will tell you, the spaces we create with meditation, mindfulness, and contemplation are worth the investment because what will emerge will be much richer than what we are capable of when we are always rushed and overly busy.
Spend some time doing nothing.
When M. Scott Peck, a busy writer and internationally-renowned speaker, is asked how he gets so much accomplished, his answer is “Because I spend at least two hours a day doing nothing.” Those two hours of doing nothing are the most important hours of his
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day. For three forty-five minute periods throughout the day, he spends time in solitude and silence, meditating and praying. It’s the only way he can keep up with the demands of his schedule of writing, traveling all over the world, and speaking to thousands of people every month. “I cannot survive without it,” he says.
* * * *“We are always doing something, talking, reading, listening to the radio,
planning what next. The mind is kept naggingly busy on some easy, unimportant external thing all day.”
- Brenda Ueland
* * * *
Leaders often make the mistake of assuming that quiet contemplative time is a luxury they can’t afford. I would argue that we can’t afford NOT to take those times. If we keep denying ourselves the kind of space and time for our minds to take a deep healing, re-energizing breath, we will burn ourselves out, blow up at our staff, and/or cease to be of any value to our organizations.
Go outside and wander for awhile.
As I mentioned earlier, art has become one of my meditation practices, as have contemplative photo walks, where I wander aimlessly through the neighbourhood photographing whatever catches my eye.
Recently I was having a particularly stressful week when I realized I needed to step away from my work for awhile and re-group. I grabbed my camera and left my office. I told myself “You are not allowed to go back inside until you have taken photographs of at least half a dozen signs that Spring is on its way.” Within half an hour, I had about a dozen photos of pussy-willows, geese returning from the south, and my irises poking bravely through the cold earth. More importantly, I had a much more calm mind and could return to my work refreshed and ready to be productive.
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Engaging in creativity - whether it’s painting, photography, cooking, sewing, dancing, drawing, or singing - has a way of freeing our minds and opening spaces for things to grow.
Try it. Take time to meditate and/or create for the sake of meditation. You don’t have to follow a set of rules or become a meditation master, you just have to set aside time when nobody bothers you, your computer is turned off, and your mind is relatively free from the expectations you place on it.
Close the door and daydream if you must.
Consider closing your office door as soon as you arrive in the morning, before you begin to engage with staff or open your email. Make yourself comfortable on your chair or on a cushion on the floor. Close your eyes if you want to (or don’t - some forms of meditation recommend leaving your eyes open). Don’t try to stop your mind from thinking (that would be virtually impossible), but try to let the thoughts pass through your mind like birds fluttering past. Try to focus simply on your breath. When thoughts come, simply label them “thinking” and then let them pass. Always return to the breath.
If this feels uncomfortable, try some of the guided meditation you can find online, or look into a meditation class in your region. Or do as I do and take regular photo walks through the neighbourhood.
Whatever you do, don’t listen to the critic (whether internal or external) who will try to tell you that you’re just wasting your time. You’re not. You’re making an investment in yourself that will surprise you with its return on investment.
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Exercises for Section #6:
Personal exercises in pausing and reflecting:
The last time I took some time for a meditative activity I...
After I meditated (or took a contemplative photo walk, or got lost in painting) I felt...
The last time I wandered through my neighbourhood was...
The kind of activity I find most meditative is...
NOW... Take your journal with you and go for a walk. Find a park bench or quiet coffee shop and open your journal. Write whatever comes to mind. Don’t censor yourself - just write. Keep writing until you’ve written at least three pages.
Group exercises in pausing and reflecting:
Hold a contemplative art period for half an hour each week in your work place. Invite your staff into the boardroom, make paper, paints and other art supplies available and tell them they are simply free to paint with no expectations of outcome.
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SECTION #7 DOODLE YOUR WAY TO SUCCESS
Grab some paper and... DOODLE!
Almost every artist I know has a sketchpad always close at hand to do a quick sketch or doodle when they’re inspired or simply want to fill the time on the bus ride home.
Doodling is a favourite creative activity of mine, especially when I have to spend a lot of time in meetings. I can get completely lost in the art of the doodle. When I worked in non-profit, I had to attend twice annual board meetings that were two days long. I did a lot of doodling at those meetings. I used to feel guilty about that, thinking I should be more focused on the discussion at hand. But then I learned that doodling actually has the capacity to stretch my brain and improve my memory.
According to a study published in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, subjects given a doodling task while listening to a dull phone message had a 29% improved recall compared to their non-doodling counterparts.
"If someone is doing a boring task, like listening to a dull telephone conversation, they may start to daydream," said study researcher Professor Jackie Andrade, Ph.D., of the School of Psychology, University of Plymouth. "Daydreaming distracts them from the task, resulting in poorer performance. A simple task, like doodling, may be sufficient to stop daydreaming without affecting performance on the main task."
The next time you hold a meeting with your staff, hand out markers and doodle pages. Encouraging them to doodle might actually help them retain more information being discussed at the meeting. It might also help more creative ideas emerge.
* * * *“Doodling lets your subconscious drive your hand. Drawing pictures gets away from words, which are left-brained and logical, and uses
right-brained pictures to stimulate creativity.”- from the website creativeminds.org
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When doodling changed my life.
Before I left my job in non-profit, I attended an innovative learning event called Authentic Leadership in Action, Summer Institute. It was a cross between a retreat, intensive workshop, and conference. It was the kind of event that attracted world-changers, activists, artists, dancers, musicians, and leaders of all stripes who dreamed of making the world a better place.
It was at that event that a doodle changed the course of my life. We were at a small table during a World Café event in which we’d been challenged with some question (the specifics of which I can’t recall) that we were supposed to discuss at our table. On the table was a paper tablecloth and some colourful markers. Being a consummate doodler, I picked up a marker and started doodling. “May I join you?” asked the man across the table. Soon all four of us were working on a collective doodle.
