We need influencers!

With no staff and no budget, I was tasked with some complex and often contentious change initiatives. The only significant tool I had at my disposal was influence. My manager and I used to debate the difference between influence and manipulation. Her view was that influencing people was inherently manipulative. Despite her being a significant and successful influencer of people via her steadying hand, compelling vision, deep care for staff and customers, values based approach and cheerful disposition, she felt that influence had an undertone of deception and force.

My perspective is that influence is essential to all successful groups of humans. And regardless of our role in family, community or work, our influence makes a difference. I reckon the concept of influence gets muddied by slick sales tactics, deceptive actions designed to force people to a conclusion and more recently by the superficiality of some social media influencers.

I was delighted to see my good friend and colleague Suzanne Waldron step into this discussion exploring the nuances of influence, and an assurance that influence and manipulation are not the same thing. It reminded me instantly of those deep conversations with my old boss where we both respectfully influenced each other's perspective. I am looking forward to joining Suzanne as she unfolds her deep and rich experience in this space. I reckon the conversation will make me a better person and leader.

Worth being part of I reckon. What do you think?

#influence #leadership #makingadifference

A picture of Self-Reliance

I work with many organisations who provide support to people with disabilities and the elderly. At face value, their clients are not very self-reliant. The truth of it is we are all reliant on others, all the time, regardless of how independent we think we are. As leaders, recognising and appreciating the people we rely on is a great way to build a sense of team, and to grow psychological safety in your workplace.

I love Steve Jobs’ take on this…

"I grow little of the food I eat, and of the little I do grow I did not breed or perfect the seeds.

I do not make any of my own clothing.

I speak a language I did not invent or refine.

I did not discover the mathematics I use.

I am protected by freedoms and laws I did not conceive of or legislate, and do not enforce or adjudicate.

I am moved by music I did not create myself.

When I needed medical attention, I was helpless to help myself survive.

I did not invent the transistor, the microprocessor, object oriented programming, or most of the technology I work with.

I love and admire my species, living and dead, and am totally dependent on them for my life and well being."

(An email Jobs sent to himself in 2010. Bought to my attention by James Clear in his weekly post)

Fringe Magic and Psychological Safety for Leaders

Last week I took a risk. It worked out beautifully. I teamed up with Stuart Lightbody, a globe-trotting, award-winning magician who was in Perth for Fringe Festival. We ran a leadership workshop together. I learned 3 clear lessons from Stuart that any leader can apply. Each has a direct impact on Psychological Safety.

• Play Host - Well before the show starts, Stuart focusses his energy on the audience. His shows are designed to create wonder. His focus is on what people will experience, rather the technical elements needed to make it happen. As people arrive, he greets them with infectious enthusiasm. Acting as host takes us out of our own head and gets us thinking about what others need for success. We could all do more of that in our work.

• Embody It - “If I want people to be curious or amazed, it helps if I am too”, Stuart said. Don’t try to impose emotion, disposition or thoughts on others. They are their own person and forcing them to show up a particular way almost always leads to showing up less authentically. Invite them into the ideal state for the work you are doing. Model it, but don't force it. I worked with a leader once who was scathing of anyone pointing out potential barriers or challenges to a project. She was forcing an artificial positivity (interestingly her own demeanour at these times was far from positive). People stopped raising challenges and several projects got sideswiped by issues that people could foresee but didn’t feel safe to speak about. The same leader could have framed the challenges through a lens of positive regard for her staff. If she assumed that they were challenging in order to drive success, and invited them into a positively framed exploration of the challenges, the results would have been much closer to what she and her team desired.

• Audience-Centred - No doubt there are many details Stuart needs to take care of for his shows to work, but these are invisible to the audience. When he designs and hosts his shows, he’s immersed in what it will be like from their point of view. He embodied the same positive enthusiasm when we met to design our workshop. It immediately created an open and curious space for us to work in. Especially when we are a subject matter expert, it’s easy to feel like people need to know everything. Usually that is confusing and overwhelming. I remind myself of this regularly as I counter my desire to give people a ‘complete’ workshop rather than a good one. Every time I stray over the line the feedback is that the workshop was confusing, or there wasn’t enough time. Give people enough to achieve what they need but not more. Design for value from their perspective rather than yours.

These 3 - Play Host, Embody It, and Audience Centred if done consistently and well, create a safe and open environment. It will be focussed on the right work, the right people, the right atmosphere and the right result. That makes commercial sense. It might even be magic.

Seamless Traffic?

The first time I drove in an Asian city, I almost caused a massive pile up. I was waiting for a gap to pull out onto a major road, but there were no gaps. Here, we wait for a gap and accelerate into it to cause minimum disruption to the flow. We mostly pay attention to the traffic that is coming, not what has passed. 

Eventually a small gap appeared, but it was tight. I floored it and all hell broke loose. Tyres squealed as brakes locked. Horns blared and voices shouted. A motorcycle came perilously close to crashing as the rider changed lanes, not expecting my violent acceleration. I joined the traffic and tried to settle the adrenaline. Clearly, what I had done was not the right way to do it. The traffic seemed completely chaotic and unpredictable. It seemed impossible to drive safely.

