Gaining Influence

Posted on August 19, 2013 by Lisa

As a functional manager it is one thing to know that you have the information and potentially the answers to some of your organizations issues, it is quite another to influence senior or corporate management’s decisions.

In the most recent issue of the Harvard Business Review researchers Anette Mikes, Assistant Professor at Harvard Business Review along with Matthew Hall, London School of Economics and Yuval Millo, University of Leicester wrote “How Experts Gain Influence” about the findings of their 5 year study on gaining influence in an organization.

They found that in order to increase their impact, functional leaders should develop four specific competencies:

1. Trailblazing: finding new opportunities to use your expertise
This particular mode of influence involves uncovering previously unidentified issues or challenges that may prevent the organization from achieving its goals or initiatives.

2. Toolmaking: developing and deploying tools that embody and spread expertise
Basically, come up with succinct but simple tools, such as reports or visual models that can be employed cross-functionally for greater visibility, understanding and ultimately consideration.

3. Teamwork: using personal interaction to take in others’ expertise and convince people of the relevance of your own
This competency draws heavily on harnessing collective intelligence across the organization and as a result creating inclusiveness and buy in. For example, if you were creating a reporting tool (see toolmaking) great influence and support will be gained by engaging other functional managers in the design.

4. Translation: personally helping decision makers understand complex content
Keep it simple! Use your own expertise to interpret information into a usable format and actively engage yourself in the explanation.

Although these four competences identified by Mikes, Hall and Millo may seem basic and perhaps have an air of common sense, execution is often hindered by the same barriers we see to collaboration such as ego and hidden agendas. As such, this weeks Kingbridge Insight is to suggest that if you struggle with attaining influence as a functional ‘expert’ perhaps the solution is self reflection – are you allowing your personal behavioural barriers prevent you from demonstrating the competencies required to be influential in your organization?

Collaboration in Hockey?

Posted on July 8, 2013 by John

I don’t know whether it’s happened before, but for the Chicago Blackhawks, winner of the Hockey Stanley Cup, to take out an ad in the Boston Globe to thank their losing opponents, the Bruins, along with the Boston fans and the city itself for their welcome and sportsmanship, was certainly unusual.

In a sport where the joke is that it’s a fight and occasionally a game breaks out, this example of classy behavior is frankly rather inspiring. Yes, it is self serving, particularly after the strike and loss of the early part of the season, but it’s a great reminder that professional sports are entertainment and enormously influential on the culture of our society. Winning comes from skill, discipline, teamwork (and a little bit of luck), but sportsmanship builds the fan base and close games fill the stadiums and TV.

More importantly, and the Kingbridge Insight for today is that sportsmanship sends a message to the fans and community at large that respect for your opponent and collaboration in behavior and rules is what makes our society work.

Leadership based on common sense

Posted on June 24, 2013 by John

John Abele talks about how increasing complexity in business is distracting us from the ‘basics’ of leadership and value delivery.

Leadership based on common sense from Kingbridge Conference Centre on Vimeo.

Today’s Kingbridge Insight from Owner, John Abele:

“Every organization needs rules of behavior, and generally more as the organization grows. Some of those rules are to follow government laws and regulations, while others are focused on providing an environment where everybody can be most productive and enable the company to achieve its goals in a profitable and sustainable manner. The best companies are those which treat employees as responsible citizens who understand the goals of rules rather than viewing them as boxes to check.”

You don’t have to be a flea!

Posted on June 3, 2013 by Lisa

We all have some – or many – unhealthy habits that we have tried to kick. Perhaps with some we have been successful and others not so much. And for those that we have been struggling with often we settle for acceptance.

Like the fleas in this video we become trapped in a pattern of behaviour that is not only difficult to break, even when a solution (or escape) is presented to us. This not only applies to poor personal health habits but to harmful organizational habits as well. And much like the fleas these patterns can spread to the entire group.

With all the information available to us today on the dangers of unhealthy behaviour and more importantly the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, why is it still so difficult to change? In a recent article from Harvard Health Publications “Why it’s hard to change unhealthy behavior – and why you should keep trying” one of the main hurdles to healthy lifestyle changes is that they are all too often motivated by guilt, fear or regret. While experts who study behaviour agree that in order to achieve long lasting and meaningful change, self-motivation and positive thinking are the keys to success.

Studies have also shown that one of the many limiting factors to change is the nature of our goals. A specific goal such as ‘I will walk 20 minutes every day’ is far more likely to be reached than the ambiguous ‘I will get more exercise’. But don’t give yourself too many goals all at once or you may become overwhelmed and fail to achieve any of them.

Our Kingbridge Insight this week is an extrapolation of changing unhealthy behaviours to changing workplace mindset. If we are not mindful of our behavioural habits we run the risk of falling into the ‘this is the way it has always been done’ trap – and it is contagious. So ask yourself, does your behaviour encourage or stifle creativity and innovation? How can you work towards changing or improving those behaviours?

