The first step to convening people meaningfully: committing to a bold, sharp purpose. ~Priya Parker

As we approached 5pm, I was grappling with how to closeout a 4-hour meeting last week with some “meat.” It felt as though this leadership team had spent a great deal of time talking and not much time deciding.

The CEO of this organization and I don’t share the same behavioral profile, and that’s a good thing. This was reflected in our differing desired outcomes. I learned after the meeting that he felt like the meeting was successful because his outcome was to see this relatively new team interact and engage with one another. Whereas, my desired outcome was to draw conclusions and determine future actions; which is my definition of “meat.”

While we both had desired outcomes, we hadn’t committed to a bold, sharp purpose.

Bold, Sharp Purpose: Make it Disputable

Priya Parker, author of Why We Gather, highly recommends that in order to have a bold, sharp purpose, it should be disputable.

This begins by really examining why a group is gathering. Ask why enough times until you reach a belief or value. You’ll know you’ve found a disputable purpose because it will stick its neck out a little bit, or take a stand. It might unsettle some participants. It will refuse to be everything to everybody.

As Parker states: “Specificity is a crucial ingredient. The more focused and particular a gathering is, the more narrowly it frames itself and the more passion it arouses. Specificity sharpens the gathering because people can see themselves in it.”

Bold, Sharp Purpose: Should be a Decision Filter

Again from Parker: “The disputable purpose will become a decision filter. It will immediately help you to make choices.”

So, how would I have changed my meeting last week? For this large nonprofit, the purpose was to wrestle with what administrative functions should be centralized and what should be decentralized. That might sound like an acceptable purpose, maybe it’s specific, but it’s not disputable.

Going into this meeting I was confident that this team was going to lean towards most everything being centralized. Therefore, a more disputable purpose would have been: As we position ourselves for growth, what will be our criteria or indicators to know when an administrative function should be decentralized. This purpose is assuming that decentralized administrative functions are appropriate and even a good strategy. With this group, that would have been “taking a stand” and “sticking its neck out a little bit.” It would have been disputable.

Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and we would all go back and change how we approached various meetings. In the future, take more time to really dig deep and determine why you are gathering. Keep asking until you hit some values or beliefs and create a disputable purpose. Convene people meaningfully and keep leading with bold grace.

Trust is the lubricant for transactions. ~Don Peppers

Growing up with three older brothers on a farm, I was more than encouraged to learn a thing or two about auto mechanics. Of course I needed to know how to check my oil, change a tire, and I was also given a thorough course in how to change my own oil (which I never actually opted to do). Understanding the importance of well-maintained lubricants so engines run efficiently is something I’ve been familiar with for quite some time.

For decades, business academic curriculum and organizational practices have focused heavily on transactions – systems, production, processes, policies, project management, etc. All of those transactions represent the metal parts of an engine, which are necessary, but without any grease, oil, or lubricant, it’s just metal rubbing against metal. Not efficient, and a really good chance the engine won’t even run. Don Peppers, with thoughts by Faisal Hoque, describe the new era of organizations.

Trust is the lubricant.

Trust is the lubricant for transactions. We no longer work in an era in which we try to make everything as efficient as possible; rather, we’re trying to be more agile and more innovative, to move more quickly with our iterations. Relationships are the bandwidth within an organization, which means we need to be deliberate in forming them.

I spend a great deal of time working with organizations on strategic planning. I’ve learned, maybe the hard way, that effective strategic planning is supported by deliberate and intentional leadership development and coaching. Or, said another way, forming the relationships (i.e., bandwidth) so the strategic plan can gain traction and move the organization forward.

It’s still very common for individuals with innate strategic thinking and analytical skills to move into leadership positions within organizations. Strategy is still critical. However, strategy without attention to relationships and culture—the lubricant that builds trust and enables the transactions to take hold—is short-lived with only minimal success. It’s like metal rubbing against metal; inefficient and many times painful. 

