Leadership

Powerful or powerless, what do you prefer?

January 26, 2019By Mike Hohnen

Powerful

Last week, we looked at the importance of building relations as a basic skill for the first time manager.

Essentially, you are the instrument. How you decide to show up from situation to situation will determine how your relationships with other people are formed.

As the ‘instrument’, you will need to be aware of three things: Your actions, behaviours and conversations. How you decide to mix and match these three will, at the end of the day, determine how successful you end up being in your roles as a first time manager (or in any future management position for that matter).

This week, we explore the first of these three key tools.

What you decide to do – or not to do – defines you in your managerial role.

Leaders who come across as trustworthy and powerful in the best sense of the word are the people whom you know you can trust to act on something when it is brought to their attention. They are in my view the powerful leaders.

Some people have a problem with the words power and powerful. In some cultures, it has negative connotations – and there are often good reasons for that because we have all experienced powerful leaders who abused their power.

In his book Power and Love, which I can highly recommend, Adam Kahane defines two kinds of power: constructive and destructive. He explains the difference as:

‘Power over’ – which is the destructive version.
‘Power to’ – which is the constructive version.

When as a leader I use my power as ‘power over’, it is not very engaging – on the contrary nobody feels inspired by being subjected to ‘power over’ – power over is encapsulated in the response: “Because I say so!” to an inquiry from a team member asking: “ why we are doing this?” .

It is a classic beginner’s error for new manager to get this wrong and to try and bolster their position by demonstrating ‘power over’ instead of focusing on ‘power to’. This form of power shows up when you order people around, grant or don’t grant favour, privileges to team members etc. These are all actions that use to demonstrate ‘I am in charge here’.

‘Power to’ on the other hand is when you use your skills, position and authority to change or create something, to move the agenda forward. You are comfortable distributing power to other team members; it’s all about getting things done and moving the agenda forward.

Leaders who display that kind of power are a joy to work for in contrast to the ones that are powerless because they do not take action but always postpone, hesitate or kick issues upstairs – to the side.

Non-action is also action

In my view, the core problem with people in charge at any level in an organisation, who are not seen as great leaders by their surroundings, is not so much that they do the wrong things but that they are not doing the things that they obviously should be doing.

These indecisions come in all shapes and sizes – from small stuff like: “Would it be possible for me to take 2 days off next month to go to my sister’s wedding…?” and then you wait and you wait and you wait for an answer and maybe you even remind them more than once and get: “Oh yes, so sorry I will look into it…” Or more serious issues like, “We have a customer who is very upset with our last delivery on the phone.” There is a world of difference between the leader who says “Let me speak to her now”, and the one that says “I am busy just now, tell her I will call her back” and you think: “That is what she said last week…”

The worst form of non-action that I know is the manager who does not respond to non-performance. It is in my opinion probably the most destructive form of non action that there is.

Think about it – what is the worst way to insult a high performing employee? – It is to ask them to work alongside an idiot. If you are a highly engaged employee and take pride in your job, nothing ruins your motivation and engagement as much as watching someone work alongside you that makes a mess of the product, the customer relation or whatever. Someone who ultimately does not care the way you care.

The powerless manager will come up with excuses – “Yes, I know Joe is not quite up to snuff but that is all we can get just now, so please suffer him for now and we will get it sorted out eventually.” – but they seldom do. Because if someone is not doing what they are supposed to be doing, it is time for a powerful conversation – and there is no reason to postpone it.

Everyone on your team needs to know that if things are not going according to plan, you will act – not as tyrant spewing blame all over the show – but you will act because you care and you will sort it out – you will be asking questions, trying to understand why we are not on track and then you will take appropriate action.

Why can it be hard to take action – well you could take the wrong action and stand there with egg all over you face. So non action is often a result of a fear of being wrong. But as leaders, we need to get over the fear of being wrong. We will be wrong from time to time and that is not a problem as long as we acknowledge it and try to improve. Perfect leaders do not exist.

