Dissatisfied of (insert organisation)

Work in supported housing in the not for profit sector brings me in contact with a lot of dissatisfied people.  Mostly they don’t know why, and think things should be other than they are.  There’s a lot of emotion and stress involved.

While this might often be projection (projecting dissatisfaction with self/lifestyle/partner/income/whatever onto an organisation), there can be a more positive reason.

Discussing this with my critical friend by the banks of the Thames, we came onto the subjects of self development, creativity, learning and change.  Government regulation may lead to a culture in supported housing organisations that is, if I can use a technical term, “stodgy”.  Management becomes hierarchy, empowerment becomes targets and statistics.  Playing this game well leads to advancement, a self reinforcing situation.

Self development can upset this situation, especially if it stimulates creativity.

Creativity, often released by being inappropriate, striving to be different or just a little crazy, does not sit well with such a culture.  Perhaps this is a reason the sector uses external consultants to import new ideas.

Self development stimulates asking questions and the realisation that actually, the person in charge may not know what they are talking about.  Suddenly you notice that the emotions and bias that drive you, drive them too.  No longer can you be satisfied with this, you ask questions, you become the one who always comments on ideas (often adversely).  You have changed and you no longer fit.

I framed this as a positive thing.  If you are dissatisfied with your organisation, and the reason is that you have changed, its time to go and find something that will help you keep growing.

Transformational Leadership 2

I previously wrote about transformational leadership on 6th February this year.  However, two things I read recently made me reflect again on leadership style.

One was an article, “Transactional to Transformational Leadership” by Bernard M. Bass.  Bass contrasted “transactional”  leaders, who relied on contingent reward (do the job or don’t get paid at its most crude) and management by exception, with “transformational” leaders.  Bass believed that transformational leaders achieved great results through charisma, showing individualised consideration to staff, and stimulating those staff intellectually.  I have no beef with the latter two as good things for a leader to do, but I do mistrust charisma (which Bass believed could be learnt).

The second thing I read was an article about Mike Wake wasting millions and his dubious involvement with and promotion of women employees in his organisation Novas.  I has the pleasure of working for Novas many years ago, and for myself and others who knew the organisation, the main surprise is that the allegations mentioned in the article took so long to come out.   Mike was not a charismatic leader in the conventional understanding of this, and Bass recognises that quiet but visionary people with a lot of determination are charismatic.  He did intellectually stimulate and show individual consideration to employees, but as this included promoting women he had relationships with, it was a parody of the ethical transformational leader.  Over a period of less than twenty years Mike Wake led his organisation from nothing to a large organisation and now, possibly, back to nothing again.

The picture at the head of this article displays the very picture of the leader that worries me.  The leader is at the centre, communication is to spokes of the wheel, and the followers are not connected.  Maybe this works well if the leader is a great and selfless one (met lots of those) but even then it neglects emergent potential from employees.

Bass himself recognised the potential problems of transformational leadership that is selfish or antisocial (“The Two Faces of Charismatic Leadership”, Leaders Magazine).

If there is a remedy to this, it lies in more distributed leadership.  The UK government has invested much money in leadership training and development, and its big money for consultancy firms.  The case of Mike Wake suggests that unless this concentrates on leaders giving away power and pushing responsibility downwards, then the Novas scenario is all too likely.  My own view is that if we replace “charisma” with the redistribution of leadership throughout an organisation, then we may get better ethics and longer term success.

Why we have trouble with TUPE

I have been reading “The Structure and Dynamics of Organisations and Groups”, written by Eric Berne back in 1961.

Old as this is, it still contains some interesting ideas.  One of these is that groups come together for specific work or activities, which is carried out most efficiently during stable periods.  However, a group reacts first to any internal or external disruption to its structure in order to preserve itself.  This means that in times of threat much of the work that a group might undertake is displaced by activity centred around self preservation.

This reminds me of “forming, storming, norming, performing“, noting that performing comes last for a group.  It also fits with Heron’s model of change:

In Heron’s model, as things change they only get back to productivity after a period of emotion followed by experimentation, that requires the right type of interventions to handle well.

