Creative Leadership

I was recently asked by Leadership Circle to reflect on this question and provide a short video soundbite that could be easily shared with others. After picking my route through the options that came to mind, and 34 takes later (give or take 20) I was able to deliver a decent 45-second answer that I felt pretty good about. I’ll share a condensed version of that here below, but then I also want to share what else came to my mind after continuing to sit with that question a bit longer as I feel my second offering speaks more authentically to a deeper aspect of creativity that I didn’t touch upon in my recorded answer.

Here's a loose transcript of my first answer.

To my mind, “Creative Leadership” suggests the ability to tailor one’s actions specifically to what each unique moment calls for in order to move your team or organization forward and closer to fulfilling your shared vision of success, while also doing so in ways that increase the felt sense of connection, cohesion, and genuine “team” sense that deeply informs the bigger mission. In other words, Creative Leadership is about optimizing the dynamic tension between “doing good” and “feeling good.” 

Not bad. But not great either.

I’ve previously written other pieces that are in the same zip code of “Creative Leadership,” like this one on Leadership Effectiveness, this one on what it means to be a Leader IN vs Leader OF, this one on Transforming Whiners into Winners, but the deeper question of “What is Creative Leadership?” still called out to me for further consideration and expression.

So, after letting the question marinate for 24 hours, here is my simpler, and hopefully better, response.

My mind holds an image of a martial artist in their “ready position,” hands and eyes up, feet moderately apart, hips open, energy poised & calm, mind alert & present. Looking more closely at their stance, I see they have their back foot firmly planted, grounded in their integrity, their confidence, and their power. Their front foot, however, is only lightly set upon the ground, allowing them near infinite flexibility and optionality in how they choose to respond when called into action.  

For Leaders, this visual metaphor translates into having the back foot of their “Leadership stance” firmly rooted in their integrity, authenticity, and commitments - to their visions, their missions, their teams, and their shared goals. Their “lightly planted front foot,” however, speaks to their ability to be spontaneous, adaptive, flexible, and truly responsive to the uniqueness of whatever challenges or opportunities that come their way.

In this regard, the “Creative Leader” maintains one foot in each side of the dynamic tensions found in the polarities of Predictable vs Unpredictable, of Stable vs Dynamic, of Task vs Relationship, of Challenge vs Support, and so many more. Having equal connection and access to both poles, yet bound by neither, allows Creative Leaders to transcend the limitations that each pole brings on its own while also including and uniting the strengths of both, accessing whatever degree of each as needed.

And as we head full speed into 2025, we’ll need more Leaders who can be relied upon to creatively respond to the ever shifting demands of today’s increasingly VUCA world. The more you can embody a stance of “Creative Leadership,” the more effective you will be across all contexts and conditions, for yourself and for your team. After all, effectiveness is both the first and final measure of Leadership. 

What’s your plan for increasing your Leadership effectiveness in 2025?

2-fer Tuesday #7 Precise vs Accurate, Possibilities vs Probabilities

** This piece is part of my ongoing “2-fer Tuesday” series where I share critical distinctions in how to view and think about the world that may help you see things more clearly - which then supports better thinking, firmer decision making, and wiser action taking. **

Boiled down to its essence, the daily life of many C-Suite Executives comes down to evaluating, options, making decisions, and taking actions. Thinking back to our OODA piece from a few years back, consistently doing these three things quickly and well is the entire job description for long term success. An overlooked aspect of this process is getting to “good enough,” both in terms of the evaluating the information coming in, and in the process of weighing options for action looking forward. Here I’ll cover two places where the best Executives draw the line for “good enough” in order to focus on getting things done. The first is appreciating the trade-offs necessarily involved in the Accuracy vs Precision dynamic and understanding that Accuracy is often the more relevant factor. The second distinction I’ll cover is the relevance of focusing on greater Probabilities vs exploring endless Possibilities.  

TL; DR – Look for where you can make smart trade-offs between Accuracy and Precision for getting to “good enough” for the quality of information coming in. Often times the fuzzier picture is Accurate enough to act on. For decisions going out, limit your time spent exploring the wider range of Possibilities and then hone in on greater Probabilities to optimize your chances for most favorable outcomes. The key to C-Suite success is effectiveness, and quickly getting to “Accurate enough” and then efficiently moving forward with Probabilities will create more and bigger wins over the long term.

1)    Precise vs Accurate – Do you really need to know if there is a 27% chance of rain at exactly 2pm? Or is “cloudy with a chance of afternoon showers” a “good enough” forecast for you to work with? How would knowing more precise details help you here? Or, how about getting an exact head count for your cocktail party vs simply getting a few extra bags of ice instead? How much time and effort are you willing to spend here to offset the $10 spent for extra ice? Going back to the C-Suite, is the Accuracy of your current risk evaluation “good enough” to move on, or do you really need to spend the time and energy pushing for several more degrees of Precision before you make the call?

In so many places we tend to look for more Precision in information coming in as a poor substitute for the felt certainty of decisions going out. While certainly appropriate in some instances, many times the “good enough” answer can be found by orienting to a useful range of Accuracy rather than trying to hone in on greater precision. Beyond just the costs of time and energy spent, the costs of delayed action need to be considered as well as the basic Law of Diminishing Returns.

The next time you find yourself seeking more information or details under the guise of wanting greater precision, pause for a minute to ask yourself how relevant that extra degree of precision will be for your thinking to see if it will truly add to the confidence and certainty in your next move. You may be surprised to see how little impact it would have when you honestly think about it. You may also be surprised at how quickly you can reorient to Accurate-enough-for-Action as your primary reference point after doing this exercise just a few times. 

2)    Probabilities vs Possibilities – Playing the game of “What if?” is an indispensably critical part of the decision making process, especially when approaching a significant strategic pivot point. However, much like some searches for Precision, “exploring all the possibilities” is often just an excuse for not acting in the face of uncertainty. “I just want to be sure” is the statement most often muttered by mid- and low-range performers as they sit and wait for their anticipatory anxiety to subside. Meanwhile, their high-performing peers and colleagues are saying things like “What are the most likely outcomes?”, “What happens to the probabilities when we tweak these variables?”, and “What do we need to know to get to a 70% confidence level?”

Sure, sometimes these high-performers miss when an “unexpected” result occurs, but the entire premise of long term success is consistently moving towards options where the odds are in your favor with a strong bias to iterative action. Those who spend too much time “exploring all the possibilities” tend to forget to factor in the opportunity costs of not acting and often allow their felt uncertainty in the moment to hold them back on the actions that move them forward down the path of success. Ultimately, pushing for more clarity on the top few highest Probabilities and deciding from amongst them is the best course of action for 90% of the scenarios that you face.

Of course, at times it is truly worth it to really slow things down and take some time to explore more possibilities, especially in times of great volatility and significant risk. But the whole premise of “Black Swans” is that they cannot be anticipated. And even when there are obvious disasters looming, such as with the entire US financial system, the real question in play is always the “when” and not the “what.”  

Saving your time and bandwidth for taking deeper dives into just a few places per day will increase both your efficiency AND your effectiveness as a Leader, and orienting to acceptable ranges of Accuracy and most likely Probabilities are some easy tools to bring to bear on your decision making process that you can start using today. Where do you have room to open up your range of Accuracy and let go of your felt need for more Precision? What decisions are you currently sitting on as you seek more awareness of remote Possibilities, and how can refocusing on likely Probabilities allow you to make an informed choice today?

Social Media Dilemma: Tool vs Terrain

Much of the recent coverage of the impact of Social Media has focused on all kinds of problematic issues that are coming to the forefront of our collective knowledge, and deservedly so. However, that coverage tends to overlook one of the central issues in play as regards to how we as individuals relate to Social Media and what’s offered by the various tech platforms under that moniker. This central issue comes down to how we, as empowered agents, take more ownership and responsibly choose to engage with Social Media, and how we protect ourselves while we are there.

The central challenge I hear from so many of my clients is how easily and often they “find” themselves having wasted a bunch of their precious time either being lulled into passive engagement of watching fail blog videos or activated into more energetic engagement of commentary and rabbit-hole following. Rarely do they “come back” after wandering around in one of those spaces for 20 – 45 minutes feeling like that was anywhere near the best use of their time. And I doubt you do either.

Do we treat Social Media as a tool, as an instrument employed by us to achieve certain goals? Or do we treat it as terrain, as an environment we enter, subject to competing influences, external powers, and invisible algorithms? Like with many choices, the best answer is usually some version of “Both/And,” and for many of us in Leadership the real challenge is how to best manage that complex relationship of competing frameworks. Here I recommend that we prioritize framing our approach as “tool users” over the idea as “terrain visitors” so as to focus on the value we are giving and getting there and avoid having our time, energy, attention, and money being extracted by others against our wishes and better judgement. 

Social Media as Terrain:  

We’ll start here due to the fact that so many of our collective challenges come from this aspect of how Social Media functions in our cultural world today. In fact, even the very concept of a singular “cultural world” seems to be crumbling around us, primarily due to Social Media itself. Tristan Harris’s documentary, The Social Dilemma, covers this collapse in great detail, one of the main points worth noting here being how users of Social Media are constantly and unknowingly manipulated by the tech platforms and their advertisers, and for their own ends.

In fact, the very ground of the terrain isn’t simply a singular thing and the exact the same for all who enter, but is in fact a customized “Through the Looking Glass” world designed just for you, by those who don’t have your best interest in mind or at heart. In other words, the “terrain” you encounter via Social Media portals is not at the same as mine, nor anybody else’s. For each of us, the terrain we encounter is much more a reflection of our interests, thoughts, opinions, biases, and blind spots that anything else. But given this deep personalization of all of our experiences there, and the deeply problematic nature of it all, what can we say about it that is generally true enough to be helpful here? 

1)    The Environment – Obviously the terrain framing leads us to look at this all with certain physical metaphors, such as landscapes, battlegrounds, or even just “space.” In this space we’ll find various entities, like individuals, “influencers,” and brands, all competing for our attention. Additionally, we have other “entities” at work here, like algorithms and trackers, that like the wind, are invisible and can only be “seen” through their impact on and shaping of the environment we encounter. This environment then shapes and limits what interactions we have, how they occur, and what happens as a consequence. I recommend viewing your terrain with a degree of caution and increased awareness, just as you would when entering a carnival or used car lot.

2)    The Interactions – These interactions are a combination of user control, via clicks, likes, and other actions, and also through terrain shaping and stimulus presenting via algorithms, trends, and other community and platform behaviors. Here in the terrain space, Social Media is less about control and more about influence or shaping. As visitors to this terrain, the natural question then arises of how much you are doing the influence and shaping, and how much is being done to you? A good rule of thumb is that almost all of what you are encountering is being placed there by other forces that have designs on your attention, time, and money. Again, think Carnival here.

3)    Action Strategies – Understanding the terrain and forces at play has different relevance for different users. Your Grandma looking at pictures of your recent vacation has little interest in taking a “strategic approach” to doing so. But on the other end of the spectrum lie the advertisers targeting her and the platform itself selling them access. Their understanding of what she may want to buy, where else she “visits,” and how to keep her in their space as long as possible become extremely relevant. How much of your Social Media experience is a result of your strategic maneuvering, and how much is it the result of you being strategically maneuvered by others for their ends? Part of an effective strategy here would be to setting up some loose guidelines and guardrails to help you avoid being pulled too far off track.

Social Media as Tool:

My thinking is that most of us Individual Agents tend to view Social Media more often through the conceptual framework of the tool where we are “logging on” with at least some general purpose in mind. And I want to loosely define “purpose” here so as to accommodate the fullest range of the idea from “chuckling at memes while on the toilet” to “seeing what’s hot on X” to “looking at job opportunities” and everything else that comes to mind. The point here is that you, the user, are approaching your efforts here with some sort of outcome goal or experience in mind.

Here are a few Tool-based considerations to keep in mind.

1)    Utility, first and foremost – What you are trying to do here matters, be it networking, communication, or even and perhaps especially entertainment. Staying aware of and focused upon those specific goals, and clear time limits, should help you avoid getting sucked into the more passive “terrain” mindset where you are more likely to be on the receiving end of somebody’s else’s “Social Media as Tool” approach. Again, guidelines and guardrails are helpful here. 