One of the women at the table mentioned that she was the head of a women’s leadership program at a university and she lamented the fact that even in a program meant for women in leadership, they were stuck in old paradigms that had more to do with masculine leadership styles than feminine. As she talked, our doodle emerged. In an ironic (though unintentional) correlation between our conversation and the doodle, the man across the table from me tried to put a box around our doodle, to confine it to a frame. All three of the women instantly resisted. Our doodles didn’t fit in his box and (though we didn’t express it verbally) we needed to be able to explore the whole page without restriction.
Suddenly, it felt like the doodle spoke to me. “What you need to do,” it said, “is work as a consultant for organizations and individuals who want to bring more feminine wisdom into their leadership. It will be about bringing more creativity, intuition, and spirituality into leadership.” And thus my website, Sophia Leadership was born, midwifed to life by a collective doodle. And now, ten months later, this workshop is emerging - all because of a doodle.
* * * *“I had not realized until then that what changes people most is not
the forceful use of power or persuasion, it is beauty. When we slow our pace, we also fill the spaces in a more beautiful and unified way.”
- John Huss
* * * *
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Exercises for Section #7:
Personal exercises in pausing and reflecting:
Doodle in the space below. Don’t try to create anything in particular - just let your pen go where it wants to go. Let your mind wander as you doodle. Don’t stop for at least 15 minutes. (And don’t let the gremlins in your mind tell you this is wasted time.)
Group exercises in pausing and reflecting:
Next time you have a meeting with your staff or volunteers, bring pens and paper to the meeting and invite people to doodle while you talk. Explain to them the benefits of doodling and assure them that they have your permission to do it more regularly. Abolish the shame of the consummate doodlers!
* * * *
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SECTION #8 BRING YOUR CURIOSITY
Curiosity didn’t kill the cat - it made him a better leader!
Artists approach their canvases with openness and curiosity. They know that, even though they might have an idea or a vague sense of what they’d like to have emerge, there are always surprises and new directions the art takes them. Unless they are content with producing mass-market knock-offs, they have to be prepared to push the boundaries of their art to come up with something new. That new thing does not emerge without there first being curiosity that leads to it.
When I started taking art classes, I was mostly trying to perfect the art of copying. Whether from a photograph or still life form in front of me, I tried to replicate what I saw. As my skill began to grow, though, so did my curiosity. “What if that man carrying a basket in the picture were actually carrying a pig? What if the sky were purple instead of blue? I wonder what would happen if I mixed these two colours?”
* * * *“I cannot expect even my own art to provide all of the answers
- only to hope it keeps asking the right questions.”- Grace Hartigan
* * * *
When people first become leaders, they feel the need to copy the effective leaders around them or the ones they’ve learned about in movies or books. They take classes and workshops to try to become the “right” kind of leader, and like I did when I started art class, they try to replicate what the “rules” tell them they should do.
To become effective and innovative though, a leader must master the art of curiosity and invite it among those he leads. “What would happen if I tried something entirely
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different at our staff retreat this year? What would happen if we flipped this design on its head and re-invented our product? What if I gave my staff an afternoon off to go to the art gallery?”
You might be surprised where your curiosity will take you.
* * * *“As leaders our new role is less about providing answers than it is
to help companies find the right questions.”- John Huss
* * * *
To get stuff done, ask good questions.
We have all been taught the value of effective goal-setting, but rarely have we been taught the effectiveness of curiosity. Research has shown, in fact, that curiosity and openness help us get MORE accomplished than determination and goal-setting do.
Three social scientists once conducted a series of experiments to determine which was more effective, “declarative” self-talk (I will fix it!) or “interrogative” self-talk (Can I fix it?). They began by presenting a group of participants with some anagrams to solve (for example, rearranging the letters in “sauce” to spell “cause”.) Before the participants tackled the problem, though, the researchers asked half of them to take a minute to ask themselves whether they would complete the task. The other half of the group was instructed to tell themselves that they would complete the task.
In the end, the self-questioning group solved significantly more anagrams than the self-affirming group.
The researchers – Ibrahim Senay and Dolores Albarracin of the University of Illinois, along with Kenji Noguchi of the University of Southern Mississippi – then enlisted a new group to try a variation with a twist of trickery: "We told participants that we were interested in people's handwriting practices. With this pretense, participants were given a sheet of paper to write down 20 times one of the following word pairs: Will I, I will, I, or Will. Then they were asked to work on a series of 10 anagrams in the same way participants in Experiment One did."
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This experiment resulted in the same outcome as the first. People primed with “Will I” solved nearly twice as many anagrams as people in the other three groups. In follow-up experiments, the same pattern continued to hold. Those who approach a task with questioning self-talk did better than those who began with affirming self-talk.
* * * *“Leaders who can shift their attention from goals to a respect for the unfolding of a moment will find within it a hologram revealing
the pattern of the whole.”- Michael Jones
* * * *
How do you get to the top of the hill?
Bring your questions, bring your curiosity, and bring your openness. And then, when the outcome is beyond what you could have anticipated, bring your surprise and delight.
We all know the story of the Little Engine that Could who worked his way up the hill by repeating to himself, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...” If you’re willing to adopt that attitude, soon you will be standing on top of that hill saying “I CAN! I CAN! I CAN!”
The next time your boss insists she needs to see your annual goals, tell her that this time, you’ll be submitting a list of questions instead.
* * * *
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Exercises for Section #8:
Personal exercises in curiosity:
I wonder if I can...
What if I...
Will I be able to...
I’m curious about...
Group exercise in curiosity:
Invite your staff to do the above journal exercise, focusing particularly on the work at hand. Discuss what everyone has written. Together, create some collective questions for the group and write them onto large poster board. Hang the posters in a place where they are regularly visible to your staff or volunteers. If/when you answer the questions on the poster board, write the outcomes on them and leave them hanging as a celebration of your accomplishments. Even if the outcome is a negative answer to the question, it’s still worth recording the outcome and reminding yourself and the people you lead that sometimes it’s okay to succeed in other paths than the ones you expected to take.
