Show Notes

“The outer game boots up on a more mature inner game.”

Bob Anderson

Founder + Chairman; The Leadership Circle

The Times Call for Exemplary Leadership

Bob and I spoke on February 21, 2020.  The date is significant because the first case of community-spread novel coronavirus had not yet been detected in the U.S.  Today the U.S., as well as much of the globe, is in some sort of lockdown to prevent its spread.  Thousands of lives have been lost to the pandemic. The lack of mention of Covid-19 seems tone-deaf today, as managing the spread and responding to the health and economic crises are all-consuming for many.

Bob has spent the past few decades understanding what characteristics indicate a leaders’ ability to deal effectively with the increasingly complex situations they’re presented with.  Our current, unfortunate predicament illustrates, even more, the need for agile, innovative and visionary leadership.

Highlights about Creative Leadership from the Interview

These excerpts have been edited for context.

[09:51]  … The Creative half is run out of passion and purpose and a vision, and are about bringing into being what I care about and becoming who I most desire to be as a leader. The Creative half is about bringing into being. The Reactive half is about responding to problems, fears and threats. There will always be problems, fears and threats, but when we make up that it’s too dangerous to speak up in the room or if I always have to prove how smart I am or if I always have to be in control, that has liabilities.

[11:30] … there are three basic Reactive strategies:

• One, we play too small. We play careful and cautious. We seek harmony over the kind of conflict that often ensues when we really put forth what we’re after as a leader; we that call Complying.
• The other is Controlling,  where we’re overly driven to get results usually over the top of people. Results over people.
• Then there’s Protecting, …which includes Arrogance. With arrogance, we’re highly rational and we have a vested interest in proving to people how brilliant we are.

Underlying any one of those strategies goes right to the core of how we form our identity and the core operating beliefs and assumptions that define us. The basic equation under any Reactive strategy is, my worth is in your hands. Somehow you define me. How you see me is vitally important to how I see me. And I maintain that in certain ways: I’m the one who always gets results, or I’m the one who is nice and agreeable, or I’m the one who’s super-rational and brilliant. This defines me.

Well, any situation which threatens, that puts us under pressure and we tend to react.

[17:26]: The highly effective, and Creative leaders had a very different set of strengths. They had all the other strengths in equal measure: technical strengths, domain knowledge, etc., but they excelled at people, people, people and people. People, teams, developing people, listening, approachable. Six out of the top 10 most commented-on strengths for the highly effective Creative leader group had to do with people and teams and their ability to develop people and lead them well.

The next set of strengths was purpose, vision and authenticity, and that rounded out the top 10 list of the most effective leaders. Yes, they have their technical skills and their intellect and brilliance. You have to have that to play. That’s table stakes. It doesn’t define leadership, and it doesn’t scale if you’re trying to run your leadership through your own creative brilliance. It scales when you can develop that in others.

The top 10 Creative competencies, according to write-in comments on the Leadership Circle Profile 360:

[20:48]: Number one: Strong People Skills. 79% of leaders had three or more comments from their raters on good with people – 79%. Reactive leaders rated only 28% good with people. That just sums it up. If you look at the list, Strong People Skills, Visionary, Team Builder, Personable/Approachable, Leads by Example. That’s authenticity and integrity, right? Passion & Drive, that’s purpose. Good Listener, Develops People, Empowers People, Positive Attitude. That’s the top 10 list.

[22:51] You’ve got to work the inner game and the outer game. The outer-game boots up on a more mature inner game. As you start to  take in feedback and work it,  see how you’re showing up and the impact you’re having, you can get underneath the feedback and say, “Well, what’s the story I’m making up or the set of assumptions that running that pattern?” That frees up a lot of space for the stuff that you’re trying to create. That’s one half the inner game. The other half of the inner game is getting really clear about what you’re trying to create, why it matters, what kind of behaviors you need to get better at in order to really have the impact you want to have as a leader.

As you focus on what you want, you move toward it. As you unhook from old patterns, you move towards even more, in an accelerated rate, what you want.  You work both ends of that spectrum. That is what the Leadership Circle Profile was designed to facilitate because you’re going to have feedback on both ends of that spectrum.