After a bit of observation I spotted the pattern. People would pull into the flow s-l-o-w-l-y, often not even looking at the oncoming traffic. The traffic would merge and flow around them, creating space. In an environment that appeared to have no rules, the rule was “Watch out for the people in front of you”. The random chaos suddenly made more sense and driving became much easier (and safer).

The key is consistency. Whenever we drive or cross a street, we rely on others being consistent. Staying left, giving way, merging (except here in Perth) are all consistent and therefore fairly predictable pieces of behaviour. In another city, you have to work out what consistency looks like. Without it traffic would be impossible.

It’s like that if you want to create a great work environment too - one where people bring the best of themselves and work cohesively for excellent results. If the environment is inconsistent, the result is anxiety. People will spend more time working out how to keep themselves safe, than delivering results. How do you spot it at work?

• High turnover.

• People blaming others, or external circumstances when work doesn’t happen.

• Sickies.

• No one speaks up. Except after the pre start, meeting, safety session or brainstorm, they are in huddles in the corridor talking about what BS that was.

• Tribal lines between teams, sometimes actively working against each other.

• Implementation fatigue which sounds like “that will never work”, “we’ve tried that before”, “You don’t understand”, “That’s impossible without better (tools, budget, leaders, etc)”.

• People being unkind - harsh words, criticism, gossip, personal attack.

The best thing you can do as a leader is be consistent and encourage your team to be as well. The ‘road rules’ might be different for a construction crew compared to an office team, but consistency is the key.

How could you be more consistent?

The Leadership Closet

A newly appointed senior leader showed me her closet. 

Actually it was just the knobs on the doors. She’d proudly installed them herself (and done a mighty fine job of it). We talked about why After all, her organisation has a maintenance team for exactly that kind of work. 

Turns out the knobs were a symptom of something many of us experience when we reach a new level of leadership. We are not 100% sure what to do! It freaks us out at a subconscious level. Feeling incompetent has deep roots in human experience. In harsher times, incompetence could equate to death or alienation. It’s risky territory. 

In the face of that feeling we often default to the familiar ‘tools’ of the level below, or tasks we can obviously do, like the door knobs. Usually our motivation is good. “I don’t want to overload others”,  and “I want to be helpful”. Here’s the problem though, others experience it as micro management. It seems like you don’t trust them to get the job done.

If you are a leader at a new level, ride out your own discomfort. Thank people for the little things you could have done yourself. Watch, ask and learn. Those precious early days when you are not yet sure of yourself in the role and others extend understanding are a great time to build the relationships and knowledge for your leadership later. 

Ask: How can I clear the way for others to do their best work? What can I learn about this organisation and my place in it? What were previous leaders at this level respected or reviled for?

In the recent hot weather, Mike has been getting questions about staying hydrated, this link has his reply.

Rio Report: Risks and Challenges

Rio Tinto made a bold move publicly releasing the Broderick report into their workplace culture. The report highlighted bullying, sexual harassment and sexual assault in many global operations. Many felt unable to report or act. Rio have a hard road ahead, and an opportunity to reshape themselves into a genuinely world class culture. The proof will be in the action taken over coming weeks and years. One leader I admire at Rio said “The price of a great culture is eternal vigilance”. 

It’s easy to throw opinions around about Rio, but I reckon the report presents a number of challenges and risks to us all.

Organisational Challenge - If you opened your organisation to a similar review,  would the report be positive? How visible are the issues? How are they being addressed? Is there a culture of tacit acceptance and ‘open secrets’? How do you actively promote a higher standard?

Leadership Challenge - How and where do you address issues like those reported? Broderick found a ‘leadership lottery’ where people’s experience of Rio and negative behaviour varied greatly depending on their leader. How do you stack up personally? Do you actively create a solid culture and call out abusive behaviour? If, like me, you provide support to leaders, how are you addressing these issues? We need more open conversation and support for action. 

The Risk - The report rightly highlights Bullying, Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault as critical issues to be addressed. They absolutely must be. But… if  psychological safety is seen as only the absence of those behaviours, we do a disservice to the people in our organisations. In physical safety,  serious incidents, accidents and fatalities absolutely need critical and urgent attention, and  a well rounded approach also looks at much smaller indications of safer/less safe. We could look at banter taken too far, gossip, disengagement, rudeness, unkindness, among others. 

Let’s work the complete spectrum and create workplaces not only free of bullying, assault and harassment, but ones that are a genuine delight to work in.

It’s the right thing to do.

Prioritise for Certain

My palms prickled and my throat ran dry as I stared into the valley. I felt like running - fast and without a plan. Verging on panic really. Running was the last thing I should be doing. I was on day one of a multi-day solo survival challenge in a hot and arid area. My biggest uncertainty was where my water resupply would be. I sat down in the shade for a while and focused on my priorities. Conserve and find water were top of my list.

There’s a ton of uncertainty as we launch into 2022 (at least in Western Australia). Many leaders I have spoken to seem a bit bunkered down. Waiting to see what comes. It’s a reactive state. Seeing what comes and then trying to make the best of it. Not being overwhelmed in the process. 

