Some good practical advice to learn from other organisations to apply in different contexts

Authors: Daniel Morales, Elizabeth Ledet, Lauren Rebagliati

McKinsey & Co: September 17, 2024: Summary of the new book by the authors-The Journey of Leadership

The role of people leadership is not as straightforward as it seems. Particularly in these times, where business, social, and climate disruptions are compounding one another, effective leadership requires a multidimensional perspective on two factors:

• what the organisation needs
• what individuals need (including what leaders themselves need)

Four McKinsey senior partners offer ways for today’s leaders to better understand and adapt their leadership styles. The book emphasizes an inside-out mindset, in which leaders continually reflect on and reinvent their approaches to leading others. Among the findings is the need for leaders to adopt a human-centric approach to managing others, characterised by humility, empathy, and vulnerability.

Of course, such self-awareness can only develop in a psychologically safe environment and with continual monitoring and measurement of leadership development behaviours and outcomes within an organisation.

Without a deep understanding of who is excelling as a people leader and who is struggling (and in which specific areas), it becomes nearly impossible for any organisation to design and implement meaningful interventions.

At McKinsey, we tackled this challenge head-on. In a relatively short span of time, we designed, developed, and implemented a comprehensive people leadership measurement system, which is a collection of leadership metrics that take an abstract concept and make it measurable.

This system offers individual leaders a broad set of personalised people metrics, which helps them to identify their “blind spots,” clarify their leadership strengths, and highlight areas for development. By making these metrics more transparent within peer groups, we’ve seen a powerful impact. For example, leaders often say, “I thought I was well ahead of others in this area, but I actually have more work to do.”

To develop the people leadership measurement system, several critical technology elements needed to be in place:

• A strong data foundation. A robust foundation of curated people data, developed over time and paired with a world-class analytics team driven by a passion for innovation, forms the backbone of our approach. This includes filling in data gaps, where needed, with new, innovative measures and sources, such as our Mentorship Sponsorship Survey, which invites colleagues to recognise those who have significantly contributed to their development.
• Advanced technology development capabilities. We leverage rigorous analytics to identify and prioritise key metrics, combined with the ability to rapidly design and prototype new solutions.
• Alignment with our leadership development model. We’ve developed an analytics approach that aligns with our conceptual model of people leadership, seamlessly integrating it into our organization’s development and evaluation framework.

Just as important, several critical enablers supported the people leadership measurement system, which helped to ensure its practical application and impact across the firm:

• Leadership integration: Our efforts are championed by a wide range of senior leaders, whose support and sponsorship have been pivotal—especially during critical moments, such as the heightened focus on people leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their commitment has ensured that our initiatives are prioritized and fully integrated into our development and evaluation processes.
• Accountability: The use of the people leadership measurement system in measured, thoughtful ways as one part of our internal review and evaluation processes gives “teeth” to the system and signals the critical importance of people leadership in being successful at McKinsey.
• Public recognition: Finally, through highly visible communications and celebrations of top sponsors in each geography, we regularly recognize our standout people leaders who excel at supporting their colleagues.

Benefits of this approach to measuring people leadership 

The impact of this collection of leadership metrics has been transformative in several key areas. First, systematically measuring leadership markers has significantly galvanised support across the organisation, highlighting the importance of focused development. Individuals now have a clearer understanding of their personal-growth areas, enhancing their capacity to lead effectively. For instance, one leader discovered a notable gap between his team’s perception of his leadership and the regional average, which fell short of his expectations. To address this, he committed to being more present and available to support his teams daily.

Second, evaluation committees have found it easier to discuss people leadership with concrete, data-driven evidence, moving away from vague or anecdotal feedback. This shift has not only reinforced the importance of the people leadership dimension alongside client service but also fostered the development of more well-rounded leaders within the firm.

Additionally, we have gained valuable insights into leadership gaps across various geographies and practices, pinpointing areas where targeted intervention and support are needed, which can be proactively addressed through development, adjustments to leadership structures, and more. For example, the leader of one of our European offices analysed aggregate sponsorship scores across all partners and found that a small group of senior leaders was providing most of the support to junior colleagues. This discovery initiated a new effort to build sponsorship skills among all leaders in her office, ensuring everyone plays a part in supporting junior colleagues.

 

As experience makes clear, cultivating high-impact leaders is an ongoing process that requires constant monitoring, measurement, and adaptation.

The effort is worth it, however: organisations that invest in creating a culture of psychological safety, directly address leadership behaviours, and hold leaders accountable will be better positioned to thrive. Dynamic and responsible people leadership will continue to be a cornerstone of successful and healthy organisations.

Dr. Nicole Price

Forbes Books Author

Forbes Books

Before committing ourselves to empathizing with others, we must draw clear boundaries to prevent burnout.

Empathy comes in various forms, each with its challenges. Affective empathy involves deeply feeling others’ emotions, which can lead to overwhelming feelings, anxiety, or emotional fatigue.

This may raise questions about the value of empathy. However, it’s important to understand that empathy is crucial and shouldn’t be abandoned. Instead, we must set clear boundaries to maintain a healthy approach to empathy.

 

The Different Types of Empathy

One common issue is the confusion between different types of empathy. Affective empathy means experiencing someone else’s feelings and emotions, whereas cognitive empathy involves listening and understanding others’ feelings and beliefs without necessarily sharing those emotions or beliefs.

When practicing affective or cognitive empathy, it’s beneficial to keep your emotions separate from those of the person you’re empathizing with, allowing them space to express and be understood.

If you inadvertently take on their emotions as your own, your efforts to empathize can become counterproductive. In such cases, the focus may shift to relieving your distress, hindering the original aim of providing support. Understanding the distinction between affective and cognitive empathy is crucial when considering the vast number of people and situations that evoke empathy.

While everyone deserves empathy, it’s important to recognize that our capacity for affective empathy is limited when we deeply feel others’ emotions. It’s neither feasible nor healthy to fully engage affectively with every individual or situation we encounter or hear about in the news.

On the other hand, we have a much greater capacity for cognitive empathy, which involves understanding and acknowledging others’ feelings and perspectives without necessarily experiencing those emotions ourselves.

