A high-level executive can become isolated. They surround themselves with people who won’t report negative information. They’re afraid to deliver bad news for fear of repercussions. Not knowing the reality of a situation means you can get into a distorted bubble. A lack of information can lead to poor decisions. You go down a path that’s a mistake from the get-go, but nobody tells you.
When Daniel Goleman spoke with Bill George for Leadership: A Master Class, they discussed what Bill learned from a first-hand experience with the dangers of groupthink.
“Early in my life, I worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a civilian in the year of Robert McNamara and the Vietnam War. Some of the most brilliant people I’ve met in my life were at the high levels of the Pentagon. But toward the end they were walking off the cliff together. They suffered from groupthink. McNamara was so powerful. His team simply reinforced what he was saying. They didn’t take different perspectives.
Any good leader needs to have a reliable team who will ask tough questions, or poke holes in logic.
Another time one of my co-workers asked, “Do you think everyone agreed with that decision in the meeting?” I said, “Yeah, they all said yes, and at the end. We even voted.”
His response was an eye-opener. “Well, there were three people backing their managers that were so angry, they could hardly speak to you because you blew over them, and forced them to say yes.”
After some thought I knew he was right. I had to go back, tail between my legs, and say, “I’m really sorry. I guess I didn’t hear what you were really saying.” That allowed me to be open to honest conversation.
I also learned that it’s not just looking for and appreciating feedback from that special trusted group, but bringing the attitude with you to the office. I now try to surround myself with people who have diverse viewpoints.”
Fine tune your executive management skills with Daniel Goleman’s video series, Leadership: A Master Class.
Additional resources
The Coaching Programis an online streaming learning series for executives, highlighting methods for enhancing any leader or manager’s effectiveness, creativity, and ability to connect with their teams.
The C-Suite Toolkitis designed for senior management (or those new to senior management positions) seeking a comprehensive reference library from the most respected business and leadership experts of our time.
The Competency Builder program was created to assist workers at all levels learn how to work more mindfully, improve focus, handle daily stresses better, and use these skills to increase their effectiveness. A great resource for any HR library.
The EI Overview provides easy-to-understand insights into proven-effective ways managers can best employ leadership styles, as well as develop the areas where they lack.
Mindfulness training isn’t much different than muscle training. Just like working out regularly and consistently will show a gradual growth in your biceps and quads, the more you practice mindfulness the bigger your mental muscle becomes to approach situations differently and in a more open-minded way.
Working out your mental muscle and toning your mindfulness is a door-opener to endless beneficial skills for leaders, such a resilience, open-mindedness, self-control, patience, and regulating impulses. Being patient with yourself as you develop your mindfulness will indirectly slow down your impulse to judge situations quickly.
Credit: rgh.cc
If you wake up one morning after doing nothing but sitting on the couch and eating chips for weeks and decide to run a marathon, chances are you will not succeed. Similarly, you cannot wake up in the morning and decide, “Today I’m going to be in complete control of my emotions,” or, “Today I’m going to take total charge of my impulses.” In order to become directly in charge of your emotions, you must work at it indirectly layer-by-layer through training in mindfulness practice.
Credit: entrepreneur.com
Emotions are fickle and sometimes can never be directly controlled. Because emotions are deeply functional and have been our survival method for millennia, your boss can’t simply approach you and say, “Just be happy now!” However, you can follow this “work-out program” to begin your journey to a happier, more mindful life.
Focus your attention on the here-and-now. Really emphasize the importance of the task at hand.
If you can begin to grasp those concepts, you are taking the first steps to creating a link between mindfulness and resilience, and becoming an effective decision maker in both your personal life and within your organization.
Dr. Jutta Tobias has been published in the Journal of Business Venturing for her work on entrepreneurial and social change in Rwanda, received several academic awards (including the President’s Award from her doctoral alma mater, Washington State University), worked with clients such as Goldman-Sachs and the United States Congress, co-facilitated non-violence workshops in United States/United Kingdom prisons, and holds counselling qualification from the University of Cambridge. Dr. Tobais is also a contributor to our Praxis You course, Thriving on Change: The Evolving Leader’s Toolkit.
You’re invited to preview our new online course, Thriving on Change: The Evolving Leader’s Toolkit for freehere. Module 1 is now available for purchase.
In response to your request for supplemental training materials, we created a comprehensive, customizable guide to cultivate superior management skills.
Burmese women refugees at Prosperity Candle’s studio in Easthampton, MA (credit: Prosperity Candle)
Too many of today’s news stories feature ruthless businessmen crumbling to greed and selfishness. Is there any hope out there for goodwill to survive? Luckily, there might be. A B-Corporation is a business with an explicit mission to benefit the greater good for humanity or the environment, as well as make a profit.
In Easthampton, Massachusetts, Prosperity Candle is a pristine example of a small B-Corp doing everything it can to change the world. Under the leadership of Ted Barber, Prosperity Candle trains women in candle-making and employs them at living wages after they have been relocated to the U.S. from overseas refugee camps.
