Are you collaborating or compromising?

Many organisations identify the importance of collaboration to their culture and yet they are not demonstrating the necessary behaviour in their business. I've noticed that many teams think they are collaborating yet in reality they are compromising.

I've realised that to truly bring individuals together within a team, where they are prepared to engage honestly by sharing their needs, emotions and concerns to collaborate then conflict is essential. Without conflict you cannot possibly have collaboration. And it is interesting to recognise that those same organisations who look to create collaboration do not overtly welcome and seek conflict.

Collaboration is about working with differences and seeking to find solutions that we wouldn't find as individuals. However, the underlying mindset many people bring is that someone has to win and someone has to lose - and this is not the mindset that supports collaboration. Too much energy is invested in winning a position rather than finding a collaborative solution that no-one would have thought of individually.

So, if you don't experience conflict when engaging in conversations or making decisions then this is a warning sign that you are probably compromising rather than collaborating.

“Collaboration can be an amazing experience of the power of leverage and unity, especially when each person continues to take responsibility for the whole of what is being collaborated on. This does not mean the old paradigm of controlling it all and not delegating but rather being aware that on a deep and profound level, we affect every part of what we experience, both consciously and unconsciously. Yes! we really are that powerful. This can sound a bit daunting at first, but give it a go and look at the world through those glasses of 100% responsibility and things really start to come alive and make sense.” - David Walker

I encourage all courageous leaders and those who aspire to be more courageous in the way they lead - to get out there with your people and encourage collaboration that embraces conflict. And know that it is the way you resolve it that is critical to the long term sustainability of collaboration.

Courageous leaders have THOSE conversations

Courageous leaders develop the confidence, the conviction and then the courage to have THOSE conversations - you know the conversation where you tell the person how you are really feeling and what you really expected.

I had exactly this experience with someone just the other day - where I spent a significant amount of time drafting an e-mail where I needed to talk about a very diffcult topic with this person. It would have been so much easier to have just let the issue slide and hope the "right thing" would be done - and I found myself thinking and being prompted by my wonderful business partner - that the conversation needed to be had to ensure the "right thing" was done by everyone.

This experience has created wonderful learning for me and I believe will also lead to wonderful learning for the "someone" I was referring to! Firstly it took great courage to draft the original e-mail and I was surprised at how long it took me to jiggle and juggle until I felt I got the e-mail "just right". Now, remember I am the one who espouses that we need more Courageous Leaders! Then what shocked me more was the terse and short response I received from such a heartfelt message that had taken me so long to draft!

So here comes the second learning - do I "put up" with that response or do I truly engage in one of THOSE conversations........you guessed it - once Pandora's Box is open we need to engage in the deeper conversation. So the next e-mail imparted my feelings and that we needed to engage in a deeper conversation when we met face to face in a few days. I explained that I had expected a more "human" response as it had been a hard e-mail for me to send in the first place...........would I have sent such an e-mail a few months ago - absolutely NOT. But as I keep saying to people I am putting myself out there more and more about being a Courageous Leader - I speak about, it is integrated into our Leadership Development Programs and I have written about it in an 80,000 word book - so now the Universe is testing me........so I wrote the next e-mail!!!!

And I have an Emerging Leader whom I am mentoring who has recently done the same thing - she went and had a conversation with her existing leader that a few weeks she would never have dreamed of having - and found the experience liberating and encouraging!

Courageous leaders do it - they have THOSE conversations and it means everyone reaps the benefits! I would love to hear about YOUR experiences in having those conversations.......please tell me more!

Courageous leaders bounce back

What a day of mixed fortunes it has been and it has provoked me to think about the need to bounce back - how quickly do you need to bounce back and how long can you dwell on the things that you wanted to happen and they didn't?