Capacity and the Practice of Empathy

Awareness of these different capacities is vital in establishing healthy boundaries in our empathy practice. Recognizing that we can cognitively empathize with many, but our ability to affectively empathize is naturally limited, helps us avoid emotional burnout.With this understanding, we can now explore how to effectively establish and maintain these boundaries in our empathy practice, ensuring that we engage empathetically in these four sustainable and balanced ways:

1. Think of Empathy as a Skill

We often associate empathy only with feeling. What happens if, instead, you consciously think of empathy as a skill—a muscle to be developed? This can be especially helpful for those in a helping profession requiring continual heavy emotional engagement.

If you think about and employ cognitive empathy in the way you do other skills like active listening or constructive feedback, what might that look like for you?

2. Believe in the Ability of Others

While we sometimes misinterpret empathy to mean solely taking on another person’s feelings and emotions, it can also be misinterpreted as the need “to fix” a situation for another. When someone simply asks us for understanding, we must limit ourselves to that.

In doing so, we respect their boundaries and ability to care for themselves and adjust their circumstances as needed. We are not saviors, and most people don’t need saving.

3. Establish Your Circle of Control

The first step in my empathy journey was paying attention to the opportunities to offer empathy throughout my day. It was not long before I became overwhelmed by trying to do the impossible. But through mentors and my practice, I learned that just because I couldn’t help everyone didn’t mean I couldn’t help someone. While there are many things I am concerned about, there are far fewer things that are within my personal circle of control.

When I find myself becoming overwhelmed, I write down the concerns that are swirling in my mind and put them into two distinct categories. First, I list my circle of concerns, which could be anything from a friend experiencing health issues to global warming.

Then, within that list, I break out what circumstances I can exert some level of control. I can control my schedule and make time to be with my friends. I can’t control global warming, but I can do my part, like driving an electric car and reducing, reusing, and recycling as much as possible. I could even decide to advocate for more intense regulations.

Acknowledging my concerns and identifying how/if I have control over them greatly reduces my stress and enables me to act with purpose rather than throw up my hands and give up.

4. Celebrate the Wins

As with any skill we attempt to develop, there will be days we fail at our empathy practice and days we just can’t seem to get it quite right. That’s okay. While it’s important to recognize when we fall short and work to do better, I would argue that it is more important to acknowledge when we get it right and build on the momentum of those moments.

The practice of empathy benefits the person receiving it, but it also benefits you—celebrate those benefits!

By Wouter Aghina, Christopher Handscomb, Jesper Ludolph, Dave West, and Abby Yip

 

This is  summary version of the article as everyone is busy…

 

What personality traits and values help agile teams bloom? Discover ways to identify these when recruiting and coaching your people.

 

How to Select and Develop Individuals for Successful Agile Teams is a practical guide developed through a collaboration between Scrum.org and McKinsey & Company in 2018. It explores the traits, behaviours, and values that contribute to building effective agile teams. The guide provides insights based on interviews and surveys with Scrum trainers and practitioners.

 

Key points include:

 

1. Critical Traits for Agile Success:

• Handling Ambiguity: Agile environments are unpredictable, so individuals must be comfortable with uncertainty, focus on goals, and be flexible.
• Agreeableness: Ranked surprisingly high, this trait fosters empathetic listening, teamwork, and the ability to reconcile differences. It’s crucial for both product owners and team members.
• Extroversion and Introversion: While extroverts tend to handle external communication well, introverts can excel in leading self-motivated teams due to their listening and empathy skills.
• Emotional Stability (Low Neuroticism): High levels of neuroticism are detrimental to agile environments, as they require calm and resilience under stress.

 

2. Work Values for Agile Teams:

• Pride in the Product: Agile teams prioritize delivering a valuable outcome over rigidly following processes.
• Customer-Centricity: Successful agile teams learn and adapt with their customers, ensuring their needs are met.
• Self-Direction: Individuals should be self-motivated, capable of working autonomously, and comfortable with minimal guidance.
• Openness to Change: A mindset that embraces innovation and adaptability is essential for thriving in agile settings.
• Avoiding Conservation: People who cling to tradition and resist change may struggle in agile environments, which require flexibility and a willingness to break rules if necessary.

 

3. Development and Recruitment Tips:

• The guide provides actionable suggestions for recruiting and developing agile team members by assessing their ability to handle ambiguity, engage in teamwork, maintain customer focus, and take pride in their work.
• Specific interview questions and assessment methods are provided to evaluate these traits and values.

 

In conclusion, the document highlights that successful agile teams are not just composed of technically proficient individuals but of people with the right personality traits, behaviours, and values. These can be innate or developed through coaching and mentorship.

By Joanna York (Source BBC ) 31st October 2022

Bosses have long said workers need a growth mindset. Now, this skill is more important than ever – and it’s possible to master it.

Among daily changes within the world of work, there’s never been a better time for employees to cultivate skills to help them better manage workplace challenges. This is where the idea of the ‘growth mindset’ comes roaring in – the belief that workers are capable of actively improving their abilities, rather than being innately able or unable to complete certain tasks.

Yet, this ‘can do’ mindset can be more difficult to harness than it seems. Doing so means getting comfortable with embracing hurdles, learning from criticism and persisting when things get difficult.

Even if we believe that such tenacity is worth developing, in practise, doubts and fears can dominate. “We’re wired to believe our emotions,” says Elaine Elliott-Moskwa, psychologist and author of The Growth Mindset Workbook, based in Princeton, New Jersey, US. “When a person says ‘I feel I’m not good enough’, that feeling is very powerful, even though that is a belief about their abilities.”

At the heart of the growth mindset is learning to overcome such feelings of inability or inadequacy in the face of obstacles, and instead recognise an opportunity to learn. And there can be profound benefits to cultivating this approach. Employees with a growth mindset can tap into a useful skillset to manage stress, build supportive relationships with colleagues, cope with failure and develop attributes to help further their careers.

What is growth mindset?

Growth mindset first emerged in 1988 as a theory relating to education. “It had to do with why smart kids fail in the face of difficulty despite their actual abilities,” says Elliott-Moskwa. The idea was that the students’ attitude towards taking on a challenge, rather than their innate ability, was a key determiner for success. In other words, our ideas about how able we are to do something can have a significant impact on the outcome of a task.

