Beyond Community to Collaboration and Collective Intelligence

I have previously written on the importance of building community in our team environments. Several posts have focused on community building. For example:

Building Community - Trust Begets Trust
Cites the work of Kouzes and Posner in The Leadership Challenge where the authors identify trust as a foundation for community and teamwork.

Building Community: Thank you as a way of leading
Proposes gratitude as an easy and remarkably powerful step in building the type of community that is essential for successful teams.

Building Community with Giving
Suggests that giving and service are key ingredients to building community across teams.

I stand by my previous work. Community is important but as a friend of mine suggests, simple community, as described in my previous posts, is "bumper sticker" material. The real objective for teams is to move beyond community to collaboration, collective action, and collective intelligence . Community might be part of the foundation but your real intent is to lead your team to great collaborative accomplishment and creativity beyond the capabilities of a single individual.

In future weeks, I plan to focus my attention on collaboration, collective action, and collective intelligence. I intend to share the findings of my journey with my fellow quiet leaders.

One of the stops in my journey this past week validated the importance of collaboration for the modern organization and the leadership that is required in order to foster collaboration. Linda Dunkel and Christina Arena in the white paper, Leading in the Collaborative Organization describe the importance,

Collaborative leadership is at the center of an important shift in a business world increasingly moving away from autocratic leadership to more decentralized models.....collaboration is an essential tool for the new kind of business leader — the facilitative leader — one who engages relevant stakeholders in solving problems collaboratively and works to build a more collaborative culture in his or her organization or community.

In their work, Dunkel and Arena also dispel the common myths of collaboration. They refute four myths:

1. Collaboration slows everything down. They maintain that the prework and consensus that naturally accompanies collaboration reduces churn and roadblocks and will speed innovation and time to market.
2. Collaboration makes leaders soft or weak. Collaborative leaders actually share power and recognize that the best decisions are "often made with the input of others with specialized expertise."
3. Collaboration cannot be taught. "If people embrace the underlying assumption that collaboration is valuable and desirable, then the behaviors and methods for collaborating can be taught."
4. Collaboration can't be sustained. The authors recognize several high and sustained growth companies that cultivate collaboration. Companies like IKEA, Starbucks, and Eileen Fisher are recognized for the collaborative environments.

I'd like to reuse a great quotation from the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu that speaks to the relationship between collaborative action and leadership,

As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence.... When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!

I hope that Lead Quietly readers will collaborate with me on this study. Please comment and contribute.

Thanks for reading. Please collaborate and lead quietly.

Don

Balance like Obama - A Lesson in Leadership Balance

I don't intend to use this blog as a political platform. My mission has not changed since my first post when I wrote, "I am writing this blog to start conversation and sustain study about quiet leadership."


Nevertheless, I was enlightened this past week as I listened to Barack Obama talk about balance in his book The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.


Balance is one of the key elements of quiet leadership. As I write in Keep it balanced, in 3D:

The concept of Quiet Leadership includes the the notion of "balance." My vision of balance is multifaceted where balance applies to many elements of life, work and leadership. This includes, for example, the balance of work and personal life, the balance between individual needs and organizational needs, the balance of opinions that need to occur within teams, the balance required to moderate disagreement. A quiet leader strives to keep it balanced.

In his book, Obama describes balance in the same light. Search the book and you will find 15 references to "balance." Often his discussion describes the challenge of "finding the right balance." He describes that ordinary citizens are "waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism." He talks about finding the right balance between national security and individual rights. He recognizes that it is not easy, "finding the right balance in our competing values is difficult."

Perhaps the most insightful statement about balance and leadership is the leadership action of "maintaining within himself the balance between two contradictory ideas that we must talk and reach for common understandings."

On the other extreme,the opposite of balance, is absolutism. Obama cites the negative impact that absolutism, i.e. a lack of balance, has had in our current politics. Absolutism suggests that values combined with power, don't allow balance or compromise. Balance is lost when "ideological minorities seek to impose their own version of absolute truth"

What is balance? Somewhere between balance and absolutism is the place where both passion and reason exist. As a leader, you need to make sure that you hear and recognize the passion of the people around you and encourage reason in order to foster the moderation that can bring balance to your team's actions.

I find that the words of Khalil Gibran in The Prophet nicely emphasize the importance of balance between passion and reason.

Your reason and your passion are the rudder.. and the sails of your seafaring soul. If either be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas. For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to it’s own destruction.