I think it is is important to acknowledge your emotions and allow yourself to "feel them" - courageous leaders need to allow themselves time to be real and feel. However it is important not to allow these emotions to take you into one of the common roles we fulfil when "feeling" - victim, persecutor or rescuer. Interestingly I found myself feeling like a bit of a victim when some disapppointing news came our way - great I caught myself and returned to just "feeling" - being present with it and allowing it to percolate into my mind and body. The hardest part is to acknowledge that I "created the whole of my reality" - and sometimes this takes time to accept and acknowledge - why would I do this? Why would I create this? So it means I need to slow down and reflect on what I know, what I did and what has happened and importantly how I feel.

So in answer to my question I think and feel that it is important to allow enough time to be present with your feelings before deciding to "bounce back".

And bouncing back means owning your feelings and determining how you want to use them constructively to take yourself forward - no blame, no justification, no defensiveness - ready to accept the news and create personal action.

And since starting this blog I have certainly been tested on "just how courageous" are we talking about.....this is what I have created and now I am learning from it. So, courageous leaders allow themselves time to be present with their feelings before "bouncing back". It is OK to feel disappointed, to feel sad, to feel mad........and it is what you do with these feelings that is so important for the courageous leader!

Courageous leaders inspire

I was asked a question today about how the world might look if people were inspired to be courageous leaders. I found it hard to use words to describe what I think it will feel like to be in this kind of world........and I have pondered this question over the course of the last few hours and am going to attempt to put my thoughts and feelings into words.

Firstly I think the reason I found it so hard is because I do not know what it could possibly look like if we had people leading courageously as one symbiotic population of leaders within an organisation or even within every organisation in a country - no political game playing, no fear, no deception, no blame, no justifying, no controlling others. The opportunities and possibilites are truly exponential! So I needed to time to think and explore before I could respond - I could easily describe what I wanted us to move away from but it was not so easy to describe what I wanted us to move TOWARDS.

If we had each complete population of leaders within every organisation in every country adopting the mantle of courageous leader we would have a world where each leader took total responsibility for the ramifications of their decisions and would not make them from an egotistical or greedy basis. It would be like standing at the peak of a mountain and seeing no boundaries just limitless blue in front of you; and everyone would be standing with you feeling inspired about the future and what it was going to bring. You would almost feel breathless like you do at the peak of a huge mountain - only it would be because of the anticipation of what "might be" as we proceed into the future. We would have complete transparency with everyone believing in abundancy and not scarcity and our underlying principle would be that of "pay it forward". Trust would be complete as people would not feel the need to "hide" anything and would trust that the leaders would make decisions based on their trusted conscience of the "right thing to do" - and at a moral and ethical level we all recognise there is a right way to do things where we look after people, finances and the environment.

I believe there HAS to be another way of leading people to create our bountiful future - and I would not want to limit anyone's thinking about what we COULD achieve as a result of being a courageous leader. And that is probably why I find it hard to describe the future because I am limited by my own thinking and want dynamic, curious, interesting and collaborative interactions with other courageous leaders to truly explore what we could be capable of achieving.

It is therefore important for me to conclude that courageous leaders inspire...........they inspire us to dream of and envision a new and exhilerating way of "being."

Courageous leaders have relationships that challenge

Courageous leaders seek out relationships that challenge them to grow and develop - they do not have a high need for relationships that feed their ego. I loved reading about this principle in Carol Dweck's book called Mindset and I believe it is highly relevant for the Courageous Leader.

Working with participants in a workshop I noticed again how easy and quick it is for us to retreat to our defenses when challenged - we don't like to reflect on how things could be better or acknowledge (developmental) feedback from external sources. It is confronting so then our natural response is to label the people facilitating the challenging thoughts as negative, disloyal and other such descriptors that I explored in an earlier blog on challenging behaviour.