When did failure become such a bad word?

Posted on May 27, 2013 by Lisa

One of life’s most rudimentary lessons, ingrained in us from birth, is that we learn from our mistakes. Why then as adults in the business world are we conditioned to look at even the smallest failure as grounds for rebuke?

Professor James Patell at Stanford Graduate School of Business has dedicated himself to challenging this mindset through a groundbreaking graduate course called Design for Extreme Affordability. The course challenges the students to design low-cost products that can solve tough problems in the developing world. Forty students from across Stanford’s schools – engineering, medical, business and others – pair up with global partners who have concrete projects to tackle. The goal is to deliver nuts and bolts solutions, a way to implement them, and the means to sustain them over the long haul. Over the last 10 years his students have been wildly successful at innovating some life changing products, and the key to success – encouraging failure!

Patell teaches his students the art of rapid prototyping, where the idea is to develp often and fail often thus allowing them to learn from all of the the large and small errors that occur at each stage to produce an end product that not only works but has been tested throughout its development. Patell believes that many failures are a means to a great solution. And the evidence suggests he is correct. Some of the most notable innovations to come out of his students work include low cost d.light solar lanterns for villages without electricity, a childhood pneumonia treatment device (AdaptAir) that provides a custom fit for babies of all sizes to receive oxygen and the widely publicized Embrace blanket for premature infants.

So the “Kingbridge Insight” for today is a recommendation for a shift in mindset among business leaders. Rather than measuring success as an absence of failure perhaps resilience and the ability to recognize failure as an opportunity to improve should be the true measure of business excellence.

Getting Ahead by Giving

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Lisa

I am enjoying reading the book, Give and Take by Adam Grant. He is taking on the “greed is good” mentality of some CEOs and business executives, hoping to shape the leaders of tomorrow by teaching them it’s possible to give and still get ahead.

Adam Grant, is one of the youngest and most popular Professors at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton’s School of Business. He is challenging the traditional alpha style of business and is examining the surprising forces that shape why some people rise to the top of the success ladder while others sink to the bottom. In professional interactions, it turns out that most people operate either as takers, matchers or givers. Takers strive to get as much as possible from others while matchers aim to trade evenly. Givers are the rare breed of people who contribute to others without expecting anything in return. Students at the University are flocking to his classes intrigued to learn more.

As he challenges the cultural wisdom that only the strong and self interested survive, his research shows that even though there are many takers at the top of organizations it is the givers that stay on top longer. This is primarily due to them putting the team’s interest ahead of their own. When this is done the teams will reward the leader by greater status and promotions. In today’s world where there is so much complexity and need for teams to work together across the globe it becomes even more important for leaders to learn new skills, behaviours and techniques that will help them take on the role of givers who are comfortable designing successful collaborative exchanges.

Here is a short video from the Today Show where they interview Adam Grant,

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This week’s “Kingbridge Knowledge Gift”, comes from our Collaboration Institute Strategic Partner, Charles Holmes who has a great technique that can be used to create bridges between individuals when the team has strong differing perspectives.

(Exercise) – Take a flipchart page, fold it in half and then draw a picture on one side that represents your perspective of what is occurring with the issue or within the organization. Then on the other half of the page, draw your desired state of how you envision things looking. Then share the images with others and they share verbally what they see in what you have drawn. After sharing with a few people, ask those who want to share “What did you learn, from what others shared about what they saw in your drawing?”

Roots of Aliveness, Leadership as a Living Process

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Lisa

It has often been said that our span of awareness is a mile wide and an inch deep. The quality of our inner life is frequently overlooked in our efforts to cope with the daily demands and expectations of our outer life. One enabling metaphor that helps us look at this is the ecology of a tree. The outer life is symbolized by the leaves and branches – they correspond to life of reactivity and busyness- of action plans, performance goals, desired outcomes and results. Sometimes we direct our attention down a little, to the trunk and lower limbs. Here we look at structures, strategies and processes. Where we spend the least of our time is the ground underneath. Yet it is the roots and the soil that give the tree resilience and the strength to grow and weather sudden changes year after year.

Our “Kingbridge Knowledge Gift” for this week comes from, one of our strategic partners within our Collaboration Institute, Michael Jones:

The shift from focusing on the trunk and the branches to the ground beneath corresponds to a shift of awareness from a factory/ production to a more adaptive/ artful mindset. Giving our attention to the ground of being beneath an organization, a community- or a tree involves an artful process of creating form out of the ambiguous circumstances and variable conditions we find ourselves in. This includes the very precise and complex interaction among many subtle variables including energy and space as well as tone, atmosphere, rhythm and time. The language shifts from action and meaning to story, to metaphor, to felt experience and the underlying stillness that holds it all. Read More on The Roots of Aliveness

Artists in the Boardroom

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Lisa

A recent article in Fast Company magazine posed the question: Is an MFA the new MBA? Author of the article Steve Tepper points to the need for creativity in the next generation of business leaders, making the point that those trained in the role of artist (such as a graduate of fine arts) as being ideally suited for the new economic climate fraught with volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. On the one hand Tepper challenges us to literally bring an artist into the boardroom or the business planning process to see one’s organization through fresh eyes. He also offers several excellent points outlining how business leaders could strive to tap into the talent nurtured in the creative arts, those traits and skills that may be hiding in plain sight within their workforce.

