Cultivating Leadership Through Conversations
As leaders, so much of our impact is derived from the type of conversations we enable. On one hand, conversations can shut us down, exclude and trigger us. On the other hand, they can lift and nourish us, expand and generate new thinking.
In this month’s blog series, we explore cultivating leadership through conversations. In our first blog we address the impact of reactive and creative leadership conversations and share how to cultivate the latter.
Cultivating Creative Conversations
In their book Mastering Leadership, Bob Anderson and Bill Adams name two types of Leadership stance’s leaders can take. The first being a Problem-Reactive Stance and the second being a Vision-Creative Stance.
Through the problem-reactive leadership stance we centre our attention mostly on the problem at hand and the subsequent emotions it generates. In this paradigm most of our effort and energy is directed toward removing/fixing the problem and the pain the problem is causing us (anxiety, fear, self-doubt, anger, frustration, sadness etc). This focus can be quite exhausting and set us up to be in a constant state of “firefighting”.
When we adopt a vision-creative leadership stance we put the vision or the result we want achieve at the centre, and view problems or obstacles as something to be addressed on the way to our desired outcome. When the ‘going gets tough’ we can resource ourselves through our passion and commitment to the vision and the results we want to create. This doesn’t mean the journey here is painless or without challenges, however this attitude leads to more sustainable efforts and resilience along the way.
Coming back to this month's theme, when we adopt a problem-reactive stance, our conversations and enquiries are characterised by a narrow focus on urgently resolving the issue and alleviating the associated discomfort. When we become excessively absorbed in the problem to the point of losing sight of our overarching vision, our work becomes unfulfilling and burdensome.
Mary, CEO of a small tech start up, recently faced a critical bug in their main product, causing significant disruption for customers. She immediately entered problem-reactive mode, directing all her energy toward resolving the issue and alleviating customer frustration. This included holding emergency meetings, directing the team to work overtime, and personally delving into technical details for a solution. The conversations she fostered focused solely on the urgent need to fix the bug and mitigate customer frustration, with a narrow focus on technical details and immediate impacts.
While Mary’s efforts were commendable and the immediate problem was fixed, the team felt overwhelmed, unheard, and burnt out by the intense focus on the issue. Morale plummeted and her team struggled to cope with the stress and pressure.
On the top of addressing the problem promptly, Mary could have facilitated open dialogue that encouraged her team to share their perspectives and concerns, active listening and incorporating their insights into decision-making processes and reorienting them to the long-term goals and vision.
By contrast, when we embrace a leadership approach rooted in our vision we initiate conversations that reaffirm our purpose and motivate ourselves and others to understand why we're committed to our work. These discussions encourage us to recognize challenges as temporary hurdles rather than insurmountable obstacles. We promote dialogue focused on uncovering potential opportunities and lessons learned. Creating authentic and safe environments, we invite team members to openly express challenges and emotions, allowing us to collectively refocus on the aspects of our journey we can control or influence in pursuit of our shared vision.
Philip leads a non-profit organisation committed to environmental conservation, navigating through various challenges such as funding shortages and regulatory hurdles with a vision-creative stance. By consistently communicating the organisation's mission of protecting endangered species and habitats, Philip fosters discussions that view challenges as opportunities for growth and innovation aligned with the organisation's vision. Conversations revolve around the organisation's long-term goals and values, nurturing a culture of resilience and optimism within the team.
Philip actively listens to people's concerns and frustrations, often asking, "What could we do about it?" He also creates space for team members to express their emotions without immediate solutions, recognising that verbalising feelings can lead to finding a way forward.
His visionary leadership inspires the team to stay dedicated to the cause, promoting creative problem-solving and collaboration. Empowered to talk about new strategies and partnerships, the team successfully achieves sustainable solutions that advance the organisation's mission. Despite occasional setbacks, morale remains high, and employees find purpose and fulfilment in their work under Philip's guidance.
Through Mary and Philip's stories, we can see how different leadership stances and conversations can profoundly impact team dynamics, sustainable performance and wellbeing. While Mary's reactive conversations resulted in a focus on immediate problem elimination and team burnout, Philip's vision-centric leadership conversations fostered resilience and innovation in pursuit of a bigger outcome.
We invite you to take a moment to reflect on the quality of your conversations at work:
- Do they tend to focus on reacting to problems or creating vision aligned action?
- What is the impact on your team?
- What shifts are you called to make?
Join us next week as we continue to explore our series on cultivating leadership through conversations by challenging us to engage in authentic and courageous conversations.
Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash
