In the last segment of each class, she comments on our work, and on the techniques of the great artists, using visual aids.  I notice she works hard to clearly describe what she’s seeing and her own perceptions and experiences.  I say she “works hard” because she is searching for her words as she speaks, but she does ultimately find apt and highly descriptive words that convey her points beautifully.  I sense her deeply connected to what she is saying.  Her cognitive approach has her entirely engrossed in her own thoughts, and it’s clear that we, her audience, and our experience are much less in her awareness.

My first reaction to her style was to be amused at how instructor-centric the class is.  Our group facilitation style here at Ontos tends to be very different, in that we strive to provoke as much group dialogue and discussion as we can – because it furthers engagement and group cohesion and ultimately learning.  But of course, the objectives for beginning art students are different, and I’m enjoying the experience of this different approach.

And yet I noticed something interesting this week about her particular brand of teaching.  At the end of the session, as she was again describing her observations of different art pieces, she suddenly said in exasperation “I always feel so inarticulate!”

It took me a few moments of grappling with that statement to understand it. How can she feel so inarticulate while I am experiencing the opposite?  And then it becomes obvious:  she is so much in her head as she talks that she is disconnected from the impact she is having.  In general, she rarely looks up at us, instead looking at the art piece itself, so as a result she is actually talking to herself and receiving little feedback from us as to the impact of her statements. When you don’t know if it’s getting through, you keep “working” to be clear!  (There is a cultural nuance to describe on this topic, which I’ll write about in a blog post in the near future.)

As group facilitators we see this phenomenon in many different forms and in many contexts.  You might have observed the person, for example, who often repeats himself because he feels unheard.  Why?  Perhaps a group has actually learned not to listen to him for some reason.  Or perhaps the group does not understand the importance of acknowledging each other’s statements.  Both have a similar impact on the speaker, prompting them to explain again in hopes of transmitting their message more clearly this time.  In other cases, as with my art instructor, when in doubt of being understood, all she needs to do is simply ask the question and her frustration would likely disappear.

Who is Biogen Idec?   Per their website:

“Through cutting-edge science and medicine, Biogen Idec discovers, develops and delivers to patients worldwide innovative therapies for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, hemophilia and autoimmune disorders.”  For more:  www.biogenidec.com.

“If a primary aim in life is to develop into a caring and connected human being (admittedly, a big “if”), rather than, say, thinking of oneself as a tourist collecting as many pleasant and fulfilling experiences as possible, then surely a capacity for tenderness must play a role.”

I began pondering the connection of tenderness to a second concept – empathy.  I consider empathy as an underlying competency to effectively work across cultures.  Why?  Because without the ability to put oneself in another’s shoes — to approximate their experience — much is lost.  Empathy, for example, allows us to connect to others in such a way which results in more insight into a situation, identification of barriers, improved collaboration, smarter strategies, and more informed decisions.  And our clients have identified the need for leaders who can operate more empathically across boundaries.  Leaders are clamoring for more collaboration across functions, hierarchies and geographies.

Admittedly the word “tenderness” into a business conversation is a very “soft” word.  Most (all?) business groups prefer settling on sentiments of showing respect towards others.  But respect, as the author points out, is a “chilly sort of feeling — if it is a feeling at all. Respect is a fence that prevents us from harming one another. But strengthening the ties that bind and make us human requires something more pliant, more intimate.”  Being empathic requires “I-can-see-myself-in-you”, and the simultaneous recognition of self, and “other”, is a momentarily intimate act.

And our collective human experience bears out that leadership must be both strategic and intimate.  Without a certain intimacy in our relationships, most will lose a sense of meaning in their work. People essentially become tools, or treated as solely strategic levers to achieve business goals.  We can often be, in sum, overly strategic.  Emphasizing this dilemma with executive groups who struggle in this area is the first step.  Developing the skill is a completely different matter.

And so I’m left pondering if building empathy is so difficult because the topic is too far from our mental models for how business is done.   As the author points out, the word hardly is even used in society, much less our offices.  On the other hand, perhaps this metaphor of tenderness could provide a conceptual gateway, at least, to the topic of developing empathy.  It is not hard to understand that tenderness involves increased sensitivity and, according to the author “as though the ego and all its machinations momentarily melt away.”  Surely this would represent an element of enlightened leadership.