2)    Customized control – How much information to share about yourself is a relevant to consider in light of your needs on each of the platforms is a fair question to ask. And the same goes for how you choose to manage your input there in terms of Likes, Shares, Subscribes, Follows, Clicks, and all the other action steps available. In sum, the more you focus on intentionally curating the contours of your immediate terrain, the more likely you are to be efficient and effective in your use of Social Media as a tool to serve your own ends, and less likely to have a terrain unfold in front of you that seeks to use you for its ends.

3)    Adaptive Functionality – Most Social Media platforms allow and foster the coexistence of multiple goals simultaneously, even those goals that exist in tension with each other. For example, I can go on X seeking a specific person’s take on a current event and/or go on just to see what is trending, both in general and among my network. And the same applies for the rest of the platforms. This focus on diverse functionality is what is most appealing to many individuals when it comes to their net appraisal of Social Media in general. But being clear and focused on what your immediate purpose is and how you want to achieve it will help you do just that, and nothing else.

Where things can get really sticky is when the upsides of “Social Media as Tool” are overly emphasized and attractively featured, and the downsides of “Social Media as Terrain” are minimized and ignored. Even more troubling is the degree to which this “terrain” is being intentionally designed with a view to us users as resources to be mined and exactly how they are being utilized as marketing and propaganda tools by corporate and governmental entities.  

Especially insidious is the degree to which the platforms themselves leverage our normal and healthy human desires, such as to connect with community, to be praised, to be liked, to be valued, etc. and tweak their inner control knobs to further their own interests, and that of their actual paying clients, in all kinds of ways that go against our interests as individuals. Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation, goes into some detail about the depth and span of damage that Social Media as Terrain has caused to younger members of our society.  

Never has the warning phrase “Buyer Beware!” seemed so needed, and even more so due to the fact that platform access is free. Which suggests the other popular aphorism regarding Social Media – “If something is free to you, that is because you are the real product” that somebody else is paying to access.

We’ll wrap up here with 2 last pithy quotes to bring it all home. Approach Social Media use as you would any tool, with a clear limited purpose in mind. And as with any powerful tool – “Use only as directed.” Be very mindful when entering Social Media as Terrain, such as when you are simply looking for a light diversion while you wait at your dentist’s office, because there is no sign at all posting all the warnings that apply. A suggested one? Simply “Here be Dragons!”

2-fer Tues #6 Effective vs Efficient, Maximize vs Optimize

** This piece is part of my ongoing “2-fer Tuesday” series where I share critical distinctions in how to view and think about the world that may help you see things more clearly - which then supports better thinking, firmer decision making, and wiser action taking. **

This week I’ll be addressing two common “traps” that most Leaders tumble into from time to time, and more importantly, showing that the way out of these traps can often most easily be seen by making some clear distinctions in what targets we’re shooting for and how we’re aiming at them. The first distinction I’ll address here is the more prevalent one of Efficient vs Effective. This issue is one that plagues both Leaders and Individual Contributors at every level of every organization, and wrongly focusing on Efficiency gains vs Effectiveness gains is a recipe for endless tail-chasing. The second distinction of Maximizing vs Optimizing takes things up a level and asks you to make sure that your Effectiveness gains are all working together towards healthier outcomes for everybody.

TL; DR – Don’t get so distracted by Efficiency that you lose sight of your Effectiveness, and the only escape from the negative trade-offs that come from Maximizing one outcome (like profit) is to find the balance point where all outcomes are Optimized in relation to each other. 

1)    Efficiency vs Effectiveness – So many of us out there feel like we are always being asked to “do more with less” and usually the “more” is “make more money” and the “less” is “with less resources” to do so. I’ve written elsewhere about efficiently managing our TME (Time, Money, Energy) budgets for better ROI’s on them, but here I want to move out of the Efficiency framework that tends to measure inputs, and instead move the focus over to the more important side of the equation that measures output in terms of Effectiveness.

While Effectiveness should always be top of mind, it becomes more and more important the higher up you go in your organization. I can’t think of any client I’ve ever had that mentioned simply having too much free time on their hands. In fact, the most frequent challenge I get from my new Executive clients comes from them trying to make time on their schedules to meet up, so helping them become more effective is the outcome I have to provide to make it our sessions worth their extremely limited and valuable time. At the end of the day, there is only so much to be gained by focusing on Efficiency and inputs, and nobody is talking about “Efficiency” when it comes to great Leaders. Effectiveness is how great Leaders are determined, not Efficiency.

How do I support Leaders that are properly focused on Effectiveness? By supporting their efforts to increase their overall Leadership Effectiveness Quotient (LEQ Score) via direct engagement with their Leadership Capacity, Company Culture, and embodied Character. These three areas are the biggest determinants of Leadership Effectiveness, and all can be improved with focused Coaching.

Read here and here for a deeper dive into the LEQ Score and why it matters.

2)    Maximizing vs Optimizing – Every effort that only focuses on increasing one metric requires necessary trade-offs in the form of losing ground in respect to others. Maximizing profit only eventually leads to the eventual “enshittification” of your products and services, which then in turn leads to no profits. Maximizing your efficiency in life hacks via spreadsheets, apps, and supplements, and other means and measures eventually leads to more time spent managing these things and less time living a better life. All maximization efforts focused on short timelines eventually lead to inevitable failure in the long term, with lots of frustration, pain, and suffering along the way.

A better approach is to get as clear as possible on all the goals and metrics that are important to you now as well as those that are important to the longer term sustainability of your team, project, or organization. Once you have a clearer awareness of those things, then you can begin to model how various efforts to increase one metric impact the others. Through this process of ongoing modeling and iterating in the real world (mapping and territories again), you should be able to find a nice range of operating where you have a clearer understanding of how your business goals interact and how efforts to manage them have various impacts across the system.

This awareness of your operating range for optimal harmonic balance allows you to push and pull the various levers as necessary to both drive temporary increases along one metric and to also counter various forces that would affect the system’s overall balance and longer term performance. For example, you might decide to temporarily increase overtime allowances as you head into a peak season for revenue generating, but can plan to offset those costs with extra time off for vacations before and afterwards. Another example that I love is the whole idea of the B Corp where instead of simply “maximizing shareholder value,” your company, like my Good Karma Cafe was, can be explicitly incorporated under the multi-pronged directive of “optimize the relationship between people, planet, and profit.”  

Looking back at our Effectiveness rubric of the LEQ lens for evaluating Leadership, you’ll see the 3 main categories of Capacity, Culture, and Character. This is a great place to try to find the best operating range of how you apply your very limited TME (Time, Money, and Energy) to best address any shortfalls in those categories and also increase your Effectiveness across all 3 of them as well. Optimization efforts here will help you make the most impactful changes right away and also get you well established on a “betterment” plan that leads to steady, consistent improvement in all the ways that matter.

How Effective is your Leadership? Where can you start to move your attention away from inputs and efficiency over to outputs of effectiveness? How might you increase your Leadership Effectiveness Quotient by having a better understanding of how the 3 metrics of Capacity, Culture, and Character interrelate, and how might you chart a way forward to find the optimal operating zone where your efforts at improvement raise all 3 scores simultaneously?

The Structure/Content Fallacy

Dear Readers,

What follows here below is a very “inside baseball” critique of what it generally known as “Integral Theory,” an impressively immense effort for better sense-making perhaps best known via the great work of Ken Wilber and current efforts of many “integrally informed” contributors like Steve MacIntosh and others. My piece here was originally written as a letter to an interested “Integral Influencer” way back in 2018 or so (please forgive my Trump, Clinton, Sanders references), but I’m posting it here to buttress a recent podcast appearance where I speak about it all more broadly. It lacks all helpful context for most of my regular readers, so apologies in advance.

Dear XX,

Thanks again for your interest in hearing out my take on the Structure/Content Fallacy. I’ll do my best to go through it as quickly as possible below, and I’ll include some examples that I feel illustrate how this tweak to the Integral model eliminates some of the confusion that seems to continuously plague Integral discourse. I think what is most relevant about what I am offering to current cultural conversations is spelled out briefly below, with 2 charts provided for illustrative purposes.

Namely, they show how “Green” and “Progressive/Liberal/Democrat” and “developmentally advanced human” are NOT AT ALL synonymous while also showing that many who subscribe to more “Traditional” belief systems that center around Religious or Patriotic content are not simply “Blue” close-minded regressive conformists.

Apologies for ALL CAPS, but I’m pretty frustrated at this point at how this fairly simple distinction of Structure vs Content – common amongst many developmentalists whom Ken Wilber often cites – is ignored. Those charts are on pages 4 and 5 if you wanted to skip ahead. In the last 2 pages I try to show how both Steve MacIntosh and Wilber pay too little attention to this distinction and how their models are each limited as a result.

For context, I’ll start with Steve MacIntosh’s book, Developmental Politics, and hope to fairly represent it here. I’ve listened to several recent podcasts where Steve is the guest and agree with about 95% of what he says in this new book. He correctly identifies many of the current major cultural themes, values systems, overlapping interiors, and several other things. I’m also in complete agreement when he follows Integral in how each of his 3 described Value Systems (borrowed from Paul H. Ray’s work on “Cultural Creatives”) seem to follow and emerge from the groundwork created by the previous ones. Broadly speaking, each subsequent one is more complex, allows for an expanded frame of identity (and therefore potential equality), and expands the “circle of care” wider and wider.

Very clearly developmental, and perfectly reasonable. I see his suggested Post-Progressive Value System as further emerging content, probably from Yellow structure (or at least Yellow cognition), and clearly 2nd Tier in that it explicitly stresses the need for recognition and appreciation of all of the preceding levels’ strengths while also calling for the attention-to and limitation-of each of their respective downsides. Again, so far so good.

Steve continues by covering the 1st Tier Value Systems see themselves in direct competition with one another. They tend to highlight the downsides of the others while failing to acknowledge the respective upsides. Furthermore, the 1st Tier systems fail to see how both the downsides and upsides are inherently baked into each system, that they come complete as a package deal. This particular insight into the inescapability of the “package deal” is the very essence of Kegan’s “Self-Transforming” level of development (Green/Yellow/Turquoise in SD, or Green/Teal/Turquoise “altitudes”) – that holons emerge as polarities, and we identify with one side or another as we grow, only to find ourselves requiring integration beyond Self-Authorship (Orange) in order to continue our development.

MacIntosh again correctly intuits, in my opinion, that his suggested Post-Progressive Value System needs to explicitly see and appreciate the respective upsides of each level while also limiting or curtailing entirely the downsides contained therein. While noble, and perhaps understandable in theory to most who have versed themselves in Integral to some degree, this aspiration is doomed to end in failure as a political or cultural movement due to the Structure/Content Fallacy. How so?

Let’s go back to Ken Wilber and Integral Theory. Wilber correctly points out that all of his primary research sources specifically state that you have to work your way up through each of the successively emergent levels and must go through them sequentially. Using the color system from Clare Graves/Don Beck’s Spiral Dynamics, we are all born at Beige and work our way up through a combination of culture, opportunity, ability, and experience. Nobody is born at Orange or Green or even Red. 

That developmental process takes time, and is very closely linked to age and experience. Again, you don’t just turn 18 and get the Orange “download” for your birthday. This is the part of Integral Theory that correctly identifies how Structural dynamics work. In sum, you start at the beginning, no skipping stages, and you arrive at the later ones through age, experience, and abilities.  

This structured and sequential developmental process is also borne out by Robert Kegan’s research and that of Suzanne Cook-Greuter as well, two leading researchers in the field of Adult Developmental Theory frequently cited by Wilber. They each have their own terminology, but for simplicity’s sake we will go with the colors popularized by Spiral Dynamics of Blue, Orange, and then post-Orange (including Green and Yellow) to cover the main ones we are discussing here.

While the specific stage names, distinctions, and percentages vary a bit, averaging their voluminous research studies shows less than 7% of college-educated adults are at post-Orange Structure, around 35% with some achievement of Orange, and 58% anchored in Blue. Basically, over 90% of the college educated population is not beyond Orange, and the vast majority aren’t even fully at Orange! And this data comes from “college educated” adults in the US. The implications for extrapolating into the larger populations are quite dire.

They also find that in addition to post-Orange being very rare overall, those stages of structural achievement are almost never found in anybody under 40. So, given this data, what percentage of non-college educated angry young protestors do you think may be coming from the highest, post-Orange levels of adult development? In other words, how “Green” or beyond could they possibly be? Almost ZERO. Yet, based on elevating content expression to developmental achievement, Integral imagines that large swaths of the population are highly developed due to the growth in popularity of Progressivism.