Once you recognize this place where passion and reason mingle, the real work begins for leaders. Often there is no easy answer. Balance is hard but the first step is to recognize the importance of balance. This may be the primary principle that I gleaned from Obama's book. That is not a political statement.

Comments are always welcome.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don

Quiet Leadership and Service Lessons from "Fred"

I've been a "Fred" all my life. With a last name of Frederiksen, I've had several phases in my life where my nickname was Fred. My father was a Fred. My siblings have all been Freds. Even today, my son is known as Fred to the point where when we call him by his real name (as we do by habit) other parents don't know who we are talking about.

I've been a Fred all my life. However, authors, Mark Sanborn and John Kotter have raised the bar on being "Fred" with new leadership and service lessons.

First, I recommend the book The Fred Factor: How passion in your work and life can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. The Fred Factor, by Mark Sanborn is based on the service and style of his new letter carrier, Fred. Fred the Postman shows exemplary attitude and achievement in his job. His service is outstanding and remarkable. In the book, Sanborn offers Fred as a model for our actions and suggests that our actions should be based on four principles,

1. Everyone makes a difference.
2. Success is built on relationships.
3. You have to continually create value for others and it doesn't have to cost a penny.
4. You can reinvent yourself regularly.

The story of Fred is a parable of successful service and leadership. I recommend the book. However, students of leadership can also visit the Fred Factor web site to learn more. You can watch the Fred Factor video clip for summary insight into being "Fred."

Bottom line, we can learn much about service and leadership from Fred.

Another instance of "Fred" comes to us courtesy of Professor John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber in the book Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions. In Kotter's book, Fred is a penguin, a quiet penguin who was unusually curious and observant. In his study he notices that his iceberg is changing and his colony was in peril. Fred had no title. He had no authority. He was quiet Fred. Nevertheless, he felt compelled to take action. He picked another penguin, Alice, who had influence and authority and quietly convinced her of their colony's peril. The team of Alice and Fred convinced the Leadership Council that change had to occur or the colony would perish. In the end, the colony was spared.

Kotter's recipe for change includes an eight step process.

1. Create a sense of urgency
2. Pull together the guiding team
3. Develop the change vision and strategy
4. Communicate for understanding and buy in.
5. Empower others to act
6. Product short-term wins
7. Don't let up
8. Create a new culture

Thanks to the quiet leadership of Fred, the colony was spared. The fable of the penguins and their iceberg guides you to acting smarter, producing more, and staying in control through understanding of the events around you.

For students of leadership and change, Kotter's Iceberg Manifesto provides additional insight and tips to lead the change that will be needed to save your colony. For our penguins on the endangered iceberg, this change started with a quiet leader, Fred.


Bottom line, we can learn much about service and leadership from Fred.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly. Be a "Fred."

Don

Leading from Below

Anyone can lead. An element of leadership that I have stressed previously is that you can lead from anywhere on the organizational chart. You do not need a title to lead as I suggested in Leadership - No Title Required. Anyone can lead and you can lead from anywhere.

This notion was validated by an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled Leading from Below. The article offered a bevy of suggestions for the leader who makes a deliberate choice to lead from any position in the organization. The article is recommended. Here are a few of my favorite elements.

Make the decision to be a leader.
Make a conscious decision to lead and move beyond your current service role. Make the decision on your own. Take the risk and you'll thrive in your job and get that next promotion.

Focus on influence, not control.
Enlist people around you to work on a common cause. Try to get people to act on their own. Adopt the perspective of the people around you. Don't hoard information. Share it. Keep things simple and clear and win the devotion of the people around you. Think influence not control.

Make your mental organizational chart horizontal rather than vertical.
Ignore any traditional organizational charts. View your colleagues as a focus group and connect and collaborate to solve your teams challenges. Even extend your connections to customers, suppliers and other external to the company. Your personal org chart can be simply flat.

Work on your "trusted adviser" skills.
Try to obtain the role of "trusted advisor" to the people that surround you. Listen more than you talk. Ask questions. Turn conversations into meaningful discussions.

Don't wait for the perfect time, just find a good time.
Don't wait for an invitation to lead. Perhaps look for an opportunity where change is eminent and people are looking for new approaches. Mergers, acquisitions, and reorganizations might create an easy opportunity for new leadership.

Leadership can occur from anywhere in the organization and is available to anyone who makes a conscious decision to lead.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.

Don

Practice Gratitude - Increase Happiness, It's Official

The research data is in. Gratitude builds community and increases happiness.