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SECTION #9 ALLOW FOR MISTAKES & BE
PREPARED FOR FAILURE
Try, try again.
Artists can’t be afraid to try something, fail, and then try again. In every art studio, somewhere there is a stack of those canvases, sculptures, or collages that “just didn’t quite work”. That’s okay, though - it’s an important part of the process. Art is never mastered unless you’re willing to try, try again. That’s why I like to call it my “art practice.” I don’t know a single artist who calls herself a master - we are all practitioners.
When you make a mistake in painting, you can either incorporate it into the artwork and make it look like it was meant to be there, or you can paint over the mistake and do it over again. (The painting on the right, for example, was a learning exercise in which I made several mistakes. I won’t point them out, however, as they are no longer mistakes but part of the artwork.) In business, when you’re open to mistakes, you have more potential for growth because you learn from your mistakes and you try again. You don’t limit yourself nearly as much if you’re prepared to deal with mistakes in a healthy way.
Sometimes those mistakes can even lead to significant breakthroughs and open you and your staff to new perspectives that you hadn’t seen before. Mistakes may, in fact, be your greatest opportunities for learning.
* * * *“When failure is not an option, neither is innovation.”
- Brene Brown
* * * *
Artists understand the value of practice. They don’t expect to get it right the first time. When you’re trying a new art form or new medium, as I’ve done recently with acrylics,
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you go through a lot of practice canvases before you get the hang of it. You don’t hang the first one on the wall.
Whenever we question whether we’re about to make the wrong move in our art, my art teacher is well known for saying “Try it! What’s the worst that can happen? You can always paint over it.”
* * * *"If you’re not prepared to be wrong,
you’ll never come up with anything original."- Sir Ken Robinson
* * * *
A good leader knows when to say the same thing to her staff. “Try it! What’s the worst that can happen? If it fails, we’ll just start over again tomorrow a little smarter than we were yesterday.”
Know when to let it die.
Sometimes, though, the problem becomes bigger than a simple mistake that can be painted over or incorporated into the art. Sometimes the whole project needs to be abandoned because it just didn’t work. A good leader knows when to let something die. That death might open the door to some new creativity that results in something even better.
Remember the compost heap where we throw our dead plants from last season’s garden. That compost might represent death, but it is that death that releases nutrients for the next season’s garden to grow.
* * * *“Projects and programs that should have been unplugged
long ago are kept on life support to accommodate the insecurities of a leader who does not want anything
to die on his or her watch.”- Parker Palmer
* * * *
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I once worked with a marketing consultant on a major (expensive) branding exercise that I’d had to coax and cajole the board of directors to approve funding for. Six months into the project, it started to become clear that things were falling off the rails. The consultants had had significant staff turnover, and though we’d gone through an initial honeymoon phase in which all was going swimmingly, the new staff assigned to our file didn’t quite understand our organization. Their output didn’t reflect what we were hoping for from the project. Every time they created something, I had to spend countless hours trying to tweak it and re-package it to make it a good fit for our culture and style.
Clearly it wasn’t working, but I was in denial. I knew there would be egg on my face if I had to go to my board of directors and say “You know that expensive project you funded? Yeah, it was a wash-out. I had to abandon it.” So I kept struggling with it, agonizing over it, having more meetings with the consultant (which involved flights, since they were in another city), and trying desperately to coax some life into it. It didn’t work. Instead it just kept falling farther and farther off the rails and I knew that I was wasting a lot of money and time trying to keep it alive.
Eventually, I knew I had to let it die. It was painful, but necessary.
* * * *“There is something amazingly freeing about not pretending.
About speaking truth, taking that huge exhale and letting go…even if it means embarrassing yourself. Even if it means failing.”
- Desiree Adaway
* * * *
In the end, the death of that project was the best thing that could have happened. In the meantime, I’d hired some new staff and it soon became clear that these new staff were capable of work that was just as innovative as anything the marketing company was putting out, and, even better, their work more accurately reflected the identity of the organization. Once I unleashed them on the project, magic started happening at a significantly reduced cost. The board was willing to overlook the failure of the initial approach because they began to see value emerging out of the chaos.
Don’t let your pride get in the way of your team’s best work. Don’t hold onto a failing project long after its expiry date just because you don’t want to admit defeat. Take it
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off life-support if you have to, stop wasting valuable energy, and walk away. Just because something fails, doesn’t mean that you and/or the people you lead are failures.
* * * * “The only true mistake is the one
we never learn from.”- Desiree Adaway
* * * *
When failure happens, gather your people together, thank them for their efforts, encourage and support them, ask them what they learned from the failure, and then begin to brainstorm about the next idea that may be growing out of the compost of the dead project. Don’t let them wallow in the dirt - encourage them to plant a new seed in it.
* * * *“The best leaders in every setting reward people for taking worthwhile risks
even if they are likely to fail. These leaders know that the death of an initiative - if it was tested for good reasons - is always
a source of new learning.”- Parker Palmer
* * * *“One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.”
- John W. Gardner
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Exercises for Section #9:
Personal exercises in allowing for mistakes & failure:
A mistake that taught me a valuable lesson was...
I kept a project alive past its expiry date when...
I kept that project alive because....
When I finally let it die, I realized...
Group exercise in allowing for mistakes & failure:
Hold a brainstorming session about the projects your staff or volunteers are currently involved in. Invite complete honesty and assure them they will not be penalized for telling the truth. Ask them where the projects are falling off the rails or which projects need to be allowed to die. Talk about how you can learn from these mistakes or failures and what seeds can be planted in the compost.
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SECTION #10 GET OUT OF YOUR LEFT BRAIN &
INTO YOUR RIGHT
Drawing on the right side of your brain
Before I worked up the courage to sign up for art classes, I bought the book “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” and started working through it on my own. The exercise I remember most is one in which you’re instructed to turn a drawing upside down and then draw what you see. The exercise forces you to step away from the way things are “supposed” to look and focus on how they actually look. When you’re looking at a nose upside down, for example, it no longer looks like a nose. It just looks like a set of lines and shadows.