Think about it, whom would you personally prefer to work for, the leader who acts and makes mistake – and is prepared to acknowledge them, or the leader who does not act but also never seems to do wrong because they push those decisions up the system instead of taking responsibility for their own actions?

Next week, we will look more closely at the second tool at your disposal – your behaviour.

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This is the sixth article in a series on how to lead as a first time manger. If you would like to know more, check out other articles of the first time manager series:

I have a new online training out on this: The Team Leaders Toolbox – check it out

How your relationships affect your results

January 26, 2019By Mike Hohnen

Relations

In our continuing series on how to lead a team as a first time manager, I would like to focus on the importance of relations.

Last week, we briefly touched on this when we worked through the high performance team model.

The second step in that process – the who part – is all about relations.

Daniel H. Kim the systems thinker has illustrated this in a very elegant way.

Leading my Team

So we have a fundamental choice here. And it can go one of two ways.

We can generate an upward spiral where we are continuously developing our relations and, as a result, performing better and better; or we can take the downward spiral where it all just gets worse and worse.

It is a choice.

A choice that is going to determine whether the team is going to be successful or not and, ultimately, it’s going to determine whether you are successful in your role as a team leader.

For the first time manager, this sometimes comes as a surprise and we think, “I have a gazillion other things to do. Do I also have to think about that, I just want to get the job done?”

And the next thought is maybe, ‘but what do we mean by relations exactly?’. This is where the first time manger can make a classical and very costly mistake.

Relationship is not about trying to please everyone. A relationship is about mutual expectations and that is something very different.

I like Ed Schein’s definition of a relationship:

“A relationship is a set of mutual expectations about each other’s future behaviour based on past interactions with each other.”

So you have a relationship with someone when you can more or less predict some of their behaviours and vice versa. Relationships go both ways, otherwise they are not relationships.

But we have relationships of different depths with other people. They can be shallow, meaning that both of us have a vague sense of what the other person will do; or at the other end of the spectrum, they can be deep to the extent that we almost know what the other person thinks and feels in most situations.

A good, solid work relationship means that we feel a certain level of comfort with each other, we have a good understanding of how the other will react and we are well aligned with respect to whatever goal or project we are working on.

That kind of comfortable relationship we often summarise in one small word: trust.

But in order for me to determine how much to trust you and how open I can expect you to be with me, we must have a history.

We judge our relationships on past interactions, and we are usually very observant of these first interactions because we use them as a test – and the result of the test feed into our conclusions on how this relationship works.

In practical terms, this means that as a first time manager, you will need to invest time and effort in building these relationships. And when doing so, you have three basic tools at your disposal:

Your actions, your behaviours and your conversations.

In our next post, we will look closer at these three relationship building instruments.

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This is the fifth article in a series on how to lead as a first time manger. If you would like to know more, check out other articles of the first time manager series:

I have a new online training out on this: The Team Leaders Toolbox – check it out

Direction, Alignment & Commitment in 4 easy steps

January 26, 2019By Mike Hohnen

Last week, I introduced you to DAC (Direction, Alignment and Commitment), the leadership concept developed by The Center for Creative Leadership and we looked at how that can be a useful way for the first time managers (FTM) to understand what they need to focus on from a leadership perspective. In fact, this does not just apply to First Time Managers, a lot of seasoned managers could benefit from applying this thinking as well. But that is another story.

So just to recap, DAC stands for Direction, Alignment and Commitment. If you did not read my previous blog post, you can find it here. This framework is not something that one person (the leader) tells everyone to do; on the contrary, establishing DAC is a process. It happens as a result of a two-way exchange with everyone on the team. It is co-created so to speak, but often initiated by the leader.

So that is the theory we covered in the previous blog post, but if you are a newly appointed manager, you may very well be thinking: “This makes sense but where do I begin?”

It is actually not as tricky as it may seem at first. There is a tool for this. And if you can integrate it into your basic approach to leadership, you will go far. I promise.

