A Leader worth Admiring

Who do you consider to be a leader worth admiring? By admire I mean that you are so impressed by them (vision, accomplishments, style, etc) that you celebrate them, become their fan and would like to adopt some of their behaviours into your life.  

So... Gandhi? Hitler? Churchill? Your neighbourhood businessman? A preacher / priest? A film actor? A family member? A friend?  Well, that's your choice.

Now, consider this Ted Talk by Martin Gutmann (the trigger for this short article) that tries to understand this by asking if, by actually celebrating the wrong leaders, we are thereby creating an aspiration to become what might actually be an ineffective leader? If so, what could be the repercussions (on self / team / organization / society) when we celebrate the only shiny (media / social media) side of leadership?

There's a lot of food for thought in this video.  For me, one of the most provoking ideas was about what are the measures by which we tend to judge leaders.  Or rather, which measures are most appropriate to evaluate leaders?  

This further reminded me of discussions I have had during my corporate days while hiring candidates at any level or promoting employees. Practically everyone at the discussion had a different criterion preference when evaluating the person, and it would frequently take us time to understand the other person's perspective when we didn't understand and disagreed with the evaluation.

Things moved forward only when we shared our perspective on the factors we looked at when evaluating the candidate.

And the two final thoughts that struck me from this video:

• Is there a leader authentic enough to be worth admiring, particularly when we look at the current behaviours of some of the world's politicians and business leaders?
• How do I leverage my strengths to become a leader authentic enough to be admired?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

My views on DEI

 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion - these words are creating a lot of noise, especially on social media.

Here are my basic views on DEI.

Pics from Conflict Management workshop

 Here are the pics from my recent workshop "Growth Through Conflict Management" for an organization in the BFSI sector.

Due to situational reasons, the start was delayed, so I had to adjust time for some of the activities. Some of the topics covered were the Thomas Kilmann model, Patrick Lencioni's Conflict Continuum and Conflict Circles models, how emotions impact conflict, and the Ladder of Inference. The topics were  partly facilitated and covered through self-reflection exercises, facilitator-led discussions, group discussions, and role plays.

The participants were enthusiastic and fully involved in the group discussions, asking me questions wherever they needed to, during the day.  Here's how it looked:

Expectations

Strategies for Managing conflict

Qualities of an Effective and Ineffective Listener

Participants summarized what they learnt during the day

Do get in touch with me on +919820155778 or ryanbbarretto@hotmail.com if your teams want to resolve some conflicts and collaborate effectively for success. Or any other topic you have in mind.

My Facilitation Tip

This was shared by the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) on social media.  Gratitude to IAF for the opportunity to run facilitation sessions for Mumbai hub, IAF conference at Delhi and IAF Asia conference at Hyderabad.  

Heartfelt thanks to the senior facilitators who spent time giving me feedback on how to improve my session design, particularly, Sekhar Chandrasekhar, Yateen Gharat, Ajit Kamath, Shyam Iyer,Varsha Chitnis.

Here's the link to the post.

Reconcile Arguments and Move On

Here's an interesting article on how to resolve arguments and conflicts:

Disagreement and reconciliation sit at the heart of democracy and are fundamental features of our social and professional lives. For relationships to flourish and organizational endeavors to succeed people must reconcile diametrically opposing beliefs.

Polarization has become an inescapable aspect of today’s political debate, fueled by issues such as abortion rights, migration, and foreign policy. This can be intergenerational, it is said to be driven by social media, and is arguably worse today than ever—though participants in the revolutions of past centuries might disagree. Failure to thoughtfully engage with opposing views in order to reach compromise can severely hamper any human activity. In the workplace, where teamwork and collaboration are essential, it can stymie progress at many levels.

An intriguing study, from Harvard Business School, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and the University of British Columbia, looks for an antidote to polarization in debate. It considers how the linguistic behavior that people exhibit in discussion can powerfully affect their co-conversationalists’ perceptions, engagement, and willingness to cooperate with them. Developing the construct ‘conversational receptiveness,’ the researchers show how this can lead to more effective communication between people who disagree with each other.

Using a machine-learning algorithm to identify the linguistic profile of receptiveness, the study found that those surveyed who were rated as more receptive by the algorithm and their co-conversationalists—though not themselves—were considered better teammates, advisors, and workplace representatives. The researchers established that conversational receptiveness at the beginning of a conversation forestalls conflict escalation at the end, and has positive relational consequences. Conversational receptiveness can be reliably measured and crucially can be consciously improved.

Encountering opposing viewpoints is part of life, but despite this people do not seem to handle disagreement well, their contradictory opinions giving rise to avoidance, biased information processing, conflict spirals, and damaged relationships. On the other hand, argument and debate are the way ideas, plans, and innovations are developed into effective considered action. The concept of ‘integrated thinking’—a key to creativity—that combines opposing viewpoints to achieve a third way forward, only works if opposite views are aired and heard respectfully.

Read the rest of the article here.

How to Make a Good “Ask:” Context, Clarity, and Communication

Here's a super read on something #managers and #leaders tend to take for granted viz. #delegation

It lays emphasis on the how and what to communicate in clear terms, which tends to get missed out due to the fast pace of the corporate world.

From the article:  "the “ask” is a conversation where both parties co-create agreements on follow-up, milestones, key metrics, and so forth. This should be a conversation, but it should be a conversation where you, the leader, have gained clarity in your mind about what you are asking others to do."

Read the rest of the article here.

Happy Easter to you and your loved ones