[27:16]  We think that the complexity of today’s business environment, VUCA: volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, all of those things – the turbulence and perturbation and disruption that we’re always in now, require a Creative mindset or higher. You can’t create the kind of agile, adaptive, innovative, engaged workplaces that we are trying to construct in order to thrive in a VUCA world. You literally can’t create those cultures and systems and structures from a Reactive leadership mindset. They won’t boot up.

More Links from this Episode

Download Practices to Boot Up Your Inner Game

Download the Transcript

VUCA

Bob Kegan

Socialized and Self-Authoring mindsets

Covey

After listening to the interview and reading the notes, I wonder what your takeaway is?

Thanks for tuning in!

LeeAnn

Show Notes

“By delivering a genuine, no-baloney product for our guests and environment for our employees to work in, we then could deliver for our shareholders…  Starting from that place of authenticity and caring profoundly about the lives of other people leads to better financial results because of the way the economy and capitalism works.”

Ron Shaich

CEO and Founder, Panera Bread

Can We Make Conscious Capitalism Redundant?

That’s the long term goal.

The general opinion of capitalism and of the for-profit business world is one of greed and scarcity, a winner-take-all mindset,  and overpaid executives at the expense of underpaid and under-insured employees (just listen to the 2020 election rhetoric!).  While that opinion has been earned, there is a movement underway that is gaining support from capitalist business leaders across the globe to change that.

Alexander McCobin is CEO of Conscious Capitalism, Inc., an organization founded by successful corporate CEOs and founders who are committed to shepherding in a new way of running businesses.  As Alexander says in the interview, it’s a Copernican Revolution, putting humans at the center of business rather than profits.  And the good news is that it’s not an either-or choice.  As Ron Shaich said in the quote, above, caring profoundly about employees and customers leads to better (and long-term) results!

Stand-out Quotes from My Interview With Alexander

[10:29]“It’s about creating a foundation for people to build the movement the way they want to…We need to let a thousand flowers bloom if we’re going to achieve our long term goal, which is for Conscious Capitalism to become redundant.” 

[00:11:17] “The times are changing. This is an idea whose time has come, finally. A decade ago, when this idea was being kicked around and introduced to conferences and boardrooms, it was being laughed out of those spaces. It wasn’t taken seriously. The initial job of Conscious Capitalism Inc. and even the reason for writing the book was to make the case for this, to change people’s minds, because everyone thought business is just about maximizing profit, serving the shareholders, and everyone and everything else is serving that end.”

[00:12:35] “The Business Roundtable is a group of 190, 200 or so CEOs of the largest companies in the United States. We’re talking everyone from J.P. Morgan, to Amazon, and if you know the name of the company and it’s a Fortune 100, it’s probably in there. In 1997, they adopted a statement on the purpose of the corporation being to serve shareholder interests. That this is the reason they exist.

Last year they changed that. They said that the purpose of the corporation is to serve a higher purpose and to take care of all their stakeholders. They basically took the conscious capitalist’s credo, reworded and adopted themselves, and that is tremendously exciting because it shows these principles and ideas are becoming well-accepted and these are CEOs making a commitment that this is how they’re going to run their businesses going forward that they can now be held accountable to. If they’re not living up to it, we are able to say, “You made this pledge. We’re going to hold you to it and we’re ready to help you accomplish it too.”

[00:16:23] “…Very explicitly, when we look at the businesses that we think we can have the greatest impact with who are most likely to adopt conscious capitalism not just in their rhetoric, but in their actions as well, it’s mid-market businesses. In particular, private and family-owned businesses, either because they’re still founder-driven who has the moral authority to implement changes like this, or they still remember the values they were rooted in from the very beginning and they want to maintain them as they grow. We not only see these private and family midmarket businesses getting involved with this already, but we are very proactively trying to work with more of them because they want to grow.”

[00:22:29]: “That is part of the stakeholder model. We need businesses to be at the forefront of addressing the challenges of climate change and environmental degradation conservation. Business has the greatest impact in these areas and it has the greatest opportunity to innovate and figure out what the solution is, because we’re not there yet and it’s not going to come from committee. It’s not going to come from bureaucracy. It’s going to come from businesses solving those problems themselves and they need to take that on.”