Approaching a challenge with a growth mindset over a fixed mindset is a choice anyone can take

Stanford professor and psychologist Carol Dweck narrowed this concept down to two approaches that can determine results: ‘fixed mindset’ and ‘growth mindset’. “Fixed mindset is the idea that your abilities are high or low, and there’s not too much you can do to change it,” says Elliott-Moskwa, “whereas the growth mindset is the view that your abilities are malleable or changeable.”

While some people may naturally lean more one way than the other, people don’t outright have either a fixed or growth mindset to all problems, full stop – instead, approaching a challenge with a growth mindset over a fixed mindset is a choice anyone can take.

For many people, though, moments of difficulty often spur fixed mindsets. For example, says Elliott-Moskwa, when people take in criticism from a boss, or struggle with a new task, they might feel a sense of inadequacy. In these situations, a fixed-mindset response might be “I’m not good enough”, or “I can’t do it”, she says.

By contrast, a growth mindset approach takes a different tack on the same situation. People with growth mindsets don’t interpret such moments as personal failings, but instead recognise a need to improve. Crucially, people working with a growth mindset believe they are capable of such improvement, and are able to break down challenges into achievable steps.

This means getting out of the comfort zone and accepting a certain level of risk, uncertainty and the potential for failure that comes with trying something new. “It feels a little bit uncomfortable, and also a little bit exciting,” says Isabella Venour, a London-based mindset coach, who helps professionals understand the role their beliefs, values and patterns of thinking play in the workplace. “You’ve got a bit of risk that it might go wrong, but you’ve also got the potential to learn something and to grow as an individual.”

 

A growth mindset means believing you can actively improve your abilities, rather than simply being ‘bad’ at some tasks.

Why is growth mindset important in the workplace right now?

A can-do approach is always a plus in the workplace – it demonstrates that workers are adaptable and willing to evolve within their jobs and organisations. But fostering a growth mindset plays an important role in helping workers navigate turbulence as well as improve resilience as they feel more confident and capable handling difficulties.

This is essential at a time when many employees are struggling with wellbeing in the wake of the pandemic. Gallup’s 2022 State of the Workforce Report showed that stress among global workers has risen consistently since the pandemic began in 2020. A similar global survey by the Wellbeing Project showed that in 2022 resilience is particularly low,  and the risk of burnout remains, especially among non-managers. “People are being pulled in all directions and stretched thin as pressures of work and life are spilling into one another,” says Venour. “Business leaders are noticing that their employees are struggling to cope with everyday challenges.”

Growth mindset not only provides a framework for dealing with challenges, but a way to break those challenges down in to manageable steps. “Often, if we’re feeling pressure when we’re not in a growth mindset, we tend to focus on what we can’t control,” says Venour. “It’s a lot more useful to focus on what we can influence.” This starts with workers identifying personal strengths that they can utilise, then making a plan to improve areas of weakness.

Taking a pragmatic approach can help cut through overwhelm and also help workers lay down boundaries – something many remote workers are struggling to do. For example, “if your boss gives you a task that you feel is unrealistic, it’s easier to say you’re not sure about the timing or you need an extra meeting to give you more clarity”, says Venour. “Because you are confident in your abilities and you don’t see weaknesses as something to beat yourself up about it. You’re able to say, I need some support here.”

[A growth mindset] encourages people to focus on feedback rather than failure – Isabella Venour

It is possible to practice growth mindset individually, but if a business encourages the whole workforce to adopt a growth mindset, the results can be even more powerful. “It encourages people to focus on feedback rather than failure,” says Venour. This can help motivate employees to tackle challenging projects, and create an in-built culture of learning. Studies suggest this is something that workers overwhelmingly want: in a 2022 McKinsey & Company study, 41% of workers said the foremost reason they would quit a job is lack of career development and advancement.

How can you improve growth mindset? 

The first step towards encouraging a growth mindset is personal awareness: the ability to identify fixed-mindset thinking when it occurs, which often manifests as feelings of discomfort or inadequacy in the face of a challenge.

First, Elliott-Moskwa advises recognising and accepting such feelings – instead of beating yourself up about them. “Then, mindfully make another choice to take an action step in keeping with what you would be doing if you had growth mindset – the belief that you could increase your abilities,” she says.

To help clients approach obstacles with a growth mindset, Venour often breaks down challenges that feel overwhelming into smaller pieces. For example, if a worker feels unable to give a presentation in front of colleagues, “how much of that is emotional and how much of that is factual?”, she asks. “Can they talk? Yes. Have they spoken in front of more than one person before? Yes. Have they done presentation slides before? Yes. So, if there are elements that they can do, [what] is the bit that they’re not comfortable with?”

Narrowing down an overwhelming challenge to a specific point of difficulty helps workers focus, and reduces the element of learning required to an achievable level.

Often, the learning itself requires asking for help. One of the key concepts of growth mindset is seeing others as inspiration rather than competition, an approach that can help foster collaborative teams. “If workers view others as resources and not as competitors, they’re open to sharing other people’s skills and abilities and learning from fellow employees,” says Elliott-Moskwa.

Over time, recognising fixed mindset and practicing a growth mindset can become easier, and the prospect of taking on challenges less daunting. “Growth mindset is an empowering attitude,” says Venour. “You can really develop and grow over time as a person.”

 

 

Call the The Futures Group to discuss how our PRINT®work provides significant insight into what makes each of us tick and has yielded some outstanding benefits for individuals and teams.

Shellye Archambeau

Forbes 7th 2023

There is no end to the list of qualities that help to create a better leader. However, during times of uncertainty, major change and disruption, one rises to the top — self-awareness.

The most effective leaders during challenging times have a very good sense of who they are. They have an accurate understanding of their impact on others. They are curious. They solve problems. In a nutshell they are self-aware, although self-awareness – per se – isn’t their specific focus.

These qualities enable them to constantly learn, grow and become … and remain … effective leaders.