The high Performance Model

The tool or approach is called the Drexler/Sibet high performance model; named after the two gentlemen who created it. The idea combines two schools of thought: Behavioural psychology and process theory.

From behavioural psychology, we learn that whenever humans are put in a new situation, a new project or a new workgroup or maybe just a new workday, they ask themselves 4 fundamental questions:

Why are we doing this?
Who am I going to do it with?
What are we going to do?
How are we going to do it?

And they ask them in exactly that sequence.

The first question is quite subconscious, a sensing. The second question is more of a feeling and the last two questions are more thinking questions. But it is hard for us to move meaningfully forward to the next question if the previous question has not been answered clearly for us.

From process theory, we know that processes follow an oscillating pattern. They move in regular ‘Waves’ from one extreme point to its opposite and then back again. Human group processes the two extremes, which are often insecurity/uncertainty to security/certain.

When we combine these two, we get the Drexler/Sibet high performance model and it looks like this:

The first step is all about orientation. Establish a clear purpose and meaning with whatever it is we are about to do.

Who is on this team and do they know each other or not?

If not, we need to find a way to break the ice and let people get to know each other. We are wired in our brains to be slightly distrustful of people we do not know. It is a basic survival precaution that dates back to our cave origins. If we are going to collaborate on a job/project, we need a minimum of trust. We start to build trust as we get to know each other. It is very simple.

If we know each other on the team, we need to check in. Just a quick round. How are we all feeling in general and what are maybe our expectations for this job or venture or day? This is all about what Blanchard (Situational Leadership) would call our psychological readiness level.

Then we need to agree on the goals and roles. What are we trying to achieve and what roles do we each have that will contribute to us achieving this?

And finally, we need to have a discussion and establish agreement, so how are we going to approach this?

Once we have been through these first four fundamental steps, we arrive at the bottom of the V model a point where we all have clarity and certainty about what we are about to embark on.

As the leader, you have now done 90% of your work. You have set direction, alignment and commitment. Lean back and let them decide the details of (tasks and timeframes, etc.) how they are going to do it. That will be quite easy if we have done the ground work well.

Observe and offer guidance only if needed as they execute, and only when they are done do you step back in and facilitate a reflection, so how did it go? What did we learn and what would we do different next time? You can see my previous post on goal grids and learning for more on this.

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This is the fourth article in a series on how to lead as a first time manger. If you would like to know more, check out other articles of the first time manager series:

I have a new online training out on this: The Team Leaders Toolbox – check it out

First time manager – The challenges

April 13, 2022By Mike Hohnen

Research conducted by the Center for Creative Leadership has identified a number of challenges that first time mangers (FTM) have in common. You can read the full list here. I have chosen to focus on the top one because you could argue that the rest of the issues are all sub issues that arise from the same overall challenge:

Adjusting to People Management/Displaying Authority

The First Time Manager has been used to achieve results through a high degree of control over themselves. They set goals and manage their time and effort in such a way as to reach them. That is exactly what has drawn attention to them in the first place and is the reason they have now been promoted to their first management position.

But the way they ‘control’ themselves is not going to work on others. They need to learn to switch from control to influence And that is a very different approach.

“If you knew how many times I have told them to do that”

But as they eventually work out, telling isn’t leading.

So more than anything, it is a mindset shift. Understanding and accepting that we cannot control other people, we can only try to influence them. And the degree to which we are successful in our influencing will reflect back on how well we end up doing as a team and ultimately that will reflect back on our image as managers and leaders.

So what does it take to influence other people?

First, our new FTM needs to understand that people do whatever they do because it is meaningful to them. The only way to get people to do something they consider meaningless is by forcing, threatening or bribing them. But none of these ‘instruments’ produces particularly happy team members.