A Stakeholder Economy is Central to Conscious Capitalism

Outside of my conversation with Alexander, I’m collecting stories and artifacts about this shift to a long-term focus and the complexities associated with it.  We’ve built financial, accountability and status systems based on the Miltonian idea that profit is king.  This philosophy is not going to be easy to undo.  And it shouldn’t be completely undone!

Larry Fink, Chairman and CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest money management firm, publishes an Annual Letter to CEOs.  His urgency regarding climate change is increasing.  His letter this year essentially states that BlackRock will be allocating more capital that mitigates climate risk and voting against corporate managers who aren’t making progress on fighting the climate crisis.

Larry Fink’s 2020 Letter

The New York Times’ podcast The Daily, published these episodes about the Business Roundtable’s Commitment and Larry Fink’s 2020 Letter:

The Daily:  Can Corporations Stop Climate Change? (January 2020)

What American CEOs are Worried About (August 2019)

More Links from this Episode

Download the full transcript (full of valuable links!)

Conscious Capitalism Philosophy

Find Your Local Chapter

Annual Conference (April each year)

CEO Summit (October each year)

Conscious Capitalism Blog

After listening to the interview and reading the notes, I wonder what your takeaway is?

Thanks for tuning in!

LeeAnn

Show Notes

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.

Albert Szen-Gyorgi

1937 Nobel Laureate

Make Everyday Extraordinary

Awe and wonder are getting a lot of attention these days because of what happens in our brain when we’re in these states of mind. Inspiration and generosity spike and we feel more connected to the world around us.  And as a result, stress and rumination decrease*.  Overall wellbeing is amplified.  The great news is that we can experience awe and wonder as part of our daily life – we just have to become more aware of what is already in our midst.

Bonnie Pitman, with her long and distinguished history in the world of art, developed two foundational practices that support the onboarding of these states in response to a life-changing illness that she continues to navigate.  She shares how Doing Something New inspires us to make each day extraordinary.  Her Power of Observation Framework instructs us on the critical steps for moving from the first glance to making new meaning of our observations. She is both delightful and incredibly grounded in her approach to appreciating the banal and sublime.

*Source:  What Awe Looks Like in Your Brain

Stand-out Quotes from My Interview With Bonnie

[14:04]“Do Something New is about having the courage to take a moment and really celebrate it. And finding a way … to move beyond simply seeing and looking to really deep observation, or deep listening. It’s about going further than I normally would.” 

[16:06] “I’ve discovered that one of the really important things, which we’ve been talking about, comes from my meditation practice:  the power of staying in the moment and just seeing things in new ways, or seeing the world in new ways.  To slow down and really invest in those moments and to – just like when you’re meditating – focus on your breathing, focus on the people or the place”

[22:33] “…80% of the way you acquire information is through visual images. Particularly important for physicians is that ability to see if a patient over the days that they are seeing them in the hospital, or in their clinics is evolving in a positive way, or a negative way. That need to be able to look quickly and observe quickly and get solid information, to be able to remember it is something that’s very important for them.”

[ 25:56 ] “Those tangible, experiential moments transform a two-dimensional experience into memory in your brain.  Now your hippocampus – your whole limbic system – is working in a different way and at a higher level to codify this memory as one you’re going to hold on to.”

the Do Something New™ practice

Take a few minutes of an ordinary day and make it extraordinary through:

1. New places
2. New people
3. New experiences
4. New experiences with old friends in new ways
5. New big things & new little things
6. New flavors of ice cream are ok!
7. Cannot be work or medical
8. Cannot carry forward to the next day

Follow Bonnie Doing Something New on Instagram!

The Power of Observation Framework™

Scanning – Taking a first look

Attending – Focusing intentionally over time

Connecting – Seeking and processing information to make new connections

Transforming – Engaging deeply and creating a personal response

Note:  Download the full Power of Observation Framework here

More Links

Download the full transcript

Bonnie Pitman Instagram

DMA – Speechless:  Different by Design

What Awe Looks Like in Your Brain – Greater Good Magazine

Videos: Art and Medicine

Nasher Sculpture Center talks on Art and Health:

Can You Train Your Brain to Work Better? Verify – WFAA

Be Well Lead Well® Pulse Assessment

After listening to the interview and reading the notes, I wonder what your takeaway is?

Thanks for tuning in!

LeeAnn