Self-Awareness Drives Tangible Benefits

“We all can lead better by developing a better understanding of ourselves, so we can make the best of what we have,” says Claudio Feser, senior advisor at McKinsey & Co. “Our research suggests that leaders who are self-aware – who know themselves or, as we put it, are ‘centered’ – are up to four times more effective in managing change than people who aren’t.”

Self-aware leaders unleash optimal performance from the individuals and teams they manage. They also identify and mentor the “next generation” of potential leaders. In contrast, leaders lacking self-awareness stifle the growth of those reporting to them by not being approachable and open to others’ thoughts.

Organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich notes that, among other attributes, self-awareness results in leaders who are more confident and more creative – attributes that directly and positively impact the company’s culture.

“(They) make sounder decisions, build stronger relationships, and communicate more effectively,” she writes, adding that more-satisfied employees are a critical byproduct. Self-awareness also establishes a culture of trust as employees are more engaged and better respond to leaders who are accountable.

Leader Derailment

The importance of self-awareness is best understood by first addressing the issue of “leader derailment” … the phenomenon of high-potential employees who, after finally getting a leadership opportunity, fail to capitalize upon it.

Research and experience tells us three important things:

· High-potential employees are less likely to derail if their career path includes developing strong relationships with upper management and listening to (and taking actions based upon) the feedback they receive.

· Derailment isn’t always (or solely) the result of poor decisions or financial results. Rather, it’s frequently because of personal and relationship issues. The other side of the coin: leaders who have an accurate or self-deprecating self-awareness minimize their derailment risk.

· A leader’s self-view can be as much as 180 degrees different than how he or she is viewed by others. The result, according to Robert and Joyce Hogan of Hogan Assessment Systems and Robert B. Kaiser Leadership Solutions, is leadership that fails, perhaps even as high as 75 percent of the time.

Incorporating Self-Awareness Into Your Skill-Set

The good news is there are ways you can become more self-aware.

The essential first step is to understand that self-awareness and self-confidence are not the same. Self-awareness is the ability to recognize your needs, feelings, strengths, weaknesses, ambitions, how others see you, etc. Self-confidence, meanwhile, is trusting (rightly or wrongly) in your perception of your skills, abilities, traits, etc. And there is no end to the number of self-confident people who are not self-aware at all.

Additional steps include these:

· Focus on how leadership should be done and not into how leaders behave. Leadership is not “performance art.” It’s bringing skills, talent and experience to the challenge of leading other people. “Many leadership (training) experiences historically foster management rather than skills,” writes former ExxonMobil executive Xinjin Zhao in Wharton magazine. He adds that traditional training methods lag changes taking place in the world, including “how to keep new generations of employees constantly motivated, inspired, and performing at their best.”

· Consider that some of your behaviors might be weaknesses. Examples: unwillingness to elicit and use someone else’s idea; believing that seeking feedback is a negative; misinterpreting risk aversion; thinking setbacks are personal defeats, believing failures don’t provide learning opportunities.

“Experience necessarily involves failures, and you certainly shouldn’t miss the meaning of those,” writes Jeffrey Russell, Vice Provost for Lifelong Learning and Dean of Continuing Studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison. ”Failures can prepare you to be a leader — as long as you take the time to reflect on them. When you’re reflective, you think about outcomes and impact. You develop judgment.”

· Develop a real curiosity into how your behavior might affect those around you. You broadcast your values and ethics in your actions and decisions. Those, in turn, shape how others view you. You may, in fact, have an unconscious bias that emerges in your leadership style.

Without learning about and understanding yourself, you face multiple problems as you are unable to:

o change your behavior when circumstances require flexibility or openness of thought

o predict how your behavior affects others

o be supportive of others

Seeking specific and future-focused feedback from others is helpful and effective, but asking for feedback historically is anathema to an ambitious would-be executive.

· Venture outside your bubble. Force yourself each day to spend meaningful time outside your of your own workspace and your closest day-to-day colleagues. Instead, look out the “window” and embrace and grow from your interactions with others.

“Absentee leaders are people in leadership roles who are psychologically absent from them,” says Scott Gregory, CEO of Hogan Assessment Systems. “They were promoted into management, and enjoy the privileges and rewards of a leadership role, but avoid meaningful involvement with their teams.”

· Identify your triggers and responses. “Showing poise in the face of difficult situations is the essence of executive presence, or the ability to inspire confidence in others to believe in you,” writes executive coach Dina Denham Smith. “You need to manage how and when you process your reactions to communicate in thoughtful ways and see the outcomes that you want.”

All of these help you to self-reflect and learn … and grow.

Getting There

Net-net, self-awareness is about being honest with others, and most importantly, with yourself (which drives how you interact with those around you). Armed with that knowledge, you make better decisions and enable others to do so, as well.

It’s a critical skill that you need to develop and fine tune as you move through your career.

Four global success stories offer insights and lessons learned on achieving organisational agility.

by Nikola Jurisic, Michael Lurie, Philippine Risch, and Olli Salo

Around the world, a growing number of organizations are embracing agility to improve delivery, increase speed, and enhance customer and employee experience.1 Indeed, in the time of COVID-19, many organizations have accelerated their shift to agile. Our recent research found that agile organizations responded faster to the crisis,2 while those that do not embrace agile working may well forfeit the benefits of speed and resilience needed in the “next normal” after the COVID-19 pandemic.

In essence, agility at an enterprise level means moving strategy, structure, processes, people, and technology toward a new operating model by rebuilding an organization around hundreds of self-steering, high-performing teams supported by a stable backbone.4 On starting an agile transformation, many organizations emphasize and discuss tribes, squads, chapters, scrums, and DevOps pipelines. Our research shows, however, that the people dimension—culture especially—is the most difficult to get right. In fact, the challenges of culture change are more than twice as common as the average of the other top five challenges (Exhibit 1).

Shifting culture requires dedicated effort. Unfortunately, many organizations on this journey struggle to articulate their aspired agile culture and bring it to life. This article demystifies culture change in an agile world through four practical lessons drawn from real-life success stories from around the world.

