At Awesome Journey, one of the key learnings that we teach from Peter Senge’s book, “The Fifth Discipline,” is that there are three roles inside being a Powerful Leader – Steward, Designer, and Teacher.

Steward You create clarity in what you CARE about. What you CARE about gets your time!

Designer You focus on designing intentional conversations to support the things you CARE about.

Teacher You are intentional about creating learning experiences and learning environments to support your people in being effective for the things that the organization CARES about.

Recently, I was in the presence of three Master Teachers. In August, I was in a four-day leadership course with Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer and Arawana Hayashi in Stowe, Vermont. One of my key learnings that I took away from our four-day conversation on leadership was seeing Master Teachers teach. Here are some of the key principles they taught me about being a Master Teacher:

1. Create an environment where learning is safe to be vulnerable. Master Teachers encourage you to say, “I don’t know how to solve this issue and I need support to move forward”. When you embrace a beginner’s mind, new possibilities can emerge.
2. Ask thoughtful questions to disrupt your current mindset. This gets you to think differently about a challenge or issue you are struggling to create new future possibilities.
3. Create space for learning through “Dialogue Conversations”. When we embrace learning in community, cool breakthroughs start to occur! Dialogue conversations allow diverse thinking to be present to allow new possibilities to emerge.
4. Be committed to your student’s winning! Winning means that your students are learning from their experiences (success & failures). By challenging your students to debrief their experience by observing how their learning has impacted their ability to lead.

Ask yourself “has the student’s learning expanded their…”

• • Thinking
  • Awareness to connect with others
  • Influence to impact others to be in action
  • Expertise to generate new possibilities
  • Relationship to problems:
    • Perspective from seeing problems as something is wrong/ needs to be fixed to seeing problems as an invitation to discover what is missing and what is emerging!

Your Leadership Challenge: Be a teacher to your team this week by applying one or all of the four principles of a Master Teacher.

Our four-day Classroom outside under this tent! From left to right: Peter Senge, Arawana Hayashi, Me and Otto Scharmer.

Great Leaders are committed to building a “Culture of Accountability” inside their organizations.

At Awesome Journey, a “Culture of Accountability” means:

1. People have the ability to account for their performance in their roles within the team.
2. People have the ability to count their performance in their roles.

What does counting your performance in your business mean?

First, consider why and how counting creates accountability. At Awesome Journey, we believe that the things which you count as your performance in your business allow you to have power over them. For example, what you can see, you can have power over i.e. choose to do more of, less of, delegate, ask for support, teach, share and so on.

Accessing this power allows you as a leader to make quality decisions to move your business forward.

When you don’t count things that are important to your business, they have power over you and your business. You risk being powerless!

What are you counting in your business?

• Sales
• Lost business
• Costs
• Client loyalty
• Time
• Safety incidents
• Efficiencies
• Turnover
• KPI’s
• Retention

Inquiry:

Ask yourself “What am I not counting in my business that I need to be, in order to have greater power, velocity, and freedom to create my desired future?

What is Leadership Presence?

Leadership Presence is the energy you bring to a conversation, measured by the impact your presence has on others.

Components of a Powerful Leadership Presence:

People are attracted to your Powerful presence and engaged to follow your lead and your requests that you have made of them, all the way to the finish line and beyond.

Dialogue: You spend most of your time communicating with others by asking questions versus telling others what to do.

Respect: You respect others for their time, opinions, expertise and insights.

Inclusivity: You include others in key conversations.

Dialogue + Respect + Inclusivity = Empowerment and Sustainable Action

Components of a Forceful Leadership Presence:

Others are engaged for a short period of time until they find a way to avoid your Forceful presence.

Monologue: You spend most of your time communicating to others by telling them what to do versus asking others questions.

Disrespect: You don’t respect others for their time, opinions, expertise and insights.

Isolation: You exclude others from key conversations.

Monologue + Disrespect + Isolation = Disempowerment and Unsustainable Action

Challenge: Develop a Powerful Leadership Presence  

Have you ever heard the saying “People don’t remember what you did, people remember how you made them feel”?

1. Assess your impact on others through your verbal language, body language, and emotional language.
2. Commit to practicing one or more components of a Powerful Presence.
3. Ask for feedback about your Leadership Presence.

