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Change Leader, Change
Thyself
Those
who want to take their organization in new directions must look inward as
well as outward
Leo Tolstoy, the Russian novelist, famously wrote,
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing
himself.” Tolstoy’s dictum is a useful starting point for any executive
engaged in organizational change. After years of collaborating in efforts
to advance the practice of leadership and cultural transformation, we’ve
become convinced that organizational change is inseparable from individual
change. Simply put, change efforts often falter because individuals
overlook the need to make fundamental changes in themselves. Building
selfunderstanding and then translating it into an organizational context is
easier said than done, and getting started is often the hardest part. We
hope this article helps leaders who are ready to try and will intrigue
those curious to learn more.
Organizations don’t change — people do
Many companies move quickly from setting their performance objectives
to implementing a suite of change initiatives. Be it a new growth strategy
or business-unit structure, the integration of a recent acquisition or the
rollout of a new operational-improvement effort, such organizations focus
on altering systems and structures and on creating new policies and
processes.
To achieve collective change over time, actions
like these are necessary but seldom sufficient. A new strategy will fall
short of its potential if it fails to address the underlying mind-sets and
capabilities of the people who will execute it.
McKinsey research and client experience suggest
that half of all efforts to transform organizational performance fail
either because senior managers don’t act as role models for change or
because people in the organization defend the status quo. In other words,
despite the stated change goals, people on the ground tend to behave as
they did before. Equally, the same McKinsey research indicates that if
companies can identify and address pervasive mind-sets at the outset, they
are four times more likely to succeed in organizational-change efforts than
are companies that overlook this stage.
Look both inward and outward
Companies that only look outward in the process of organizational
change tend to make two common mistakes. The first is to focus solely on
business outcomes. That means these companies direct their attention to
what Alexander Grashow, Ronald Heifetz, and Marty Linsky call the
“technical” aspects of a new solution, while failing to appreciate what
they call “the adaptive work” people must do to implement it.
The second common mistake, made even by companies
that recognize the need for new learning, is to focus too much on
developing skills. Training that only emphasizes new behavior rarely
translates into profoundly different performance outside the classroom.
In our work together with organizations undertaking
leadership and cultural transformations, we’ve found that the best way to
achieve an organization’s aspirations is to combine efforts that look
outward with those that look inward. Linking strategic and systemic
intervention to genuine self-discovery and self-development by leaders is a
far better path to embracing the vision of the organization and to
realizing its business goals.
What is looking inward?
Looking inward is a way to examine your own modes of operating to learn
what makes you tick. Individuals have their own inner lives, populated by
their beliefs, priorities, aspirations, values, and fears. These interior
elements vary from one person to the next, directing people to take
different actions.
Interestingly, many people aren’t aware that the
choices they make are extensions of the reality that operates in their
hearts and minds. Indeed, you can live your whole life without
understanding the inner dynamics that drive what you do and say. Yet it’s
crucial that those who seek to lead powerfully and effectively look at
their internal experiences, precisely because they direct how you take
action, whether you know it or not. Taking accountability as a leader today
includes understanding your motivations and other inner drives. We focus on
two dimensions of looking inward that lead to self-understanding:
developing profile awareness and developing state awareness.
Profile awareness
An individual’s profile is a combination of his or her habits of
thought, emotions, hopes, and behavior in various circumstances. Profile
awareness is therefore a recognition of these common tendencies and the
impact they have on others. We often observe a rudimentary level of profile
awareness with the executives we advise. They use labels as a shorthand to
describe their profile, telling us, “I’m an overachiever” or “I’m a control
freak.” Others recognize emotional patterns, like “I always fear the
worst,” or limiting beliefs, such as “you can’t trust anyone.” Other
executives we’ve counseled divide their identity in half. They end up with
a simple liking for their “good” Dr. Jekyll side and a dislike of their
“bad” Mr. Hyde.
Finding ways to describe the common internal
tendencies that drive behavior is a good start. We now know, however, that
successful leaders develop profile awareness at a broader and deeper level.
State awareness
State awareness, meanwhile, is the recognition of what’s driving you at
the moment you take action. In common parlance, people use the phrase
“state of mind” to describe this, but we’re using “state” to refer to more
than the thoughts in your mind. State awareness involves the real-time
perception of a wide range of inner experiences and their impact on your
behavior. These include your current mind-set and beliefs, fears and hopes,
desires and defenses, and impulses to take action.
State awareness is harder to master than profile
awareness. While many senior executives recognize their tendency to exhibit
negative behavior under pressure, they often don’t realize they’re
exhibiting that behavior until well after they’ve started to do so. At that
point, the damage is already done.
We believe that in the future, the best leaders
will demonstrate both profile awareness and state awareness. These
capacities can develop into the ability to shift one’s inner state in real
time. That leads to changing behavior when you can still affect the
outcome, instead of looking back later with regret. It also means not
overreacting to events because they are reminiscent of something in the
past or evocative of something that might occur in the future.
Close the performance gap
When learning to look inward in the process of organizational
transformation, individuals accelerate the pace and depth of change
dramatically. In the words of one executive we know, who has invested
heavily in developing these skills, this kind of learning “expands your
capacity to lead human change and deliver true impact by awakening the full
leader within you.” In practical terms, individuals learn to align what
they intend with what they actually say and do to influence others.
Erica Ariel Fox’s recent book, Winning from Within,
calls this phenomenon closing your performance gap. That gap is the
disparity between what people know they should say and do to behave
successfully and what they actually do in the moment. The performance gap
can affect anyone at any time, from the CEO to a summer intern. This
performance gap arises in individuals partly because of the profile that
defines them and that they use to define themselves. In the West in
particular, various assessments tell you your “type,” essentially the
psychological clothing you wear to present yourself to the world. To help
managers and employees understand each other, many corporate-education
tools use simplified typing systems to describe each party’s makeup. These
tests often classify people relatively quickly, and in easily remembered
ways: team members might be red or blue, green or yellow, for example.
There are benefits in this approach, but in our experience it does not go
far enough and those using it should understand its limitations. We all
possess the full range of qualities these assessments identify. We are not
one thing or the other: we are all at once, to varying degrees. As renowned
brain researcher Daniel Siegel explains, “we must accept our multiplicity,
the fact that we can show up quite differently in our athletic,
intellectual, sexual, spiritual—or many other—states. A heterogeneous
collection of states is completely normal in us humans.” Putting the same
point more poetically, Walt Whitman famously wrote, “I am large, I contain
multitudes.” To close performance gaps, and thereby build your individual
leadership capacity, you need a more nuanced approach that recognizes your inner
complexity. Coming to terms with your full richness is challenging. But the
kinds of issues involved—which are highly personal and well beyond the
scope of this short management article—include:
What are the primary parts of my profile, and how are they balanced against
each other? What resources and capabilities does each part of my profile
possess? What strengths and liabilities do those involve? When do I tend to
call on each member of my inner executive team? What are the benefits and
costs of those choices? Do I draw on all of the inner sources of power
available to me, or do I favor one or two most of the time? How can I
develop the sweet spots that are currently outside of my active range?
Answering these questions starts with developing profile awareness. CD
b y Nate Boaz & Erica Ariel Fox CDET 140418
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