Lesson 1: Define the from–tos

Each organization is unique. Accordingly, each needs its unique culture to power the new agile operating model. Organizations building an agile culture should base their approach on aspirational goals. They also need to understand their current culture, including the behavioral pain points that can be used as a starting point to articulate three to five specific mindset and behavior shifts that would make the biggest difference in delivering business results.

At New Zealand–based digital-services and telecommunications company Spark, one of the first steps the leadership team took in its agile transformation was to launch an effort to articulate the cultural from–tos. Spark boldly decided to go all in on agile across the entire organization in 2017 flipping the whole organization to an agile operating model in less than a year. From the beginning, Spark understood that the change needed to be a “hearts and minds” transformation if it was to successfully enable radical shifts to structure, processes, and technology.

Exhibit 1

More than 70 percent of respondents are transforming to agile; changing the culture is their biggest challenge.

Spark’s culture change started with its Sounding Board, a diverse group of 70 volunteers from across the organization. These were opinion leaders—the “water cooler” leaders and Spark’s “neural network”— not the usual suspects visible to management. The Sounding Board’s role was creating buy-in for and comprehension about the new model and designing enablers (behavioral shifts and new values) to help employees along the agile journey. An early task for the Sounding Board was to identify the behavioral shifts teams would need to thrive in the new agile operating model. Members used their experiences, inspirational examples from other companies, and Spark’s work on culture and talent to define these shifts. And to help inform what changes were necessary, the Sounding Board sought to understand mindsets (those underlying thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that explain why people act the way they do) that were driving behaviors.

The from–to aspirations were then shared with different groups, including the top team, and distilled into four key themes. Each theme had to resonate with colleagues across the organization, be both practical and achievable, be specific to the company (that is, not derived from general agile theory). The resulting articulation of from–to behaviors allowed Spark to understand and compare its existing cultural reality with the desired end state (Exhibit 2).

Exhibit 2

A clear, purposeful cultural aspiration is the foundation of a successful transformation program.

Finally, to set up its from–tos as more than words on paper, Spark made culture one of the agile transformation’s work streams, sponsored by a top team member and discussed weekly in transformation sessions. The work stream brought culture to life through action. The from–to changes were incorporated in all major design choices, events, and capability-building activities. The work stream aligned fully with other culture initiatives that would help to move the needle on cultural change, such as diversity and inclusion.

Melissa Anastasiou, the team member who led the company’s culture workstream, observed: “Like many organizations, the company’s experience has been that culture change is hard and does not happen overnight. It takes collective and consistent effort, as well as a genuine belief in and understanding of the ‘why’ at all levels of the organization. Setting a clear and purposeful vision for what great looks like—and ensuring that this vision is authentically bought in from bottom to top that is, from shop floor to C-suite—put us in the best possible position to deliver the change to full business agile.”

Lesson 2: Make it personal

This lesson is about making the change personally meaningful to employees. To take change from the organizational to the personal frontier, leaders need to give their people the space and support to define what the agile mindset means to them. This will differ between senior leaders, middle managers, and frontline staff, and have different implications for each. Inviting colleagues to share personal experiences and struggles can build transformational momentum and unlock transformational energy.

This was an approach adopted by Roche, a 122-year-old biotechnology company with 94,000 employees in more than 100 countries. In order to build an agile culture, Roche facilitated a deep, personal change process among senior leaders.

More than 1,000 of these leaders were invited to learn a new, more agile approach to leadership through a four-day immersive program that introduced them to the mindsets and capabilities needed to lead an agile organization. The program, called Kinesis, focused on enabling leaders to shift from a limiting, reactive mindset to an enabling, creative one. It also started the journey of learning how to shift from a traditional organization designed for command, control, and value capture to an agile organization designed for innovation, collaboration, and value creation.

Throughout the program, leaders came to recogize the ways in which their individual mindsets, thoughts, and feelings manifested in the design architecture and culture of the organizations they led. This recognition highlights why change programs that start with personal transformation are more successful. Organizations are built and led by their leaders: the way they think, make decisions, and show up shapes every part of the organization. This dynamic is amplified in agile organizations, which have an unusually high degree of openness and transparency.

The Kinesis program focused on leading through example. Roche’s head of talent innovation (the primary architect of the initiative) heard dozens of stories of leaders coming back from Kinesis and showing up differently. Beyond its learning programs, Kinesis also helped make the change personal by catalyzing large-scale experimentation in organization and business models. Within six months of the senior leader programs, many participants had launched agile experiments with their own leadership teams, departments, and several in their organizational units—engaging thousands of people in cocreating innovative ways to embed agility within the organization.

A core tenet of Kinesis was invitation, not expectation. Leaders were invited to apply lessons learned back to their own organizations. With the new mindset and the invitation, most participants did. Compared with the initial expectations of 5 to 10 percent of participants running a follow-up session with their teams, 95 percent chose to do so. Today, agility has been embraced and widely deployed with Roche in many forms and across many of its organizations, engaging tens of thousands of people in applying agile mindsets and ways of working.

Lesson 3: Culturally engineer the architecture

Even the best-designed culture programs can fail if the surrounding context does not support—or worse, hinders—new mindsets and behaviors.

To sustain a new culture, the structures, processes, and technology must be redesigned to support behavioral expectations. To be successful, the desired culture change needs to be hardwired into all elements of the business-as-usual organization as well as the transformation.

Magyar Telekom of Hungary (a Deutsche Telekom subsidiary), invested to embed and ingrain agile mindsets and behaviors throughout the agile transformation it started in 2018. As with Spark and Roche, Magyar Telekom began with the foundational lesson of defining its from–to. The telco started with three core values that, as the transformation matured, eventually evolved into seven values and were translated into slogans for more effective communication:

—Focus, becoming more focused by critically assessing the current tasks and saying no to things that are not worth the required effort

—Ownership, encouraging ownership by nudging employees to think of their tasks as if being performed for their own company

—Retrospection, emphasizing the need to review and assess, celebrating successes and learning from failures

To ensure formal mechanisms supported this agile mindset shift, Magyar Telekom used structural changes on an individual and organizational

level, aligning the people, customer, and business processes as well as the physical and digital working environments to an agile culture.

