GISC Blog

When we first started our GISC newsletter, I kept a journal of what it was like to come on board as the new CEO and shared pieces of it in the newsletter, hoping to offer first-hand insight into the process of leadership transition.  We value transparency in organizations and wanted to model it.  As many of you already know, I have made a decision to end my tenure as CEO, so I want to again share my experience – of the process of deciding to leave, and of helping this organization through another transition.

Recently I was reviewing a compendium of our core teachings and came across a line that described my experience in coming to awareness that it was time for me to move on.  “We follow the paradoxical theory of change, which encourages people to pay careful attention to what is going on in the present, before moving to change it in any way. “

Early last December  I injured my arm falling on a patch of black ice, and spent a few days away from writing or computers.  It occurred right around the 3 year anniversary of my first days in this role, so I spent some of my resting hours reflecting on all that has been accomplished by so many at GISC since December 2006.   It was that process of exploring where we had been and where we are now that made me realize I had accomplished the goals I’d set out for myself and had been set by others for my work at GISC.

The goals I accomplished were all collective efforts.   I was hired to move the organization through a transition from founder leadership to professional leadership.  I was hired to create a marketing vision and to build our visibility in the world. I was hired to create financial and organizational sustainability. I was hired to expand our programs and faculty. I was asked to build GISC into a larger community with a gravitational that expanded well beyond our founders. 

Some of these goals will continue to be out front of GISC leaders and others will be added, but I realized that the “unit of work” for which I had been hired was now complete.  Then I had to reflect on what I wanted to accomplish next, both at GISC and in my life, and having faced a sudden family crisis this past year I was starting to think more personally.  What and who mattered most in my life?  What did I want to make sure I attended to?  What was on my “bucket list” of things to do while I still have the energy, good health, and willingness to embark on adventure to do them?

Contemplating leaving GISC evoked so many memories of people I’ve met and come to love, of folks around the world I’ve learned from, of challenges that have helped me grow.  I thought about our concept of co-creation – how we influence and are influenced and create our experiences together.  Just as I have touched and changed GISC, so has GISC touched and changed me.  I thought with grief of the losses I’d experience by leaving.  But I cannot make space for something new without  letting go of something.

With a decision made, it has been the work of the board to move forward to hire a new leader to take GISC on to its next stage of development.  I have stayed on five months during this hiring process.  With good will from all sides, we have been moving gracefully ahead.  I have been focusing on the work of GISC as always, public speaking, filling programs, building visibility, etc. all the while preparing the staff, and leaving a history for the next leader. 

I’ll finish with one last thought on change from our compendium of knowledge.  “Change is a way of life that enables us to remain healthy and productive. “  I know that this change of role will not only create new opportunities for me but also for GISC.  I look forward to watching the next phase. 

At a workshop on social networking for small businesses run by a local chamber of commerce, the presenter was asked how many times a day should a business plan on posting to their social networking sites.  The answer was no more than 5 and it evoked a groan in the room. 

Who has time for social networking?  Who is really using it effectively?  We’re wondering where you are interacting in cyberspace?  Are you active on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Ning, Wordpress?

The statistics on increase in users on each of these channels are impressive, but if everyone is signing on because they feel they have to and not really becoming active or finding value, then the statistics are somewhat meaningless. The real question is what content or tools are valuable, either for your business or practice development or for your professional development.  How is it changing how you do business or interact with others?

We got started on advice from the marketing pros.  With participants and faculty located around the world we wanted to offer new ways for our community to interact and continue to engage with one another to share best practices, new ideas, and ongoing learning.   Just as we recommend experimentation as a way to learn new behaviors, we tried experimenting with blogging, tweeting, and linking ourselves. 

As in face to face communication, presence is key.  Making good contact requires energy and involvement.  We quickly discovered the commitment it takes on top of everything else we do.  It’s easy to lose track without a strategy and a focused prioritization.  We see and hear that others are finding the same challenges in managing their time and social networking engagement.

Now we are refocusing.  We’re looking at ways to engage our participants that offer connection and value.  We’re looking for your ideas of what information you’d like more of and how you want to see it.  We welcome your ideas. 

Rhythm,Rain,and the Blues,Listenting,Meetings

It’s been raining for days and days.  Mushrooms thrive in the fields.  I don’t.  My rhythm changes.  I don’t walk or run in the morning.  I sleep later.  I get the blues.  I read more and take less action.

I was in a bookstore the other day and saw a book in the Leadership section on the Rhythm of War. There was something about the Rhythm title and the size of the book (it was skinny) that intrigued me.  I leafed through it – sorry Barnes and Noble, I didn’t buy it.  But it talked about the rhythm of martial arts.  The rhythm of soldiers marching.  The rhythm of advance and retreat.    The rhythm of swordplay.

I studied theater – even apprenticed in a professional summer stock playhouse.  I remember watching the choreography of a swordfight for an upcoming performance.  No question – there was a powerful rhythm to it, as for a dance. 

It got me thinking about how unaware I can be about the rhythms around me all the time. The rhythm of the day’s start, the rhythm of a conversation, the rhythm of a meeting, the rhythm of my family, my organization.

I sat in a board meeting of another organization recently and noticed the rhythm of voices.  Rather than an ebb and flow, it was a constant hum.  One voice, on and on.  I believe if that one person who did all the speaking could have paid more attention to the rhythm, they might have allowed others in.  If the chair of the meeting paid more attention to the rhythm they would have noticed that the agenda was no longer in sight and only one person was participating.  I wonder if we all paid attention to the rhythm, we would have dealt with the issues in front of us rather than leaving them to the next meeting, undecided.