Gordon Marino’s article:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/13/try-a-little-tenderness/?nl=opinion&emc=edit_ty_20130214

“Mistrust doubles the cost of doing business.”
– Professor John Whitney, Columbia Business School

We recently facilitated an executive off-site retreat for a client group who is breaking new ground and pursuing a big business bet. In a fast-paced, high stakes environment, millions have been invested in bringing the best and the brightest together in rapid fashion. The pressure is on for this new group to perform. They know they are part of something exciting and cannot wait to achieve their vision.

But the team is not gelling well. There are differences in industry background, geographies, cultures, and management style. Some see themselves as rock stars, others are soft spoken team-players, and every style in between.

With that as context, many came to the off-site clearly impatient; everyone was concerned about the cohesiveness of the team. They acknowledged the lack of trust between them and most stated wanting the barriers to come down and for everyone to “open up”.

And yet most of them shared little. Those that did later wondered if they should have because that it felt risky. Certain leaders made valiant efforts to model openness but the team was not communicating fluidly. While the conversation evolved over the course of the event and some headway was made, many wondered afterwards why more of the group didn’t open up and asked themselves if enough was accomplished.

From our facilitator vantage point, having led many similar sessions, we’ve seen a spectrum of scenarios. Results often depend on the readiness of the group. Some groups experience huge leaps forward, and some only incremental advancement. But no matter what happens, this we know: (1) a group is exactly where it is supposed to be in its development based on the individuals in the group, and (2) the group needs to earn the trust it seeks.

Instead of asking if the offsite was “successful”, our question is “What will the group do to ensure the off-site was successful?” The work of such a group is not to show up and hope others will talk. The work for each leader is to leverage every opportunity to build an open relationship with each group member and earn the right to enjoy the trust and openness they seek. How? A few examples:

• Ask others how you can support them better in achieving their goals
• Demonstrate that you care about others’ goals as much as you care about your own
• Articulate your thoughts and feelings publicly and consistently – even if it means you “stand alone”
• Respectfully disagree, when you do
• Acknowledge others by being appreciate and building on what others say (instead of injecting only your own differentiated perspective)
• Employ good group process, honing your skills to know when to move from task to process, and vice versa

Leaders know — but seem to forget — that trust takes time. Trust must be earned. It takes time to earn confidence from your peers relative to your integrity and your abilities. And while the business needs are urgent and pressing, trust only accelerates the speed of business and reduces cost once it has been earned. Until then, it is an iterative process that takes time.

I believe leaders forget that there are two speeds when a group is forming: the speed of business and the speed of trust. They are not the same. The question to leaders is “How fast can you generate trust with others?”

“We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior.”
– Stephen Covey

Microsoft engineering leaders believed project management was a core competency, something all technical people had to master. Sure, there was a career path that emphasized project management– we called it “Program Management” – but the competencies in that path entailed much more than project management. Program Managers at Microsoft– the term originated with Boeing to describe the role ultimately responsible for an entire aircraft development program — “own” the whole product or product line, from requirements definition to design through project management, testing and release to market. This entails, effectively, determining what gets built and why, when, and to some extent, how and by whom. Program Managers (in theory at least – the role was interpreted differently from division to division) are the major – though not the only – interface between a product development team and other key partners like testing, marketing, and design. In other engineering organizations, these responsibilities are often part of the engineering manager role, or are distributed among senior architects and product management.

Building project management “muscle” was important to Microsoft (and P&W and Bayer) because strategically the company wanted to make sure all engineers were accountable for their part of the schedule, and because the fear was that by making project management “someone else’s job” , schedule and dependency ownership (etc.) would be diminished. So hence at Microsoft we had a dedicated Program Management career path as well as project management competencies for every technical path.