Magyar Telekom’s people processes, for example, practically reflected four principles:

—All messages employees receive from the company are consistent with its cultural values

—The cultural values and themes of focus, ownership, and retrospection are embedded in all HR and people processes

—The employer brand, recruitment process, and onboarding journey ensure every new employee understands the agile culture’s cornerstones

—Criteria for career progression define and support agile mindsets and behavior shifts

Magyar Telekom’s business processes were also hardwired to support its culture values. One of several examples used to support the focus and retrospective themes was the quarterly business review (QBR), a common element of agile operating models for business planning and resource allocation. QBRs typically involve stakeholders from major areas of the organization to set priorities and manage organizational demand and dependencies.

To further emphasize focus, the telco committed to implementing and scaling the QBR in the whole organization, including nontribe areas such as customer care or field execution. This formal mechanism had strong cultural implications. First, it signaled that the organization was committed to its cultural theme of focus. Second, the company-wide QBR aligned the whole organization around clear priorities, helping employees focus only on activities that create value while explicitly recognizing and deprioritizing activities that do not.

Third, the QBR cycle also included retrospectives to understand and learn from previous successes and failures in a formal, structured, and highly visible process.

Another powerful way to ingrain culture is to change the physical and digital environments. Floors and walls can, quite literally, create either collaboration or barriers between teams. Magyar Telekom altered its floor plans to create spaces for individual squads, as well as all squads in a tribe, to sit and work together. The new physical environment promoted collaboration and continuous interactions. Team-level tools were introduced—including spaces for squads’ ceremonies and writeable walls where teams could visualize priorities, track progress, and engage in realtime creative thinking. Similarly, the digital work environment was updated with agile tools such as Jira issue-tracking and Confluence collaboration software, enabling efficient handling of epics, features and user stories. Within weeks, the Magyar Telekom work spaces turned from stereotypical offices to collaborative incubators of the new agile culture.

Lesson 4: Monitor and learn

Continuous learning and improvement is a core principle of agile working. It applies to agile culture as well. Successful agile transformations have shown the value of monitoring progress, evaluating behavioral change and its impact on performance, and running regular retrospectives to learn from successes and failures. However, measuring behavioral change has traditionally been a challenge.

ING, a well-known leader of agile transformations in banking, innovated here and used multiple approaches to track the impact of its agile transformation on productivity and several dimensions of performance, time to market and volume, and employee engagement. As part of these tracking initiatives, ING also tracked the progress of culture change and its impact on the overall transformation. The bank even teamed with INSEAD’s Maria Guadalupe, a professor of economics, to study and improve the quality of tracking efforts and the resulting insights.

ING’s first tracking initiative was a 40-question survey with 1,000 respondents that ran five times between 2015 and 2017. The survey questions, including those related to culture, were linked to the bank’s objectives and key results. This correlation between the transformation’s soft and hard drivers and its performance metrics allowed ING to see which cultural factors led to results and were critical to the transformation’s success.

According to Michel Zuidgeest, ING’s lead of Global Change Execution, the product-owner roles and their corresponding behaviors, for example, turned out to be one of the most important factors affecting outcomes. Skill sets for product owners, chapter leads, and agile coaches—as well as the way they work together—were not clearly defined at the start of the transformation, and individuals in these roles had to grow the right mindsets and behaviors before team performance improved.

ING’s second tracking initiative, started in 2019, combined a 300-person “working floor” survey with senior leadership interviews across 15 countries. Once again, metrics on agile included culture-related questions on whether people on the floor felt more responsibility, whether they could collaborate better, and whether they were more able to learn from others in the company. In parallel, ING used qualitative methods to track the shift toward an agile culture. Updated performance frameworks and dialogues, for example, tracked whether employees were adopting desired behaviors while a continuous listening framework gave an ongoing pulse check of how people were doing.

ING used the data from its tracking initiatives to produce practical learning. Survey and interview results were used in QBRs, leadership dialogues, and improvement cycles. Outcomes were shared with tribes, the central works council, advisory groups, and others, and used in performance dialogues. ING also shared its findings with universities, sharpening both the company’s tracking efforts and university research. The value of tracking became very clear. ING managed to measure culture progress, establish the correlation between culture and performance, and use culture data to bring its agile operating model to life.

ING’s tracking initiatives produced insights on agile maturity, performance, and culture. Payam Djavdan, ING’s global head for One Agile Way of Working, explains that as the agile culture metrics improved—specifically the sense of belonging, motivation, purpose, and empowerment—employee engagement consistently increased. Similarly, several dimensions of team performance improved as the culture of credibility and clarity took hold while greater autonomy, a core principle of agile culture, allowed teams to take on their own challenges. In parallel, performance dialogues revealed that trust in tribe leads was a defining factor in employees’ engagement and their ability to share the tribe’s purpose.

Culture counts in all organizational transformations; it becomes critical in agile transformations. Organizations can do agile by changing their structure, processes, and technology. But they cannot be agile without changing the way people work and interact daily. Enabling a successful, agile transformation requires a fundamental shift in culture. Lessons from organizations that have successfully made this shift can give others a head start on their own transformation journeys.

REUTERS/PAUL CHILDS

Tackle your fear of conflict to become a better leader.

FROM OUR OBSESSION

How to Manage People

Inspiring, coaching, critiquing, training, promoting, problem-solving. There is no shortage of work to be done by good managers.

By Melody Wilding

Published January 26, 2018.

Does the thought of giving negative feedback to an employee make you want to call in sick? If so, a fear of confrontation may be getting in your way.

But you’re not doing anyone a favor by avoiding conflict. When problems go unaddressed or are swept under the rug, everyone suffers—including you. Avoiding conflict doesn’t just keep you from fulfilling your responsibilities, it also erodes your self-esteem. No one likes being the office push-over and constantly questioning yourself can take a toll on your confidence levels (What if he explodes in rage? What if she says I’m a bad manager?).

A lack of constructive feedback is also detrimental to your team, depriving them of mentorship and growth opportunities. Workplaces marked by poor communication and unclear expectations are also breeding grounds for imposter syndrome, low trust, and disengagement.

Improving your ability to deliver feedback clearly and assertively does require practice. Learning to create a container for the strong emotions kicked up by difficult conversations can also take time. But the longer you wait, the higher the cost to both you and your team members.