Our clients, who are committed to living in an Abundance Mindset of “Think Big, Play Big”, have a unique set of leadership practices that demonstrate they are in this mindset. Here’s what we notice they do:

First – Think Big

They have a clear vision of future possibilities that they are focused on making real.

Second – Play Big

This clarity of their action plan to make their vision a reality separates the real leaders from the pretenders.

They have a built a High-Performing Culture that allows their team to deliver consistent, repeatable and reliable outcomes to those whom they choose to service because:

They live in clear agreements:

Examples of clear agreements would be how new staff and clients are brought onboard, effective meetings are run, decisions are made, real-time quality feedback is given, and performance of a project or an event, i.e. meeting, is debriefed to maximize learning and future growth.

They live in a system of accountability:

Components of a system of accountability in an organization are:

• Counting what is important, i.e. Where is time being allocated?
• Clear roles, responsibilities, and goals (KPIs)
• Clear weekly priorities
• Clear individual and organizational 90-day goals with action plans
• Clear understanding of and accountability to the annual operating plan
• Being and holding each other accountable for commitments, priorities, and promises

They have strong support structures:

Examples of strong support structures are:

• Quality processes to executive business flawlessly
• Hiring the right people and supporting their development to be great performers
• Having a set of practices in the organization to support the culture and brand.
  An example of a practice of one of our clients is they consistently celebrate on a weekly basis individual and team accomplishments large and small!

They have a shared understanding with the team:

A shared understanding is such that everyone:

• Knows the shared vision and the future of the organization
• Lives the culture through intentional conversations
• Knows how their role, responsibilities, and goals support bringing the vision to life
• Speaks and understands shared organizational language to support coordinating action with others with ease

When an organization lives in an Abundance Mindset there is a high degree of “Workability” throughout the organization to support their ability to deliver quality outcomes consistently.

A great example of an organization that lives the principles of an Abundance Mindset of “Think Big & Play Big” is Bridgewater Associates. To learn more, read their book entitled, “Principles”, by Ray Dalio, CEO Bridgewater Associates. It is a fascinating read about the commitment of a whole organization to live in an Abundance Mindset!

Leadership Challenge:

What is one component of an Abundance Mindset you will develop?

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” African Proverb

[1] Reference: Copyright – Alex Mandossian

I have recently embarked on a new Leadership Learning Journey by enrolling in the Executive Leadership Coaching Program at Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario. I’ve done this to expand my Executive Leadership Coaching development as a coach and as a CEO to support my 5-member coaching team. I’ve just returned home from the first of three intensive learning weekends. One of my key takeaways is the power of “Self-Reflection” (to evaluate) to generate learning insights and action quickly.

I have come to understand that my relationship to learning has expanded by being more intentional about debriefing after a learning event. A learning event could be a conversation with a colleague, a meeting with your team, a learning workshop, a client meeting or a key project. At the end of the event, you pause and debrief the learning that occurred from the event, on your own, or with your colleagues. My self-reflection practice includes this Learning Loop – Design (a conversation), Execute (the conversation) and then Evaluate (the impact of the conversation). Remember, every meeting, event, and project is a series of conversations that you design – execute – evaluate.

My Learning Journey at Ivey Business School:

As I reflect upon my recent weekend at Ivey Business School, one experience comes to mind.

We were put into groups of 5 and challenged to create a Coaching App to support our clients. We were given 1 hour for idea generation as a team, then 15 minutes to create an engaging presentation to give to the class and then 30 minutes to evaluate our prototype.

As I self-reflect (evaluate) on this experience here are my key learnings:

1. Collaboration creates rich insights! Idea generation begins with each person generating their own ideas and sharing their ideas with the group. At that moment collaboration took us from a few ideas to many ideas as we built on each others’ ideas.
2. Being curious about other people’s visionary ideas was very profound. It took me out of my fixed mindset of how I thought the Coaching App should be built.
3. Quantity of ideas can lead to a few quality ideas which can generate viable solutions. Together, our class created a prototype Coaching App in one hour, we called our app “HeadCoach!”.

I have gained a lot of insight from applying the Learning Loop to this experience. The power of collaboration to create Possibility Thinking was AWESOME to be part of!