I have written in earlier posts that a simple thank you does much to build community. In Build Community - Start simply with smiles and thanks, I quoted Carmine Coyote who wrote at Slow Leadership, that gratitude is "major constituent in the glue that holds together groups of all sizes, from a few friends to society as a whole."

Leaders can use thanks and gratitude to start building a community of leaders.

The value and effect of gratitude was cemented in "Practicing Gratitude Can Increase Happiness by 25%" on the PsyBlog. The post cites the work of Dr. Robert A Emmons of the University of California, Davis in his book, Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier. In studies referenced in the book, Emmons found that people who focused on gratitude felt fully 25% happier and more optimistic about the future.

Additional research by Emmons and Dr Michael E. McCullough of the University of Miami discovered that the benefits of gratitude extended to a variety of emotional, interpersonal and life gains.

How can leaders capture and maximize the benefits of gratefulness. A follow-up PsyBlog post cited Emmons' tips for become more grateful and happy:

1. Keep a gratitude journal.
2. Ask yourself three questions, consider someone you know and "first consider what you have received from them,
   second what you have given to them and thirdly what trouble you have
   caused them. This may lead to discovering you owe others more than you
   thought."
3. Use visual reminders to remember to be grateful.
4. Swear an oath to be more grateful.
5. Act grateful to be grateful. Remember "Thanks begets thanks."

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly and gratefully.
Don

The Art of Woo, a Quiet Leader Requirement

Quiet leaders have to be persuasive. For those of us who are quiet leaders, force is not an option when you need to sell an idea. Most of us don't like to shout. We are not going to get in your face. We have to flat out be persuasive.

If you are a quiet leader, particularly a small l leader (Read an earlier post to understand the difference between Big L and small l leaders), you probably have situations every day where you need to sell an idea, an approach, concept, or plan. Or as quiet leaders try to do, build consensus. How does a quiet leader accomplish this persuasion?

A Knowledge@Wharton newsletter recently caught my attention. The topic the the letter was the "Art of Woo."

The concept of woo can take on several meanings. The common definition has to do with the effort to "sue for the affection of." Let's try to leave this out of the workplace.

Instead, the definition that is the focus of this post and the book, The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas relates to the concept of woo as the ability to "win others over" to your ideas without coercion, using relationship-based, emotionally intelligent persuasion.

The research and case study of authors Shell and Mousa, lead to a four-step approach to the Woo process:

• Polish the idea.
• Confront the the five barriers that include unreceptive beliefs, conflicting interests, negative relationships, lack of credibility, and failing to adjust communication to the audience.
• Pitch the idea with your best compelling approach.
• Secure both organizational and individual commitments.

The authors with there experience in negotiations also cited three typical mistakes that I also found interesting:

• Focusing on yourself rather than your audience
• Just winging it thinking that there is no process
• Forgetting about organizational politics

I have lots of wooing that I need to accomplish in the next few weeks and have a newly discovered process and confidence for the task.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.

Don

The Maturity and Balance of Quiet Leadership

I describe balance as one of the key attributes of quiet leadership. As I wrote in Keep it balanced in 3D,

My vision of balance is multifaceted where balance applies to many elements of life, work and leadership. This includes, for example, the balance of work and personal life, the balance between individual needs and organizational needs, the balance of opinions that needs to occur within teams, the balance required to moderate disagreement.

I feel that maturity is also part of this vision of balance. This notion came clear this past week in reading Do You Recognize the 7 Ingredients of Maturity on the Dumb Little Man blog.

Lifestyle mentor, author and educator, David B. Bohl of Slow Down Fast, identifies the seven ingredients of maturity as:

• Maturity is the ability to control anger and settle differences without violence or destruction.
• Maturity is patience.
• Maturity is the capacity to face unpleasantness and frustration, discomfort and defeat, without complaint or collapse.
• Maturity is humility.
• Maturity is the ability to make a decision and follow through.
• Maturity means dependability and coming through in a crisis.
• Maturity is the art of living in peace.

The list resonated with me. Although you could probably add and adjust the ingredients as evidenced by some of the blog's comments, my takeaway thought after the reading the post, related to the value that employers and organizations place on maturity. I suspect that maturity is undervalued and under appreciated

Maturity as a personal attribute seems difficult to sell. Picture a hiring process where there are two candidates where the only difference between the two is that one candidate exudes energy and charisma and the other maturity and balance. Who gets hired?

Let me know that you think? How can we quiet leaders sell our balance and maturity?

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don