The trouble is…

The person who most needs to change is someone else in the organisation, quite probably somebody very senior, perhaps the boss. They’re the business’s greatest strength but also it’s greatest weakness, simply because they have so much influence and everything they do is greatly amplified for good or for bad.

(OK, that’s assuming we’re already being the change we want to see and so on.

How do you help your contact successfully suggest a meeting with you to begin the process of change? How do you help them see what they need to see? How do you get started?

One way is to begin by seeking the problem person’s knowledge and input.

What works for you?

Actually, of course, it’s really the one constant…

I mean leadership in the sense of contributing something to help shape the future, or more literally, “stepping ahead.”

The nature of leading is a timeless quality, resting partly on skill, partly on personal presence, and partly on inner belief and sense of purpose, and more besides—an art much more than a science, and so somewhat elusive.

Our individual knowledge of leadership, of course, changes as we learn and grow.

And yet the nature of leadership probably stays the same, and so a very worthwhile investment.

Sometimes people talk about different styles of leadership. I’m not so sure. I believe all of these styles (or most of them) are part of the range of the best leaders—the ones with the most flexibility. Ultimately leadership encompasses them all.

If you’re on the outside, it can be hard to stimulate change because although you’re not constrained, you don’t have authority.

But you do have the chance to be radical.

And those on the inside need those on the outside to be radical, because the stakeholders are influenced.

And then those on the inside can do something different because they have authority.

And then the system can change.

It’s one thing to know about something, quite another to know a subject and be able to deploy it in life. Unless you can do (or be) something, you don’t know it, not really. There’s a world of a difference between knowing your purpose and knowing about purpose, for example.

This comes up with books—a great change resource if used properly…

Sometimes people ask me to post a summary of a book I’ve read for them to access, as if that’ll achieve the same effect. And sometimes, I’m offered summaries by other people.

It would be handy if you could radically cut the time invested and still get the same result, and change by just as much.

You can’t…

You can know about something from a summary, but you can’t truly know it.

The best books take you on a journey of learning. You’re changed by the process of reading from cover to cover. Your unconscious mind accepts new patterns. As a result, you live what you’ve learned, and achieve the corresponding results.

Changing what you know about isn’t the same as changing what you know.

A summary most likely won’t change what you know. Skip the reading and you skip the change.

What do you know about and what do you really know? And how do you tell the difference?

(I think a clue is one’s a head thing and the other’s a whole body experience.)

Tempting perhaps to reach for the psychometric profiling tools to understand who’s doing what and why.

But there’s a danger…

The results of profiling are almost bound to reinforce the problem patterns because they give the individuals involved greater reason, justification even, for being the way they are.

Sure…

They may become more aware of their traits and choose to change them—that is a possible outcome.

But it might be better just to build their flexibility in the first place; to coach them in different ways of showing up in the world.

And yet often the same effect can be achieved with the leadership group attending thoroughly to their own change and growth.

So much cheaper and easier to organize and yet not the usual pattern.

In forming teams, it’s a good idea to bring together complementary skills and personality types. Diversity brings performance, though it may not be comfortable at first.

So we reach for the psychometric tests—how handy to be able to profile people and select them for roles in teams.

But there’s a problem…

Actually, probably several problems, but let’s focus on one…

Unless we’re very careful, the use of profiling strengthens the belief in team members that they don’t need to change; that they don’t need to develop their flexibility. After all, they’ve been told they’re an xyz, and perhaps even encouraged to play to their profile, to be an xyz to the full—to avoid flexibility, in fact.

In letting this situation persist, we make a fundamental error…

For a team to be successful, it needs to learn, and for a team to learn, it needs its members to be searching out their individual development, not staying in their boxes.

Otherwise one of the conditions for learning and growth in an organisation—personal mastery (responsibility for one’s own change)—isn’t present.

We’ve taken it away with our profiling.

Let’s focus on the individual first…

A congruent person is one whose behaviour is a consistent reflection of their values and beliefs, and their sense of identity. Some of these values and beliefs may be in tension with each other, but they will be held in balance. What the person actually does will consistently reflect that chosen balance point.

To us, they seem “sorted” and very present. We may well be drawn to them. And their results will speak for themselves. Their clarity gives them a power.

A congruent business or organization then is one whose behaviour is a reflection of a consistent set of values and beliefs, reconciled to a chosen point of balance—for example, between cost and quality.

And just as with an individual…

We know what a congruent business stands for. It has a clear brand presence. We may well be drawn to it. And its results will speak for themselves.

Moreover, the business’s people will be able to take their lead from that consistency.

Here’s the thing…

Lose the connection between the values (like cost and quality) your business needs to hold in balance and you won’t have a congruent business. And your people can’t help but amplify that lack of congruence. After all, they have more than one master to serve.

And your brand will suffer.

A change to lead then is increasing the congruence in your business.

And, of course, it’ll need to start with you.

How do you build your earnings to sustain what you are doing without compromising your leadership “mission” (if that’s the right word)? If you’re not careful, you end up contracted to deliver something that’s at odds with what you see as important, because sometimes money flows more easily to sustain the status quo than to facilitate change.

But if you do it well, you can attract the revenue you need to sustain your mission, assuming it has fundamental merit of course.

So what makes the difference?

1. Articulating your message clearly enough.

2. Committing to what you have to say—going beyond the point of no return—accepting the risk of it not working out.

3. Living the principles you espouse.

In short, being real. Then you attract the right people and the right resources.

Oh and finding how your approach meets the customer’s need at a higher level, as in, “Here’s another, more sustainable way to achieve what you ultimately want.”

What’s your experience of this?

And yet…

For the rest of us, getting to that new layer you’ve added on top on an existing body of knowledge is a real jump.

Why?

Because we need to catch up with the ground-work before we can get to the innovative step.

Be patient with us please, and help us find a way up. Show us where to place our feet.