Nothing I teach or coach clients on requires a degree in rocket science or them to have a genius IQ. Rarely do I have participants in my leadership classes not understand a concept or learning module I present. They get it. You get it. If “getting it” were the full criteria for excellence in leadership or success we’d all have bodies like Arnold (or Christie), bank accounts like Buffett, and brains like Jobs.
Nope, we need to do more than “get it”. We need to DO it. We need to BECOME it.
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I have been enchanted by a book I have been studying as a part of a new pilot program our goMonti company is launching for an international coaching firm. The content is great, yes, but the thing that has me wanting to burn it into memory is the practical application of the concepts in a way few authors are able to execute.
Fred Kofman, the author of Conscious Business: How to Build Values Through Values, founded a firm known as Axialent and became the Executive Coach to who is now the President of LinkedIn, Jeff Weiner. So impressed and, well, probably, enchanted, with Fred and his concepts, he hired him to become the VP of LinkedIn where he now infuses those concepts throughout the company culture. As a side note, Jeff is one of Glassdoor’s top rated CEO’s with a 92% approval rating from those that work for him.
The audible version of the book pulls you in, gently and ever so kindly into reinforcement of ideals, practices and principles that are common sense, but are not common practice in most workplaces. There are 3 basic ways we interact at work. They are also common sense.
- Communicate to understand each other
- Negotiate our differences to make decisions
- Coordinate actions through mutual commitments
YET…we tend to:
- Withhold information in order to get what we want.
- Avoid conflict and blame others for failures that occur.
- Find excuses and justifications for not doing what we have committed to when we committed to doing it. We make promises we don’t keep.
These practices are labeled as: Manipulative communication, Narcissistic negotiation, and Negligent coordination. His solution is to become conscious of our thoughts and actions. He wants those two things to be in alignment with one another. “Fred argues, an enterprise flourishes or fails based on its technical and its emotional intelligence, integrity, and capacity to nurture “success beyond success.”
EXERCISE YOU CAN USE WITH YOUR TEAM THIS WEEK:
What common sense concept will you and your team make common practice this week?
What type of environment do you need to create to support that practice?
What will you and your team commit to taking action on that will have the biggest impact on the practice you want to make a permanent part of your culture?
A culture, simply put, is “the way we do things around here”. In order for the common practice to become common in your workplace culture, each team member must agree to execute it and there must be consequences when they fail to do it.
Sounds a little harsh, right? Not really. If you want accountability to be part of your culture then you need to have consequences developed and implemented when team members miss deadlines or fail to report delays. Otherwise, it’s a wish, not a practice.
“Freedom does not mean doing what you want without consequences; it means having the capacity to choose, in the face of a situation, the response that is most consistent with your values.”
KOFMAN, Fred (2007-05-01). Conscious Business: How to Build Value through Values (p. 43). Sounds True. Kindle Edition.