Back when I was instructing survival skills, clear priorities were a major key to success.  The environment is no less uncertain, but the priorities give certainty about what to focus on. Focus informs action. Certainty reduces the amount of time spent second guessing how to respond. 

Priorities inform an approach - Moving in the cool of the day, minimising losses from sweat. They also make opportunistic action possible - Keeping an eye out for bird and animal movements indicating water nearby. Moving like that means we might head off the planned route to take advantage of water along the way. 
In times of uncertainty, direction and targets may not work to plan. We’ll have to adapt and deviate. Priorities help us to maintain positive momentum, rather than being entirely reactive to circumstances. They also minimise wasted effort.

In my business, one of the biggest priorities is maintaining great relationships with current and potential clients. Having certainty about that assists greatly in decision making and setting direction for the team.

What are the key priorities for you and your business/leadership? How can you use them to create certainty for yourself and your team in an uncertain environment?

Empowering Students as Leaders with Wil Massara

Wil Massara is an inspirational 18-year-old who has been making a big difference on the youth leadership front. We discuss inspiration, motivation, leadership and insight.

Find out more about Wil Massara and Youth Leadership Australia at: www.ylaaus.com.

Stay tuned on what's next in our Unshakable journey... see you soon.

A Daily Lesson in Survival

Every day I see someone pick up their phone while driving. The instant they do, they enter a survival situation.

Research by Professor Dingus in Virginia quantified this. He says, “Taking your eyes off the road to dial a cell phone or look up an address and send a text increases the risk of crashing by 600 to 2,300 per cent.

If people were genuinely aware of this risk, they would never pick up the phone on the road. It is a genuine, life-at-risk survival situation. To take the risk, there’s got to be a lack of acknowledgement of the circumstances they are in. Either a sense that, ‘I’m so bloody good at driving, this risk doesn’t apply to me’ or ‘The traffic is cruisey, I’ve got heaps of space and time’. There are only three possible outcomes.

1. A near miss - this is the best possible outcome. It might shake the driver out of their complacent denial.

2. A sudden, violent reminder that Phone + Driving = Accident. This is, at the very least destructive, always traumatic and in the worst-case scenario, fatal. Definitely a bad outcome.

3. The driver gets away with it, reinforcing their delusion - this significantly increases the future potential for 1 or 2 to occur. The fact the driver got away with it increases their sense that they are not in a survival situation. They are more likely to do it again, in increasingly busy traffic conditions, and for longer periods of time.

All survival states are like this. The risk may not be directly to life or limb. It might be measured in financial or relationship terms, but lack of decisive and timely action will inevitably lead to a confrontation with the risk. What critical situations do you face but chose to ignore? Where might your blindspots be?

Reference. Dingus, T, Hanowski, R and Klauer, S “Estimating Crash Risk: Accident data must be considered in the context of real-world driving if they are to lead to realistic preventive behavior”. Human factors and Ergonomics Society, 2011

Adapting Under Pressure

In 2004, I was part of specialist survival crew for the Pilbara grand finale of Pushed to the Limit a BBC reality show to find Britain’s toughest family. We gave the two final families a few days of survival training and set them off on a multi-day survival challenge. It was tough. It was hot. They were far from their comfort zone.

Each family had two adults and two under 18 years old. One family was a single mum, 21-year-old daughter, 16-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter. The 14-year-old was the stand out example of adaption for the week.

On a particularly tough day they walked many kilometres along a river in the Pilbara. They’d done it hard, making many mistakes and errors of judgement that sapped their energy and stacked the deck against them. They were on the verge of giving up. Mum had been the stalwart leader of the team, but was exhausted. She had carried 15 litres of water all day even though they were walking beside large fresh water pools. Even with the abundance of water she was badly dehydrating herself. The family lost their compass and flint. Confusion about navigation and inability to light a fire added to the pressure. Late in the day they dropped their tin can, losing their ability to purify water by boiling and make a cup of tea (tea is a great way to create a sense of control and familiarity under duress).

The family began to fragment. The 16-year-old son became a constant burden to the rest of the group and was pushing them to pull out of the contest.

At one of the checkpoints they were met by Chris Ryan (ex-special forces and BBC host) who got stuck into them about their poor performance. The 14-year-old burst into tears, followed by others in the family. It was a low point for all of them and looked like it might be the end of their story.

A short while later the 14-year-old daughter made a massive adaption. She lifted her head and dried her tears. She reflected on Ryan’s feedback with the family and decided that they needed to lift their game. She stepped up to lead the family. For the rest of the scenario she drove leadership, planning, support and motivation. She held the family together and rallied them through their toughest moments.

In that moment, and for the rest of the course she was an Adaptor, taking full responsibility for her results and rallying her family to do the same. She made no excuses, and was prepared to fully face the circumstances. She was prepared to carry others if necessary. Pulling out was no longer on her radar. She brought strength and certainty to a difficult situation. Her family made it to the finish line largely because of her leadership.