Change Dynamics

"For us to have any hope that our preferred future will come to pass, we must provide the leadership and not leave it to others".
Peter Block 'The Empowered Manager'

Leadership is everyone's business. It's not abut position or title, it's about relationships, credibility and getting things done. It's about a deed love for life, of justice, other people, important causes, etc. Leadership emerges because people care enough to make a difference. They are willing to learn and challenge both themselves and others to achieve something that is important to them and those around them. Now is a time for optimism, imagination and enthusiasm for change - qualities that come from from the inside-out.

What do you love so much that you would be prepared to learn and lead change to achieve it ?

The research now points to the view that leadership is a learned behaviour that engages the whole person. We make the effort to develop leadership skills and abilities because we need them to achieve a change that's important to us. Leaders remain positive, passionate, confident and committed despite setbacks. It's about keeping hope alive for without it courage will not appear.

Change, leadership and learning all go together. Each dimension is required to achieve something beyond what you initially thought was impossible. To be a postive force for change, much depends on how we feel and see ourselves. Our ability to lead change has got everything to do with how we think of ourselves. We have to feel we can make a difference.

James Kouzes and Barry Posner identified five practices of Real Change Leaders that I have seen displayed by most of the people I have met that made a real difference. They found that performing at their best they::

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Model the behaviours they want see others adopt
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Inspire others to create and commit to a shared vision
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Challenge themselves and the process to perform
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Enable others to act wth authenticity
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Encourage the use of the heart as well as the head

The health warning is, do not allow work to consume you, show some humility and don't overdo things. Remember to praise the contributions made by others - there is no leadership without followship. Always be open to feedback, new possibilities and challenges. We only learn when we seize the initiative and take some calculated risks. Without it we are unlikely to achieve continuous improvement.

They possess a high degree of personal integrity and credibility

They coach those around them be positive, energised and powerful

They create higher-performing teams which are loyal and committed

They experience less absenteeism, staff turnover and drop-out rates

They promote higher levels of involvement and expand their activities

They talk well of their team and expect great things from them

They are more effective in achieving transformational change

They encourage others to grow by releasing what's inside them

There are many different styles and approaches to leadership. The main ones are personal, transactional and transformational. The model I am offering is one that can lead dynamic change or leadership moment by moment. Most leaders fail to be responsive or authentic in their actions because they are ruled by the expectations of their role - not the inner yearnings in their heart.

Personal Style - bottom-up
The personality traits of leaders, as they are felt to be important to followers, include: honesty and integrity, high energy levels, ambition and desire to lead, self-confidence, task relevant to knowledge, inspiring, forward looking and fair minded.

Transactional style - outside-in
This is sometimes referred to as situational leadership that can be supportive or directive. The emphasis here is on guidance and creating a climate and working environment that enables others to feel valued and motivated.

Transformational style - top-down
This approach is about lifting people beyond their personal goals and self interests to focus on goals that contribute to a greater collective achievement. It's about aligning people and systems to the vision of the organisation

Emotional style - inside-out
This approach is a more recent approach based on Daniel Goleman's work. It argues that the most effective leaders have emotional intelligence. That is, they are aware of their own feelings on a moment by moment basis and know how to manage and motivate themselves appropriately. They also have empathy and understanding for the emotions in others and are able to interrelate well and work with others.

Leadership requires you to be balanced. Balancing work and home life, the needs of bosses and colleagues, the demands of customers and suppliers, hard time and soft time, stress and relaxation, talking and listening, etc.

Leadership requires you to be responsive. Remaining positive with words of praise and gestures of support, picking up on your own and other people's feelings, putting the emotional needs of others before your own, .........

Leadership requires you to be clear. Being clear about what you want to achieve, explaining decisions and the reasons for your actions, setting realistic yet challenging deadlines and performance targets .....

Leadership requires you to be people focused. Keeping an eye of mantaining good relationships with colleagues, customers, contractors, clients, etc.

pursuasive

a follower

a constituency builder

courageous

curious

creative

innovative

politically aware

authentic

emotionally intelligent

They are careful what they say and don't take things personally
Knowing when to speak and when to keep silent is a capability of someone with wisdom. This skill is borne of an understanding that language has the power to make others sink or sing. Although not easy to measure it is observable, practical and effective in the moment. Mastering this skill enables you to direct your energy and reduce the amount of 'toxic waste' that can so easily be create in the minds of others. People say things for their own benefit so don't take them personally or attach too much importance to them.

They know how to be fully engaged in the moment
Having the ability to see what is happening in a situation without preconceived ideas or distractions. It's about quietening your own 'self-talk' and suspending your own assumptions. You get locked into fretting about what happened in the past or worrying about what might happen in the future. You need to clear your mind and focus on what's happening in the present.

