In this issue…

• More Competency Nonsense
• All I Ever Learned About Leading… Kindergarten?

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You may have noticed that this issue of our newsletter is a bit late. Kris was very good at keeping things moving, suggesting content, writing and editing and she has decided to dedicate more time to her two young children and her family. So I’m learning what it takes to produce this and clearly haven’t got it mastered yet. Thanks, Kris for all your support and hard work!

There’s an interesting lesson in here though. Over the past 30 years of working with teams who are out to accomplish something great, without exception they lay out their plan as if nothing will change, nothing will disrupt the time and resources they have available, everything will go smoothly. Economists use the phrase ceteris paribus, which means “with other things the same”. Yet things are never the same; they are always changing. I wonder why we stick so rigidly to our hidden assumption that things won’t change.

I’m interested in what you see about that… How have you managed to disrupt the blindness?

Enjoy!

Lorne Armstrong

More Competency Nonsense
by Lorne Armstrong

I’m a little late in reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, but he presents some disturbing evidence about the serious risks involved in developing soft skills competencies.

Gladwell cites an example of Vic Braden, one of the world’s top tennis coaches. Braden, he says, hasn’t found a single pro tennis player in the world who is consistent in “knowing and explaining exactly what he does.” All the pros say that they use their wrist to roll their racquet over the ball when they hit it. Amazingly, when you slow down the high speed action and examine it in minute detail – that is not what they do. A digitized analysis of Andre Agassi’s swing, for example, shows that he doesn’t move his wrist until long after he has hit the ball.

Now this is significant for a couple of reasons. First, a tennis swing can be recorded, slowed down and analyzed – and the analysis shows the pros don’t actually know what they are doing physically. They do however make up an inaccurate explanation that they believe to be true.

Now take leadership; it doesn’t happen on the outside, it happens on the inside. When we are observing leadership in action, we don’t know what the leader is thinking about; how they are thinking about it; why are they thinking about these things and not others? We can’t see how they determine who to talk with, who to talk with first, next, next? And how often – once certainly won’t be enough. How do they determine who to encourage and who to disrupt? When to take a hard line or when to take some more time? And all these considerations – plus many more – are just a thin slice in time and most of their choices occur on an unconscious level. Not only is there no evidence available to the external observer; we do not even have reliable access to our own thinking.

While the evidence of leadership shows up in what gets accomplished there is scant evidence available about how the leader orients to the world inside her and the world outside her. What is really going on – the myriad choices and decisions is completely invisible to the high speed cameras that could actually tell us whether she is rolling her wrist before or after the shot.

So now we have an interesting situation. The experts we would want to rely on as our best examples to emulate are unreliable for describing what they do or how they do it. However, we seem to be compelled to offer explanations. It’s just that those explanations cannot be relied on as true!

So here’s the short version of the story. We find people who are very good at what they do but don’t worry that they won’t know what they actually do, how they do it or why they do it and we ask them to describe it anyway. They do their best to provide a plausible explanation. We then use this description and explanation – which may in fact be the opposite of what they actually do – as the basis for training others and in some cases paying others. Amazing!

It’s no wonder that despite all the latest and greatest ideas of the month, fads and apparent short cuts to success that things don’t reliably improve. It really does pay to get at what’s fundamental: fundamental strengths; the first principles of communication and what really fuels accomplishment. You just need to look in a different place.

Full Article...

All I Ever Learned About Leading…

Jane-Ellen Seymour is Contegrity Leader and friend who lives near Seattle and works primarily with nonprofit organizations “who are up to real good in the world”. Jane-Ellen can be reached by email at janeellens@comcast.net. She writes: Remember the book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten¹?  The premise is that the simple things we learned in kindergarten also applied to life as a grown up. I've been thinking that perhaps there is a new book to be written along the lines of "All I Ever Learned about Leadership Only Went So Far". Here are a few chapters I would consider including:

Leading doesn't come from studying leadership. It comes from leading. You have to lead to lead. That seems obvious and redundant but consider how much time is spent studying leading, preparing to lead, talking about leading, hand wringing over the lack of leadership and so on. But there is something to choosing a direction, a project, an area in which you do not have it all figured out but needs to be addressed, and bring your leadership to that – with others and with whatever life throws your way. It takes courage to step into the unknown but what a way to accelerate the leading learning curve!

Leading in a project leads to leading in life. The project is a place to focus on being in development – to be playing for greater power, freedom and fit. And doing so in a particular arena of life or work is likely to affect leading in your whole life. This year I saw for myself the unexpected ways in which taking on being in development or leading in one area of a life can begin to affect and alter your whole life. Taking on a new way of relating to a husband leads to a new way of relating to our teen, which leads to a new way to consider our work.  On it goes.

Leading isn't about knowing so much as discovery and development. For a half-century old girl who's gotten lots of points for being smart, articulate and knowing where we should go, this shift in orientation around leading has been big.  Knowing what to do, where to go, how to craft a good agenda, etc. had run out of steam.  Instead I have learned much over the last year about leading from “not knowing” and from “coming to know” in the conversation – from listening and receiving. It is a relief in many ways not to have to know and I find that my work is more powerful and has more impact when I begin from “not knowing” and see what there is to be discovered and lead from there. It has been good to lead from really considering that my view of life is simply my view and that it is never the whole story. I found repeatedly that where I might think to "lead" – out of communication with others – was off the mark.

Leading has much to do with serving. Perhaps this takes us back to where we began, but I found this year that my leading was best when I gave myself over to serving others and the deep desire of the human spirit to do and be good, to live lives of integrity and to contribute to what is whole and holy while getting it done here on the ground.  What an honor and privilege to serve that! It makes us all bigger.

1 Fulghum, Robert. All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten. Toronto: Random House of Canada Limited, 1988.

     Areas of Focus

• Identify the REAL Issue
• Develop Leadership
• Accelerate Accomplishment
• Develop A Community of Leaders

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We hope you have enjoyed this issue of our newsletter!

Lorne Armstrong

email: Lorne@armstrongresults.com
phone: 403-609-4622
web: www.armstrongresults.com