Observing TUPE transfers within supported housing, normally caused by changes in Supporting People contracts, has illustrated this in action for me.  The amount of effort spent on change management, or on groups resisting change, is extraordinary in some ways.  In other ways it is very normal, as changes in a group lead all members to lose much of the social capital that they have developed in that group.

However, if we also take the view that in a constantly changing world a useful metaphor for organisations is that of an organism, then we may think all that effort and lost work is worth it.  In this metaphor, the definition of death is something that is no longer changing.

Keeping busy and the Drama Triangle

You may recognise the problem:  too much work, leading to tiredness, stress mistakes and demotivation.  Then your manager offers you help.  What do you do?

A – accept gratefully, hand some of your tasks to someone else, and concentrate on other work

B – accept but try to stay in control, either monitor or check their work, or perhaps get upset when they do it differently or take a decision without asking you first

I have seen both reactions from colleagues and as the sample grows I begin to think that which reaction occurs may be partly explicable by the extent to which they are participating in Karpman’s Drama Triangle.

The drama triangle is an unhelpful situation where we act as either a victim, a persecuter or a rescuer.  Each dramatic role influences others to assume the other roles – so if you act like a victim it creates a persecuter, and probably a rescuer.  Combine this with a Transactional Analysis game: the payoff in this drama triangle role for the overworked person is that they feel like a victim, are acting heroically in a situation where nobody could possible help them successfully, and so their stress or lack of success are justified. We then have a situation where the help is actually a threat to the status quo, which if successful may break the comfortable patterns of behaviour of the overworked person.  Change is often challenging or painful, so they may resist.  Certainly something I have been guilty of in the past.

Back to my sample.  Those most resistant to receiving help appear to be those who already cope worst with stress, display more negative emotion than is normal, and want to stay in control the most.  Those whom it is easier to help (and to work with) tend to be more relaxed and apparently secure in themselves.

This is not to suggest that the person who sees themselves in a dramatic or heroic role is not a high performer – just that they are harder to help if they are overwhelmed with work.

A lot of management literature suggests that everyone needs to feel heroic in their work.  Based on the above thoughts, I would question that.  We need to feel what we do is worthwhile and appreciated, but do we need to get dragged into a potential drama to overcome impossible odds?

My prescription in this situation would be reflective practice.  Stop and think.  Do you stop people from helping you when you have too much to do?

Giving compliments to manage behaviour

One way of giving positive reinforcement in behaviour modification is in providing compliments, approval, encouragement, and affirmation; a ratio of five compliments for every one complaint is generally seen as being effective in altering behavior in a desired manner^[18]

Behaviour modification is concerned with changing how people react and behave using positive and negative reinforcement.  It has its supporters and critics.

I’ve highlighted the quote above (from Wikipedia) as its something I’ve discussed with participants in training.  It fits with the idea of unconditional positive regard for a person you are supporting (although you might take exception to their behaviour).  The 5:1 principle is something that many of us find very difficult to achieve in practice.

If we apply this to leadership and management, we would get a very different environment to that which is found in many organisations.   My personal experience has been that belief in people, positive feedback and trust get people to give their best.  Mistrust, blame and negativity generally don’t.

Why is it so easy to be critical rather than positive?  Part of it is practice, but a big part is about how we feel about ourselves.  This morning I was not feeling great, and on the way to work caught myself having a jealous moment or two, thinking negatively about some of my colleagues.  A “not OK” moment as transactional analysis might term it.  As soon as my mood picked up that vanished.

Staying with transactional analysis, being in an “I’m OK, you’re OK” position would enable the positive compliment giving type of leadership that effective behaviour modification would require.  We come back to ourselves, and changing ourselves so that we might more positively manage others.

So tonight I’m going to bed, thinking, “I’m OK”….

Leadership and action logic

David Rooke and William Torbert wrote an article about the “Seven Transformations” of leadership.  Lots of people seem to like their ideas (e.g. another blog I read on this). It was originally published in the Harvard Business Review back in 2005.

Their basic premise was that the effectiveness of a leader depends on their “action logic” – how they interpret their surroundings and react when their power or safety is challenged.  They identified 7 stages in leadership development, each more effective than the next.