When I completed the upside-down drawing and turned it over, I was amazed at how close to the original it looked. When I let go of “this hand has to look like a hand” and just focused on the ways the lines intersected and related to each other, I was able to draw much more freely and effectively.
This exercise forces a person to move out of left-brained thinking (the default for many of us in this culture) and into right-brained thinking. According to psychobiologist Roger W. Sperry who first brought us the concept of human brain hemisphere functions, the human brain uses two fundamentally different modes of thinking, one (left brain) verbal, analytic, and sequential, and one (right brain) visual, perceptual, and simultaneous.
* * * *“Doing the same thing over and
over, yet expecting different results, is the definition of crazy.”
— Unknown
* * * *
As leaders, we are primarily trained to think with our left brains. Logic, analysis, and verbal skills are integral to any organization.
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But if we get too stuck in left brain thinking, we won’t be able to imagine new solutions to old problems that were created by limited thinking. Unless you’re leading a team of people whose only responsibility is to ensure that Widget A fits into Widget B (and - I might argue - even then, because perhaps Widget C would be a better fit?), you want people to be able to access their right brains to solve problems and come up with ideas that the left brain can’t visualize.
* * * *“The imagination is marginalized when the only lenses we use
to measure value are statistics and facts - and, of course, the economic benefit.”
- Michael Jones
* * * *
When we engage our right brain in exercises like art or music-making, sometimes surprising things happen. Sometimes the solutions to problems that have been baffling us suddenly appear as if out of nowhere. Sometimes what we know but don’t know at a verbal, conscious level comes pouring out as we focus on art instead of on the problem itself.
* * * *“I have come to realize that the very words that had once
been my touchstones - targets, performance, efficiency, solutions, results, breakthroughs - are now beginning to suffocate me.”
- John Huss
* * * *
Outside of our comfort zone.
Encourage those you lead to step out of their left brain thinking modalities and into right brain spaces. Chances are, this will be uncomfortable for many of them.
At a staff retreat once, I brought a box of modeling clay and asked my staff to create a model of what they imagined our purpose to be. They all had fun getting their hands dirty and playing with shapes, but one person in the group was clearly impatient with the exercise. “When are we going to get to the action plan?” he asked, more than once. To him, staff retreats are about action plans, goals, and - quite frankly - a lot of
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left brain thinking. My insistence that he spend a little time in his right brain instead of his left was not very comfortable at first.
Eventually though, he loosened up, and at the end of the day (in which we’d also done some collage work to develop a visual vision for our team), he finally saw what was emerging and realized it was as valuable as an action plan with all its boxes and strategic goals.
Remember that right-brained thinking is not verbal thinking. Sometimes, your most creative staff or volunteers will be those people who can create a great new product or idea, but won’t necessarily be able to explain it in words. Leave room for non-verbal creativity and don’t force it. Wait for the words to emerge at the right time, if they’re necessary at all. Perhaps someone else in the group will have an easier time articulating what is emerging.
Another important thing to remember is that we all tend to have different preferences for how we process our thoughts. Some of the people on your team might tend toward more right-brained thinking, while others lean to the left. It is also true that we all have different learning styles and different personalities.
It is worthwhile spending a little time learning about and helping your staff, volunteers, or family members understand their own learning styles and personalities. You may consider, for example, bringing in a consultant who will help people understand their Meyers-Briggs or True Colors personalities.
As a parent, one of the most helpful books I ever read was “Seven Kinds of Smart” by Thomas Armstrong (based on the theory of multiple intelligences by Howard Gardner). Discovering that my kids might lean more toward “people smart” or “music smart” rather than academic smart helped me help them through the minefield of their early
school years.
My oldest daughter has a lot of body/kinesthetic smarts and she processes things visually. At fifteen, she’s a clothing designer and rugby player. When she was six years old and first learning to spell, she was really struggling because her first tendency was not to learn sitting at a desk with a pencil in her hand. After watching her struggle through her nightly spelling practice, I finally
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told her “why don’t you try dancing around the room while you spell the words out loud?” She did and it worked wonders. For the first time ever, she made no mistakes on her list.
Is there a way that you can make your office culture more conducive for the kind of learning and thinking that your staff need to do? Consider the visual thinkers, the right-brained thinkers, the kinesthetic learners, and each of the other unique people in your group - how can you foster their best efforts?
* * * *
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Exercises for Section #10:
Personal exercises in right-brained thinking:
Practice drawing on the right side of your brain. Print the line drawing below. First, try to draw it, holding it the right way up. Then turn it upside down, and draw what you see (trying to ignore what it’s supposed to look like).
Group exercise in right-brained thinking:
For your next staff meeting, try the exercise above, or bring a box of clay and invite the group to fashion vessels that represent what they think the purpose of their work is. Encourage them not to over-think it or try too hard to put words to it. They may not, in fact, be able to explain what they’ve created once they’re done. Right brain thinking is not verbal and isn’t always easily explained in words. Sometimes, like good music, the act of creating art simply moves us or brings up emotions in us that are difficult to explain.
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SECTION #11BRING YOUR PASSION &
VULNERABILITY
Go ahead - expose yourself!
Good art doesn’t emerge unless the artist is willing to bring his passion and vulnerability to the canvas. An artist has to be willing to expose himself in sometimes frightening ways. Diving deep into one’s art form means being prepared to experience the depths of whatever emotions are emerging, and being willing to express oneself authentically and daringly on the canvas or page.
Vulnerability is a scary place to stand when you’re a leader. Our instinct is to want to protect ourselves, to put up armour and put on masks to keep from getting hurt. We feel the need to distance ourselves from our emotions and from the emotions of those we lead. To truly move toward transformation, though, we have to be willing to be vulnerable.
* * * *“Transformational leadership means that we are willing
to be transformed along with our world.”- Susan Szpakowski
* * * *
When you’re thrown into the fire, you might get burnt.
