Growing Better Leaders

The increasingly complex and chaotic marketplace poses an urgent need to grow better leaders. Companies that seek to maintain competitive advantages require strong leadership.

Leaders remain confused, however, about how to strengthen their competencies. Formal training and higher education haven’t sufficiently prepared them for all of the 21st century’s disruptive innovations and global challenges. While some leaders thrive, others barely survive. Many of today’s executives feel as though they’re in over their heads.

In their quest to unlock leadership potential, organizations invest millions in assessments, training programs and executive coaching. These investments seem to pay off, at least for a while. But for long-term growth, organizations must understand leadership’s developmental stages.

How Leaders “Grow Up”

Like all maturing adults, leaders progress through sequential developmental levels. At each stage, adults gain greater awareness and cognitive capacities. Similarly, leadership effectiveness improves as one develops, matures and expands consciousness.

At the higher stages of development, leaders become more successful and their businesses enjoy greater results. With increased leadership effectiveness, there’s a 38% probability of seeing higher business performance, according to one study. A 38% leverage is well beyond most companies’ profit margins, so developing capable leaders should be a priority.

Developmental-stage theory is relatively new and even more cutting-edge when applied to leadership programs. Rather than focusing on training, skills and knowledge, it involves expanding one’s mindset and “forms of mind” (defined by New Zealand leadership coach Jennifer Garvey Berger as our changing capacity to cope with complexity, multiple perspectives and abstraction).

Yet, few leadership-development initiatives address the inner game: how leaders perceive, find meaning, make decisions and handle complexities.

Robert J. Anderson and William A. Adams, authors of Mastering Leadership: An Integrated Framework for Breakthrough Performance and Extraordinary Business Results (Wiley, 2015), applied developmental-stage theory to create the Leadership Circle Profile, a 360°assessment tool that measures leaders’ developmental stages. Founders of The Leadership Circle consultancy, they also developed The Universal Model of Leadership.

Similarly, William B. Joiner and Stephen A. Josephs use developmental-stage theory as the foundation for Leadership Agility 360°, their 360° assessment tool, as explained in Leadership Agility: Five Levels of Mastery for Anticipating and Initiating Change (Jossey-Bass 2007).

These assessment tools are based on decades of psychological studies and are designed to accurately measure leadership effectiveness and identify a leader’s developmental stage. More than descriptive, the stages point to leadership behaviors that help target how to coax a leader to the next level.

By identifying stages of progressive development, we can create behavioral action plans and use coaching to expand a leader’s form of mind and modify behavior. Progressive organizations have adopted this strategy to promote leadership agility.

About Dr. Maynard Brusman…

Consulting Psychologist & Executive Coach   
Emotional Intelligence and Mindful Leadership Consultant  

Are you a purpose-driven executive leader who wants to be more effective at work and get better results? Emotionally intelligent and mindful leaders build trust, and inspire people to become fully engaged with the vision and mission of their company. They build coaching cultures of positive engagement.

Over the past thirty-five years, I have coached hundreds of leaders to improve their leadership effectiveness. After only 6 months, one executive coaching client reported greater productivity and more stress resiliency helping her company improve revenues by 20%. While this may depend on many factors most of my clients report similar satisfaction in their EQ leadership competence leading to better business results.

You can choose to work with a highly seasoned executive coach to help facilitate your leadership development and executive presence awakening what’s possible.   

For more information, please go to http://www.workingresources.com, write to [email protected], or call 415-546-1252.  

Posted by Maynard Brusman on October 26, 2016 in Leadership Development | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: emotional intelligence, executive coaching, grow better leaders, leadership development

Motivating People for Full Engagement

How do you bring out the best in people? Managers want their people to achieve excellence at work. Leaders and management alike know that without people motivated for peak performance, companies will fail to succeed.

To achieve peak performance — a combination of excellence, consistency and ongoing improvement— one must find the right job, tasks and conditions that match an employee's talent. Therefore, facilitating the right fit becomes one of a manager’s most crucial responsibilities.

Disengaged Or Bored?

Disengaged employees often appear to lack commitment. In reality, we all crave engagement. No one enjoys working without passion or joy.

While many factors cause disengagement, the most prevalent is feeling overwhelmed — or, conversely, underwhelmed. Disconnection and overload pose obstacles to performance, yet they often go undetected or ignored because neither qualifies as a disciplinary issue.

Meanwhile, managers try to work around such problems, hoping for a miraculous turnaround or a spark that reignites energy and drive. They try incentives, empowerment programs or the management “fad du jour,” but with only temporary success.

While it’s impossible to create “flow” moments all day long, any manager can greatly improve on the ability to help people achieve peak performance.

Use Brain Science to Bring Out the Best

While no management guru has found the golden key to unlocking the full panoply of human potential at work, research sheds new light on possibilities.