Prosperity Candle has also helped train more than 100 Iraqi women – mostly war widows – in candle-making and entrepreneurship, giving them the ability to start their own thriving businesses. Their sister non-profit, Prosperity Catalyst, received funding from the U.S. State Department to expand the program to include 600 Iraqi widows. Prosperity Candle’s reach has found its way to Haiti, as well. They have given 12 women from domestic violence shelters in Northern Haiti the skills to start their own cooperative.
Sealing the Cracks
Refugee women are typically given a year of support from federal and state programs, during which time they are expected to find work and pay all of their own expenses. They often find themselves in minimum wage, temporary positions, made explicitly harder with language barriers. Facing many obstacles with a minimal a safety net, it’s very easy for these women to fall through the cracks.
Back in 2010, Prosperity Candle asked a group of refugee women what they truly need in terms of support. They were simple and clear: living wages, a steady income, opportunities to take ESL classes, flexible hours, a harassment-free workplace, and resources to understand the laws of their new home. Ted did not find these needs out of reach, and vowed to provide them double the minimum wage, transportation, and flexible schedules – among other supports. He wants his employees to be safe and treated with respect, and to help them get back on their feet not only so that they can survive, but also thrive.
“We’re very explicit,” Ted says. “We’re here to help women thrive. Minimum wage doesn’t even cover the bare necessities.”
Iraqi women learning candle-making in Baghdad (credit: Heber Vega)
B-Smart About the Bottom Line
Prosperity Candle was recently added to the top ten percent of B-Corps in the world for their size. Ted’s long-term goal is rather simple: to make a difference. He wants investors to see they are providing amazing opportunities not only to women who desperately need it, but for a healthy financial environment. He wants the organization to scale gradually and sustainably so that more lives can be impacted without growing so rapidly they fizzle out.
“I want to grow this business in a very specific way,” he says. “It’s not just employing women refugees here in the Pioneer Valley, but actually making them profit-sharing partners. I’m always exploring how Prosperity Candle can be a vehicle for greater impact.”
Personally, Ted’s goal is to merge his past experience in international trade and economic development with his present life dedicated to a creating a sustainable social enterprise that helps women and families lift themselves out of poverty.
B-Corps embody the philosophy of positive capitalism, which is when a business moves forward, but also makes it possible for others to move forward, too. The Dalai Lama says your goal should be to get on your feet, and then help others get on their feet. Like the ripples from a pebble thrown into a pond, the act of goodwill started by positive capitalism can start a chain reaction.
Ted admires any organization that has gone through the rigorous requirements to become a B-Corp, and considers it to be one of the best measures available for assessing an organization’s commitment to social and environmental sustainability. Even though there’s only about 1,500 B-Corps in the world, it’s an extremely active community.
“I support businesses that take on the challenges of doing things the right way, that care as much about the common good as their own personal success. That is what the B-Corp movement is all about,” he says.
Haitian women learning candle-making in Cap-Hatien (credit: Prosperity Candle)
“The global economy is like a roof over all of us. But it depends on individual pillars for support. First take care of yourself financially. Then, step-by-step, stand on your own feet in order to help others.”
When asked if he could give any advice to his younger self, or to an entrepreneur looking to make the same sort of lifestyle transition into B-Corps like he did, Ted laughed and said, “I feel like there’s a talk in me that wants to come out… with any start up – whether it’s nonprofit, for-profit, social enterprise or tech – you’re going to have more people tell you why it won’t work than why it can. You have to filter out an onslaught of nay-sayers because they’re there in spades. Well-meaning and genuinely intending to help, but more inclined to punch holes than be supportive. This is my third venture, and I’m beginning to see a pattern. My advice is to seek out people who love your passion, regardless of whether they think your idea is crazy.”
Prosperity Candle truly embodies the words of the Dalai Lama. Ted Barber got on his feet, and now is spending the rest of his life helping others join him. And who knows? Maybe we’ll see him on a TED Talk in the future. Until then, Prosperity Candle will continue to be a model for other entrepreneurs and businesses interested in making a difference and joining the B-Corp movement.
Learn more about Prosperity Candle’s mission and initiatives at prosperitycandle.com.
The audiobook for A Force for Good: The Dalai Lama’s Vision for Our World is available for pre-order. The 6-disc set and digital download will be available on June 23, 2015. Listen to an excerpt from the audiobook here.
It’s no secret that I’m not thrilled with the environment of today’s business schools and management training. The business world wants leaders, but the education only gives their students the skills to be workers. A recent Bloomberg study about the skills gap that executives are finding in corporations says the four areas that are really missing in business education are:
Problem Solving
Decision Making
Leadership Skills
Communication Skills
These four skills are missing pieces that have been sighted since 2001 when I first started reading Josh Bersin and Company’s annual report to the Learning Development world. Some companies are highly engaged with the personal development of their employees and actually provide them with formal training to make up for the slack in their education. They put them in situations that cause them to cultivate their problem solving and decision making skills, and have a mentor/coach follow up with them. This open stream of communication helps organizations view their new employees not as workers, but as their leaders of tomorrow.