They know that they are not separated from others
Our beliefs affect the way we see ourselves and our relationship to other people. If seen from a spiritual perspective we are connected as the cells of one body. We each make an important contribution, but no less or more important than anyone elses contribution. Leaders need followers, they are interdependent. Our separateness is an illusion.

"Everywhere people ask: What can I actually do ? The answer is as simple as it is discerning: we can, each of us, work to put our own hose in order. The guidance we need for this work cannot be found in science or technology, the value of which utterly depends on the ends they serve; but can still be found in the traditional wisdom of mankind."
Frederick Schumacher 'Small is Beautiful' 1974

They know how to use other people's ideas
The assumption is that the more qualified a leader is, the more they will know and the more effective they will be. This may be so, but wisdom is often displayed by someone who does not claim to know and prefers to ask questions rather than make assumptions. It's about believing you are seeing and hearing things for the first time. Unless you are willing to empty your mind of pre-judgements their will be no room for new insights.

Change Leadership Workshops

These workshops explore the concepts and practices, the dynamic change process itself and associated tools and techniques. Places are still available at the Birmingham Workshops. These events will enable you to move beyond chanage management to change leadership.

The legacy of a hierarchical and industrial culture is still dominating our thinking about leadership and change. We are now living on a knowledge-based, network driven world where rational and logical streams of consciousness are struggling to deliver real change.

Balancing the Four Dimensions of Change
We are just beginning to understand what it means to put people at the heart of change. It means embracing uncertainty, and the unpredictability of human minds and spirits. Change is becoming a messy business.

The energy that levers and delivers performance tends to come from the outside-in and the inside-out. This is not to say that top-down hierarchies and structures don't count, it's just that they must not be allowed to dominate the bottom-up interactions between the agents of change - the people.

Changing the culture requires leaders to look outwards, into the organisation and beyond, as well as looking inwards to the emotional intelligence of every individual. Some courage is needed to ask challenging questions and advocate new possibilities. This is essential for securing real change, as it helps the leader to identify those who are for and against specific aspects of change. What's more, it involves others and taps into their natural energy resources and ideas.

The failure to balance these four dimensions lies behind many reorganisation and cultural change failures. For example, the potential to reduce costs can look fine fine on paper, but they are often underestimated. The assumptions from the top are that the least skilled will be weeded out, but the damage to morale forces the most skilled to leave. The change turns out to be dismal, expensive and ultimately unnecessary.

"It's not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change."
Charles Darwin 'Origin of Species'

Leadership for Change
Leadership for change requires senstivity to the dynamics of change. A Real Change Leader has to be someone who plays a proactive role in implementing of purposeful change in a way that engage those around them.. They care about making a difference and will therefore inspire others with their energy and spirit. This is infectious and secures commitment and cooperation.

The insistance on 'real' chnage is that people tend to commit to change when they see and trust real people working in real and imaginative ways to help them achieve meaningful change. We tend to follow leaders who are being their authentic selves.

As a result, real change requires a partnership, someone you can do things with not do things to. Having things done to you, saps your energy. That is why Real Change Leaders need the skills of a Change Coach - someone who can inject passion, pragmatism and pace into learning relationships.

There is now a growing appreciation that leadership characteristics can be developed and are indeed now needed at all levels. It's about tapping into the creative potential within people - getting in touch with what's in their hearts and souls. Do you organise karaoke evenings for your team ?

Clarity of purpose

Tailoring the learning needed to support leadership for change requires clarity of purpose. For example, whether the objective is ...

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transactional change - doing things right
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transformational change - doing the right things

Clarity of purpose and a strong focus on learning is an essential ingredient for real change leadership. The clarity comes from ....

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understanding what is
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communicating what could be
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giving direction to what will be

Being a Learning Leader

Real Change Leaders are learning leaders - they encourage themselves and others to review, reflect and where necessary, change their beliefs in order to achieve a desirable change. Difficult ? Yes. Impossible ? No.

It takes an understanding of the dynamic balance between personal reflection (inside-out) and social interaction (bottom-up). It's vital that underlying assumptions and beliefs are are shared with others and tested out in order to make sense of the change and achieve suffient enoug understanding to feel personally committed to its achievement.

"Leaders will increase their effectiveness if they continually work on the fine components of leadership - if they pursue moral purpose, understand the change process, develop relationships, foster knowledge building and strive for coherence with energy, enthusiasm and hopefulness."
Michael Fullan

Because change is often complex and dynamic it can only be coped with - not managed. You have to learn to cope with the change you don't want and and make the change you do want happen. You also have to help others cope with it and make it work for them.

