Leadership

Creative leadership: Scary for some?

/ Susan Hendrich / 1 Comment

Creative Strategist, Innovator & Leader, James (Not Jim) Patsalides, asks the following question:

Does “creative leadership” scare some people?

He says, “Those of us who are Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) alums would clearly value creative leadership, but are there companies/executives out there who might be nervous of the “creative” part? How can you tell these companies from those who might embrace creativity? Why would they be nervous?”  

Here’s what I think:

Creative leadership, scary or not, is the survival key for these uncertain times.

This question reminds me of the following wise words: “Human creativity is the ultimate economic resource.” — Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class

Creative leadership, therefore, is the management and guidance of our ultimate economic resource.

Here’s how I distinguish companies that embrace creative leadership from those that are run scared:

When I talk to company representatives, I listen to the language they use to describe company happenings. Do they speak in terms of “how we work,” or do they specify individual stories about specific people and teams that creatively solve problems? When I hear specific “breaking the mold” stories about people and ideas, I know that the company is valuing creative leadership.

“The key difference between checkers and chess is that in checkers the pieces all move the same way, whereas in chess all the pieces move differently. … Discover what is unique about each person and capitalize on it.” —Marcus Buckingham, The One Thing You Need to Know

I’d say more, but I don’t want to scare anyone…

Spotlight on…Implicit assumptions

/ Susan Hendrich / Leave a comment

Do hidden biases affect your leadership and training?

Project Implicit

Project Implicit provides a short online test that provides the opportunity to assess your conscious and unconscious preferences for over 90 different topics ranging from “pets to political issues, ethnic groups to sports teams, and entertainers to styles of music.” By taking this test, you’ll be assisting psychological research on thoughts and feelings.

The individual sessions take 10-15 minutes. At the end of the session, you will get some information about the study and a summary of your results. Interesting and informative!

About the project

Project Implicit blends basic research and educational outreach in a virtual laboratory at which visitors can examine their own hidden biases. Project Implicit is the product of research by three scientists whose work produced a new approach to understanding of attitudes, biases, and stereotypes.

The Project Implicit site (implicit.harvard.edu) has been functioning as a hands-on science museum exhibit, allowing web visitors to experience the manner in which human minds display the effects of stereotypic and prejudicial associations acquired from their socio-cultural environment.

Take me to Project Implicit!

Here’s the scoop on the test behind the project:

It is well known that people don’t always ‘speak their minds’, and it is suspected that people don’t always ‘know their minds’. Understanding such divergences is important to scientific psychology.

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) shows us that we learn to quickly link or associate sets of ideas in our brains. We might tend to associate the words “sunny” with “good” and “overcast” with “bad”. Besides linking the words, we are linking the concepts and feelings that go with those words and we act on those feelings. The IAT is a way to see how closely our brains have linked certain concepts. The strength of the links is hard wired in our brains.

Note that the IAT has not gone without controversy (see Wall Street Journal; Science News Article).

Your turn

So, now that your interest is piqued…

How can we incorporate what we know abotu implicit assumptions into our learning and development practices?  Let’s discuss ways to uncover hidden biases and optimize the training experience!

More information:

  1. Dr. Anthony Greenwald/IAT Materials
  2. http://faculty.washington.edu/agg/IATmaterials/PDFs/R&W.JEPG(2004).pdf

Got leadership skills?

/ Susan Hendrich / 3 Comments

Leadership assessment resources

Carolyn Neblett, Senior HR Manager at Capital One, asks:
“Any thoughts for online assessments that would help with building stronger management skills?”

Susan’s response:
The Learning and Development Roundtable is a terrific resource for management skills training and development.

I’m also a big fan of the Lominger competencies (360 degree feedback). Lominger’s FYI book (For Your Improvement) is a strong and valuable resource with many examples and practical steps for improving management skills.

I highly recommend https://www.strengthsfinder.com/, which offers an online assessment as a complement to the classic “Now, Discover Your Strengths,” by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton.

For more ideas and inspiration…

Harvard Business Publishing has a great post from Bill Taylor, called “Memo to a Young Leader: What Kind of Boss Are You?”

Michael Watkins’ book, The First 90 Days, has some nice self-assessments.

Here’s another (albeit less rigorous) resource for quick feedback: http://college.hmco.com/business/griffin/fundamentals/3e/students/assessment/.

 

Eudaimonia

/ Susan Hendrich / 3 Comments

happy1.jpg A key to happiness and design success

Oprah’s been hanging out with best-selling author and spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle, and their focus is happiness.  Tolle’s latest work, A New Earth, provides practical teachings for waking up to a new, enlightened mind-set.  So, what does this new-agey stuff have to do with learning, design, and leadership?  Enter eudaimonia. Research shows that genuinely happy people have something called “eudaimonia” in common:

Finding your (design’s) “most golden self.”

A combination of the Greek eu (“good”) and daimon (“spirit”), eudaimonia means striving toward excellence based on one’s unique talents and potential—Aristotle considered it to be the noblest goal in life.

In Aristotle’s time, the Greeks believed that each child was blessed at birth with a personal daimon embodying the highest possible expression of his or her nature. One way they envisioned the daimon was as a golden figurine that would be revealed by cracking away an outer layer of cheap pottery (the person’s base exterior). The effort to know and realize one’s most golden self—”personal growth,” in today’s lingo—is now the central concept of eudaimonia, which has also come to include continually taking on new challenges and fulfilling one’s sense of purpose in life.

I submit that, like life design, training design should pursue eudamonia. Let’s crack away the outer layer of extra words and elements that mask the true message we are trying to deliver. Whether that means using more white space in our layout or trimming content to only the most salient points, the search for eudaimonia is a mantra I’m willing to repeat. 

Tell us how you have experienced eudaimonia…