Thirteen years ago, I became a regional director in the federal government. Because of a mentor who believed more strongly in my leadership ability than I did and was willing to take a risk and offer me the position, I’d managed to leapfrog over the intermediate steps of supervisor and manager. I felt like I’d been thrown into the fire. Suddenly people assumed I had more wisdom than I believed I had.
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Suddenly people were turning to me for big decisions and big results.
At first, I followed my intuitive sense of what my own leadership style should be. I fostered a strong community among my small team and we were creative and innovative and we knew how to have fun together. We launched several new innovative projects and felt good about our accomplishments. It helped that I had young and eager staff who were willing to follow me (and coax me) into new and challenging directions.
Then one day, sitting around a management team table, I started to get the message that my leadership style might not be the acceptable way to do things. We had just been through two days of difficult meetings in which we had to make tough budget decisions that included cutting some of our staff and programs. I looked around the room and saw a circle of emotionally spent leaders.
We were about to adjourn the meeting, but it just didn’t feel right to me to leave it on that note. I knew that we would all take those negative emotions and that exhaustion with us to our homes and offices and I wondered if there wasn’t some way of softening that blow both for us and those who would bear it with us. I was pretty sure it would help if we processed it a bit before we left the room.
“Wouldn’t it be a good idea for us to go around the circle and just share a bit about how these tough decisions have made us feel?”
As soon as I said those words, I could see by the changes in expression that I had said the wrong thing. One of the more seasoned managers, who had long been my mentor and friend, turned to me and said, “Feelings have nothing to do with management.”
Gulp. I think I turned three shades of red before the meeting adjourned and I slunk out of the room. I had committed a major faux pas and revealed my ignorance about management.
I didn’t make that “mistake” again. At least not for a very long time. I learned to keep my feelings in check and never, ever let them show around the management table again.
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* * * *“Don’t let the desire to appear ‘rational’ or ‘professional’
keep you from displaying your humanity and touching theirs.”- Annette Simmons
* * * *
Learning to wear my heart on my sleeve again.
About ten years later, though, something shifted for me and I began to doubt what that manager had told me. Maybe feelings were important after all. Maybe they were the missing pieces in the puzzle I was trying to solve.
At the time, I was at an impasse with a dysfunctional team (at a different workplace), and I had no idea how to work past the block. There was a lot of negative, passive-aggressive behavior going on, and none of us really trusted the others.
Finally, I decided to lay my cards on the table and bring my feelings BACK into management. At a staff retreat, I started sharing exactly how I felt about what was going on. I admitted that I felt like I was failing as their leader. I told them that I thought that we were all hurting each other by not being more honest and supportive. I expressed my deep sense of frustration, failure, and loss. I told them that I wasn’t even sure I was the right person to lead them any more, and I offered them the opportunity to be honest and tell me so. I put it all out there and waited to see where the cards would fall.
The result was almost magical. There was a collective release of tension in the room as people began to realize that it was safe to bring their hurts and their genuine feelings and emotions to the circle. After my honesty, they started sharing more honestly about how they were feeling. Together, we moved a little closer toward healing and started functioning as a much stronger unit than we had before. Our problems weren’t all solved overnight, but at least we were one step closer to being a functional, cohesive unit.
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Don’t believe everything you hear.
I realized that, although well intentioned (and probably trying to spare me from years of hurt), that seasoned manager who instructed me years earlier to leave my feelings out of it was dead wrong. It’s not that I’m suggesting that managers should begin to share every single hurt whether or not it’s petty or inconsequential, but I do believe that authentic leadership is about bringing your feelings to the table when they’re important, and encouraging others to do the same.
Feelings have a LOT to do with good leadership. Without feelings, we can’t have passion. Without passion, we won’t inspire people or move them to action.
* * * *“In a time of vast mistrust we need
leaders who are candid and truthful, willing to be present to
their vulnerabilities, fears, and concerns, and able to
articulate them as openly and thoughtfully as their aspirations,
dreams, and ideas for change.”- Michael Jones
* * * *
In Buddhism, they talk about the importance of having “strong backs and soft bellies”. In other words, a Buddhist warrior carries herself with strength and dignity, but is also willing to be vulnerable. As leaders, we too need strong backs and soft bellies. Our strong backs remind us to have courage and strength in the face of adversity and fear – to hold firmly to our values. Our soft bellies remind us to make ourselves vulnerable to each other – to show compassion and extend understanding and forgiveness to ourselves and others, and to open our hearts.
* * * *“Bring your vulnerability, your tenderness, your fear. Bring your questions – bring the
things that puzzle you. Be prepared to hold ambiguity – to sit with the ‘not-knowing’. Open your heart and your mind
to yourself and to the other people in the room.”- Michael Chender (at the opening of ALIA Summer Institute)
* * * *
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A warrior lets her heart be broken.
In a workshop on “The Leader as Shambhala Warrior”, one of the first questions we were asked was “what breaks your heart?” It seemed a strange thing to talk about in a workshop on becoming warriors, but in the end it made a lot of sense.
The things that break our hearts are the things that point us to our passions. Those are the things that drive us forward, that give us purpose, vision, and strength to carry on. Those are the things that bring out the leader/warrior in us and make us want to work toward positive change.
It’s time to bring your vulnerability and your passion to your role as leader. Be honest with those you lead. Share your tenderness and your fear and invite them to share theirs. Offer up the things that break your heart.
Note: Incidentally, that manager who told me that feelings have nothing to do with management was far from bereft of feelings himself. In fact, six months later, when I gave birth to a stillborn son, he was one of the most compassionate people in the office. He too had gone through the experience of having a stillborn child and so he knew some of the pain I’d been through. It made me realize that his statement at that management table was not to say that feelings are not important, but rather that to be a good manager, we have to separate ourselves from our feelings. I suspect that he may have had times in his leadership journey when he was knocked down for being too vulnerable. I hope that some day there will be a sea-change and that young leaders will learn differently from the way that he was taught.