Bringing this learning into my business taught me that when you have an issue (operational, service, process, communication, sales or a team), don’t solve it alone! Gather your team together for an hour and challenge them to generate a prototype that will improve the situation that you can test as a solution. I have also committed to practicing daily self-reflection (to evaluate) to accelerate my Learning Journey to becoming a champion leader in my business and as a coach to my clients.

Leadership Challenge:

Take 15 minutes at the end of your day and Self-Reflect by evaluating what you learned from your day and see what new insights you gain about yourself.

Great Leaders are committed to being intentional about awakening every member of their team to their greatness. They recognize that getting to know their people and understanding what makes them tick is vital to empowering them to perform at their highest level.

Question: As a Leader, how deep is your Listening to Understand and Connect with your people?

Here are 11 key things that you can look for, identify and hear when listening to your people:

1. Do they speak using the Language of Accountability: I can, I will, I choose, or I am versus Language of Non-Accountability: I’ll try, I should, I guess, or I assume?
2. Are they speaking in a Future context versus a story that happened in and comes from their Past?
3. Are they Stuck vs in Action?
4. What are their Gifts of Greatness and how can they leverage these gifts and strengths?
5. Do they have a Fear of, example:
   • Looking incompetent?
   • Rejection?
   • Not being liked or accepted?
   • Imposing or being seen as demanding?
6. What are their Core Values and how do they guide the person in their life?
7. What do they Care about personally and professionally?
   • Personal examples: family, hobbies, and/or travel
   • Professional examples: career advancement, learning & development and/or security
8. What is their current Mindset?
   • Abundance i.e. what’s possible and what can be created
   • Scarcity i.e. not enough time, money or ideas
9. Do they speak to Fix and Rescue others or do they speak to Empower and Support others?
10. What are they Concerned about i.e. what are their frustrations, worries, problems, and roadblocks?
11. Are they Vague or Intentional when they speak?

As you focus on being intentional about growing your people, and you take the time to get to know, understand and connect with them through ‘Deep Listening’ practices, you will be able to empower your people to harness their ‘True Potential!’

Want to expand your Deep Listening skills?

Check out this article by Tony Zampella – “Commitment of Listening”

Your Weekly Learning Journey:

Pull out a piece of paper and a pen, and for 10 minutes this week write down how much you know about two members of your team based upon the ‘11 Deep Listening’ areas outlined above.

“Are You Reaching Out for Support?”

A common conversation our firm engages in with Executives deals with the intensity they are experiencing as they lead their organizations through escalating uncertainty and change.

21^st Century Executives are consumed by increasing complexity that is causing breakdowns everywhere in businesses today. With this new level of intensifying complexity, Executives are asking themselves how they can embrace this new “Unknown”. If we don’t manage change, we risk a higher degree of burnout, more work/life balance issues, more performance related issues, and less strategic thinking that can cause a company to miss competitive advantages in volatile markets.

So how do Executives manage the intensity?

A common response we get from Executives is, “I have never felt this level of overwhelming, isolation, uncertainty and heightened anxiety while striving to create clarity and answers for my staff and board.”

The truth is, most Executives are coping with this intensified complexity by doing more of what they already know; working long hours, putting out fires and fixing problems. Albert Einstein stated, “We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.”  In times of significant change and disruption, we need to leverage each other for deep, creative thinking to persevere the economic challenges we now face.

The paradox we are noticing is that this kind of true innovation is at an all-time low. Many leaders are not asking for support because they are stuck trying to find the answers to the challenges they are facing on their own.

It’s time leaders’ step outside the day to day grind to ask themselves how innovative they really are and who they are reaching out to for support.  Without self-reflection, collaborating together and turning our focus to what’s possible, we stay stuck in habitual methods of operating our businesses and compromise possibilities for improving performance, work/life balance and corporate sustainability. We acknowledge that asking for help is easy to say and hard for many Executives to do because they believe vulnerability equals weakness!

Once our clients learn to see vulnerability as a strength, they are able and willing to see their fears which had them stuck in the first place. Here’s a short list of what we’ve discovered are many of our standard fears:

• Fear of looking incompetent – I should know what to do
• Fear of rejection
• Fear of imposing – everyone is busy
• Fear of not being accepted
• Fear of looking helpless

An excellent way to support our clients in shifting their mindset from fear to possibility is to have them leverage their peers for different perspectives.  Leveraging the gifts of our quality support network challenges our often hidden mindset of “I need to be right and I need to know what to do”. This gets us thinking outside the box, seeing new perspectives and considering different possibilities.