Our “Kingbridge Knowledge Gift” for this week comes from Tim Dixon, one of our strategic partners within our Collaboration Institute and our Meeting Experience Architect, working with our clients to design and deliver Kingbridge Organizational Programs:

In reading this article, I was reminded of those times when I have facilitated strategic conversations about “charting a new business direction” or “engaging our employees during a significant organizational change” – when words simply weren’t enough to convey meaning. The shared understanding of the participants’ “cultural climate” was greatly enhanced during those types of leadership forum events when we were literally able to “ask an artist” what they were hearing. The use of a graphic scribe allowed us to capture the essence of the dialogue so that the organizational landscape the artist was able to record provided a visual anchor for those leaders to engage their own teams when subsequently telling the story of their new direction and initiatives. Below is an example of such a graphic representation of organizational complexity in uncertain times, which emerged during a multi-media simulation based on the metaphor “cross the desert of change”.

Another gem that can come from an arts-based orientation is a concept I picked up many years ago from a mentor and longtime thespian – Dr. Possibilities, who taught me the importance in an organizational setting for being a ‘SpectActor’. Howard Jerome – aka Dr. Possibilities and founder of the Canadian Improv Games reminds students and executives alike to play their part in the grand theatre of life or business, while aware of how one’s role serves to bring the best out of the other actors. This skill of critical self-reflection in action is what adult learning theorist Mezirow saw as pivotal to transformative learning. So let us all strive to draw upon our inner Spectator to enhance relationships in our teams and with key stakeholders, as well as seek opportunities to bring the artist into the organization to see business through a fresh set of eyes.

Un-common Sense

Posted on August 2, 2011 by John

Duncan Watts has just written a new book with the title “Everything is Obvious (Once You Know the Answer): How Common Sense Fails. Watts explores how our reliance on commons sense and the idea of what is obvious in human behavior to govern our everyday lives often translates to errors when anticipating or managing the behaviors of many individuals in a complex setting over time – such as in a corporation, a culture or a certain market.

With common sense we can rationalize just about anything into an obvious conclusion. The study of social sciences is often looked upon as unnecessary for that very reason. If a study concludes that people living in the city are more likely to own vacation home then our common sense will tell us ‘of course they are more likely to own a vacation home so they can get away from the hustle and bustle of the city and relax’. While that same study could conclude that those living in rural areas are more likely to own vacation homes and again our ‘common sense’ would kick in and tell us that ‘of course it makes sense that those in rural areas would be more likely own vacation homes, they are more relaxed and aren’t as addicted to the corporate life and convenience of the city.’ It would be seemingly obvious either way but the accuracy of the pattern can only be determined through the study of social behavior.

For example, under the guise of common sense, marketers may feel that they have a good sense of what consumers want and how to sell them more. However, their predictions are often based on their own ‘obvious’ motivations rather than the complex variety of motivations that exist within a diverse group. The same is true for any problem that falls under the umbrella of ‘social’ rather than scientific. However, as Watts points out in his book we actually have a much better grasp on the physical sciences than managing problems with a people factor such as the economy or corporate culture.

“The paradox of common sense, then, is that even as it helps us make sense of the world, it can actively undermine our ability to understand it.”

Skepticisim vs. Cynicism

Posted on July 25, 2011 by John

Often the line between skepticism and cynicism is a blurry one or not differentiated at all. When working in a group on an issue or problem, skepticism can be constructive and helpful in creating understanding and teasing out potential issues by asking the right questions. Cynicism on the other hand is poisonous and creates an impervious barrier to new ideas or potential solutions. In other words, skepticism is open to explanation and new ideas. Cynicism is closed minded and not open to change.

Many people don’t have a clear understanding of the difference between skepticism and cynicism and as such may believe that by being cynical they are merely exercising their right to disagree when in fact their cynicism has the potential to infect other members of the group, destroy the group dynamic and an opportunity to collaborate and innovate towards a solution.

Sometimes a group leader will try to control the cynics by requesting that there be no criticism. That can be just as bad in the other direction. It’s important to create an environment where everybody is accountable and open to new ideas in addition to feeling comfortable questioning and being questioned. Constructive criticism is best expressed in the form of questions. Sometimes self-criticism from the leader can set the example for others to follow.

Cynicism has the power to eliminate hope and dis-empower people, but with a small shift in attitude cynics can become skeptics and skeptics can evolve to problem solvers.

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