Relationships are the bandwidth.

Trust is the lubricant for transactions and relationships are the bandwidth within organizations. Trust is the lubricant for transactions and relationships are the bandwidth organizations. That’s not a typo; I intended to repeat myself because I think it’s worth repeating. 

I frequently watch executives study numbers, charts, and data in an effort to create a business strategy to turnaround or re-invigorate their organization. They do this with the belief that if they can make the numbers make sense, then everything will easily fall into place. And the numbers are important; I’m not intending to discount sound financial and analytical management. However, that’s simply not enough, not today. The real bandwidth of today’s organizations is not balance sheets and cash flow statements. 

Just in case you missed the point I was trying to emphasize: Trust is the lubricant for transactions and relationships are the bandwidth within organizations. It’s another paradox of leading with bold grace.

We’re so desperate to be understood, we forget to be understanding. ~ Beau Taplin

There are so many things in life, and leadership, that are much easier to say than do. Mercy is one of those. The definition of mercy that I’m thinking of includes synonyms like empathy, understanding, and forbearance (which means patience, self-control, restraint, and tolerance).

Now that we’re able to meet in person again, I worked with a leadership team last week to help them move towards alignment. Some had joined the team during the pandemic so this team had very little in-person face time. One of the activities we worked through was the DISC assessment. I’ve done this many times and what I witness continues to be quite similar from organization to organization.

I reveal the behavior styles of the members of the team, and in this case they were very diverse. This is good in terms of having the potential for the best team outcomes. However, it also presents a challenge because it means everyone will need to demonstrate some empathy and forbearance to truly understand one another. In other words, they need to give each a bit of mercy.

Then, for example, I will hear people say they are trying to be more patient with those who need far more detail and information than they do. And others will say they are trying to be more flexible for those who like to keep options open and not be tied to particularly specific plans.

As the outsider in the room, what I see is people’s intention to adapt to others, but actual behavior that still reflects their own preferences. And, I also see a smidgen of frustration because the “other” is not adapting as much as they would like. This is where we need more mercy.

Celebrate Differences

Adure Lorde said, “it is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.” And I think in order to do just that, we need to lead with mercy.

The challenge I see many leaders struggle with is the fact that they see their own view as obvious. They believe it’s so obvious that it baffles them that others don’t see it that way as well. Which then leads to impatience and frustration. Leaders forget, people aren’t necessarily “disagreeing” with the leader’s perspective, they just simply aren’t “understanding” it.

Lead with Mercy

This is not the first time I’ve written about the hard work of first seeking to understand if leaders truly want to be understood. In fact, as I’m writing this I feel somewhat like a broken record. But I’ll keep repeating this same chorus over and over because it seems to be one of the most difficult and most necessary aspects of effective leadership. Understanding doesn’t mean you have to “agree.” Understanding means you’ve truly listened. It means that you’re aware of others’ feelings and thinking. It doesn’t mean you have to agree with their point of view, but it means that you’re willing to understand and appreciate it. Adapt your own behavior style and lead with mercy.

Grace and mercy are very close cousins. Showing mercy is an example of leading with bold grace.

Repeated complaining rewires your brain to make future complaining more likely. Over time, you find it’s easier to be negative than to be positive, regardless of what’s happening around you. Complaining becomes your default behavior, which changes how people perceive you. ~Travis Bradberry

There are two behaviors that I have watched leaders practice that sabotage their leadership. Yes, we could certainly list more than “two.” However, I think these two behaviors begin very subtly, and then snowball into default behaviors that can be destructive and go undetected by the leader. They are complaining and blaming. The two are interrelated and possibly interdependent.

Sabotage Leadership with Complaining

You may view yourself as a fairly positive and optimistic person. Yet what others see might be quite different. Complaining can become a blind spot, even for CEOs. Here are a few questions to ask yourself to determine if you’ve subtly become a complainer.