Achieving Real Change

Real Change Leaders know that chaos is not disorder, it is a process in which ambiguities coalesce into clusters of meaning. Leading change from the top-down involves a delicate balancing act between planned change and real change - or between strategic intention and operational realities. This requires a shift of mindset away from linear thinking to one that is comfortable dealing with complexity, paradox and diversity

I coach and train managers at all levels to think and act as Real Change Leaders. The shift in focus is outlined below.....

Leadership for Planned Change	Leadership for Real Change
The way things are organised Routinised and Scheduled Orchestrated Compliant and Dependent Assumes a predictable controled environment Relies on explicit knowledge Linear forms	The way things get done Spontaneous and Compassionate Improvised Creative and Innovative Responds to an ever changing unpredictable environment Driven by tacit knowledge Networked forms

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An appreciation of the impact that good interpersonal relationship can have on performance is only just beginning to be appreciated.

As relationships between employees, customers and other organisations grows more complex, good realtionships become an essential part of achieving a continuous flow of communication and information.

This particularly important for those in leadership roles, because it impacts on the whole organisation. Employees follow the example set by their bosses. Whilst this may seem obvious, there are still a large percentage of senior managers who give little thought to why others will want to follow them.

The assumption may be that people behave in ways that fit the role the organisation's culture dictates. Managers do what their superiors do - they look up (bottom-up) for their lead. Perhaps they feel that relationships just complicate matters or that they can lead to unprofessional behaviour. What's more, many people still believe that relationships are a personal matter and should not be the subject of formal learning or practice.

The exchanges that impact on relationships are often subtle and complex, but it is helpful to think of utility relationships to get things done, and personal relationships that meet a deeper need inside ourselves which give them added-value. The latter usually has a social dimension and require trust and closeness to make them work.

Relationships need to be thought through because they can so easily be misused or underused - with major implications for work performance. They can provoke unintended consequences and undermine expected improvements in performance. This often results from situations where there is dynamic complexity.

An effective leader requires an understanding of the dynamics of change. It is the only way to succeed in a world of perpetual innovation. This website helps you understand the importance of innovation and how to make it happen. The website is a resource for anyone in public service who wants to make a difference everyday, everywhere and in everything they do. As Aristotle reminds us "We are what we repeatedly do".

Top-Down Leadership
Viewd from the top down, leadership tends to concern itself with changing the structures, systems and people issues. Senior people tend to look 'outside' for the expertise to help them deal with the complexities involved.

Those at the top feel it is their role to define the vision, give its moral purpose and ideal outcomes. They then feel the need to 'guard' and 'reshape' the vision as the environment changes and the organisation shifts its focus.

The realisation that few senior managers actually own the vision, that important customer groups do not share the moral purpose and many employees have opposing values, makes leaders realise that change is a dynamic process, not a once and for all announcement. Dealing the tensions and competing interests requires a coherent approach to be developed, new knowledge to be created and better relationship will be needed if the vision is to be aspirational or inspirational enough

If vision and leadership are to work, they both have to be well distributed around the organisation..

You probably do not recognise the potential you have to transform yourself and our organisation. When you take the initiative to solve a problem, whether or not you have permission to do so is an act of real leadership. Anyone can lead change to some degree, so potential leaders can be found in all parts of an organisation.

Indeed, it was W Edwards Deming who said "Nothing changes without personal transformation". To become a real change leader you have to see yourself in a different light and view your situation from a number of different perspectives. The four change dynamics encourage you to observe yourself from the inside-out, as well as how your boss might see you (top-down), as your colleagues might see you (bottom-up) and how your customers or suppliers might see you (outside-in).

I suspect you are browsing this site because you want or need to take the lead in a change initiative and you are wondering what will be required of you and what resources are available to help you deal with it.

Self-leaders are people who face reality with confidence and a sense of purpose. They are often prepared to push themselves to the edge of their creative abilities, and take full responsibility for their actions. Self-leaders are prepared to take risks to improve themselves and their situation. They are often aspiring and inspiring, displaying a passion and spirit for life and work.

The challenge of self-leadership is that it requires you to explore your assumptions about life and work and respond to the real needs in a situation. It may mean changing your values and being prepared to learn new habits to achieve what you really want.

When a team or organisation recognises the importance of self-leadership, it sets out to create waht Peter Senge calls Leadership Communities and Margaret Wheatley refers to as Leadership Circles.

Leading change consultant Simon Smith refers to this process of personal transformation in his excellent book 'Inner Leadership'.

www.inner-leadership.com
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