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Exercises for Section #11:
Personal exercises in sharing your vulnerability & passion:
What breaks your heart?
How have you been hiding your vulnerability from those you lead?
When was the last time you felt truly authentic among the people you lead?
What small step can you take today to be more open and authentic?
Group exercise in sharing your vulnerability & passion:
Host a sharing circle with your group. Invite each person to share something that breaks their heart. To demonstrate that it is safe and okay to share, it’s a good idea to be the first to do it. Don’t jump too quickly to solutions. Simply sit with whatever breaks people’s hearts and try to explore how those things point to their passions.
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SECTION #12 KILL A FEW SACRED COWS
What’s wrong with using the wrong paint?
Before I started taking art classes, one of my greatest fears was that I might use the wrong paint on the wrong surface. You need watercolour paper for watercolour paints right? And canvas for acrylics and oils? Is it the same canvas for both acrylics and oils or do you need different ones? What if I buy the wrong watercolour paper?
Now that I’ve been painting for a few years, I marvel at the silly fears that I allowed to get between me and the joy of painting. It took the right teacher, though, to teach me that “there is no RIGHT way, there is only YOUR way.” An adventurous teacher will tell you to try the “wrong” medium on another surface just to see what happens. If it fails, you’ve learned something from the process. If it succeeds, well then you may have created a brand new art form that nobody’s tried before.
* * * *“Discoveries are often made by not following instructions,
by going off the main road, by trying the untried."— Frank Tyger
* * * *
Recently I led an online art workshop in which I encouraged people to use watercolour to paint on their bodies, then to wipe it off with wet wipes, let the wet wipes dry, and then cut the now colourful wet wipes into interesting shapes to collage onto a painted surface. None of these steps would be found in any traditional art text books, and yet they resulted in an interesting piece of art when I tried it, and an even more interesting and worthwhile process. It was worth breaking a few “art rules” for something new.
Sometimes, in art and in leadership, you have to be willing to kill a few sacred cows. Sometimes you have to be willing to say “just because that’s the way it’s ALWAYS been done before, doesn’t mean that it’s the way we’re going to do it now.”
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* * * *“How many times have you watched people kill off creativity
by treating traditional policies and practices as absolute constraints on what we can do?”
- Thomas Ryan
* * * *
Be ready to break a few rules.
To be an innovative and inspirational leader - one who will be able to lead people toward positive change - you have to be willing to break a few rules, throw out a few instruction books, kill the sacred cows, and try the untried. Nothing new was ever invented by doing things the way they’d always been done before. No innovative way of working ever emerged from the status quo.
* * * *“Nothing is so embarrassing as
watching someone do something that you said could not be done."
— Sam Ewing
* * * *
Never say “it can’t be done” to your staff. If they come up with a wacky idea that you’re sure will fail but has a slight chance of being brilliant, let them try it. Give them guidance and support (and perhaps a timeline), but then let them loose on their inspiration. If others in the group protest with “but... that’s not the way we do things around here”, assure them that “for now, this IS the way we do things, until we prove that it absolutely won’t work.”
You’ve heard the term “innocent until proven guilty”, well what about “successful until proven a failure”? Try that attitude out on new ideas before trying to kill them with negativity and all the reasons why they shouldn’t work.
* * * *“One does not discover new lands without consenting
to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”- Andre Gide
* * * *
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When the sacred cows are out of the way, you might find the real meat.
When I was a fairly new director, working in the federal government, one of my staff had the bright idea that we should host a regional writing contest (a creative essay about the identity of the Unknown Soldier who was about to be buried at the war memorial in Ottawa) to try to get high school students more interested in Veterans’ Week. “What if we asked a major airline if they’d donate free airfare to fly the winner to Ottawa to attend the ceremony for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier?”
Fairly quickly, there was resistance to this idea. “You’ll never get an airline to donate airfare. It just won’t work.” Or “Governments aren’t allowed to ask companies for donations like that. It’s against the rules.” Or “What if we get thousands of entries and somebody has to read all of those entries?” Or “It’s never been done before. It’s not going to work.”
I was willing to take a chance, though, and so I unleashed her on the project. Before long, she had not only gotten an airline to donate airfare, she also had a free hotel room, she’d designed an attractive poster, and she’d arranged things so that the student would have an honoured place in the ceremony at the Tomb. On top of that, once the Minister of Veterans’ Affairs got wind of it, he decided that he wanted to fly to Saskatchewan to make a special presentation to the winning student.
We had to kill a few sacred cows, break a few rules, and risk failure, but without the willingness to risk it, we would never have known how successful it could be. (Incidentally, that young and eager staff person is now a communications director in the federal government herself. I couldn’t be more proud.)
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Exercises for Section #12:
Personal exercises in killing sacred cows:
Name three sacred cows (rules, traditions, expectations) that you are afraid to kill, either in your personal life or your workplace.
What fear emerges when you think about killing those cows?
What small step are you willing to take that might overcome that fear and kill one of those sacred cows?
Group exercise in killing sacred cows:
Host a “wild and crazy” brainstorming session with your group. Invite people to imagine the biggest, most amazing thing that they might be able to accomplish. Make a list of reasons why this would be the best thing to ever happen for your company or community. Now make a list of “sacred cows” (rules, traditions, expectations) you’ll have to break to get to that big, crazy dream. By the end of the session, commit to killing at least one of those sacred cows before you meet a week from now. The next time you meet, debrief about what happened and what the next step should be.
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SECTION #13BE A STORYTELLER & STORYCATCHER
The artist as storyteller.
Whether it’s a painting, a sculpture, a poem, a song, or a dance, every piece of art tells a story. Every artist is, at heart, a storyteller.
The story may be interpreted differently through my eyes or ears than it is through yours, and we may not ever really know the full story that the artist poured into the art, but that doesn’t really matter as long as the story moves us, or entertains us, or opens us up to new questions. As we talked about earlier when we spoke of right-brained thinking, not everything is interpreted through our verbal, logical mind. Some of it is absorbed intuitively or subconsciously.