So how you think about this question at your company is a matter of strategic business direction. Here are some pros and cons of establishing a distinct project or program management (PM) career path:

Pros

1. Grow deep expertise: With a project or program management path the company can clearly and directly invest in growing deep skills in this area from entry level to senior. Competency expectations – at least within a career model or career framework – are clearly delineated and can be systematically developed over time.
2. Role clarity: Responsibility for schedules and dates and dependencies (etc.) can be clearly assigned and communicated across all functions. It is clear who is responsible for what.
3. Recruitment: You can more easily attract and retain people who have interest and expertise in this career because how to progress is clear.
4. A home for Six Sigma. Roles that specialize in “lean” transformation or Six Sigma can naturally become part of the PM discipline and career path.
5. Talent mobility and agility:  With a PM path you can readily move talent across business and regions because domain expertise is usually not the most important requirement.  What matters is functional competency expertise, which is eminently transferable across product lines and businesses.
6. Enable business and culture transformation. Because people can move into these roles from other internal business and regions, PM roles can be useful in many talent and leadership development applications. For example, PM roles can be targets for high potentials as part of a multi-year HiPo development scheme. And cross-pollinating talent across business units is an important way to drive culture change.

Cons

1. Not my job. Ironically, with a dedicated PM role/path other engineers don’t pay as much attention to schedules or risks or dependencies – the basics of project management – believing these are responsibilities of the PM.
2. Skill atrophy. For the same reason, you run the risk of diminishing PM skills across the rest of the engineering workforce. And by having project management defined as a dedicated career path, you don’t build leaders with this competency in other disciplines.
3. Manager roles become smaller. A defined PM role and path makes the engineering manager role smaller because this role is now either not accountable, or less accountable, for project tasks, schedules and resources. Project managers often control most of the key decisions on schedule, budget, dependency, etc., which leaves the engineering manager mainly responsible for personnel review and development, a role many engineering managers feel is not that attractive.
4. Decision making is more complicated. Decisions such as who is responsible for how resources and time are to be allocated by project, and how conflicts are handled (etc.) become more complex. Complexity can be mitigated by good group process, communication and collaboration, to be sure, but many engineers do not take naturally to these kinds of skills, so resourcing and time allocation conflicts sometimes can bog projects down. Ironically, a dedicated PM role and career path increases the need for good communication and “contracting” between managers and PMs.

Ultimately, the decision cuts to what is strategically important to the business and what capabilities and competencies therefore need to be optimized over the long term. For example, if the business strategy demands closer integration and synchronization across product lines, a dedicated PM role and path may be instrumental to mitigating and managing the myriad dependencies that come with that. Or, if better talent integration and a more cohesive culture across divisions and business units is a strategic imperative for the company, the benefits of a dedicated PM career path may outweigh the cons.

It was a wise add.  Adding curiosity as a behavioral norm for the leadership group is one that we often bring up when groups are getting to know each other and/or learning to work together better.  Many times, high-powered leaders lean more toward advocating when they speak, preferring to make strong statements in order to influence each other and assert authority.  But curiosity, or inquiry, is the other end of that continuum, and is a critical skill for every leader.  Without inquiry, the group can’t easily learn from each others’ experiences, and cannot leverage it for the benefit of the team.

A similar finding with a different nomenclature came out of research¹ done in 2011.  In four international companies, the research found that a way to bridge gaps in tacit knowledge was to “create an awareness of what the company ‘did not know that it did not know’ which would inevitably influence its behaviors and knowledge-creation activities…”  In other words, one way to build skills in curiosity, or increase the amount of inquiry, is to systematically remind people of the perils of its blind spots.  Blind spots are created because we, as leaders, do not have all the experiences required to see “around corners” because our limited experiences make our perceptions unreliable.  And so we need to learn from each other in the room to help illuminate those corners, to add to our own experiences, and to broaden our perspectives.  Remembering this truth in diversity creates different outcomes in moments of high-stakes strategic decision making, as well as in the fundamental processes of building team trust.  For either purpose, we are all well advised to stay curious.

¹Glisby, M. and Holden, N.,(2011). Global business and organizational excellence. Wiley Online Library. Doi: 10.1002/joe.20396.

The Manager as Coach I and II programs are an opportunity to develop leadership skills.  Participants learn how to interact more adeptly in a way that develops others, ultimately to create leaders around them who can solve problems independently, take on new challenges, and develop their skills.

The basics of the program:

• 2-day, customized program – both methodology and practice
• Practical and interactive, based on participants’ actual challenges
• Program delivered in 5 languages
• A 2-program series:  Manager as Coach I and Manager as Coach II