Here’s how to get started with conquering your fear of confrontation so you can manage more effectively.

Tackling your fear of confrontation

Many people who avoid confrontation jump to worse-case scenarios and carry around stories like, “No one likes a micromanager,” or “Bringing up this issue will ruin our working relationship.” While these beliefs may stem from past experiences with rejection and failure, they are a reflection of inaccurate, binary thinking. In actuality, it’s possible to be both assertive and direct without damaging relationships or earning a reputation as the “difficult manager.”

To challenge (and change) your assumptions, focus on what you could gain by speaking up. Compare this against a list of the costs you’re bearing as a result of skirting the issue. When you look more closely, you’ll see that expressing your thoughts, feelings, and opinions is far more beneficial than stuffing them down and suffering the consequences.

Reframe feedback as a tool that empowers, rather than demoralizes, others

Despite what you may believe, employees crave meaningful, candid feedback from their managers. Again, this forces you to reconsider your assumptions—namely, that feedback causes hurt feelings and bruised egos. On the contrary, it’s an underutilized way to inspire and motivate those around you.

While it’s true that some bosses thrive on tearing people down, most leaders genuinely care about helping those around them grow as individuals. If you fall into the latter camp, then reflecting back on a person’s weaknesses (with tact, of course), affords them a special opportunity to develop skills like grit and a growth mindset.

When you reframe conflict as a healthy, normative part of leadership, it loosens the anticipatory anxiety you may feel broaching difficult topics with others.

Communicate thoughtfully and directly

Before diving into corrective feedback, start by setting a non-adversarial tone for the conversation. Let the person know that you hope to have two-way dialogue—not to lecture them. Welcome their input and ideas. Listen and validate their concerns.

You may also want to acknowledge that you’re possibly at fault, too. Saying something like, “We can talk about how I may have contributed to this problem,” can put people at ease. It signals to them that you’re not trying to pass blame—you’re sincerely trying to find solutions.

Using “I” statements whenever possible helps ensure you communicate directly without vacillating or minimizing your concerns simply because you’re scared. Being specific is also important. Rather than saying, “You dropped the ball again,” try saying, “I’m concerned that I didn’t get the documents in time for the client meeting today.”

Make feedback part of the process

If you only level criticism when something goes horribly wrong, or, conversely, at formal performance reviews each quarter, you may want to shift to a more routine schedule. Delaying difficult conversations only lets problems linger.

As management expert Joseph Grenny suggests, strive to make feedback “a regular ritual rather than an occasional blast.” Why? Gradually exposing yourself to fearful situations is the best way to overcome them. The more you practice giving feedback in lower-stakes, everyday scenarios as part of your role, the better at it you’ll become.

You can open up regular communication channels in many ways, including building in weekly one-on-ones, initiating daily stand-ups, or using team collaboration tools.

Creating a positive feedback culture will not only give you more opportunities to flex your newfound assertiveness skills, it’ll also help you strengthen rapport and trust with your team. And that, as a manager, is one of the best things you can hope for.

Melody Wilding is a high-performance coach, writer, and speaker.

An interesting article especially the quote from Dr Zeuss -Last paragraph

Gerard Florian-Group Executive Technology, ANZ

One of my favourite commentators, Professor Scott Galloway, talks about “10 years of progress in 10 weeks”.

I think he’s right. The pace and degree of change has not only been radical but has shown us what is possible – including much we would’ve considered wishful thinking just a few months ago. And so much of that emergency response includes attitudes and ways of working we should keep, whenever and however the pandemic ends.

” What is the purpose of “the office” and what changes if these properties are no longer where the vast majority of work is done?”

I’ve been having many conversations with chief executives and other leaders operating in financial services, retail, public sector and technology. I’ve compiled a list of seven strategic areas that are increasingly dominating the agenda of my conversations:

1. The future workplace

Where do we do work, what is the purpose of “the office” and what changes if these properties are no longer where the vast majority of work is done? More than just working from home, this calls into question collaboration, culture, the employee value proposition and the very nature of productivity as we try and find the right balance of working anywhere and delivering quality outcomes. The virtual office has been on our minds for years. Now it is on the agenda of CEOs around the world.

2. Employee wellbeing

Ensuring our people can perform at their very best makes sense on so many levels. While employee wellbeing is not a new topic, it is more clearly seen as a critical success factor since COVID-19. More than something left to human resources leaders to promote, this is now something all good leaders are driving with purpose. In particular, the recent crisis has shone the spotlight on resilience. More than a “defensive” play where we are trying to manage adverse situations, the focus has expanded to realising that an offensive play that builds sustainable resilience will enable organisations to be in an always ready mode, prepared for future shocks, regardless of their nature.

3. Paperless

In a world where so many physical objects are being digitised at pace, what happens when data is real-time (fewer reports), transactions are digitised and contactless (less cash, zero cheques, minimal paperwork) and stand-ups are virtual (no sticky notes)? Bill Gates called it 30 years ago but the paperless reality may be finally upon us. But what is needed behind the scenes to do this well? What tools are needed, what controls are needed and what needs to shift at the top of the house to support this change?

4. Supply chain risk

Risk assessments start with one simple question: what could go wrong? The answer to this question is now vastly different to what is was just six months ago. Understanding all parts of the supply chain and thinking about the business impact of one or more failures is a priority for every business. Topics such as cloud, automation and offshoring are now seen from an entirely new perspective. Some are calling this a turning point in the globalisation mega trend – is that too soon?

5. Data is the centre of our digital universe

We have all known data was becoming increasingly important… and then COVID-19 happened. Trying to operate any team or business during this crisis without accurate, timely and well presented data would have been impossible. The consequences of this are far reaching from your architecture to your ecosystem, from your capabilities to your governance models. Having an abundance of trusted, data-driven insights has never been more important than now. Will this crisis accelerate the ethics and privacy debate as seen by the response to track and trace apps?