A company I worked with, ICANN, was a 13 year-old start up with a very small staff responsible for the resilience, safety, and security of the internet. The staff was filled with very bright and skilled personnel, but never had any formal training. I wanted them to be well-rounded, adaptable individuals, but to get there these four skills have to be a required part of the performance management process. If employees are responsible for problem solving and decision making but it isn’t part of their performance management process, they’re (understandably) just going to ignore it or find a way around it.
From my own experience, I have found the case study method to be the most effective. My online course, Thriving on Change: The Evolving Leader’s Toolkit, uses three pillars – mindful awareness, focused attention and intentional relaxation, and cultivating goodwill – as major skills areas that are required for employees to develop a foundation that they can grow from. These skills allow them to be better equipped to handle any challenges and tough judgments that arise.
Thriving On Change teaches you to not only listen to other people, direct reports, or peers, but to really hear what they’re saying. Your coworkers’ views and words are just as relevant to a collaborative environment as yours. But to hear them properly you have to be able to put aside your views, opinions, and biases first. You have to be able to bring a kind of neutrality and objectivity to the decision making process.
A lot of conflict arises due to the lack of communication, leadership, and decisive skills, which is where mindfulness and goodwill comes in. If you’re going to generate goodwill in your workplace and life, you have to be skilled at conflict resolution. Mindfulness is one thing, but you have to be able to stand the heat when people have differences of opinion and strong negative emotions. Mindfulness goes out the door if you don’t also have the confidence to be able to skillfully have that conversation.
Preview the free Introductory Module from Thriving on Changehere.
Download Elad’s free ebook, Learn to Dance on Jellohere.
Elad Levinson, head lecturer for the Praxis You course Thriving on Change, has over 45 years of experience as a leadership coach and organizational consultant. He’s currently the Senior Organization Effectiveness Consultant at 4128Associates.
Elad has been a senior organization development and learning and development professional at Agilent, Stanford University, ICANN and several start-ups. He was the first to apply the stress theory to business and leadership at many of these organizations.
The following is an excerpt of Elad Levinson’s interview with Leadership Development News.It’s no secret that the “softer” personality traits aren’t as valued in organizations. Empathy, self-reflection, and goodwill take the backseat to efficiency, results, and profits. What would you say if I told you that fostering the former skills would actually improve the latter?
Jane Dutton, one of the founders of the Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship and University of Michigan Roth School of Business, has been studying and researching compassion in the workplace. Her research shows that when you train in mindfulness, it has an immediate impact on the quality of your relationships with your colleagues.
Mindfulness and compassion in the workplace happens in three ways:
Responsibility
You take more responsibility for your own reactions to situations. Instead of being unaware of the impact you have on the people around you – whether it be the team you manage, the project you’re a part of, or even in your personal life outside of work – you begin to step back and observe. Once you are able to view yourself from a semi-objective standpoint, you will find that your actions, positive or negative, may have been really influencing outcomes.
Listening
Your listening skills will be immediately impacted. When you are mindful, you tend to be able to put aside your internal reactions to things and really listen to someone and what they are experiencing. As a result, you will improve in being able to include other people and their experiences with the problems you’re trying to solve, which will make not only you, but your team, happier and more efficient.
Warmth
You just might become warmer. You become more interested in others. There is a sense of concern that the people around you might translate as, “I’m with you, not against you. I’m here for you and interested in your growth and development.”
What people like Jane Dutton and myself are trying to say is that there is room for compassion in the workplace. Work should not be a place you have to completely turn yourself off. Practicing mindfulness and compassion in the workplace can start with you; give it some time and you just might notice your colder co-workers warming up to you, and your workplace become a more enjoyable place.
Preview the free Introductory Module from Thriving on Changehere.
“When I began introducing mindfulness methods to co-workers or clients, the most noticeable shift was that people became more present with difficulty. They didn’t repress it or push it away. They were better able to say, “Okay, here’s a difficult situation. What are our options? What are the possibilities? What can we do with it?” I began to see a calmness and acceptance in difficult moments.
People also started to accept change with more ease. As you may know, when we practice mindfulness, we learn to see that everything is changing all the time. We watch our mind and our body. We notice thoughts and physical sensations rise and fall away. Sensations are changing. Ideas are changing. We become much more comfortable with change.
When I first started working with Google, I was intrigued by a real-time projection of what people were Googling. The whole wall was a projection of all these questions, phrases and fragments going up the wall, and then disappearing. I thought, “This is the global mind at work.” Just the way you watch your own mind in meditation, you’re getting to watch what the global mind is thinking and letting go of.
Back to coping with change. When I worked with a large chemical company in the mid-”˜90s, there was always a possibility they were going to be bought by somebody else. It was that period of mergers and acquisitions. The employees were always really worried about job security. I would focus our mindfulness practice retreats on dealing with change.
We discovered that the more comfortable we become with change, the more we can just be with whatever arises. Including a job loss. And that’s not to minimize that such a change could cause suffering. But we’d be able to be there with that suffering. That presence and awareness was huge in terms of developing leaders.”
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Exciting, compelling, and grounded in new research on meditation, this is a rare audiobook with powerful insights that can change us at the deepest level.