In music, the notes matter, but so also does the rhythm.  In golf, the club choice and swing path matters but the rhythm does as well.   This is true in a sentence, in phrasing. The words matter but without the rhythm, they mean different things – a question, a statement, an insult, a compliment.   If we know it in all these things, why do we not pay attention more in our work?

There are patterns in organizations of inter-department behavior as well that lead to the organizational culture, and to blocks in the organization’s success or the flow that leads to satisfying results.  To me, it’s learning to see the rhythms.  To pay more attention to all this other information that is right in front of us, beyond the words. 

On rainy days when the rhythm of my thinking is about being “stuck”  - stuck indoors, stuck in progress, I know I’ve got a case of the blues.    That’s okay.  I don’t slow down on my own.  And sometimes what I most need is to slow down to a crawl.  A full stop.  Take time to sit and stare at the raindrops.  Not rush to action.  Constant action isn’t a rhythm.  Act and reflect.  Speak and listen.  Speed up and slow down.  Take time for today.

The actor, Michael J. Fox had a special on television last week on Optimism.  We teach the effectiveness of facilitating change from an optimistic stance at GISC, so I stayed up to watch the special, loosely based on his recent book Always Looking Up, the title a play on his height and his attitude.  The book was a personal journey of his last 10 years since his retirement when his Parkinsons Disease made it too difficult for him to continue to film and produce a weekly TV series. 

In this TV special though, Michael explored optimism in the world.  He looked at the science of optimism, discovering after testing that he carried a gene for optimism.  (I don’t think I want to know one way or the other if I have it.  I prefer to think I do and don’t want to be proven wrong.  Does that make me an optimist or a pessimist?) 

He went to Wrigley Field in Chicago to investigate the optimism of baseball fans that come back year after year to cheer the Cubs, who have gone the longest without winning a World Series.  Yet each year the fans say “this could be the year.”

He climbed mountains in the faraway country of Bhutan, which measures Gross National Happiness rather than Gross National Product.  Interviewing the prime minister or some important leader, Fox was told that happiness is the purpose of life. (I think there’s a difference between happiness and optimism.  To me happiness is a state in the present and optimism is how you view and how you approach what is to come.  But you can only experience optimism in the present so maybe they are inextricably intertwined. )

 I was particularly intrigued by his discussion of shared optimism – like the Cubs fans. What fun would it be to go to a game if only one or two fans “believed.”  It got me thinking about the impact of shared optimism; teachers who believe their students will do well – and lo and behold they do well.  I remember studying this “self-fulfilling prophecy” in reverse – the psych experiments where the teacher is told half the students in the class are below average, half above – even though they have all tested at exactly the same level.  But after spending time in the presence of that teacher’s expectations, they start to perform at the level the teacher is expecting them to perform at.   Those students who the teacher saw as below average started to demonstrate failure rates not consistent with their true capacity. 

So if we can share optimism, can we share pessimism as well? If you bring your negative view and convince me to join you where does that take us both together? 

Of course, that makes me think of how we teach the process of leading teams and facilitating change from a stance of optimism and seeing competence.  For the first time I see it as shared optimism. It is both what I expect to see and what you come to expect to see by sharing that optimism. I believe I will see something in you individually or in our team that is working well. And of course I do.  And I share it with you so you can see it too.  That knowledge then leads you to believe that not only can you do that well but you can develop other competencies as well.  Shared optimism. 

When I talk about optimism, I get those folks who feel uncomfortable, who want me to focus on the negative, on the dark side. “Don’t sugar coat things,” they say. But that’s missing the point.  Optimism and looking for competence isn’t about putting the good in between the bad, the way I’ve heard some managers describe how they’ve been taught to give performance feedback - the complement, criticism sandwich. It’s all about what I’m looking for and in what context I put what I see. I know a leader who always says” I expect my people aren’t waking up and coming to work wanting to screw up. They want to do a good job. It’s up to me to see that they can.” So when the coffee urn isn’t kep full in the lobby he looks at what is wrong with the coffee pot first, not what is wrong with his people.

Then there are others who are quick to point out that reality is reality, if things are bad, they’re bad.  They forget the interpretation of the data is everything - the context you put it in, the decisions you make about what to do next.  You know those folks who say numbers don’t lie? Well, they do all the time. Statistics was one of my favorite courses in college because I came to see how the same data can be interpreted many ways. Of course, we need some measure of pessimism, as well.  We can’t walk out into a busy street of traffic and just be optimistic that we won’t get run over.  But if we assume we’re going to get run over, we’ll never leave the curb. Then we’ll convince others of the danger and soon we’ll be a crowd of people too afraid to move. Until an optimist comes along and says “we can do this, we just have to figure out how.”

These are difficult times for individuals, for families, for organizations, for countries.  There is plenty of danger to pay attention to. But I want to be with those who believe we can get through the challenges and want to figure out how. There is neurological research that says that that perspective will physically serve us well - making our brain function better.  That the optimism causes the neurons to fire more effectively.   That working from optimism increases the seratonin and endorphin levels in the brain which increase energy and a sense of excitement and potential, that causes us to look for opportunities and solutions. 

So for today, I’m going to take a bit of Michael J. Fox with me into my world.  I’m going to spend some time looking up. I do that in both ways Michael does – as a short person, too, I look up at most everyone around me.  But I’m also going to look at all that is possible, all that is going well, and share it with those around me.

Optimism,teamwork,performance management,Michael J. Fox