This brings us over to where much of the specific confusion lies regarding Integral Theory and its appraisal of how “Green” is manifesting in today’s world. Here are some simple questions for the Integral community to ponder:

1.     How come the “Mean Green Meme” is so prevalent?

2.     How come those young “Green” Progressives are out there rioting in the streets, completely disregarding the perspective of others?

3.     How come “cancel culture” is erupting on college campuses, places normally considered liberal havens for these “Green” Progressives and their ideas?

4.     How come those who chant about tolerance and diversity and inclusion are so angrily intolerant, singular, and exclusive of alternative perspectives?

5.     How do these “Progressives” imagine equality is reached by closing down police stations, especially in those areas where minorities are most at risk of personal harm?

6.     How come Free Speech is being shouted down and canceled?

The list of ways that these “high” values are being enacted in very “low” manners goes on and on. But why?

Let’s look back at what the research shows – namely that post-Orange structural achievement is very rare, and pretty much is only ever seen in folks over 40. Now let’s look at all these “Green” protestors, marchers, college students, and the “Twitterati” seeking to “cancel” those that have opposing viewpoints. There are A LOT of them, and they are heavily populated by younger demographics, mostly in their late teens, 20’s, and 30’s.

Guess what? Not post-Orange!  How can we make sense of this? They almost all identify as Liberal/Democrat/Progressive, and are all shouting slogans of pro-diversity, pro-equality, anti-racism, and anti-discrimination, right? Yet, their actions seem illiberal, authoritarian, and regressive in practice. I guess they all must be “Mean Green Memers,” whatever that is!

Wrong.

The interpretation that best fits the most accurate developmental lens is that Blue Structure young folks are parroting and promoting what sounds like a higher complexity “Progressive” Value System’s words, based on insights originally derived from “Green” structural level insights in other people (Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault, and others), that they then smash, twist, and deform to fit into their lower complexity Blue Structural mindset. As Kegan writes, they are conforming to the Post-Modern Progressive message the only way they can – in a true Blue hue, sans the complexity of the original message (as are any Blue or Orange colleagues of the original messengers).

Back to my hardware/software analogy from a previous letter to you, they have Blue Structure hardware and are trying to run a Green-derived “Content” software known as the Progressive Value System. The very same characteristics that we always see with Blue Structure show up here too. We see demands for conformity, virtue signaling, and appeals to authority figures (White Fragility and other “anti-racist” dogma). We see the world divided up into Us vs Them, Good vs Bad, In vs Out, and other absolutist dichotomies. We see those who are Out, Bad, and “Them” labeled as heretics and treated accordingly with the standard Blue practices of blaming, shaming, shunning, censoring, and “cancelling.” All very typically Blue.  I put together 2 simple charts to illustrate how the Structure/Content Fallacy resolves much of the confusion around these issues on the next 2 pages.

Here’s how most folks in the Integral sphere commonly tend to see things.

Vertical Development = Value Change???

Wilber/Integral has these 3 stages stacked up on top of each other and MacIntosh does the same with his 3 main Value Systems. Each successive one is built on and emerges from the preceding ones. Each emergent one then imagines itself as both correct and complete and then attacks the others as wrong and limited. This chart exactly illustrates how things look when making the Structure/Content Fallacy. From this theoretical framework the young self-identified Progressives clearly aren’t Blue/Traditionalists nor Orange/Moderns, so they must be Green/Progressives.

But how can we account for their sheer numbers, their age, and their contradictory and destructive tendencies? I thought Green was supposed to be “nicer,” and focus on pluralism and relativism? Even if we accept that all “first tier” levels are absolutist and can be either “good/open” or “bad/closed,” the numbers just don’t add up – not by age, and not by volume.

Now let’s apply the Structure/Content Fallacy corrective lens and put MacIntosh’s Value Systems on the lower horizontal axis and bring in Kegan’s Structural Stages on the left vertical axis.

Vertical Development & Value Stacks as separate but related.

** Percentages derived from study of “college educated adults” in US in 1994, and numbers condensed into clear categories for visual simplicity. “Real” numbers show lots of gradients in between stages, but still suggest 80% of “College educated adults” are somewhere in between Blue and Orange, and therefore, not even fully Orange, much less beyond it. 

Notice that by separating out Structure and Content that the overlapping squares seem to more accurately capture some of the more prevalent dynamics at play in today’s culture. The Blue folks in all 3 Value Systems are functionally much more similar underneath the very different Value Systems professed. Same with the Orange and Green. Their operational dynamics are the same underneath the surface appearances, but manifest differently when expressing each of the 3 Value Systems.

This chart also accurately helps identify how people can often flex from one Value Stack or System to another, like MacIntosh’s example about how somebody can be a Traditionalist on Sunday, then a Modern at work on Monday, and then a Progressive in their reading group on Tuesday night. But as Lisa Lahey showed in her doctoral dissertation research (with Chris Argyris and Robert Kegan advising her), people are structurally the same even though they and others see them as different at work and home.  It is very easy to flex horizontally through the Value Systems as social circumstances shift; it is almost impossible to flex vertically due to how Structures work. For what is a structure if it is not consistent?

This chart also helps explain some of the Right/Left, Conservative/Liberal frameworks that people employ to make sense of the world. On both sides of the aisle, people scratch their heads about “why on earth would those people vote in such ways that seem to go against their own interests? Why would blue collar Traditional conservatives vote pro-corporate when those same corporations are moving all the blue collar jobs to China? Why would “enlightened” liberals vote for politically correct measures that hinder free speech and promote explicit racial hiring biases? Have they gone mad?”

No, they are being structurally consistent.

In this chart the Conservative Right largely aligns with the Traditional Value System throughout the Structural Stage stack. You have folks at all 3 vertical Structural Stages who have different understandings and emphases on what it means to have and support Traditional Value Systems. On the other side the Liberal Left largely aligns with the Progressive Value System, and the Centrists line up with the Modern Value System, again manifesting differently from individual to individual according to their underlying developmental Structures.

When we reflect back to the early questions I posed to Integral-minded folks, some of the answers become quite clear. “Green” altitude does not equal “Progressive” attitude, and you can see the Blue Structure Progressives are the guilty party for most of the unhelpful cultural disruption we see.

And this is exactly what we should expect from the less complex structure. Many of them are anti-free speech, anti-free inquiry, anti-constructive dialogue, anti-let’s look at the evidence, pro-shunning, pro-shaming, pro-cancelling. Same dynamics as the more familiar Blue Traditionalists and their religious fundamentalism.  So, it’s not “Green” that is “mean,” it is in fact Blue.

Same as it ever was.  Whether it comes to The Bible, The Science, or The DEI, Blue requires that good conformist Believers be kept IN, and bad corrupted heretics, deniers, and racists get kicked OUT!

This larger framework also allows and supports vertical development up through any of the 3 main value stacks. For example, it helps us see, appreciate, and value the insights shared from Orange and Green “Traditionalists” who bring autonomy and critical interpretation and authentic embodiment to certain religious teachings and traditions and helpful emphasis on character, wisdom, community, family, and other so-called “Traditional” values. It allows us to deeply honor all the contributions made by those who lived before “Modern” times, like Jesus, Buddha, Confucious, Socrates, and so many others who were clearly vertically developed to post-Orange levels. Why would we think that high development is only accessible to those very few humans who have gone through a “Modern” enculturation process?

As a side note, there is a strong natural pull or resonance between true Green and Blue due to their collective orientation to community and the collective, mirrored by the strong pull connecting Red to Orange to Yellow due to those Structures’ orientation to the individual. This is another topic for another day however.

Hopefully the above chart shows the clear benefits of not using “Green” and “Progressive” interchangeably, and same with Blue/Traditionalism and Orange/Modernism. Looking at the true Green Structure, one can more easily see how it also manifests in the Traditional Value System through such initiatives as Interfaith Outreach at some of the more “Progressive” Protestant denominations, and for those whose Traditionalism is more on Country and less on God, the Green Structural inputs there can perhaps be seen in certain NGO’s such as Doctors Without Borders and Peace Corps. 

In the Modern Value System you see all kinds of Green Structurally sourced initiatives such as Conscious Capitalism, Sustainability, Renewable Energy, and Socially Responsible Investing (SRI). Green and Progressivism do indeed overlap in the upper right corner square, and the entire Progressive Value system can be said to be derived from Green Structural insights, but again, they are NOT at all equivalent. The Structure/Content Fallacy is my attempt to help us all get past the problems that come from being less than clear about this distinction.

You could propose any number of questions and then fill in each of the 9 squares on this chart with different answers. Some questions would probably show higher similarities across the horizontal categories, others throughout the vertical columns. How would these squares look if you asked “Where is your source of authority?” or “What economic system makes the most sense?” or “How should education be conducted?” or any number of other such questions. What about “What are your thoughts on burning the American Flag?” or “What do you think about professional athletes kneeling on the field during the National Anthem?”

You could also fold other frameworks into this chart, such as the Otto Scharmer/David Brooks take on Open vs Closed. Each of these 9 squares obviously has its more Open characteristics and more Closed ones, the Closed ones animating them more in times of perceived cultural distress such as now. Alternatively, you could just add a “Healthy vs Unhealthy expressions” divider into each box to help us make less technical distinctions.

If you really wanted to take a deeper dive then you could add the Red and Purple lower level Structures to the bottom of the chart to explore how the 3 Value Systems might manifest through them too. Filling those extra squares in to illuminate the most fundamental elements of each Value System, as well as the most unhelpful when energy is being directed through their respective unhealthy expressions. Lots of interesting lines of inquiry can be pursued when using this chart as a starting point.  

Wrapping up, let’s go back to Steve MacIntosh and his proposed Post-Progressive Value System. While it is full of great aspirational content, his idea has 2 main flaws which can be seen much more clearly through the application of this chart:

1)    It’s all Content and no Structure, so it’s just going to end up being a 4th vertical column on the chart, and will be mis-interpreted by lower level identified folks that somehow get motivated by it (unlikely anyway), just like the Progressives have shown, and Moderns also to a lesser extent.  

2)    It is way too complex to be appreciated at all by the lower structural levels. What does the Blue version of Post-Progressive look like? What is the story here that can attract and organize a movement? Who is Us and who is Them? How do we then treat those who oppose us? These Blue Structural dynamics are here to stay and must be navigated by everybody who comes along, regardless of the content. The Blue Structure’s “Procrustean Bed” demands simplicity, and it will have it, no matter how much that simplicity contradicts the stated values.

Back to Integral, Ken Wilber was doing great up until this Structure/Content Fallacy gummed up the works. He got twisted when he made “emerges from” equal to “is synonymous with.” I look at the whole concept of the “Mean Green Meme” as the moment where he hit a dead end with that thinking. The “Meme” part is largely the same as MacIntosh’s concept of the Value System, and it’s “Green” to the degree that much of the Progressive Value System is built on insights derived from the Green Structural level’s altitude. But the “Mean” part is neither Green Structural nor inherent to the Progressive Value System, it’s more a function of Blue (and perhaps to some degree Orange) trying to jam the Progressive Value System through its Structure. Not gonna work.  

Robert Kegan makes this point over and over in both of his texts on development. The Blue folks will “hear” a Blue version of an Orange or Green (or beyond) message. The Orange folks will “hear” an Orange version of a Green (or beyond) message. We all interpret the world structurally, whether we act in traditional, modern, or progressive ways. To claim otherwise is to abandon developmental psychology altogether. One of Kegan’s favorite lines is how the Golden Rule of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” gets bastardized by Blue into “Do unto others as they have done unto you.” Justice gets perverted into Revenge.

Wilber has published very little new material that has substantially advanced Integral Theory since Integral Spirituality (when he introduced Wilber-V and post-metaphysics). Most of his books since Sex, Ecology, Spirituality were various simplified titrations packaged for specific audiences.

His “Trump and a Post-Truth World” piece clearly shows how stuck he is here. In that entire piece he barely mentions the Bernie Sanders campaign at all, much less highlights how Sanders was polling as beating Trump by a significantly higher margin than was Clinton before the DNC nomination was finalized.