So we need to focus on making whatever we are trying to do meaningful to them. One way to think about that is to use the DAC framework also developed by the Center for Creative Leadership. DAC stands for Direction, Alignment and Commitment. (https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/make-leadership-happen-with-dac-framework/) That means establishing agreement on what we are trying to achieve as a team (Direction); Coordinating and integrating the different aspects of the job so that it all fits together and serves the agreed direction (Alignment); Establishing a collective desire and responsibility for succeeding with the task (Commitment).

So what does DAC look like in reality?

	Happening	Not Happening
Direction	There is a vision, a desired future, or a set of goals that everyone buys into. Members of the collective easily articulate how what they are trying to achieve together is worthwhile. People agree on what collective success looks like.	There is a lack of agreement on priorities. People feel as if they are being pulled in different directions. There is an inertia; people seem to be running in circles.
Alignment	Everyone is clear about each other’s roles and responsibilities. The work of each individual/group fits well with the work of other individuals/groups. There is a sense of organisation coordination and synchronisation.	Things are in disarray; deadlines are missed, rework as required, there is a duplication of effort. People feel isolated from one another. Groups compete with one another.
Commitment	People give the extra effort needed for the group to succeed. There is a sense of trust and mutual responsibility for the work. People express a considerable passion and motivation for the work.	Only the easy things get done. Everyone is just asking “what’s in it for me?” People are not #walking the talk”.

Now you may be thinking that is all well and good on paper but that must be really hard to achieve – how on earth does one do that as an experienced manager let alone a rookie?

Actually there is a very cool process for that.

I will show you next week.

With a bit of practice this will become second nature to you – and you will see a very different kind of team performance as a result.

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This is the third article in a series on how to lead as a first time manger. If you would like to know more, check out other articles of the first time manager series:

I have a new online training out on this: The Team Leaders Toolbox – check it out

The big leap… from team member to team leader

January 26, 2019By Mike Hohnen

In my previous post, we looked at how the first time manager (FTM) is often neglected when it comes to training and development. In this post, we’ll start identifying some of the challenges that the FTM has.

The scenario is more or less the same in most types of service organisation. Due to a promotion or an organisational shuffle, we find ourselves needing a supervisor or team leader on one of our customer facing teams. We are busy. The position needs to be filed fast so our first reaction is to look at the team and see who we have that could jump in.

Who gets promoted to their first managerial position?

And often we find, what we think, is just the right person for the job. The criteria we use to evaluate this are typically this person’s performance. We pick a high performing team member with a lot of personal drive and on top of that, it is someone who is well organised – In short, it’s a no-nonsense person who gets the job done. The underlying implicit logic is that they will be a good example for the others to follow.

And they are good at managing … themselves. But they do not necessarily have a clue about how to manage other people. In fact, often they are distinctly bad at managing other people because they are too self focused.

The typical pitfall’s

They are used to being successful and are therefore determined to also do well as FTMs. Often this means that they either drive their team colleagues too hard or they end up driving themselves too hard as they try to compensate for other people’s lack of performance. And the worst of them do both. But obviously neither works very well and often ends up producing stress reactions in themselves and/or their colleagues.

They see performance as being all about excelling at certain (hard) skills. So their first reaction in their new role is often to look for tools or skills that they can learn that will equip them to do a better job. I see this in virtually every workshop I conduct when I start the day by clarifying what expectations the participants have. Top of the list at each table is nearly always – learn more tools to manage better.

It all about changing perspective

But the reality is that it is not so much a question of new tools and techniques, but more about perspectives. Evolving from a high performing team member into a successful FTM is all about shifting perspectives.

Instead of focusing on themselves as they have been used to, they now need to understand that it is only by focusing on the success of their colleagues that they themselves will be seen as successful.

As I have written about earlier on this blog – the name of the game is engagement. What the first time manager needs to learn and develop more than anything else is the ability to provide an engaging environment in which their colleagues thrive.

Sounds simple when you frame it like this but that is actually quite a big shift.

And the puzzling reality is that most of them are left to figure it out for themselves.