Their research and model is impressive.  However, I am always suspicious of models that show any sort of linear progression, and neatly divide things into stages.  I’m also suspicious of something based on top executives at big international Western businesses.  For someone like me working in the not for profit sector, it has to really ring true for me to feel it is relevant.

In the article the three middle categories, to which the majority of managers belong, were the most recognisable for me.  I could see how I went through the transformations myself.  I’ve given them below:

Expert	Rules by logic and expertise. Seeks rational efficiency.	Good as an individual contributor.
Achiever	Meets strategic goals. Effectively achieves   goals through teams; juggles managerial duties and   market demands.	Well suited to managerial roles; action and goal oriented.
Individualist	Interweaves competing personal and company action logics. Creates unique structures to resolve gaps   between strategy and performance.	Effective in venture and consulting roles.

I remember when I started to study an MBA that my learning was characterised by the idea that there was a right way to do things, the “expert” action logic. Its something I see often in organisations, who want solutions to problems, and want them fast.

The “achiever” makes me think of an organisation I worked for (and many I know) where the focus was on multiple targets, achieving goals, taking lots of action – and seldom ever reflecting.

As for being an individualist – I remember the step a couple of years back to asking the question, “why these targets?”.  “What is the assumption behind this?”  “Can we think differently?”.

The reason for my suspicion of the model is that, like most  linear models, a lot of it actually happens all at once and not in stages.  The action we take depends on how we are thinking at a particular moment.  One day I might reflect, think a lot, take into account lots of factors and people’s different realities.  Another time I might look for a solution without reflecting, or be pressured enough to go for a target whether I think its worthwhile or not.

To Rooke and Torbert’s credit, they recognise this, speaking about the “dominant” action logic for a leader and do not treat it as clear cut.  I suspect the simplicity of the model will help many people make sense of leadership development, but be a trap for “experts”.

Tired mistakes

Last week I discovered a mistake I made on the last day before I went on holiday.  It was a simple one, missing someone off an email address list, but caused a lot of disruption.  At the time I was really tired and badly in need of a holiday.

Comparing notes with a friend, she suffered from exactly the same sort of error, overlooking something when tired and under pressure just before going on holiday.   Tiredness contributes to more serious errors – something like 10% of road accidents or up to 20% of motorway accidents.  Its a subject worth taking seriously at work or elsewhere.

An article I found told me what not to do to combat tiredness – don’t rely on caffeine, don’t eat to boost energy, don’t try to sleep lots and lots – and as an alternative more water, healthy lifestyle, regular sleep.  Common sense things I know but don’t put into practice.

This made me wonder to what extent we self-sabotage.  Not just myself, but the others I see about me downing coffee, relying on the mid afternoon chocolate bar, or waiting for a lie in at the weekend.  The cultures I work within vary but tend to demand high levels of activity and generate stress.  People are always complaining of too much to do.

I can only speak about my own personal battle against “working too hard”, where I have discovered my greatest foe is myself.  I’m always obeying the shadow parent hovering at my back, saying I should work hard.  Simply doing nothing and enjoying myself generates guilt.  Letting go is difficult.

One of my favourite books is “The Tao of Pooh” by Benjamin Hoff.    Modern society is characterised as the “Bisy backson” (after a sign – busy back soon – misspelled by Christopher Robin).  On the other hand, the nicest of times is when you are going nowhere and doing nothing.

what I like doing best is nothing – Christopher Robin

Now if only I could get rid of that shadow….

Leaders and followers

In previous posts about transformational leadership and Singapore, I began to wonder about the leader and the led.  In Singapore I perceived a leadership focused on the material and secular, whom people were willing to follow because it delivered success.  This appeared to produce a sameness that I found stifling.

Should leadership also be about the spiritual in government and secular organisations?  In the UK church and state have been kept largely separate, but I’d like to apply the question to leading organisations.  Singapore also kept these things separate, and a wonderful diversity of religion existed – Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Chinese.  Yet outside this strict rules and materialistic sameness were backed by a culture of conformity.

Lee Kuan Yew’s (former Prime Minister) leadership might be termed transformational – he inspired people with a vision of a materially better future and led them to it.  However, this also created conformity and sameness that carries a risk for the future, one where the reliance of the people on good leaders is a weakness.