He also never mentions any of the Northern European countries as positive examples where Green Structure has manifested some healthier expressions in Economics, Political Structure, Healthcare, and Education. It is almost as if that whole massive element is invisible to him. How could this be? Why does Ken hate Green so much? He always claims that criticisms of his work are due to his inclusion of other views – this is not that! This is a criticism of ignoring data that is inconvenient at best for the Integral idea that the “Mean Green Meme” is the worst thing ever.

If he spent some time separating out Green Structure from Progressive Content, and discussed the other Structure/Content distinctions as well, he would have been able to make a lot more sense out of Sanders’ popularity as well as Clinton’s ultimate failure to galvanize enough of the people to beat Trump.

I’ll stop here for now, but I figured these few pages will help you get a better understanding of my thinking on the Structure/Content Fallacy. Many further implications unfold from here, including the perpetual high population distribution of people at Blue and how to approach them, the difficulties of moving from Blue to Orange and how to best enable and support this growth, and how the “mean Green” youth are best handled with more Blue-level appropriate means and measures for starters. But that’s a whole ‘nuther letter! LOL  

I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback on it. Like I mentioned in my introductory email, I’ve just started to pivot my attention and thoughts back to the Integral enterprise and am trying to think more clearly about what I see happening in the world today. Any and all critiques are welcome and appreciated.  

Best wishes,

David

2-fer Tuesday #5 Aspirations to Greatness, vs Actions for Progress

** This piece is part of my ongoing “2-fer Tuesday” series where I share critical distinctions in how to view and think about the world that may help you see things more clearly - which then supports better thinking, firmer decision making, and wiser action taking. **

Aspirations to greatness are a very potent source of inspiration, drive, determination, and other valuable qualities that help us keep our head up, eyes forward, and focus locked onto our vision for success. But as important as they are, aspirations alone don’t magically turn into upward progress, for without action “important” aspirations can become flaccidly impotent. Therefore, we need to be sure to activate the rest of our mind and body to put effort into “measures that matter” in our real world dynamics. Demonstrable progress here is achieved by setting clear goals and taking firm actions.

Yet, we must not allow our mind, eyes, and hands to linger too long in our immediate circumstances tracking efficiency gains, checklists, spreadsheets, and other “next steps” without being sure to check our maps against the territory, find our North Star, and confirm that we going upward as well as onward. In other words, we need to make sure our progress is aligned with our purpose.  

Here at Catalyst I support my clients in their efforts to connect aspiration with action, and progress with purpose, by encouraging them to develop their own unique strategy of “Engaging in Betterment.” I write elsewhere on the general importance of cultivating a growth mindset around betterment, but here I want to focus on the fundamental importance of implementing a variety of exercises, experiments, and simple action steps in our day to day lives In short, to link aspiration and action as “Engagement,” and frame the long term journey of progress to greatness as a consistent process of “Betterment.”

So what does “Engaging in Betterment” look like?

Simply put, it is all about finding the edges of your comfort zone and taking tiny steps forward, one at a time. What happened? How did it meet or not meet expectations? How did other people react, or not react at all? Most importantly, what have you learned here? About the world? About your relationships? About yourself?

Much of my work centers on the basic principle that Leadership, all Leadership, comes down to behavior. People on your team may not have any idea of your thoughts, plans, feelings, or anything else going on inside of you, but you better believe that they can see your actions, your words, your proclamations, and how much these things align. They can also see your body language, your eye movement, the tone, inflection, and timbre of your voice. Who you smile at, and who you don’t. How you acknowledge the teams wins, and more importantly, how you respond when they come up short. So again, Leadership is behavior. And the higher up the ladder you go, the greater the impact that your behavior has on the lives of more and more people. 

Therefore, like most Coaches, I encourage my clients to examine how they show up in the eyes of others to give proper context to how they may feel or think about approaching their Leadership development journey.  But beyond just thinking about it, we brainstorm together on ways they might experiment with small behavior changes, specifically around areas that feel “problematic,” to explore how other people actually do and don’t respond as predicted.

These experiments with new behaviors also allow us to get real data on how WE might not respond as predicted, or more to the point, how we may have historically responded in previous chapters of our lives. And looking to the future, new behavior patterns ultimately solicit new reaction and response patterns in those around us, even if this last part can occasionally take a pretty long time to unfold.

In short, new behavior patterns create a new reality for our team to experience, allow us to update our reality maps with the most current information, and invite those around us to update theirs as well with more current and accurate versions of who we are in their minds.

In other words, we can change our reality and change the reality of others, all for the better, by embarking on a journey of daily “Engagement in Betterment.”  

And who knows how many different kinds of Greatness we might achieve along the way?

Transforming whiners into winners

A client I have been working with for a few years now was recently hired into a Senior Management role for a new company. ”Mary,” as I’ll refer to her here, soon brought up the culture of her new workplace as her biggest emerging pain point. She was hired into a Managerial role, but her large team had a toxic culture characterized by unhealthy competitive dynamics such as gossip, in-group vs out group socializing, slander, and critical focus on age, looks, wardrobe, and other irrelevant and personal characteristics. Read on below to hear how she turned a culture of whining into a culture of winning.

 Mary is a high performer with a background of leadership experience at multiple levels at a single company the past 10 years. Frankly speaking, she didn’t have much experience with toxic team culture as her previous company was run well and had a strong culture of professionalism. She was really frustrated with her experience here in her new role, particularly given the scope and scale of the changes she would like to see happen. She felt she had been given 2 bad options to choose from which she humorously phrased as *NPC vs Main Character Syndrome.

• In common parlance, NPC stands for “Non-Playing Character” in reference to certain built-in video game characters that aren’t “real” players and just fill a programmed role, like an extra on a movie set. Main Character Syndrome, on the other hand, is a derogatory term used to describe somebody who believes they are the “Main Character” in a Made-for-TV Drama and acts as if the world is centered on them.

 In other words, Mary she felt she needed to either pick the “NPC” route of simply ignoring her team’s culture, keeping her head down, and focusing on the performance challenges, or go the other way and join the fray by taking on Main Character Syndrome and claw her way through the chaos by asserting herself as Queen Bee.

 Neither of these options was the least bit appealing to Mary, but her early attempts to find ways to productively shift her new workplace’s culture weren’t working.

 However, by embracing the Challenge & a Choice framework and taking on a more empowered and agentic stance she was able to create her own 3rd option and fairly quickly lead her team’s culture towards a common higher ground. I’ll share a few of her strategic choices here below for your consideration for if and when you find yourself in similar shoes.

 1)    Already familiar with taking action and getting results, Mary loved our conversation reminding her of the “Challenge & a Choice” framework that informs every “Hero’s Journey” Narrative. Here for Mary, the immediate challenges presented by her team and its dysfunctional dynamics were obvious, but the choices seemed limited. Mary leveled up by reframing the entire situation in a larger Challenge & a Choice dynamic where the true Challenge was NOT how to work within the constraints of the current culture, but actually how to lead her team UP and out towards the co-creation of a new and healthier culture. By reframing her Challenge this way, Mary left the 2 “false choices” of NPC vs Main Character Syndrome behind and CHOSE to take ownership of the “Hero’s Journey” opportunity to lead her team upward into a healthier environment that was better for everyone.

2)    Having taking more full ownership of her power of choice, and having decided on her strategy to lead her team to higher ground, Mary decided that her main tactical plan would be to find ways to move the competitive energies OUT of the covert and personal realms and over to the overt and professional realms. She implemented 3 specific means to achieve her goals here:

a.     Her predecessor had only shared team performance updates during quarterly full team meetings, and had also been reluctant to discuss how individual members of the team were doing outside of individual monthly 1-on-1’s.

 Mary created a new Performance Dashboard that had Team goals and performance metrics on it, but also clearly featured all the individual members’ performance and contributions to the collective. This new Dashboard was accessible for viewing by anybody at any time from their desktops, and was also permanently and prominently displayed on a large monitor mounted on the main wall outside the break room. Mary powerfully moved invisible covert performance awareness to shared overt performance awareness with this bold maneuver.

b.     During those first few weeks in her new role, one of the most concerning elements of Mary’s experience was how so many of the conversations she was hearing among her team members were primarily focused on other team members! It was almost as if the abject goal at work of each team member was to improve their own cultural standing and/or lower somebody else’s. Mary wanted to shift their focus out of the personal and up to the professional.

 Mary addressed this by adding her company’s Mission Statement up in huge letters above her public Performance Dashboard mounted outside the breakroom. Underneath the monitor she simply had the following question spelled out, in only a slightly smaller font: “How are you helping us meet the mission today?” This simple reminder of professional obligation, combined with the public Performance Dashboard stats, acted as a powerful magnet pulling her team’s attention out of the miasma of personal concerns and up to the proper level of professional ones.

c.     Building on the above items, Mary also implemented an aggressive weekly 1-on-1 schedule for her entire team of 20+ people. During the first one of these new meetings she clearly framed out her expectations something like this: “I am the Manager of this team, and as such, I am responsible for this Team’s performance in relation to the goals we’ve been given to support the company’s bigger mission. As a member of this Team, your job is to help us meet those goals. In these meetings I want to learn more about where you need support or guidance so as to up your performance so that we can work together to give you what you need to be successful. I want to help you be as successful as you can be here in your current role, and am more than willing to help you be successful elsewhere if it isn’t for you. But in order to stay here on my team you need to perform at a certain level, and that is non-negotiable.”

 She also reminded them of HR’s guidelines for office language and refused to address any personality-based complaints below that threshold, instead often asking “And what did they say when you addressed this with them yourself?” In short, Mary made it clear that her concern was improving professional performance, not in policing personal quibbles.

Mary stayed true to her commitments, and over the next few weeks saw 6 people leave her team for various reasons. But guess what qualities those same 6 people happened to share? Embarrassed by the public posting of their low individual performance metrics, they first doubled down on their toxic behavioral traits to try to form a coalition to get Mary fired. The rest of the team, relieved and inspired by Mary’s strong leadership, stood up for Mary, banded together, and advised those 6 chronic complainers that their time and energy would be better spent on self-improvement and/or getting results.

Down 6 people, Mary’s team still managed to boost their next quarter’s performance by 25% over the previous quarter’s numbers, leading to larger than expected bonus distributions all around.  

But more importantly, Mary had turned around her team’s culture to one that was clear on the company’s mission, focused on performing well, and shared in the freedom to excel in their professional aspirations.

When I recently asked Mary what her biggest take-away from that experience was for her, she simply replied, “People like to be on a winning team, and winning teams get better by recognizing and rewarding individual performers. Managers who hold high standards, support Team development, and reward high performers will have a winning team. Managers who don’t, won’t. I’m proud of how I was able to turn my team’s performance around by leading them to a culture built on winning rather than allowing them all to suffer in a culture based on whining.” 

Mary’s take on things clearly illustrates the power of effective Leadership and how good Leaders can make all the difference along so many dimensions of workplace dynamics. What small tweaks to your Leadership could you make to help move your team a little further up the spectrum from whining to winning?

2-fer Tuesday #4 Group vs Team, Likeability vs Trust

** This piece is part of my ongoing “2-fer Tuesday” series where I share critical distinctions in how to view and think about the world that may help you see things more clearly - which then supports better thinking, firmer decision making, and wiser action taking. ** 

Workplace professionalism seems to be a topic of increasing concern for many of my clients, and especially so for those with large teams to manage. I’ll share 2 frameworks today that may be applicable in your efforts to increase the professionalism in your workplace. The first one – Group vs Team – is a lens aimed at your team, whether one you manage or one in which you’re a member. The second one – Likeability vs Trust – is more aimed at how you are showing up, especially in a Leadership role, and in which way you’ll want to invest more effort going forward.

TL; DR – Teams built on Trust will outperform Groups based on Likeability, 8 days a week. 

1)     Group vs Team – This one is another of those concepts that is super easy to understand but exceedingly difficult to assess and change in the real world. The shortest riff is to simply understand that Teams are connected via various threads of “shared aspirations,” and usually quite significant ones like Mission, Vision, outcome goals, and other forward-looking endeavors.  

Groups, on the other hand, are often connected by “shared circumstances” or simpler, more fundamental conditions like just being co-workers, colleagues, wine drinkers, and/or other non-performance oriented elements. The main issue here is that many Teams function more like Groups, which not only yields mediocre results at best, but also demoralizes and disincentivizes individual high performers who clearly see their best individual efforts go unappreciated and unrewarded.