Next week we will look at some more challenges that are typical for FTMs and then in future posts, some ideas and tips on how we can get better at providing the support that this group needs.

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This is the second article in a series on how to lead as a first time manger. If you would like to know more, check out other articles of the first time manager series:

I have a new online training out on this: The Team Leaders Toolbox – check it out

Millennial, the “impossible” generation

May 18, 2016By Mike Hohnen

From Mike Hohnen: This week I would like to introduce you to Hanh Lam. For the past two months, Hanh and I have been collaborating around the management and development of my website. During that period, we have had a focus on leadership as a theme on the blog. So I have invited Hanh to guest blog this week and give her perspective.

Author’s note: First of all, I want to thank Mike for asking me to do this guest post on his blog. Working together, we talk a lot about leadership and management. Mike once told me people asked if he found it difficult to work with millennials. As I happen to be a millennial, here is a post to address the impossibleness of my generation.

Millennials were born and raised in the age of information and technology, in a globalized world, in times of peace but also in some ways, times of crisis. We are tech-savvy, we have itchy feet, and we are naïve and foolish. We are “Generation Me”, “Trophy kids”, “Peter Pan Generation” or “pragmatic idealists”. There are so many other ways or words people use to describe generation Y. In short, we are really different. We dress differently, we think differently, and we live/work differently.

With access to computer and the Internet from an early age, we receive information and communicate through multiple sources and platforms. We learn and process knowledge from a more global perspective. Being more exposed to traveling and other cultures, we are also more liberal.

Many people think we are selfish, greedy narcissists. That is only partly true with a proportion of generation Y. The reason behind this is that we were born in a time when consumerism was booming. Everything we have is in adequacy and abundance. And our parents, mostly Baby Boomers and Gen X, who lived through wars, recessions, had sacrificed a lot for us to have better lives. And some of us just got accidentally and unintentionally spoiled.

However, most of us aren’t like that. Millennials have already taken over around 50% of the workforce. We have been, and will be, changing the world in every way possible, and for the better. We are responsible global citizens. We care deeply about global issues and we take actions. We learn and adapt fast; we are also very versatile with change.

But, we are also lost… Growing up in a globalized world, we question our identity and doubt about our core values. We do not want a stable, secure life like older generations, so we struggle at times to find our purpose in life. Generation gap probably hasn’t hit any generation as hard as it has us. Millennials live and grow in a fast-paced, constantly changing world. So we get lost and disoriented…quite often.

With the relentless and restless spirit of generation Y, we get lost but we are foolish enough to continue leading and pursuing the life we want. But, we could use a bit of guidance and orientation from older generations. Guidance, not imposition.

People from previous generations, who are wiser, older and more experienced, can be great mentors and advisors for us. On the other hand, we youngsters can show you a thing or two, a different perspective on things, a different side of a world we are living in, a different way to do things. It can be a wonderful learning experience and growing opportunity for both sides if you are patient and open-minded enough to get to know us, listen to us and most of all, grow with us.

Millennials and leadership

Okay so basically we are a bunch of energetic, complicated, crazy youngsters. How does leadership work with us? Or how can you lead or manage us?

Millennials can make great leaders. No doubt. Generation Y is full of ideas and fresh perspectives. We don’t really settle; we always look for a better solution and change. We are determined and naïve enough (yes) to make bold decisions and take risks. We are not afraid to tumble. “Stay hungry, stay foolish” has been pretty much our motto.

And from our yearning to learn, change and grow, comes innovations. Our positive energy and restless spirit are contagious. With us, there is neither boss nor manager. We lead by inspiring, motivating and being part of the team.

If you have millennials as part of your team, depending on your mindset and approach, it can either be the worst nightmare imaginable, or the best management experience of your career. So, how can people deal with us? Well, don’t.

– Give us something meaningful at work, a purpose, and we will stop calling it work. We will live it. A purpose gives us a sense of belonging and we will commit ourselves to the cause you stand for.

– Don’t micro-manage us. Instead, give us the freedom and flexibility to learn, explore and try things our ways. You will be amazed with the ideas we come up with.

– Give us some challenges. We are action junkies and we get bored super fast sitting in cubicles doing paperwork or running errands. Believe in us and maybe let us be in charge of a big project. This will make us feel really valued and respected. We will be even more creative, responsible and engaged.

– Allow us to learn and grow. We love learning and developing ourselves. We will be more likely to choose and engage at a workplace that provides us with training opportunities and mentorship rather than a higher-paid position doing endless repetitive work.

– Listen to us and open your mind. We might be young and inexperienced, but that is actually our advantage. We are curious and we have different views and opinions. If you are patient enough to listen to us and our ideas, we will help you “unstuck” and show you a new way of doing things. Don’t be afraid to change and accept to be challenged.

So after all, Millennial isn’t impossible at all. If you just change your mindset and approach and allow us to thrive, we are actually the “I’m possible” generation.

Exceeding expectations… of your followers

May 6, 2016By Mike Hohnen

Your success as a leader is closely associated with your ability to manage and live up to the expectations… of your followers.

We all know that we need to live up to or preferably exceed customer expectations.

But do we also understand that exactly the same mechanisms apply to the expectations of our followers?

ETC

From behavioural psychology, we know that there are three components that are important for humans when they evaluate an experience.

Emotions, trust and control.

Emotions influence what we remember, how we score encounters and the decisions we make. We all have explicit memories that we access about events, and implicit, or unconscious, emotional memories that characterise our feelings during those events. Emotionally charged episodes (both positive and negative) are often easily recalled.

Trust is a primitive psychological variable that is essential to any robust and enduring relationship. Without trust, there is often no engagement, only negative feelings such as anxiety and frustration. With trust comes a sense of comfort.

Control over one’s environment and knowledge of how events are going to evolve are fundamental psychological needs. Research shows that feelings of control (or lack thereof) can affect one’s health.

Control plays out in two forms: behavioural and cognitive.

Behavioural control means letting people have a say in how they do things (autonomy); and cognitive control is created by conveying information about the process or the outcome you can expect, i.e. as few negative surprises as possible.

What do they expect?

So with all this in mind, what are the expectations around you as a leader?

According to Mastering Leadership a book by Robert J. Anderson and William A. Adams, leaders need to understand that there are two sets of expectations: Explicit and implicit.

Explicit expectations are fairly straightforward. They are typically about accountability, responsibility, results, strategy and execution. The explicit expectations may even be listed in our job description.

But when your followers chose to follow you as a leader, they have implicit expectations in return for that followership. These expectations are typically about competence, fair treatment, commitment, engagement, listening, acting on suggestions, and providing inspiration, meaning, and direction.

But there is not a given list and it will vary from person to person.

Depending on how well you understand these expectations, you will influence their Emotions, Trust and sense of Control and thus ultimately their engagement.

How do you know what the implicit expectations are? Well that is exactly the point, you probably don’t. Because that is the nature of implicitness, they are not vocalised because they assume that you know…

So you need to ask.

Meaning you need to start a series of conversations with the people you lead with the aim to uncover their expectations – what do they need from you?

Eventually the goal is to make the implicit explicit, and then you will positively reinforce the three parameters: Emotion, Trust and Control.

And that is the way to generate a high level of engagement!

Change your mind and grow

April 13, 2022By Mike Hohnen

In my previous post, we looked at two very different ways of seeing the world of work: Transactional and Transformational.

So the next obvious question is why don’t more companies teach their leaders to be transformational?

Organizations have grown skilled at developing individual leader competencies, but have mostly ignored the challenge of transforming their leader’s mind-set from one level to the next. Today’s horizontal development within a mind-set must give way to the vertical development of bigger minds.
___John McGuire and Gary Rhodes Transforming Your Leadership Culture, Center for Creative Leadership

The challenge is that being transformational is not a skill. It’s a way of making sense of the world.