Like the artist, an effective leader learns to incorporate storytelling into her leadership.
Whether we know it or not, stories are what move us to action.
Stories connect us to each other.
Stories let us know we are not alone.
Stories help us determine whether we can trust another person or not.
* * * *“We look for reassurance that we are
still part of the bigger story, that others have gone through this and
left us their maps of story.”- Christina Baldwin
* * * *
We are changed by stories. Our perceptions are shifted and our views are either validated or changed by them.
Leaders need to be storytellers, because they need to inspire and influence people in order to lead them into change. Stories have a way of convincing us that we need change and we can handle it. Either the stories show us new ways of seeing the future, and seeing ourselves in that future, or they help us see others who have survived the change and thrived as a result.
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* * * *“Story doesn’t grab power. Story creates power. You do not need
a position of formal leadership when you know the power of story.”- Annette Simmons
* * * *
It’s about building trust
As leaders, we need to develop trust among those we lead and influence and those we serve. Stories help us do that. Think about the last great public speaker you heard. Every great communicator knows that if she wants the people in the room to trust what she is saying, she needs to offer them stories about herself and the way that she sees the world that make her seem accessible and human and just like every other person in the room.
If I know your stories, and I can recognize at the centre of them a person who is authentic and honest and down-to-earth, I will be much more willing to trust you than if you had offered me nothing.
* * * *“How can we expect people to trust us, to be influenced by us, when we
don’t let them know who we are? When we separate our attempts
to influence from who we are personally, we neglect the most
important criteria most people use to decide whether to
listen to us or not.”- Annette Simmons
* * * *
In her book, The Story Factor, Annette Simmons talks about the six stories we need to know how to tell in order to build trust and influence people. People want to have faith in the person who leads them. They don’t want more information (they are already up to their eyeballs in information), they want faith - faith in you, your goals, and your success. Facts do not give birth to faith. “Faith needs a story to sustain it - a meaningful story that inspires belief in you and renews hope that your ideas indeed offer what you promise.” The six stories that help build faith are:
1. “Who I Am” Stories 2. “Why I Am Here” Stories
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3. “The Vision” Stories4. “Teaching” Stories5. “Values-in-Action” Stories6. “I Know What You Are Thinking” Stories
* * * *“If you want someone to see facts that are outside their current reality, use story to take them on a tour of the big wide world and help them stay interested long enough for it to become
real to them. Stretch their reality with story.”- Annette Simmons
* * * *
Storytelling does not come easily to many leaders. Many of us have built our reputations on our brains rather than our emotions. Our brains want to be in control and they try to convince us that we should communicate through facts and logic and leave the emotions for weaker people than us. Logic is threatened by stories. Stories don’t necessarily follow logical patterns - they can surprise us and transform us without even entering our logic-seeking left brains.
Being a story-telling leader means connecting to our emotions and connecting to the emotions of those we lead, influence, or serve. As we mentioned earlier, most of us have been programmed to leave our emotions at home when we step into leadership. An emotional place is not a comfortable place for many of us. It feels too uncertain, too out-of-control. But if we overlook the power of stories, we overlook our greatest tool to impact change.
* * * *“Losing yourself to the telling of your story means you are not as ‘in control’
as when you are reading bullet points off slides or reading from notes. If you give your attention fully to your story you may not be ‘in control’...
but I bet you will be a LOT more interesting.”- Annette Simmons
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Don’t just tell the stories, CATCH them
An effective leader needs to be not only a storyteller but a storycatcher. A storycatcher is the person in the circle who is effective at drawing out the stories from the group. A storycatcher helps people recognize the value of their own stories and the stories they have gathered throughout their lives. A storycatcher is like a weaver, weaving the threads of various stories into a big beautiful tapestry so that all can see the beauty of it and let themselves be changed by it.
A storycatcher learns to not only be a good listener, but also a good mirror, reflecting the truth of the story back to the person sharing it. A storycatcher has to be effective at asking the right questions so that the depth and beauty of the story will be revealed in time.
* * * *“Storycatchers are the ones who ask a leading question, make an inviting comment,
or just stop and turn to face the speaker with heightened attention.”- Christina Baldwin
* * * *
When I worked in non-profit as the primary communicator for our organization, I spent much of my time as the resident storycatcher and storyteller. I traveled all over the world gathering stories of people whose lives had been impacted by the hunger-related programs that our organization supported. I also gathered stories of people who were committed to impacting social change from their little corners of the world, whether that corner was in rural Saskatchewan or the middle of the Afar desert in Ethiopia.
I witnessed not only how stories have the power to connect people all over the world, but also how stories galvanize people into action. I once saw a $100,000 check come in to the organization simply because the donor had heard the right story that moved him to participate.
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A story that changed me
One of the stories that moved me the most in my travels, and that I have shared many times and witnessed its impact on many other people, is the story of Elizabeth, a young Ethiopian woman (in the pink hat, at the right of the photo) who left her comfortable city life to serve the people of the Afar Desert. An unlikely leader (she was only 23 at the time and had a quiet, rather shy demeanor), she took on the role of leading a staff of 75 and volunteers numbering in the hundreds in a water diversion project that would give drought-prone villagers more regular access to water.
When she arrived in the village, she was told a historic regional story. “If it’s run by a woman, this project will never work.” It was that declaration that convinced Elizabeth it was time to write a new story. She stayed with the project and not only did it work, but it transformed the entire region.
When I visited the village, a year after the water diversion project was finished, there were lush green gardens full of vegetables and fruit. The villagers were enjoying a higher standard of life than they had ever lived before. Not only that, but women were being appointed to local governing committees, a higher status than they had ever had. As well, more young girls were being educated than ever before - simply because Elizabeth had stuck around and modeled a new way. Elizabeth’s story has galvanized many toward change - both in the village where she lives and all across Canada where I have shared it with others.