Take away here for you as an Individual – How well are the Teams you are connected to and with truly operating as a coherent Team oriented to performance-based aspirations vs hanging out as a Group or Groups, bonded by non-performance based fashions, fads, and opinions? What might you do in your words and deeds to shift the professionalism dynamic up a notch or two towards the Team ideal?

Take away here for you as a Leader – What are you doing to organize and orient your Team to its higher collective function? How are you motivating and rewarding high performing individuals while also recognizing other contributions to the team’s success. Perhaps more importantly, how are you directly and clearly addressing and preventing the devolving forces of Group dynamics to creep in and undermine your better efforts?

2)   Likeability vs Trust – This is probably one of the most common issues that comes up for people in the earlier phases of their total Leadership journey. Primarily because as Team Leaders, Managers, and VPs they have to make and/or communicate a lot of things that are going to be unliked. From difficult 1-on-1’s and performance reviews to project pivots and changing company polices, you are destined to be the messenger of almost all the “bad” news that your employees or teams are going to hear. This is unavoidable, and in fact, only gets more challenging the higher up you go. Choosing pathways that build long term Trust over increasing short term Likeability is the best way to proceed here. 

The crux of the problem is that, people being people, we tend to automatically orient to relationships and connections, especially when delivering “bad” news. Which is fine. HOW we relate to connection is the issue. To the degree that we ONLY focus on the person in front of us, ONLY focus on how they respond in the moment, and/or ONLY (and perhaps unconsciously) focus on how WE are going to feel in response to them feeling bad. All those things (and others too) point us squarely in the wrong direction of Likeability. They also lead us to present the “bad” news less directly, less clearly, and less constructively. And guess what? Those factors work AGAINST any and all efforts to build trust, the much more important factor here. 

Trust is one of the rarest and most powerful reservoirs of influence and leadership effectiveness you have almost complete control over creating. And losing too. In fact, it is one of only 3 factors I use when assessing a Leader’s true Leadership Effectiveness Quotient, or LEQ.

Trust differs from Likeability in myriad ways, so for this short piece here I’ll simply state that it is just better all around. But how to orient to building trust when delivering bad news? 

Whereas Likeability concerns drive focus to the immediate feelings of both your recipient and yourself in the moment, Trust building orientation brings your vision up higher out of the particulars of the moment and over the long game and wider team. A direct report who knows you are going to give them clear and direct feedback, and then shift over to action steps for improvement may not like what they hear, but they can trust what you say that you are focused on helping them improve.

And beyond just that relationship, when you act out of integrity and focus on building trust with that one individual, other team members will either hear about it and begin to trust you more as well. Trust and Respect go hand in hand, and when it comes to true Team Leadership, who would you rather have at the helm in turbulent times? A Leader you like? Or a Leader that you trust and respect? 

Take away for you as an Individual – Where do you notice your natural urges to be liked getting in the way of your more authentic position, opinion, and/or perspective? How might you lean further into the risk of speaking more clearly and directly in order to work towards the long game of building trust while also conducting yourself respectfully and responsibly in the context of relationship concerns? Would intentionally bringing up the topic of building trust as part of the conversation shift the dynamic for both you and the other people involved?

Take away for you as a Leader – Trust and Respect are 100x more important to your long term aspirations than Likeability, and not just for you and your Leadership goals but also for all those who serve below you. Showing up every day in your fullest authenticity encourages everyone else to do the same, creating crucial bonds of connection and support that make the good times better and make the hard times easier. And Pro Tip: Being direct, clear, and action-oriented for future success with all your “bad news” will also increase your Likeability in the long run too! 

In summary, healthy Team dynamics can be fostered and fertilized by explicitly focusing on higher shared professional aspirations, recognizing and rewarding high individual performance, and handling all interactions with an effort to build trust through authentic engagement. Nowhere is this truer than when giving “bad” news, and in those situations its important be direct and clear, and to then follow up with actionable steps for improvement.  

Unhealthy teams tend to orient to more personal-based connections that often have nothing to do with job responsibilities, leading to loss of focus, lower output, and worse performance results. In addition, unhealthy Group dynamics can create a workplace culture based on popularity, which can then mis-incentivize people to orient more to Likeability in their conversations, which eventually erodes trust all across the board. Low trust groups will compare poorly to high trust teams in every metric that matters, every time.

What can you start and/or stop doing today to build Trust and increase Team coherence in your workplace?

2-fer Tuesday #3: Personal vs Professional, Personal vs Principled

** This piece is part of my ongoing “2-fer Tuesday” series where I share critical distinctions in how to view and think about the world that may help you see things more clearly - which then supports better thinking, firmer decision making, and wiser action taking. ** 

When it comes to taking more ownership of your career advancement, one issue that continually confounds even seasoned Executives is slipping into the mode of operating from a “personal” orientation. Actions coming from “personal” motivations can have a tendency to be self-centered and/or self-serving, and small slips here can have large and lasting impacts to your relationships and reputation. In this short piece I’ll unpack the two distinctions of Personal vs Professional and Personal vs Principled in hopes of helping you increase your trust, enhance your integrity, and enlarge your circle of influence. 

1)    Personal vs Professional – The more you show up in your “Professional” capacity vs your “Personal” framework, the better you’ll do on almost every metric.

This distinction is typical of so many I share in that it is simple to understand, but very difficult to consistently practice. It deserves a fuller unpacking in a separate post, so this take here is a just a broad stroke overview. First things first, by “Personal” here I mean everything that is not part of your job description. Or said another way, “Professional” is everything to do with your role, including being a behavioral and cultural leader in your company. Everything outside of this circle is by definition “personal.”  

For over 90% of you, the odds are that you are being paid by some company some amount of money to do certain things. And doing those things well requires you to “show up” in certain capacities, with certain levels of emotional maturity, and embody certain characteristics that come with the specifics of your role. This is just as true for a Barista as it is for a CEO.

And seen through this lens, almost all of your “personal” thoughts, feelings, and inclinations aren’t only irrelevant, but are probably unhelpful. I know this idea may seem a bit offensive to some of you, but I’d simply ask you to reflect on how the Café’s customer service focus is being served by a moody Barista or how the Board of Directors might feel about the CEO’s feelings about the updated legal requirements.

In other words, while at work just focus on your job and on doing it well. The higher up the org chart you go, the more important it is to intelligently embody the role you occupy as professionally as you can. In short, it’s not about YOU, but your ability to help the company and your team be successful.

2)    Personal vs Principled – Principled actions and behaviors clarify your character and immediately increase the respect and trust from others that form the bedrock of your relationships. Actions based on Personal motives and self-interest also clarify your character, but negatively so, and lower the respect and trust you are given in relationships. 

 As discussed in my piece about your LEQ Score (Leadership Effectiveness Quotient), Trust is one of the 3 main factors that factor into your Leadership ability. And unlike the other two (Capacity and Culture), it is extremely fragile, and therefore, perhaps the most valuable. While a certain, casual amount of trust and respect will be granted up front, deeper trust, the kind that inspires followership, must be slowly earned over time and through countless and constant action.  

Every little thing counts here, and the easiest way for you build trust and respect is to act in accordance with principles vs personal feelings. It may seem old-fashioned, but articulating a “code” for yourself to adhere to and follow can be a powerful organizing force in your growth and development. And when tempted to be led astray, either through events or invitations, it can be much easier to simply say “no thanks, that’s against my code.” Sure, it may cost you some minor relationship points in the short run, but it will earn you respect, and trust, in the longer one.

In summary, look around at your team, your colleagues, and especially the upper Leadership of your organization. What you want from them? What do admire about their effectiveness? Their character? Their trustworthiness? I’d wager that the people who get the most respect, the most appreciation, and the most trust are the ones who show up and embody their Professional responsibilities vs complaining about their Personal lives. I’d bet these same people also have some pretty firm Principles by which they operate, Principles that allow them to be relied upon, given more responsibility, and valued for their judgement and recommendations.

How can you start to show up a little more Professionally in your role? Where do you see opportunities to refine and upgrade the principles by which you operate?

2-fer Tuesday #2 - Maps vs Territories

** This piece is part of my ongoing “2-fer Tuesday” series where I share critical distinctions in how to view and think about the world that may help you see things more clearly - which then supports better thinking, firmer decision making, and wiser action taking. **

By now we’ve all heard the stories of people inadvertently driving into lakes, down train tracks, and through fields because they were “just following the map.” In fact, “just following the map” has led to much worse outcomes than 4 flat tires or 30-minute detours. This week’s duo of distinctions is offered to help you become better at not only avoiding driving your car (or company!) off a cliff, but also better at predicting what is coming up around the bend.

1)    Maps vs Territories – “The Map is not the Territory” is a well-worn phrase, but let’s unpack it just a bit more thoroughly here to put more focus on YOU as the intermediary Agent between them. The man who drove out into the lake mentioned above wasn’t simply hallucinating that he was on a road, but was in fact fully aware of driving his car out in the water but chose instead to believe the map was more real than his actual experience. Same with the lady who drove on the railroad tracks. But guess what? The territory always wins. 

And, if we’re honest, I’m sure we won’t have to look too far in our lives to find occasions where we chose to believe some imaginary “map” or Narrative as being more real than what we actually experienced and understood to be true in our lived experience. And at some point, the territory “won” and we probably ended up paying some cost as a result.

The take-away here for you: Remember that maps serve as a guide, but ultimately, we are in charge of how we proceed through the territory. Taking more ownership and responsibility of our roles here as Agents will empower us to make better choices that align with the real world opportunities and honor the limitations found in the territory.  

What “maps” are you using today? How do they compare to your experienced territory? Is it time to change maps? 

The take-away for your Leadership: What maps are you giving your teams? How are you supporting them in their own efforts to remain oriented to what the territory is giving them?

2)    A model vs TO model – This one is pretty closely related to the one above, but is different enough to warrant a brief exposition of what makes it distinct and useful. A model is a noun, and much like the maps mentioned above, usually gets some sort of primary role in interpreting data, simplifying decision making, and ideally making helpful and accurate predictions of what is to come.

Good models are extremely useful and can be used to parse or chunk our complex reality into much easier to process points. But A model can also miss lots of important info, fall out of date, be based on bad assumptions, and/or be more wrong than right in 100’s of ways. The problem here is that most of these ways are invisible to the people using the model, especially to the degree they are unaware or unfamiliar with how it was built in the first place. Economics is one place where models are wrong ALL THE TIME but people persist in using them, as are Pandemic Response Strategies *cough, cough*.

TO model, on the other hand, is a verb. It is the action of modeling. And as such, it requires some degree of participation in building the model, which requires a minimal awareness of assumptions, givens, filters, and other relevant modeling frameworks that can at least point to where any particular model might be limited. Being a verb, it also invites an active and ongoing comparison between what the model predicts and what is actually happening (maps and territories again!), which should encourage ongoing adjustments to the modeling process so as to tighten up the prediction/reality gaps.  

One good place to see TO model in use is with hurricane forecasting where you often see 6 – 8 “predicted tracks” of where the hurricane might go. In these instances the meteorologist is using multiple models, each with slightly different parameters in place, to generate some possible routes the hurricane might take. The more closely aligned the tracks are, the more confident and specific he can be in his forecasts. The more divergent they are, the less confident and less specific.   

The take away here for you: Appreciate that we often need to rely on A model other people have made to forecast our own future, but we still have the opportunity and obligation as Agents TO model how the predictions are lining up with our observations and experiences, and then adjust our use of those other models as necessary. 

The take-away for your Leadership: How are you demonstrating active and effective modeling as a strategy for your team? Where are you collectively testing the models they are using? And how are you encouraging them to take a more active role in their own iterative process of using models to make predictions, evaluate them, and then change the models as needed? 

In conclusion, and this applies in your own life and in your Leadership roles, feel free to extensively use all the maps you like, but always keep an eye on the territory AND give it both preference and precedence. And when faced with uncertainty, don’t simply follow A model that was given to you in pursuit of black and white clarity, but instead seek To model a wide variety of possibilities in order to make your decisions on probabilities that can better reflect the shades of grey of real world decision making.  

Better predictions not only help you keep your car on the road, but they help you get where you want to go, faster and easier.

