Tackling the Undiscussables: Taming the Elephant Without Getting Your Head Bitten Off Sherry...
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Transcript of Tackling the Undiscussables: Taming the Elephant Without Getting Your Head Bitten Off Sherry...
Tackling the Undiscussables:
Taming the Elephant
Without Getting Your Head Bitten Off
Sherry Schiller, Ph.D.President, Schiller Center
www.schillercenter.org
801 Duke Street, Alexandria VA 22314 USA
703.684.4735
Goals for this Session
• Review key elements of Collaborative Strategic Leadership
• Share effective strategies for addressing the most common “undiscussables”
• Offer ways to frame “undiscussable” issues that benefit all
2
What are the Elephants Sitting in Your Organization?
Lack of transparency?
Rumors about cutbacks?
Leadership issues?
Low morale?
Lack of clarity about where we’re going?
Internal hunkering down/competition?
Not much fun any more?
Expected to keep doing more with less?
?????
Are There Any Elephantsin Your AFP Chapter?
• If so, what are they?
• What are they costing the Chapter?
• What could/should be done about them?
1. Culture Elephants
• Culture:– The totality of socially transmitted behavior
patterns
• Organizational Culture:– The basic assumptions, shared values and beliefs
that guide the way organizational members behave toward each other and approach their work
2. Leadership Elephants
• Failure to lead?
• Wishy-washy?
• Personal agenda?
• Manipulative?
• Authoritarian
• Micro-manager?
• No drive?
• No vision?
• Worse?????
2. Leadership ElephantsStrategies for Helping Your Leaders Lead
• Motivators in the workplace
• Understanding communications issues
• Confusion about leadership
• Competing leadership roles
• Others?
2. Leadership ElephantsSummary of Leadership Skills
Key Points
1. The two basic objectives of any group are to:Achieve its goals
Maintain the relationships among members in good working order
2. Leadership Is the performance of any actions that help the group achieve its goal and maintain
cooperative relations among members
2. Leadership ElephantsSummary of Leadership Skills (cont.)
Task Behaviors
1. Share information and opinions.
2. Seek information and opinions--ask questions.
3. Give direction and guidance to group work, keep group focused.
4. Summarize.
5. Give energy to the group.
6. Diagnose group difficulties.
7. Encourage group to move beyond normal boundaries and to be creative.
8. Make sure that group has the information and resources needed.
9. Test reality--how practical are solutions?
10. Evaluate group products as compared to group goals.
2. Leadership ElephantsSummary of Leadership Skills (cont.)
Group Maintenance
1. Help members know what is expected of them, and how to plan
to accomplish those expectations.
2. Encourage others to participate.
3. Relieve tension.
4. Clarify communications.
5. Monitor and evaluate emotional climate about work and each other.
6. Practice active listening.
7. Harmonize and compromise--search for common elements in conflict, be a peace-maker.
8. Set standards--keep the group's goals in focus.
9. Solve interpersonal problems (constructively keep anyone from dominating
the group, keep the group comfortably moving toward its goals, etc.
10. Communicate with group members between meetings--send e-mail notes,
follow up with promised or relevant items, greet others in passing.
2. Leadership ElephantsCompeting Leadership Roles
Internal Focus External Focus
Flexibility
Stability
Domain: The OrganizationDomain: PeopleRole: The Motivator
Domain: The FutureDomain: InnovationRole: The Vision Setter
Domain: The Operating SystemDomain: EfficiencyRole: The Analyzer
Domain: The MarketDomain: PerformanceRole: The Taskmaster
From Deep Change, by Robert E. Quinn
2. Leadership ElephantsInfluence & Roles
• What are the issues?
• Can they be re-framed?
• How can you increase
your influence?
• Some basic truths…..
3. Change ElephantsUnderstanding the Change Process
• Holding on
• Ending and letting go
• Void, Abyss, Wilderness
• Renewal, Moving On
3. Change ElephantsHow Change Occurs
• Incremental change
• Transformational change
• Tipping points
• Transformational change as a subversive activity
3. Change ElephantsOften-Used Strategies that Seldom Work
When Dealing with Resistance
• Break it down
• Avoid it
• Discount it
3. Change ElephantsStrategies for Dealing with Resistance
• Share Change Agenda Widely
• Act on change agenda
• Heighten awareness of resistance
• Honor and support
• Inform
• Engage, Explore and Learn
• Check and modify
• Establish organizational accountability and support
3. Change ElephantsSuccessfully Communicating Innovations
The Cardinal Rule for Introducing Innovations
The key to successfully introducing innovations is the perspective of targeted users.
The innovator's perspective is irrelevant and often counterproductive.
3. Change ElephantsWhat Adoptors Must Perceive in an
Innovation• 1. Values compatibility• 2. Perceived advantage• 3. Significance• 4. Simplicity• 5. Trialability• 6. Communicability• 7. Reversibility• 8. Relative Costliness• 9. Credibility• 10. Observability• 11: Reliability• 12. Safety
3. Changing ElephantsRecommendations for Effecting Positive Change
• 1. Involve and empower all stakeholders as early and as completely as possible.
• 2. View every communication as an opportunity to "sell" the innovation.
Communicate about it differently with different audiences, depending on their needs and perspectives.
• 3. Focus on the quality and effectiveness of implementation activities as well as
promoting the initial idea.
• 4. Give it time--remember, different people and institutions have different rates of
acceptance.
• 5. Be ready for the unexpected--and ready to capitalize on crises, which often cause people to seek innovations.
3. Changing ElephantsRecommendations for Effecting Positive Change
(cont.)
• 6. Stay flexible and adjust to changes in leadership.
• 7. Keep your eyes on the goal, but stay open to modifications in how to get there.
• 8. Take advantage of temporary and informal systems in building support for
your innovation.
• 9. Expect more of yourself than you do of others; periodically reexamine your goals and methods.
• 10. Remove your ego and personal identity from the "sale" of the innovation.