That story has changed me, emboldened me, and made me a better leader. I will continue to share it for years to come because I know the power it has to influence.
* * * *“Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that to go on living
I have to tell stories, that stories are the one sure way I know to touch the heart and change the world.”
- Dorothy Allison
* * * *
We all have stories in our repertoire. Often we tuck them away into the private recesses of our minds, assuming they have little value. As leaders, we are especially cautious of hiding
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the stories that might embarrass us or demonstrate our lack of qualifications, skills, or knowledge for the work we do.
It’s time to dig those stories out of hiding. It’s time to dust them off and start sharing them. It’s time to be brave, get vulnerable, let go of the semblance of control the data and hard facts lull us into thinking we have, and share impactful, honest stories.
Be a storyteller. Be a storycatcher. Ask good questions. Create space for stories to emerge.
Let the stories change you and those you lead.
* * * *“Storycatchers believe that the ordinary stories of our ordinary lives have
extraordinary gifts coded within them - for the one speaking and for the ones listening.... Storycatchers are provocative, disturbing the status quo
with a probing question or statement. Often Storycatchers are a gift, the people others count on to make a story that will get us through the chaos.”
- Christina Baldwin
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Exercises for Section #13:
Personal exercises in being a storyteller & storycatcher:
I remember being influenced by a story when...
I am reluctant to share my own stories when...
When someone shares a good story I...
A story that helped shaped me into the leader I am is...
Group exercise in being a storyteller & storycatcher:
Host a story circle with the people you lead. Start by asking something simple, like “Tell me about a time in your childhood when you were scared.” Use a talking piece, passing it around the circle. Only the person holding the talking piece is allowed to speak. In the next round, ask another question like “Tell me about a time when you felt strong.”
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SECTION #14 HAVE FUN!
Go ahead - release your inner child!
One of the greatest things I discovered when I finally signed up for art classes and bought an art apron was that it is SO MUCH FUN! I hadn’t had that much fun in years!
Creativity turns you into a child again - a child who delights in getting lost in the pure joy of colouring the sidewalk with big pieces of chalk, a child who remembers what it feels like to fingerpaint without any worries about what it might do to your clothes, and a child who doesn’t care if the legs on a drawing are too long for the body - they just want to draw for the fun of it.
* * * *“A life without delight is only half a
life.”John O’Donohue
* * * *
A creative workplace is a vibrant, energized, and FUN workplace. If you want to lead people who enjoy coming to work every day, then foster their creativity, let them take risks, kill some sacred cows, and unleash them on their wild ideas. You might have to abandon the org. chart or the action plan, and you might have to be satisfied with a list of questions instead of a list of goals, but it will be worth it.
Work really CAN be fun for you and your staff. Having fun doesn’t mean you’re not being productive. The most productive people, in fact, are usually the ones who take delight in what they are producing.
Paint your dreams!
Dare to have fun at work. Find the delight in creativity. Hold regular art picnics on the floor of your work space. Plaster the walls with huge pieces of paper and paint your dreams instead of forcing them into stuffy little strategic plans. Bring clay regularly to
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staff meetings. Go outside and hold your meeting in a park instead of in the boardroom.
* * * *“The call to the creative life is a call to dignity, to a life of vulnerability
and adventure and the call to a life that exquisite excitement and indeed ecstasy will often visit.”
- John O’Donohue
* * * *
You want ecstasy and exquisite excitement?
Dare to follow the call to a creative life. Then dare to lead your staff in the same direction.
* * * *“To open to a world of wonder, simply start with nothing.”
Thomas Ryan
* * * *“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”
Jalal ud-Din Rumi
* * * *“Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention. It's a gift to the world and
every being in it.”Steven Pressfield
* * * *“Good art isn't just creative, it's generative -- that is, it inspires creative acts in others.”
– Melvin Bray
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Exercises for Section #14:
Personal exercises in having fun:
I am happiest when I...
When I have fun with my staff/volunteers they...
I will look for more ways to “put my paint clothes on” and have fun by....
My thoughts on the relationship between fun and productivity are...
Group exercise in being a having fun:
It’s simple - just have FUN! Figure out how to bring fun into your day-to-day functions. Gather your staff/volunteers and ask them what would bring more joy into your work space. Don’t be afraid to break a few (harmless) rules in the process.
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References:Soulfire, by Thomas Ryan
The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield
Beauty, the Invisible Embrace, by John O’Donohue
Artful Leadership, by Michael Jones
The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron
The Little Book of Practice for Authentic Leadership in Action, by Susan Szpakowski
Let Your Life Speak, by Parker Palmer
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, by Betty Edwards
A Simpler Way, by Margaret Wheatley
The Circle Way, a Leader in Every Chair, by Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea
The Places that Scare You, by Pema Chodron
The Authentic Leader, by David Irvine
The Element, by Ken Robinson
A World Waiting to be Born, by M. Scott Peck
The Story Factor, by Annette Simmons
Storycatcher, by Christina Baldwin
Seven Kinds of Smart, by Thomas Armstrong
Blogs:
Desiree Adaway
Barbara Winter
Brene Brown
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About:
Heather Plett is the author of “How to Lead with your Paint Clothes on”. She’s been exploring what it means to be a leader for more than fourteen years in various government, non-profit, and community-related roles. In that time she’s had a bunch of long and important-sounding titles like Regional Director of Communication and Commemoration for Veterans Affairs Canada, Communications Manager for Canadian Science Centre for Human and Animal Health, and Director of Resources and Public Engagement for Canadian Foodgrains Bank. She is now self-employed and though she’s tempted to give herself a long and important-sounding title, she’s mostly content to spend her days writing, exploring, teaching, and serving as a mid-wife for other people’s
brilliance. She blogs at www.sophialeadership.com and can also be found at www.heatherplett.com.
If you like the content of this book and would like to hire Heather to speak at an upcoming event, or facilitate a Paint Clothes retreat for your staff or community, contact her at [email protected].
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