Leadership is an insanely important discipline. Here you’ll find the thought, tools and tricks of the trade of great leaders.
Having just spent three days in Slovenia exploring the art of hosting, I thought I’d write a little about what hosting means to me.
Basically, every time you invite somebody to be a part of something, you’re assuming the role of host. Whether it’s a meeting, a conference, a project, a party, a lecture or a night out with the boys: Any time you gather people, you assume the role of host. So what makes the concept of hosting so interesting?
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While going through my bookmarks, I came across this article, where Dee Hock, the founder of VISA, explains his ideas of chaordic organization and leaderhip.
Here’s a sample from the article, that talks about when organizations achieve peak performance:
Every choreographer, conductor, and coach — or for that matter, corporation president — has tried to distill the essence of such performance. Countless others have tried to explain and produce a mechanistic, measurably controlled process that will cause the phenomenon. It has never been done and it never will be. It is easily observed, universally admired, and occasionally experienced. It happens, but cannot be deliberately done. It is rarely long sustained but can be repeated. It arises from the relationships and interaction of those from which it is composed. Some organizations seem consistently able to do so, just as some leaders seem able to cause it to happen with consistency, even within different organizations.
If this speaks to you, then you need to read Dee Hocks book “birth of the chaordic age”.
The CEO Refresher has an article that suggests ten conversation topics in organizations. This builds on the idea, that conversations are the way that human beings think together, as explored by Margaret Wheatley in Turning to one another.
An excellent way to conduct the discussions, would be circles of conversation. This is a very simple method that promotes deep discussion and deep listening.
Last night I had the pleasure of meeting Margaret Wheatley (or simply Meg) for the first time. I was part of a circle conversation about leadership, arranged by my good friend Carsten Ohm. Meg is the author of (among others) A simpler way and Turning to one another.
We had a very diverse group in the circle, and as always the discussion was deep and intense. Megs presence gave the discussion an added dimension, because she could use her background and experience to point out the deeper roots of the discussion at a few critical points.
We started from the definition of a leader, that they use in the Berkana Institute, namely that a leader is someone who wants to help (or someone who wants to contribute to positive change).
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Perhaps it is the hedonist in me, but I believe that gatherings designed to achieve useful results can only be fully effective when the participants are having fun. The issues on the table, and the implications of the outcome, may all be deadly serious, but creative interchange, to say nothing of innovative results, seems to disappear quickly when a dark cloud of solemnity hangs over everything.
– Harrison Owen in Expanding our now.
Questia.com are putting a lot of free books and articles on the net, and this week the focus is on leadership. Here are their prime picks in that category.
We currently act as if people are not inherently motivated, rather that they go to work each day and wait for someone else to light their fire. This belief is common among managers and employees alike…
It is right and human for managers to care about the motivation and morale of their people, it is just that they are not the cause of it. Managers should ask for feedback from employees about hot they could improve as managers, but they ask this out of their own interest and desire to learn, not for the sake of the employee. If we decide to view employees as free and accountable, then we stop fixing them.
– Peter Koestenbaum in Freedom and accountability at work.
If you’re not having a fair degree of failures, you’re not exposing yourself to the upside of getting it dramatically right on dark horses. If you don’t like going home at night with a feeling of uncertainty, then you’re not cut out for it. If you try too hard to improve your failure rate, you become afraid of your inbox, terrified by the proposals made by authors and their agents. You end up having either no output or a book that is so bland that no one will want to read it. Discovering J.K. Rowling has reminded me of the sheer fun of knowing long before anyone else that you have something that will change the world.
– Nigel Newton, CEO of Bloomsbury, the publishing company who “discovered” Harry Potter
This underlines the importance of getting it wrong once in a while, and the utter stupidity of the old “Get it right the first time” maxim. From an article in Fast Company.
I’ve never been to the Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle, but people who have describe it as a joyful chaos. The fishmongers throw the fish and crabs around, catch them one-handed, yell at and with the customers and generally have a great time.
But things weren’t always great. Yokoyama, the owner, describes himself as an ex-tyrant, who only recently learned to treat employees as peers in stead of peons. And the reward has been to see the company come to life, and the customers have followed.
Let me give you an example of what happens in a company, where people have this much fun.
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Stories and storytelling have played a major part in three of the books that I’ve read lately.
It’s interesting to see the ancient art of telling stories used in such different settings as change management and child therapy.
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