So it is not a question of adding more skills and competencies. What is needed is a different way of thinking.

As human beings and as leaders, we can develop ourselves fundamentally in two different ways. We can add skills and tools to our toolbox, if you like. We often call that horizontal development.

The other dimension of our development is vertical. It is about our growth as human beings. We go through different stages of growth from when we’re born; and these stages are, first and foremost, about how we understand the world. How do we make sense of what is happening around us?

These vertical developmental stages are very apparent when we observe small children, in whom each stage happens over a relatively short time. So, we easily notice the difference.

With grown-ups, it’s slower, and at some points, most of us stagnate at some levels.

It was the Swiss child psychologist, Jean Piaget, who was the pioneer in this area. His work has since been followed-up by researchers such as Jane Loevinger and later Susanne Cook-Greuter.

More recently, Bill Tolbert and Robert Kegan at Harvard, have both worked on grown-up vertical development and what that means in a leadership context.

Kegan describes that grown-ups typically have the possibility to develop in three overall stages. The first one he calls ‘dependent and conform,’ the next one ‘independent and achievement-oriented,’ and the last one is ‘interdependent and collaborative’.

Depending on which of these stages of development you find yourself in as a leader, your approach to a number of classical leadership competencies will be very different.

If we take some of the typical issues that we identify as leadership competencies, they could be strategic thinking, change management, conflict management, and leadership across boundaries.

And depending on where one is in one’s development, one will approach each of these very differently. In the figure below, you will see illustrations of the three developmental levels and how they are handled at each level.

Competencies	Dependent – conformer	Independent – achiever	Interdependent – collaborator
Strategic thinking	– Short-term view – Tactical tasks – Black and white – Either/or – High need for certainty	– Medium-term view – Sees is parts of the system – Sees is some patterns and connections	– Long-term view – Sees many shades of grey – Sees many patterns and connections – Accepts uncertainty as the norm
Leading change	– Change to come from above – Needs and trusts authority to give direction – High need for certainty	– Has own views about best change – Sees the mechanics of change needed – Success is achievement of individuals and teams	– Change is a collaborative process – Comfortable with ambiguity – Success means realisation of a shared vision
Conflict	– To be avoided – Authority is in charge – Feels torn by conflict	– Worked out behind closed doors – Produces winners and losers	– Healthy view together more viewers – Something to be encouraged – Increases learning and performance
Leading across boundaries	– Trusts analysing people you know – Them versus us – Distrust of outsider	– Able to think from others’ perspectives – Horse trades for favours – Focused on success of own self	– Sees the world through others’ perspectives to understand more – Shares knowledge across boundaries – Works in partnership with other functions

If you look more closely at the matrix, you will also see that this is where we find the key as to why we are not seeing as much transformational leadership as we maybe would like.

It’s only at the third stage of development in Kegan’s model, the one that is called ‘collaborative and interdependent,’ that the leader has a mindset that enables a transformative approach — the short explanation as to why this is so, is that, in the two earlier stages, the leader is often more concerned with himself.

The first stage, the dependent stage, is all about fitting in and conforming to the prevailing culture.

In the next phase, independent and achievement-oriented, it’s all about the leader being so oriented towards his own achievement that he risks falling into the trap that it’s all about his project: Better results, market share, new products, or whatever. The leader really wants to succeed personally, often in order to further his career or qualify for a bonus, or whatever. But, because it then becomes all about him and his project, he often doesn’t manage to get everybody else with him. (Followers will engage around ‘our’ project but will tend to disengage if it is just about ‘your’ project.)

It’s only when you, as a human being, have developed to the stage where you are more inclusive and collaborative, have a higher tolerance of others, and are not as focused on yourself – and your personal success – that you actually are capable of inspiring everybody else around you to contribute to what everyone will see as ‘our’ project.