I found myself in such a situation just recently - and it is ever so hard not to jump into justify your behaviour when someone labels you - for me, I was labelled "negative" - and for those that know me well would know that kind of label really hurts and is not representative of the kind of person I am and the kind of brand I want to build. I found myself passionately wanting to prove to the person that I was not being negative that I was trying to challenge the reality of what was being created for this business. And I certainly experienced first hand how hard it is to engage in such conversations - because you feel under attack personally ........... and yet at the same time it is just the kind of relationship I say I seek - one to challenge me to grow!

If I pick up the challenge then I start to think that if I am creating the perception then what can I do differently to turn it around - how can I engage in the conversation differently? Or do I need to stop taking responsibility for how people are choosing to receive my ideas - others in the room found me inspiring? These thoughts rage through your head as you are trying to choose your behaviours in an instant - what should I say next, how should I respond, how will I manage my raging emotions constructively...........

Courageous Leaders look for opportunities to grow and develop as a result of the relationships they build - what can I learn from the impact I created for people from the language I chose to use and would I do anything differently if I were put into the same situation again?

If you see and hear people moving into their "defenses" what do you do - try to engage them differently, acknowledge that is where they are at and that is not where you are going to travel with them?

Wouldn't it be great to have a "manual" with all the answers - life is full of experiences that bolster growth if you allow it and that is the very essence of the Courageous leader. Know you did the best you could in the instant when you needed to make your choices and then reflect on what you can do differently when put into a similar situation in the future.

I think that next time I am going to ensure the person takes more responsibility for their reactions - I present a situation and it is their choice to respond defensively - and that is OK!

I would love to hear back from some of my followers about their experiences with such growth in relationships.

Courageous leaders tell BIG T truth

Over recent months I have spent considerable time talking about and exploring the need for truth from leaders. The more recent events with our political scene in Australia have dismayed me - will we ever have anyone who tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth? How are our young people supposed to learn about the importance of truth? Big T truth I have learned from a fabulous colleague needs to be differentiated from divulging/dumping and avoiding - it is the hard cold truth - facts and feelings.

This is what sets a courageous leader apart - they tell the truth and can be consistently relied on to tell the truth and not to manipulate the facts and feelings to fit with their needs. I wish someone could tell us Big T Truth about the proposed super profit tax on the mining industry for example so we could all make informed decisions about our future - super profits go to the shareholders and are the major shareholders of our mining companies residing in overseas countries - so Big T truth would the proposed tax really have hurt Australians or rather just the returns CEOs could provide to their shareholders thus earning them wonderful performance bonus payments? Will we ever know the truth?

Will we ever know the truth about our economy - yes Liberals provided us with a great surplus - great bottom line but what was the Big T Truth about the cost of such a strategy - how much funding was really taken away from our education system and medical system? Will we ever know?

We desparately need more courageous leaders to tell the Big T Truth!

Courageous leaders know how to stay "in the zone"

I have been working with several clients over the last few months and applying the work of Martin Seligman for them to better understand how they can come from a place of strength and work regularly in their "sweetspot". It has been wonderful to watch and hear people exploring what it feels like to hit their sweetspot and what holds them back from doing it more often.

As a society we have been educated to value skills and accordingly spend a lot of time emphasising the need to build them - and yet as a leader it is not skills that are going to unleash your courage to make the tough decisions, engage in the conversations you'd rather avoid or set aside critical time to think and reflect. I believe this is a major reason why we have so many leaders who operate on automatic pilot and do not inspire their people to truly unleash their potential. We have leaders who concentrate on skills and achieving bottom line by getting the tasks done.

To be a courageous leader you must invest the time in getting to know yourself and finding ways to "be at your best" - know the "right hand" of your personality preferences, identify your values/strengths and determine how to translate these into behaviours that let you be at your best. Only then are you ready to unleash the potential of people working in your team and in your business.

As I heard Dr Stephen Covey describe when he spoke in Sydney - globally our biggest workplace issue is all the untapped potential of people working in our businesses. They have untapped potential because they are not managed and lead by courageous leaders! Contact me if you would like to explore this issue in more depth as I love engaging in such conversations.