3 Tips for Owning Your Career

Many of my early- to mid-career phase clients are finding more traction and engagement in their professional journeys by embracing the concept of “Owning Your Career.” Taking on more direct ownership of their career path allows them to ground more deeply into their personal and professional aspirations, orient more clearly to a future with greater optionality and opportunities, and perhaps most importantly, take direct action and accountability in charting their courses forward.  

Sounds great, right? But what does it mean to “own your career”? And more concretely, what are some specific things you can do today that move you further down that path of success?

1)    The “Challenge & a Choice” narrative framework. Every “Hero’s journey” has an “origin story,” and the core of every origin story is the pivot the Hero makes in the face of Challenges. From Greek Myths to modern Marvel comics, all origin stories have this central plot shift. This is the point they muster their courage and make the Choice to step up and grab the ring, put on the suit, and/or wear the cape.

Your “Owning Your Career” journey has such pivot points too. Look around, what are your current challenges?

Sure, your boss sucks, but how are YOU going to choose to respond to him?  

Your technical skills may indeed be deficient, but what are YOU doing to change that fact?

Your workplace culture may be toxic, but what are YOU doing to sidestep or immunize yourself against it?

Are you ready to pivot your narrative from one that has you a helpless victim of circumstances to one that begins to feature you as the Hero defined by the Choices you are making? Where can you move the slider TODAY from “I’m challenged by X, Y, and Z” a few notches over to “I CHOOSE to do A, B, and C?”  

The first step towards Owning your Career is owning your power of choice in this very moment. 

2)    What’s your “Betterment Strategy?” By “Betterment Strategy” I mean your combination of educational intake (relevant podcasts, books, trainings, certifications, etc.), plans for progress (goal setting, mentorship seeking, networking, etc.), and real world action steps that bring you new experiences and greater exposure. In other words, and following up from number 1 above, what are YOU doing to better prepare yourself for WHO you want to be in 5 years?  

Notice I said “Who you want to be,” not “where you want to be.” I use “who” here on purpose to signify that this is all about YOU and YOUR ownership and much less about “where” this path takes you. YOUR skills, YOUR knowledge, YOUR Leadership growth and development are the proper areas of focus. Where you are is much less relevant than WHO you are at any point in the journey. 

3)    Focus on embodying Leadership IN your current role as a prerequisite for moving beyond it. I’ve covered similar takes elsewhere in Leadership IN, Bloom Where You’re Planted, and Responsible TO vs FOR. However, the central point I want to make here is that good Leadership is a quality you can develop, and one that will get you noticed, appreciated, and promoted far faster than your peers with similar or even better technical skills.

Intentionally cultivating and developing your Leadership skills is a critical part of any Betterment Strategy, regardless of your industry, background, or experience level. Even if you have no intention of taking on any direct Management responsibilities, cultivating better Leadership skills will help you create a more functional team at the level you are in as well as help you more skillfully “up-manage” those above you.

And at the end of the day, developing good self-leadership skills will truly accelerate your progress towards more fully owning your career. 

So there you have it. Take more ownership of your career by focusing on the choices you can make vs the challenges you face, by developing a multi-pronged betterment strategy that brings educational input and plans for progress together into concrete action steps, and by looking to develop your Leadership skills IN your current role and the opportunities it provides. Document in your journal or elsewhere where you are now as the baseline, start working these 3 tips today, and then check back in on things in 3, 6, and 12 months to see how much progress you’ve made.  

Regardless of where you might be by then, I’d bet real money that you’re going to be proud of how far you’ve come in your own “Hero’s Journey,” and more importantly, WHO you’re becoming along the way.

Introducing 2-fer Tuesdays! Differences vs Distinctions, Ideas vs insights

Following up my recent BLUF and SBAR pieces that show the value of clear, concise communication, and taking into consideration my ever-growing list of future article topics, I’ve decided to put out a special “2-fer Tuesday” article series where each Tuesday I’ll share 2 critical distinctions that I’ve seen yield powerful insights that have directly spurred significant transformational shifts in myself and in clients too. I’ll also conclude each piece with a “2-fer” of take-away suggestions for how to apply these distinctions in your life as an individual as well as in your role as a Leader.

To help get this new series off on the right foot I’ll start by framing out and briefly unpacking the importance of correctly understanding and appreciating the Differences vs Distinctions distinction and also the Idea vs Insight distinctions. Why these? In today’s VUCA world, the ability to see and appreciate critical distinctions leads directly to deeper personal insight, which then better empowers you as the Agent to make better decisions and take wiser courses of Action.

Hopefully these 2 initial offerings are not only useful to you in your everyday life, but also inspire you to check back next week to see what’s coming up next.

Oh, and please feel free to share your thoughts on these in the comments and/or suggest further topics for me to touch upon in the future!

1)    Differences vs Distinctions – Differences as a term simply indicates “not the same,” and is often used in very general and not very helpful ways. Distinctions, on the other hand, are ways to nail down the specifics of HOW things are different, to WHAT degree, WHERE these differences matter, and WHY they are and/or are not relevant.

Take away for you individually: Different is rarely sufficient for making decisions and taking action. Dive deeper into both quantitative and qualitative distinctions to better appreciate the HOW, WHAT, WHERE, and WHY and more fully flesh out your perceptual matrix.

Take away for your Leadership: As busy Leaders and Executives, we need to help our teams build greater awareness of what we need from them to make the best decisions for the organization as a whole. Pushing them to dive deeper into differences in search of more clarity around the granular distinctions in play can go a long way to increasing their effectiveness and increasing your efficiency (hint for one of next week’s items...)

2)    Idea vs Insight – It’s often been said that ideas are some of the most powerful forces in play for organizing and connecting people. And that is very true, especially for organizing teams and groups to a common purpose. However, the true measure of any idea isn’t really its content, but its impact. More specifically, the impact of an idea, any idea, is only as powerful as the insight it generates in you as an individual.  In other words, insight is what turns information into transformation.

As I covered in last week’s article, the “aha!” flash of insight is the initial experience of that impact, even as the further implications take more time to trickle down and unfold. In this context, insight means the way that the initial idea connects into your mind and how your mind then reorganizes to a higher level of coherence as a result of that connecting. Good ideas may generate only a singular insight, even quite large and impactful ones. But truly great ideas can generate multiple insights over time, often arriving as deeper and more extensive appreciations and extensions of the initial insight. “Aha!” shifts to “Whoa!” as successively deeper insights unfold over time. 

Take away for you: Insight is the mechanism that turns information into transformation. Keys to getting insight include taking in new information, taking on new perspectives, and trying out new behaviors. What are you doing in each of these areas?

Take away for your Leadership: Simply giving people the answer robs them of the experience of having their own insight. It’s the “Give a man a fish vs Teach a man to fish” parable all over again. How are you helping your team increase their chances of having insights? What more can you do to help lead them up to the edge of it, but then pause to allow them to take the last steps on their own. How are you developing capacity in your teams vs just telling them what to do?

So again, I share these here because I firmly believe that helping my clients make finer distinctions in the world empowers them to make better decisions and take more effective actions. And perhaps more importantly, I believe that my primary role as a Coach is helping them experience the powerfully transforming impact of fresh insights into their own lives, narratives, and aspirational goals.  

Clarity from finer distinctions increases the frequency and impact of fresh insights, which then accelerate the pace of transformative growth and development.  

Tune in next Tuesday for another 2’fer sharing of distinctions and insights I’ve seen be powerfully helpful in my work and in my life.

The Transformative Power of Insight

Flashes of insight are those moments most often experienced with a sharp sense of “a-ha!”, your head tilting, eyes widening, and lips turning into a smile as a new understanding, appreciation, or depth of meaning and connection takes hold in our minds.  

Beyond the felt experience, these moments of insight also signify when new information hasn’t simply just been added to our existing mental framework, but has instead actually changed that framework, and in so doing, opened up greater possibilities for larger changes to unfold in our mind and in our very being.

In other words, insights are what real transformation feels like! 

Following the initial flash of “a-ha!”, the impact of the insight ripples all throughout our mind. Some ripples change and reorganize previous understandings of a situation, while others change the very way we perceive and organize new information flowing in. Insights can not only change our narratives around what’s happening in the past, what’s happening now, and what possibilities exist in the future, but can actually change our narrative of how we understand ourselves and our place in the world!

Therefore, insights are catalysts for ongoing personal growth, and as such, are of premium value for us all. 

For these reasons, one of my primary goals as a Coach is to help my clients cultivate and experience transformative insights that are most relevant to them and their goals. And beyond simply catalyzing the emergence of insight, its equally important to reflect upon and discuss these insights to help ground and unpack the various implications and impacts that they might have for future courses of action.

At the end of the day, Insight + Reflection + Action = Accelerated Growth, which then leads to further insights, in a self-perpetuating, iterative manner. 

What are some insights you’ve had recently? How have your further reflections on them impacted your daily life? What new actions are you taking as a result?

More importantly, what are you doing to cultivate and increase the likelihood and frequency of insights unfolding in your mind?

Back up your BLUF with a short SBAR summary

Last week’s post was on the importance of using the BLUF framework of Bottom Line Up Front and “starting with the point” in your professional communications to increase your efficiency as well as your impact. This post takes a deeper dive into how to best back up your BLUF with an equally efficient and impactful unpacking of the details using the SBAR approach of Situation, Background, Assessment, & Recommendations. Using the BLUF/SBAR combo well will quickly get you positively noticed as a high performer worthy of additional opportunity, responsibility, and promotional consideration.

*** I’ll be trying to use the BLUF/SBAR approach in most of my blogs going forward. Please share your thoughts on if you like this style better, and of course, any suggestions for improvements as well! ***

As we covered last week, the BLUF approach is designed to quickly and clearly communicate the What?, the So What?, and the Now What? basic ingredients of what you’re telling your audience, why you think they need to know it, and what you are suggesting or asking for as a consequence. However, while the BLUF may be all you need to send out a short text or quick email, often you will be expected to unpack things more thoroughly in the main body of your paper or presentation. The SBAR format can help you do so in a reliably organized and efficient manner, and you should be looked at as the next layer down in your framework.

The S in SBAR stands for the Situation. This part is where you can unpack the first 2 components of the BLUF paragraph of What? and So What? in more detail. In other words, where are we now?, and what’s the main issue at hand? 

Picking up from our example last week of the software roll out challenges and pending delays we led with in our BLUF, if Anna had responded with a request more info then we could begin our SBAR reply with a more detailed breakdown of what was going on with the software challenges and why we were concerned about falling behind by referring to previously shared tempos, timelines, or other relevant context. This section can still be fairly brief, so maybe think of it as adding just 4 – 6 sentences of further explanation to give more color and context to the Situation.

Next up is B for Background. How did we get here? What led us to this point? This can often be a bulky section, especially for formal presentations, and sometimes needs to be put into bullet points or multiple paragraphs. Again, depending on context, it is recommended to err to the briefer side here knowing you can provide more detail if asked, and/or putting additional information in footnotes, appendices, or other reference materials.

Using the Anna email as our example, here is where we could share a more detailed explanation of our initial assumptions of difficulty, the trajectory of the phased roll out over the last 3 weeks, what other challenges we encountered along the way, how we solved them, and why we are asking for help at this point in the timeline. Definitely try to stay focused only on what’s relevant though! Showing awareness of your audience’s perspective and only providing the relevant details is critical here.

Assessment is the A, and where you are setting up the transition from So what? to Now what? This section is critical in that you are expected to share your own independent appraisal of things as a prelude to what follows. In other words, the spotlight is now firmly centered on YOU. While it can be helpful here to bring in a few objective perspectives and/or well-considered opinions of others, at this level the goal is to clearly communicate what YOU think about the What? and So What?  This section should be handled wisely as this assessment is going to give your audience the clearest view into your thinking process, and will therefore have the most powerful impact on their appraisal of you and your performance potential.

With the Anna email example, this section is where we could make a point to share our concern about timelines, budgets, and other areas where we foresee difficulties coming up. Again, stay focused on how this is relevant to your audience! In this email to Anna, you want to focus on customer expectations, her upcoming site visit, and avoiding problems there. In other words, how does this problem impact their priorities? With Anna, it might be about financial implications, but in an email to your spouse about working over the weekend for this project, you can simply share your frustration with the initial timeline, team performance, or other more personal issues. Assessments are always connected to relevance, and relevance is context dependent! 