1. Are people frequently slow to return your calls or emails?
2. Do people listen to you for a few polite minutes and then need to go to an appointment or take another call?
3. Do others vent to you, or are you always the venter and never the ventee?
4. Are you complaining about the same thing now that you were six months ago?
5. Following a meeting, presentation, event, etc. do you talk first about what everyone did poorly?

Sabotage Leadership with Blaming

I recall a CEO who was providing a corporate update at an all-employee meeting. In his effort to be “transparent” he said he was going to talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly. When he got to “the ugly” part of his presentation he zeroed-in on one specific department. Essentially, he said that the organization’s lackluster bottom line was all their fault. He put the blame squarely on a department that actually depended upon his participation in order to be successful.

Peter Bregman wrote in HBR (April 8, 2013): “Take the blame for anything you’re even remotely responsible for.” Bregman says:

This solution [taking the blame] transforms all the negative consequences of blaming others into positive ones. It solidifies relationships, improves your credibility, makes you and others happy, reinforces transparency, improves self-esteem, increases learning, and solves problems.

It takes courage to own your blame, and that shows strength. Being defensive makes you slippery. Taking responsibility makes you trustworthy.

The CEO in my example believed he was doing a good thing, being transparent. Transparency is a good thing; however, it’s unfortunate that he sacrificed the credibility of being transparent by pointing fingers, blaming others, and not taking any personal responsibility for something he really was partially responsible for.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself to consider how you might be defaulting to blaming without even realizing it.

1. When you debrief with others, does your name rarely appear on the list of whose responsible for mistakes?
2. Do you communicate who the “culprit” is for unsuccessful efforts, rather than identify how you will take responsibility?
3. Are you still trying to solve a problem that was identified months ago?

John Maxwell said, “A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit.” That’s a really good example of leading with bold grace.

Your beliefs are THE master commanders of your behavior and your results. ~Marie Forleo

Belief -> Thought -> Feeling -> Behavior -> Result

When I’m leading any kind of a planning session, our ultimate goal is to achieve some type of results. If we work backwards from achieving those results, we need people to change their “behavior,” and they’ll change behavior if they “feel” that they should, and in order to feel they should they need to “think” they should, and even prior to that they need to have the “belief” that they should.

Forleo says, “In order to solve any problem or achieve any [result] we must first make a change at the level of belief. Because when you change a belief, you change everything.”

I won’t provide all of the details that Forleo lays out, but imagine this research involving a placebo surgery! The surgery was orthopedic, so it was not life threatening, but it did involve people wanting relief from very real pain. The placebo group received a sham surgery. They went into surgery, were under anesthesia but received shallow cuts and were discharged with  protocols and painkillers. One-third of them reported pain relief, the same portion as those with the real surgery! Even more amazing, at one point within the study they had better results than those who had the real surgery!

This is just one of a number of studies that demonstrate the power of our beliefs. As Forleo states, “our beliefs tell us what to notice, what to focus on, what it means, and what to do about it.” That means, when planning, we can identify challenging visions, goals, objectives, etc., but if we don’t also address what people believe, we will likely fall short of actually achieving the results.

How to change beliefs?

1. Ask people to state what they believe except replace the word “believe” with “assume.” Then follow that with “what has caused me to make this assumption is…” and keep doing that several more times. In other words, what are their assumptions about their assumptions.

This may uncover two things. One, they may discover that some beliefs are based more on habit or history than on actual evidence. And two, they may identify ways that they really can control something they thought they had no control over.

2. Ask a group, if we want X result, what do we need to believe? (Note, I said believe not know.) Then make a list of all the evidence that would support that belief. Now try asking the group, why wouldn’t we believe this?

Challenging our beliefs is hard work. There’s a reason Forleo says that our beliefs are the “root” of our reality. Roots hold tight, even the worst of storms. Nothing is easily up-rooted. Challenging and then changing beliefs requires bold grace.