Lead with Emotions in Mind

As a leader, do you consider the emotional impact of your words and actions?

People resist direction or change that they don't understand, don't value, or whose demands they don't feel they can measure up to.  The impact on individuals can be significant....and not necessarily in a good way.  Positive emotional impact - recognition of a person's work or their personal life - can be inspiring.  On the other hand, negative emotional impact - not noticing work well done, negative comments, neglecting the personal lives of staff members - can cause people to resist, shut down, or, at worst, sabotage organizational efforts. 

Staff members feel more confident about taking direction and tackling new ideas when leaders set a positive tone by recognizing work that is well done, thanking people for their work, and by exuding awareness and appreciation of the complexities of the work they are being asked to do. 

Remember the great quotation:

In the end, people will forget what you said, forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Maya Angelou

Don't miss a chance to recognize a staff member for work well done or to thank someone for their efforts.  They'll remember how you made them feel!

Technical or Adaptive?

As a leader, are you engaged in technical or adaptive work?

...it was Ron Heifetz (1994) who focused attention on the concept of an adaptive challenge.  An adaptive challenge is a problem situation for which solutions lie outside current ways of operating.  This is in stark contrast to a technical problem for which the know-how already exists.  This distinction has resonance for educational reform.  Put simply, resolving a technical problem is a management issue; tackling adaptive challenges, however, requires leadership.  Often, we try to solve technical problems with adaptive processes or more commonly force technical solutions onto adaptive problems.  ...

Almost by definition, adaptive challenges demand learning, as progress here requires new ways of thinking and operating.  In these instances, it is 'people who are the problem', because an effective response to an adaptive challenge is almost always beyond the current competence of those involved.  Inevitably, this is threatening and often the prospect of adaptive work generates heat and resistance. 

Mobilizing people to meet adaptive challenges is at the heart of leadership practice.  In the short term, leadership helps people meet an immediate challenge.  In the medium to long term, leadership generates capacity to enable people to meet an ongoing stream of adaptive challenges.  Ultimately, adaptive work requires us to reflect on the moral purpose by which we seek to thrive and demands diagnostic enquiry into the realities we face that threaten the realization of those purposes. 

From: Every School a Great School by David Hopkins
Published by: McGraw Hill

Understanding the Change Process

As a leader, do you need to manage change?  If so, how do you approach it?

Understanding the change process is less about innovation and more about innovativeness.  It is less about strategy and more about strategizing.  And it is rocket science, not least because we are inundated with complex, unclear, and often contradictory advice. ... The goal is to develop a greater feel for leading complex change, to develop a mind-set and action that are constantly cultivated and refined.  There are no shortcuts.

Understanding the Change Process

• The goal is not to innovate the most.
• It is not enough to have the best ideas.
• Appreciate the implementation dip.
• Redefine resistance.
• Reculturing is the name of the game.
• Never a checklist, always complexity.

To find out more.........

From: Leading in a Culture of Change by Michael Fullan
Published by: Jossey-Bass