Recommendations is the last section, and here is where you can clearly and directly share what you think needs to be done next. These recommendations should be communicated as simply as possible, perhaps only in a sentence or 2 for less complex matters. Even if your conclusion in the Assessment is that no immediate action should be taken, that should be clearly stated here along with an articulation of how changes in the initial Situation might lead to a revised Analysis and Recommendations section. 

With the Anna email here you can restate your request for design team support, and could also float a few other options for her to consider as well, like either extending the deadline, postponing her visit, or something else. The main thing to keep in mind is finding the balance of clearly stating your recommendations while also creating room for your audience to make a different decision as needed.

At the end of the day, using the BLUF/SBAR approach well will leave your audience appreciative of your succinctness, impressed with your clarity, and elevating you in their esteem.

Start with the point

Utilize the BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) framework in your business communications to clearly state the issue, why it matters, and suggested action steps right at the beginning of your communication, regardless of type (email, meeting agenda item, presentation, etc.) to best orient and organize your audience’s time, attention, and decision-making efforts. Doing this well will get you noticed, appreciated, and fast tracked for promotion. Start practicing this approach today so as to quickly get the hang of it and to start getting people’s attention as somebody who is ready to be effective at the next level.

See what I did there? Or at least tried to do? I was using the BLUF framework to show you how using the BLUF framework takes the initial attention your audience is giving you and quickly and efficiently gives them the “What?” (use the BLUF approach), the “So what?” (to gain career traction), and the “Now what?” (start practicing today) for next steps. 

Why does this matter? Developing and improving your communication abilities is a powerful catalyst for rapid career advancement, and something that is entirely within your control. One of the best skills to develop here is to communicate relevant information quickly and efficiently, and to then immediately follow it up with specific recommendations if appropriate. Using the BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) framework to organize your emails, presentations, and other workplace communications will help you stay focused on getting the essential points of the communication across while also still allowing room for more detailed supporting info to follow.

This BLUF approach is counter to the “getting to the point” style that so many people use where they START by laying out all kinds of details in an effort to build up to the point and make a thorough case for it, only giving the conclusion/recommendation at the end.

THAT approach wastes everybody’s time, and many in the audience (whether it’s an audience of 1 or 100) will check out and lose interest as the seconds tick away. By the time the presenter gets to their conclusion or recommendation their audience has lost focus and aren’t able or willing to move forward with smart questions or helpful decisions/suggestions. Even worse, the presenter is now held in LESS regard by the audience than when they started talking to them! Not a good place to be…

As an example, here’s an email that DOESN’T use the BLUF approach: 

“Anna, these last 3 weeks of rolling out the new software have been going really well, if just a bit hectic as well. We’ve had some great successes, and of course have experienced some challenges along the way. Most of these challenges are in the process of being addressed, but some seem to be a bit trickier than we first imagined. Are you still planning on coming in next week? If so, I can talk to more about them then. If not, can you recommend somebody back there on the design team who I might be able to reach out to for help? I know you’re all busy back there but I don’t want these delays to go on much further.”

And here’s the same email, written out in the BLUF style:

“Anna, we’re stuck on a few key issues in this software roll out. We’re in danger of falling behind and I’d like to have everything running smoothly before you get here next week. Can you please connect me with somebody on the design team so I can get them resolved ASAP?”

Notice the first one is kind of rambling, seems more worried about tone, and is a bit wishy washy. Now look at the BLUF one. Clean, clear, and focused. The “What?”, “So what?”, and “Now what?” components are right there, all in a row.

Which one do you think Anna, a busy Executive, appreciates more?

Busy Executives like Anna focus their time on solving problems and making decisions. They aren’t interested in sitting through a 15-minute PowerPoint as you mumble your way through some charts and graphs, slowly leading up to your recommendation. Using the BLUF approach allows you to clearly articulate the issue, say why it’s a problem, and advocate for your solution right up front. You can provide more research data, stats, and other parts of your analysis in the body of the email or in the meat of your presentation.

“Start with the point” via the BLUF framework to save everybody some time and effort with your communciations, and most importantly, to save yourself some time and effort in getting promoted!

Freedom vs Agency

“I just want to have more freedom.”

Some version of this statement is probably the number one item that comes up in the Coaching world these days. Freedom from routines, freedom from old patterns, and freedom from limitations – especially one’s self-imposed or otherwise unconscious framing that is being outgrown. And yes! These are all great reasons to explore the field of Coaching in hopes of matching up with a Coach that can help you surface the things holding you back so that you CAN free yourself from repressive routines, outdated patterns, and hidden assumptions that may be holding you back.

But...

Freedom “from” these kinds of things is only half the picture, and the lesser half if I were to speak frankly here. A better kind of freedom exists out there, and that comes in the form of true Agency, or the ability to make things happen. I often write about the importance of action in these articles (like here, here, and here), but the best actions to take are ones that create novelty, that “build the new,” that lean out over your front foot and push your boundaries further.

How are these 2 kinds of freedoms different?

The first freedom is pretty self-explanatory. Fewer limits mean more freedom. More options are better than less. Less duty equals more opportunity. Of course we all want more of this kind of freedom, right?

The second form, the freedom of Agency and the ability to make things happen, is much trickier. You may have set up your life to where your afternoons are free of appointments, achieving that first definition of freedom sufficient to allow you almost unfettered optionality on how to fill that time in ways that interest you. But what are you truly able to accomplish here?

Have you developed enough skill in playing guitar to where you are “free” to play along with some of your favorite songs, or even compose your own? Do you have enough training and practice in the culinary arts to enable you to enjoy the process of creating a 5 course meal for you and your friends this evening? Or even at the most basic level, have you cultivated enough curiosity and interest in the world around you that you have a half of dozen hobbies that you joyfully devote your time, energy, and money (TME) to further exploring?

The first freedom, freedom from obligations and limits, is a great place to start. But it gets real boring, really quick, if it isn’t soon replaced by prioritizing your ability to follow the path of action and agency into the realm of the second one. Only there are you really free to express your most unique qualities, pursue your passions, and fully bloom into your true Individuality.

What would YOU be doing if you had minimal obligations and restrictions on your TME, and could really lean into that 2nd freedom? And perhaps more importantly, what could you start doing today to create that reality?

Making your goals SMART

My last batch of blogs comprising the Action Audit series were specifically focused and designed to help close Action Gaps between our words and deeds so that we can enhance our personal integrity. The CAR process I prescribe is specifically designed to connect singular statements (or Commitments) with singular behaviors (or Actions) with the idea that successful outcomes help us enhance our personal integrity with ourselves, ultimately resulting in increasing our social integrity within our relationships as well. A critical distinction in this process is to be very clear that the outcome is only focused on integrity enhancement, and not at all on goal attainment. 

To further clarify, I use “Actions” here to describe single, 1-time events. In this context, they are usually set in the future in the form of a plan or promise. For example, “get up early and go to the gym,” or “meet for a drink at 5pm sharp,” or some other specific behavior.

I make it a point to clearly differentiate these actions from any larger goals that they may be in service to. For example, the plan to “get up early and go to the gym” may be in service to a larger goal of “losing weight” or “getting healthier,” but the existence of a goal is irrelevant to the CAR process and efforts towards integrity enhancement. Again, the CAR process is focused on singular events, period.

Goals, on the other hand, are often about some far off, nebulous state of being. They exist in the future land of “eventually” and are often vaguely defined or even imaginary. “Richer,” “thinner,” and “happier” are all common goals I often hear from clients. They’re all invisible and immaterial, yet paradoxically, any meaningful progress towards them requires steady attention and focused intention. Their constant drag on our awareness can have enormous impacts on our mental health and wellbeing, even as they promise to improve it.

How we connect our actions of integrity enhancement to larger goals of attainment? How do we take a “random heap” of individual actions and turn them into an “integrated whole” of goal accomplishment? By turning our vague “-er” (thinner, richer, better, etc...) hopes into concrete plans through application of the SMART process.

SMART goals are those that not only answer “yes” to the following 5 questions, but follow up with concrete answers.

1.    Is it Specific? Here you need to turn your nebulous “-er” goal, such as “richer” or “thinner” into something else more quantifiable.

2.    Is it Measureable? Thankfully this 2nd question provides direction here. How could you quantify the invisible goal of “richer” or “thinner” into something more objectively visible? Examples would be “increase salary by 20%,” or “lose 10 pounds.”

3.    Is it Achievable? This 3rd question further brings reality into play by forcing you to account for more of what is actually true for you now and what steps you might need to consider to reach the specific goal you stated. Here is where many clients initially struggle but then come out of the process more motivated to begin the work necessary for achievement.

4.    Is it Relevant? Another good question that comes from a place that you, like everybody, only have so much TME to dedicate to this process. A key to success here is to make sure that this particular goal is worth the struggle!

5.    Finally, is it Time Bound? We need to get out of misty “eventual” land and anchor our goal firmly to the calendar. Maybe our original sense of “thinner” could be helpfully tied to an upcoming event? Or “richer” can be connected to our upcoming performance review conversation. Regardless, we need to set a hard timeline here to drive focus and effort.

All this comes together in framing out our goal in accordance to the SMART process. Just like the CAR process above ties Commitment to Action and binds them in the final step of Recognition, the SMART goal process turns half-conscious aspirations into concrete plans.

For example, “I want to be thinner” gets turned into “My goal is to lose 10 pounds by Janet’s wedding coming up in 2 months. I will accomplish this goal by increasing my time at the gym from 2 x/week for 45 minutes/session to 4x/week for 1 hr/session. Accomplishing this goal will allow me to wear an awesome dress that I feel great in, (and most importantly, will help me further boost my integrity and self-confidence as somebody who can set goals and then attain them!).”

That last part of the last sentence is the real take-away for me and my work with my clients. Acting as a Catalyst, my goal is to help you get where you want to go, just quicker and easier. Book a complimentary 30-minute Discovery call here to set up a chat to see where I might be able to help you close some Action Gaps and/or rework your vague aspirations into attainable SMART goals.

Action Audit Wrap Up – The 60-Day Challenge

Here in our 5th and final piece of our Action Audit series we’ll put together the insights you may have gained from you Self Audit process with those that you might have discovered through your interactions with friends and family through your Action Audit 360 surveys.

 Hopefully you have already started applying the CAR process to those Action Gap areas that you previously discovered in your Self Audit examinations. Again, in the CAR acronym, C stands for Commitment, where you pause when an idea for future plans or actions come up and make a point to decide there and then if you are willing to fully commit to it or not. For those things that you do decide to commit to, when the time comes you then have to take the Action required to meet the commitment. And finally, for every Commitment you complete with Action, you want to make a point to intentionally and consciously Recognize this fact with a short moment of appreciation and applause for yourself.

 No matter how small they may seem, these moments of Recognition are critically important components for solidifying your deeper integrity and further bolstering your awareness and identity as somebody who says what they mean and means what they say. Every success in your efforts to integrate the CAR process into your normal flow of life should result in increased self-confidence which leads to and supports others increasing their confidence in you as well.

 Now it is time to review your Action Audit 360 surveys, specifically looking with an eye for 2 things. The first thing is see what each person listed as the most relevant for them and their experience of you. Working with this item as relates to that individual person will be a big part of your 60-day challenge, so it is important to have a clear understanding of how they see you coming up short in their experience of you.

 The second thing to look for in those surveys is to see if there is a theme or themes present underneath and/or across the specifics of all the individual responses. Examples of common themes in play include timeliness, overcommitting or last minute cancellations, and lack of follow through on often stated life goals like fitness, diet, or even travel aspirations.

 From here you should be able to make some connections between your Self Audit findings and those coming from your Action Audit 360’s, and the more, the better! In a perfect world, your Action Audit 360’s revealed no surprises and all mentioned the same 1 or 2 things that you have already been working on in your Self Audit CAR process efforts. However, it’s more likely that while there is some overlap, your Action Audit 360 surveys also revealed some bigger issues in play whose existence might have come as a bit of a shock or surprise.

 Armed with your Self-Audit results and both the individual and thematic items from your Action Audit 360 surveys, you now have the basic information in front of you to officially begin your 60-Day Challenge of closing some more Action Gaps.

 Step 1: Get more clarity on exactly what Action Gaps you want to close when it comes to your social circles. As mentioned above, I’d recommend focusing on items that were highlighted by relevant individuals as well as any larger thematic ones.