An alternative for a leader, be they a business or political leader (and are the 2 different?) is to lead not through inspiration, but by creating the conditions for people to question.  The Internet (self organising and changing like a living entity) is an argument that you don’t even need the leader, and that leadership distributed amongst participants is equally strong in the right circumstances.

Whether you need the leader or not, I’d suggest that a leader’s job must always be spiritual as well as material.  How we think and feel is linked critically to how we act and so to the business of business.  This is normally expressed as motivation, but I believe it is more than that and that a truly transformational leader would inspire people to examine their own beliefs and ways of being.

I’d like to suggest that its important for all of us to move from followership to discovery, and that the key to this is how we go about learning.  I’ll end with a quote I find important:

Learning to become an effective self-directed learner is probably the greatest intellectual and psychological challenge that an individual can face in a lifetime……  Some people never attempt to acquire the competencies of serious learning to learn as they are addicted to the deferential prescriptive approach.

- Dealtry, R. (2004), “The savvy learner”, Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 16

Older Travellers, sterile leaders

The backpacker scene in Penang is dominated by the 40+ age group.  Not to say there are not younger back packers, but perhaps they are all on the beach in Thailand.  Wondering why this is and listening to their talk, some of it is memories, some of it is early but not well off retirement, but some of it is the search for a less hermetically sealed and more abrasive holiday.

Coming to Penang after Sinapore, especially to the budget end of the holiday market, the differences are very noticeable.  I enjoy the dirt, noise and confusion, the sense that there is something more raw and less sterile here.  Perhaps I and others sense fewer barriers between our selves and others – the difference between seeing through a window, and standing in the scene yourself.  One contrast is the malls – Penang has them (see picture of a huge one) but they are more like market stalls and small shops moved inside than swish department stores.

Perhaps the difference between Penang and Singapore is about intensity of experience. We enjoyed the street food, but also enjoyed high tea at the Eastern and Orient hotel (the Penang version of Raffles).  Both things we would not normally do.  But then my partner and I are both people who enjoy change and variation, and do not have much problem with rats and cockroaches.

The other point of view is the bland shopping mall land that Singapore has become.  I’ll give you two quotes about it:

Lee Kuan Yew (former Prime Minister): “when you are hungry, when you lack basic services, freedom, human rights and democracy do not add up to much”.

A 65 year old taxi driver we asked about how life had changed: “people were happier then….now too stressed, too materialistic”

I’m with the taxi driver, but then I have the luxury of a full belly, health-care and public services.  As to the shopping mall, as Fiona says in Shrek 2, “I really don’t need all of this…”.  Perhaps that’s why there are few backpackers, let alone older ones, in Singapore (or could it be the cost of living in Utopia?).

Oh Brave New World – Singapore?

“O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here!  How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world!  That has such people in’t!”   – Miranda, The Tempest, Shakespear 

I write this post while on holiday in Singapore, visiting friends.  In the first few days I am struck by the difference in culture, and an immedieate feeling that this is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.  It certainly has more than enough shopping malls to satisfy the most dedicated consumer.  It also has a high control/obediance culture.  This means low crime and decent homes, a good standard of living for most, and a powerful economy.

However, one friend complains of lack of creativity at work from Singaporeans.  This fits well with things I have read, that mark the local culture as good at getting things done in an organised and efficient manner, but poor at the sort of indivdualistic innovation we see more of in the West.  Another friend here said “it all looks nice, but scratch beneath the surface and there’s no history”.  Everything we see is new, as if the past has been deliberately obliterated. 

So low crime, good standard of living.  Yet this country of cleanliness and order makes me think of Australia, another good time culture, but where the vicious past and maltreatment of the Aborigines was hidden and largely ignored.  Not that I know of any darkness hidden in Singapore.  Its just that my internal bias kicks in to link the two.  If I had to pick a reason, its that I value chaos and creativity and dissent more highly than order, material satisfaction and community.  My bias probably.

Yet I am left with the question: “Is it better to be Socrates dissatisfied?” (J.S.Mill)