6. IT-savvy community

The consumerisation of information technology was all about the shift of technology from the office to the home. My generation first got access to technology at work – first email account, first computer, first mobile. While that is now almost ancient history, there has been a “late majority” of tech consumers who have simply not seen a reason to change. To watch “Zoom” go from cool tech to a mainstream verb in weeks has been breathtaking. But it is more than Zoom – it is the use of contact tracing apps, the preference for contact less payments, the rise of the podcast and webcast and the boom in online retail. Our customers have a very different appetite for technology and with that comes higher expectations and greater opportunity to innovate.

7. Small “a” agility

Peak “Agile” may have been reached recently with the word splashed across the front cover of leading management publications. While many organisations have looked at agile work practices and some have pursued this more formally, during the crisis every organisation has had to adopt the basic principles of cross functional teams operating at pace with imperfect data, failing fast and pivoting, and focusing on clearly articulated priorities. Organisational agility and the ability to adapt quickly to changing conditions has never been more important. What will these lessons teach executives who are looking for competitive advantage through execution at pace?

These are the forces at play and companies are responding in a myriad of ways. Predicting the future rarely goes well – especially in times such as this. However control the controllable is a favourite mantra of mine.

What we can control is how we lead. How we empathise with our teams and customers, how we think about the opportunity regardless of the headwinds, how well we engage transparently with all stakeholders, how we use data to help inform decisions and how we manage for the short term and the long term at the same time.

I started with a professor and will end with a doctor – Dr Seuss.

“When something bad happens you have three choices. You can either let it define you, let it destroy you, or you can let it strengthen you.”

This crisis has already bought incredible hardship and it is likely there is more to come. How organisations will emerge post-COVID will somewhat be defined by which of the three alternatives we choose.

Gerard Florian is Group Executive – Technology at ANZ

Critical Things You Must Quit Doing Now To Be More Successful

Mar 9, 2016

Written by Dr. Travis Bradberry

Coauthor Emotional Intelligence 2.0 & President at TalentSmart

Most of us grew up hearing the mantra “Don’t be a quitter,” and we’ve internalized it to the point where we feel guilty even if we don’t finish a book that’s boring us to death. Our parents weren’t entirely wrong in saying that persistence is necessary for success, but sometimes quitting is the most effective course of action. Whether it’s a failed project, a thankless job, or a doomed relationship, quitting can be a virtue.

“Quitting is leading too.” – Nelson Mandela

As it turns out, some of us are really good at knowing when to quit, while others have a hard time getting “unstuck.” Research from the University of Rochester found that people are motivated by either “approach goals” or “avoidance goals.”

Those who fall into the approach camp are motivated by challenges and don’t waste time trying to solve problems that simply don’t have a feasible solution. In other words, they know when to quit.

People motivated by avoidance goals, however, worry a lot more about failing. They want to avoid failure at all costs, so they keep plugging away at things, long after logic suggests it’s time to move on. This is typically a much less productive way to work.

Knowing when to quit is a skill that can be learned. If you tend to get stuck on things long after it’s obvious that what you’re doing isn’t working, you can train yourself to do better. You just need to practice quitting. Thankfully, life provides plenty of opportunities to do this. Here are some things we should all quit doing.

Quit doubting yourself. Confidence plays a huge role in success. Hewlett-Packard conducted an interesting study whereby they analyzed the process through which people applied for promotions at the company. Women, it turned out, only applied when they met 100% of the criteria for the job they wanted, while men applied when they met 60% of the criteria. The researchers postulated that one of the (many) reasons men dominated the upper echelons of the company is that they were willing to try for more positions than females. Sometimes confidence is all it takes to reach that next level. The trick is, you have to believe it. If you doubt yourself, it won’t work. Faking confidence just doesn’t produce the same results.

Quit putting things off. Change is hard. Self-improvement is hard. Scrounging up the guts to go for what you want is hard, and so is the work to make it happen. When things are hard, it’s always easier to decide to tackle them tomorrow. The problem is that tomorrow never comes. Saying you’ll do it tomorrow is just an excuse, and it means that either you don’t really want to do it or that you want the results without the hard work that comes along with it.

Quit thinking you have no choice. There’s always a choice. Sure, sometimes it’s a choice between two things that seem equally bad, but there’s still a choice. Pretending that there isn’t one makes you a victim who is voluntarily taking on a mantle of helplessness. To play the victim, you have to give up your power, and you can’t put a price on that. To succeed at the highest level, you have to quit giving your power away.

Quit doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Albert Einstein said that insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Despite his popularity and cutting insight, there are a lot of people who seem determined that two plus two will eventually equal five. The fact is simple: if you keep the same approach, you’ll keep getting the same results, no matter how much you hope for the opposite. If you want different results, you need to change your approach, even when it’s painful to do so.

Quit thinking everything is going to work out on its own. It’s tempting to think that it’s all going to work out in the end, but the truth is that you have to make it work. This has many implications. Don’t expect your boss to notice when you’re ready for a promotion, don’t expect your colleague to stop sloughing work off on you if you’re always willing to do it, and don’t think that anyone is going to stop walking all over you as long as you allow it. Everything is not going to magically work out on its own; you have to be proactive and take responsibility for yourself.

Quit saying “yes.” Every “yes” you utter is a tradeoff. By saying “yes” to one thing, you’re saying “no” to something else. Saying “yes” to staying late at work, for example, might mean saying “no” to the gym or to time spent with your family. Research conducted at the University of California, San Francisco, showed that the more difficulty you have saying “no,” the more likely you are to experience stress, burnout, and even depression. Saying “no” is indeed a major challenge for many people. No is a powerful word that you should not be afraid to wield. When it’s time to say “no,” avoid phrases such as I don’t think I can or I’m not certain. Saying “no” to a new commitment honors your existing commitments and gives you the opportunity to successfully fulfill them. When you learn to say “no,” you free yourself from unnecessary constraints and free up your time and energy for the important things in life.

Bringing It All Together

There are dozens of ways we get in the way of achieving our full potential. We doubt ourselves, we decide that something is just too hard, or we tell ourselves that we’ll worry about it tomorrow. If you really want to succeed—and I meanreally succeed—stop focusing so much on what you should be doing and, instead, take a really good look at the things you should quit doing.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/critical-things-you-must-quit-doing-now-more-dr-travis-bradberry