So, we leave you with the challenge: “Who is one person you will reach out to for support who will listen to you and put you into action to turn your unknown experience into future possibilities?”

What will it take to generate results when tomorrow’s economy is volatile, uncertain, complex & ambiguous (VUCA)?

There’s little doubt the Canadian economy has been impacted by the volatility of a changing global market.  Current market conditions have created skepticism to any promise of sustainable growth, leaving many Leaders in a heightened state of anxiety about the future of their business.

Such challenges require creative thinking to generate new possibilities.

The type of creative thinking we are suggesting is not improving on old methods of operating our business from a “Problem-solving Mindset”. Instead, we are pointing to our ability to stand in the unknown, using an “Inquiry/Insight Mindset” to acknowledge our capacity to consider clearly what tomorrow looks like so that we can embrace our VUCA world.

We see this way of creative thinking as something that we often avoid. Why? Because of the rise in emotions that will inevitably surface when we don’t know what we’re doing.

This common behaviour can reveal our relationship to problems. It may also hold the solution to how we might navigate turbulent waters.  At Awesome Journey, we assert that Leaders need to expand their agility to navigate problems.  Human behavioural patterns indicate that we believe problems shouldn’t exist.  Most people interpret or experience problems as something is wrong, resulting in a reactive state of fight or flight to survive the situation.  This default method of problem solving often works AND may have us only sticking with what we know, limiting access to possibility for innovation and creative thinking that will take organizations to new growth.

This critical challenge requires moving past or setting aside what is known to generate a possible future of creating new results out of nothing.

To truly generate the future, Leaders need to spend less time on execution and embrace more time on learning.  This means deepening the inquiry into what got them where they are, what actions can they take today, what else is possible, and coming back to ask – did the actions work, and how might we improve on them moving forward. Asking yourself and your team “What did we learn?” and “How did we learn that?” creates a culture of Learning by Doing – Living from an “Inquiry-Insight Mindset”.

Learning requires Leaders to come from an Inquiry-Insight Mindset.  We need fewer people trying to be right about everything and more who question everything.  This new way of growth and development will provoke enough thought that moves us from our old paradigms of thinking.  No longer will problems appear as obstacles but instead they become the pathway to innovation and possibility.

Here are some key distinctions to live in the “Inquiry-Insight Mindset”:

1. Introspection: Notice how your team reacts when problems occur. What emotions are present?  Does everyone think their answer is the solution?  Or does your team explore multiple possibilities that go beyond your current realm of expertise?
2. Shift the context from which you see things – reframe how a situation is occurring for you by asking an Empowering Question – What else can we do? What have we not done that we can do?  What is missing?  As a rule of thumb, remember that our ability to generate results comes in direct proportion to our ability to manage uncertainty.
3. Agreements – Be crystal clear on the actions and accountability that needs to occur for the results to come over time. Give room to fail, make sure to learn from mistakes and always innovate and improve.
4. Fail forward and Celebrate – Creating from nothing takes learning by doing, which essentially comes with failing. With a learner mindset, failing is okay and should also be celebrated for acknowledging new efforts with an intent to see results over time. 

Example: Blockbuster vs Netflix

For Blockbuster, they created their Strategic Growth Plan based upon a “Problem-Solving Mindset” by focusing on bringing the past to now. To grow their business, they focused on leasing retail space in growing neighborhoods – Duplicating their past success to grow the business. They also were making massive profits from charging their customers for late fees which clouded the executive team from seeing a different future.

On the other hand, Netflix approached their Strategic Growth Plan by applying an “Inquiry-Insight Mindset” by asking empowering questions – “What trends are emerging such that they could differentiate their business to support future growth?” One insight that continued to show up in Netflix conversations was people were asking when they could download movies like downloading music over the internet. The technology was two to three years out when Netflix’s started. So, they built their business from the future and when the technology was available Netflix was ready and Blockbuster was not. Today Netflix’s market cap is approx. $110 Billion, and Blockbuster is bankrupt.

Leadership Challenge:

Create a discussion with your team asking them the following two questions:

1. What are our biggest challenges as a team when we are presented with problems?
2. What could we do differently that we haven’t done before when we experience breakdowns?

Create an action plan from your dialogue and act.