 Step 2: Write out the specifics of these Action Gaps, and then also write out how you might apply the CAR process to closing them and potential opportunities to do so. The more specific and detailed you are here, the better for your future chances of success!

 Step 3: Here’s another scary part. Have a short conversation with each of the relevant Action Audit 360 survey respondent where you briefly recap what came up in the survey and then tell them about your 60-Day Challenge of trying to close those Action Gaps. Finally, I recommend actually inviting them into the challenge as a way to further build that relationship and get real time feedback on your efforts. Here’s an example of what that might look like:

 “Hey Mike, thanks for making time for this chat, I appreciate it. I wanted to share the results of my Action Audit 360 survey that you helped me with a few weeks back. It turns out that you and several other people all pointed to my lack of timeliness as a place where I had an Action Gap. So, first of all, thank you again for being honest with me there. But secondly, and more importantly, I’m undertaking a 60-Day Challenge where I am going to put more effort and attention into watching myself when it comes to my timeliness. This may look like me being clearer about when I can be somewhere, including if I don’t think I can make it at the preferred time. And on my end, I will be much more intentional about honoring the time commitments I do make. My goal is to be where I said I would be at the time I agreed to be there. That would be refreshing, right?

 This being said, I’d like to invite you into my 60-Day Challenge by simply asking you to pay a little more attention to my timeliness for the next 2 months to see if how I do. I’d like to receive a little push if I’m not doing well, and perhaps hear a little acknowledgement if I am doing well. Building up my own integrity is important to me, and I’m grateful for your continued support in those efforts.”

 Of course, that’s just a hypothetical example, but it covers the basics of appreciation for honesty, communication of results, aspiration for improvement, and request for open-mindedness on their part to go along with the attention and effort on yours. These ingredients should come together to create stronger relationships in the end, especially to the degree that you can show up with more integrity and fewer Action Gaps going forwards.

 Finally, the key moving forward is to intentionally apply your CAR process each and every time anything remotely near the area of your identified Action Gaps comes up. Sticking with the above “Mike” example, say Mike and few others mention a post-work Happy Hour meet up at the pub down the street, starting at 5:30. Upon hearing this, pause first and simply check in with yourself to see if you want to Commit to going instead of just expressing vague commitment. Assuming you want to go, now ask yourself if 5:30 is workable. If so, say “Yeah man, I’ll see you at 5:30.” If not, say something like, “Yeah man, but I’ll be closer to 6. I need to button up this report before I leave today.

 Next, follow up with appropriate Actions that get you there at the time you agreed upon. Again, as a reminder, this is much more about your integrity, and much less about their opinion of you. Take the necessary actions that strengthen your integrity and their observations of such will automatically increase your standing with them.

 When you get there at 5:30, or 6, or whenever, make a brief point to touch base with Mike and say something short and sweet, like, “Alright, I made it!” with a smile to let him know that meeting your expressed commitment connects to your previous conversation around your 60-Day Challenge. The subtler here, the better. But the point here is to not only have your own Recognition of making this improvement, but to have it be a shared Recognition as well.

 Over the course of your 60-Day Challenge you should have plenty of opportunities to engage or even create chances to give your friends and family members new experiences of you showing up better and in more alignment with your spoken commitments. Making a point to connect with them before and during the 60-Day Challenge can be a helpful catalyst for creating a new shared reality between you that is an upgrade and overwrite of the previous one.

 This new shared reality now features you as more reliable, more dependable, and in fact, more admirable for having taken on your Action Gap challenges in a direct and focused manner. While these results speak for themselves, you might be surprised to see how much they inspire others to speak positively to and about you as a result as well.

Action Audit 360, pt. 2

In this 4th installment of our Action Audit series we’ll tackle perhaps the trickiest part of the process – asking other people for their honest feedback on how we may be coming up short in relationships with them. For many of my clients these requests for feedback are difficult to send out, and even more difficult to read through with an open mind and positive attitude. And rightly so, as these reports peel back a layer on one the most important parts of our innate drive for status, perhaps one of the central components of our social lives as humans.

 While status itself is huge and hugely interesting topic, suffice it say here that the temporary challenge to our self-perception of our social status is very necessary first step in elevating it, especially if our self-perception is significantly out of alignment with what actually exists in our social networks. This mismatch never works out in our favor, and almost always is an impediment to any and all personal growth and achievement goals. Therefore, it is imperative to first identify where we have opportunities to increase our actual social status by seeing where we have Action Gaps in our social sphere so that we can begin to close them

 Again, this actual practice is much trickier than it may sound at first read. Part of the issue is that these Action Audit 360’s can range from extremely thorough and complex, such as those Leadership 360’s used by many large corporations when choosing new C-Suite Executives, to the very short and simple, like what I’ll suggest here for my casual readers further on.

 Another dimension of difficulty that is largely invisible but massively impactful is the fact that most people have strong aversions to honest critical feedback – both giving it and receiving it! Human relationships have a lot of flexibility and resiliency to them, and a big part of this fact is our willingness to overlook or otherwise accommodate various degrees of our inherent flaws, foibles, and other shortcomings as humans.

 Therefore, part of our challenge here is to invite feedback from our various social connections in a way that feels doable for them and doesn’t cross over into relationship-risking territory. In fact, for this exercise here I would strongly suggest ending all your feedback requests with a clear opportunity for your recipient to opt out of it entirely.

 The final area of challenge here is internal to us as recipients of the critical feedback. As I mentioned last week, all journeys of self-improvement begin with the bad news of seeing ourselves in light that’s a lot less favorable than we are used to doing. It is very natural to react to critical feedback with a wide variety of defense mechanisms, excuses, and rebuttals.

 And while these reactions are normal and expected when we feel attacked, it is important to remember that our goal here is greater awareness of our Action Gaps as experienced by other people. Therefore, the best responses to hearing them are a sincere and appreciative “thank you,” or perhaps even a “Can you please provide me an example or instance where you saw this to help me ground it better in my experience?”

 All of this being said, here is my simple template for beginning a short and simple Action Audit 360 assessment on any Action Gaps you may have as experienced by your community. Feel free to copy it for your own use, and to also make any changes to it as you see fit.

“Dear _________,

I am in the process of doing some internal housekeeping as part of new 60-Day Challenge I’m undertaking. Part of this Challenge is to identify what are called “Action Gaps” in my behavior where my actions don’t quite line up with my stated plans, promises, or commitments. I’m already running the Self-Audit part of this Challenge on my own, but I need help from a few trusted members of my social circle to get more perspective on my opportunities for positive growth and change. I would be honored if you could help me in the process. Is this something you’d be willing to help me with?

 If you are willing to assist me here, please share where you see me having an Action Gap where my behavior doesn’t line up 100% with my stated intentions. It could be something small, like I tend to show up later to events than I said I would, or have mentioned joining a gym for a while now but still haven’t done so. It may be a bit larger, like you’ve overheard me saying things you know not to be true or doing things that otherwise damage my integrity from your perspective.

 I know this may feel risky, or you might think that being honest here might damage our relationship. And I understand that because it certainly felt that way for me when I first looked into this Challenge. However, I truly believe that you sharing your perspective through some constructive feedback here will actually strengthen our relationship by giving me more awareness of where you already see it to be a bit weak and allowing me the opportunity to begin to close those Action Gaps that are hurting me.

 If you are willing to lean here and participate, then please complete the below questionnaire in whatever way feels most constructively honest for you.

 And again, if you don’t feel comfortable with this exercise at this time, then that is great too! I trust your judgement and concerns here 100% and appreciate you taking the time to consider it.

 Best wishes,

_________________”

 Again, the above component of your Action Audit 360 request is just the introduction to the actual 360 questionnaire that you will provide.

 The questionnaire that follows can just be a single, open response question, like “Where and/or how has my behavior given you reason to feel uncertain about my ability to follow through on something?” Or, perhaps something like “Where have you seen a disconnect between what I say and what I do? No answer or example is too big or too small to include here.” Or even, “What have I done that gives you reason to view my integrity as anything less than 100%?”

 Alternatively, you could create a simple list of questions like “Between 0 and 100%, generally speaking, how reliable would you say that I am?” and “What is one thing I could change that you think would help me be seen as more reliable by other people?” You can ask pretty much anything you want here, my only recommendation on specific content would be to consider tailoring your questions to fit your audience. For example, you might have one set of questions for your colleagues and another for you partner and yet another for your boss.

 And yes, I know, ALL of those questions may seem very risky to ask of your friends and family! But what’s the bigger risk? Having them answered in a way that gives you opportunities to address them, or having them remain unanswered and holding you back with them in any number of ways that are invisible to you?

Action Audit 360, pt. 1

A few weeks back I introduced the concept of Action Gaps – those places where we aren’t following through on expressed interests or commitments with actual actions when the time comes. As I discussed in that post, these Action Gaps can be very costly to our social status and professional reputations, and can cause greater damage in our close personal relationships. Yet, even more profound is the negative impact these Action Gaps can have on our self-confidence and trust in ourselves. In short, they weaken our integrity and compromise our ability to fully show up all throughout our lives.

 I followed up that initial post with another piece on running an Action Audit as the process of seeking to find where those Action Gaps might be lurking in our own planning and promises. The first place to start with this Action Audit is with ourselves via the process of a Self-Audit where we turn our focus onto our behavior to see where we make plans and promises to ourselves but then don’t follow through with action. Examples mentioned include telling ourselves we’ll go to the gym or skip dessert, but then, when the time comes, we simply don’t go to the gym and do end up eating that dessert. So that is step 1 of the Self Audit – to bring more awareness into our own behavior to identify where we have Action Gaps.

 Whether these gaps are large or small, or simple or complex, they all ultimately result in lower self-confidence and lower trust in ourselves. These lower self-appraisals in turn impact our ability to garner trust and confidence from the people around us. Any goals we have for developing our leadership skill and ability are thereby made more difficult to accomplish. Therefore, it becomes imperative to identify these Action Gaps with the intention of working towards closing them.

 Once these Action Gaps begin to come to greater awareness, we can then start to be more mindful on closing them by either being more realistic on the planning side or more diligent on the action side, or ideally both. The goal here is greater integrity between our words and deeds, and making necessary adjustments on both ends to close those gaps. And while this seems simple in theory, there are plenty of obstacles in the way that make it difficult to make immediate changes. The main challenge we covered in that follow up post was to make a hard and clear distinction between the process of integrity enhancement vs goal accomplishment. As a reminder, Action Gap closing is much easier when approached with the former objective in mind.

 Part 2 of the Action Audit is the much more difficult and scarier proposition of directly seeking information from your friends, family, and colleagues on where they’ve seen you creating Action Gaps. We call these assessments an Action Audit 360 in that they are designed to provide a full 360 degree view on how you show up (or don’t) across multiple domains of your life and the relationships therein.

 Potential recipients of an Action Audit 360 request can include personal friends, partners, and relatives, but usually focus on professional connections such as colleagues, supervisors, and direct reports. We often “code-switch” in how we relate to different people in our lives and across different contexts, and part of the idea of the 360 degree view is to identify patterns within each of these contexts as well as the larger ones that span across them.

 For example, we may come across as warm and caring towards our employees and/or direct reports, but that same concern and care may manifest as softness and indecisiveness in how our Boss or other, more senior Leadership might view us. Or perhaps we are particularly respectful and patient with our spouse, but come across as a bit rude and contemptuous with a long-time friend.

 The point to be made here is that all our relationships are unique collaborations between us, the other person, our shared history, current context, and future expectations. Therefore it is reasonable that how we show up in each of these relationships may differ - sometimes widely, sometimes quite narrowly. However, we still have a core personality, adhere to certain principles, and have other less malleable traits and characteristics. These should be observable across multiple relationships to some degree as well.

 Through running an Action Audit 360 assessment of your Action Gaps and how they manifest in and across a wide range of your relationships you should be given some unique insight into opportunities to improve all of them. Obviously, you’ll want to make note of what specific things pop up that might be unique to a particular relationship with an eye on addressing that item within that relationship. But the bigger thing to look for is what patterns might emerge when comparing the feedback you receive from all the recipients together as a whole.

 We’ll return next week with a more detailed breakdown of how this part of the process usually unfolds, what dynamics make it a bit tricky, and provide a simple template you can use to get things started.