As far back as a 2005 Harris poll, 33 percent of 7,718 employees surveyed believed they had reached a dead end in their jobs, and 21 percent were eager to change careers.

The situation isn't improving. In 2014, a survey revealed 52.3 percent of Americans were unhappy at work.

When so many people are moving from one job to the next, something is wrong. They clearly have not landed in the right outlets for their talents and strengths.

The better the fit with the job, the better the performance. People require clear roles that allow them to succeed, while also providing room to learn, grow and be challenged.

5 Steps to Boost Performance

Dr. Edward M. Hallowell, author of Shine: Using Brain Science to Get the Best from Your People (Harvard Business Press, 2011), synthesizes research into five steps managers can apply to maximize employees’ performance.

Cited as “The Cycle of Excellence,” it exploits the powerful interaction between an individual’s intrinsic capabilities and extrinsic environment:

Select: Put the right people in the right job, and give them responsibilities that “light up” their brains.
Connect: Strengthen interpersonal bonds among team members.
Play: Help people unleash their imaginations at work.
Grapple and Grow: When the pressure’s on, enable employees to achieve mastery of their work.
Shine: Use the right rewards to promote loyalty and stoke your people’s desire to excel.

Step 1: Select

Examine how three key questions intersect:

At what tasks or jobs does this person excel?
What does he/she like to do?
How does he/she add value to the organization?

Set the stage for your employees to do well with responsibilities they enjoy.

Step 2: Connect

Managers and employees require a mutual atmosphere of trust, optimism, openness, transparency, creativity and positive energy.

A positive working environment starts with how the boss handles negativity, failure and problems. They set the tone and model preferred behaviors and reactions. Employees take their cues from those who lead them.

To encourage connection:

Look for the spark of brilliance within everyone.
Encourage a learning mindset.
Model and teach optimism.
Learn about each person.
Treat everyone with respect, especially those you dislike.
Meet people where they are; most will do their best with what they have.
Seek out the quiet ones, and try to bring them in.

When people are floundering, the last thing they need is to have their flaws and mistakes spotlighted. Instead, make sure you understand the real issues.

Step 3: Play
Play isn’t limited to break time. Activities that involve imagination light up our brains and produce creative thoughts and ideas. A playful attitude boost morale, reduce fatigue and bring joy to workdays.

Encourage imaginative thinking:

Ask open-ended questions.
Encourage everyone to produce three new ideas each month.
Allow for irreverence or goofiness (without disrespect).
Reward new ideas and innovations.
Encourage people to question everything.

Step 4: Grapple and Grow

Help people engage imaginatively with tasks they like and at which they excel. Encourage them to stretch beyond their usual limits. If tasks are too easy, people fall into boredom and routine without making any progress or learning anything new.

The job of a manager is to be a catalyst when people get stuck, offering suggestions but letting them work out solutions.

Step 5: Shine

Every employee should feel recognized and valued for what he or she does. Recognition should not be reserved solely for a group’s stars.

When a person is underperforming, consider lack of recognition a cause. An employee usually won’t voice feeling undervalued, so you must look for subtle signs. In addition:

Catch someone doing something right. It doesn’t have to be unusual or spectacular.
Be generous with praise. People will pick up on your use of praise and start to perform for themselves and each other.
Recognize attitudes, as well as achievements. Optimism and a growth mindset are two attitudes you can single out and encourage. Look for others.

When you’re in sync with your people, you create positive energy and opportunities for peak performance. Working together can be one of life’s greatest joys—and it’s what we’re wired to do.

Are you working in a company where executive coaches provide leadership development to help leaders put strengths-based leadership into action? Does your organization provide executive coaching for leaders who need to build a company culture built on trust? Transformational leaders tap into their emotional intelligence and social intelligence skills to create a more fulfilling future.

One of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself is “Am I a transformational leader who inspires individuals and organizations to achieve their highest potential, flourish at work, experience elevating energy and achieve levels of effectiveness difficult to attain otherwise?” Emotionally intelligent and socially intelligent organizations provide executive coaching to help leaders create a culture where respect and trust flourish.

Working with a seasoned executive coach and leadership consultant trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-i 2.0, Hogan Lead, CPI 260 and Denison Culture Survey can help leaders nurture strengths-based conversations in the workplace. You can become an inspiring leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become fully engaged with the vision, mission and strategy of your company or law firm.

Working Resources is a San Francisco Bay Area executive coaching and leadership development firm helping innovative companies and law firms develop emotionally intelligent and mindful leaders. We help build coaching cultures of positive engagement.

...About Dr. Maynard Brusman

Dr. Maynard Brusman

Consulting Psychologist and Executive Coach|
Trusted Advisor to Executive Leadership Teams
Emotional Intelligence & Mindful Leadership Workplace Expert

I coach leaders to cultivate clarity, creativity, focus, trust, and full engagement in a purpose-driven culture.

Dr. Maynard Brusman is a consulting psychologist and executive coach. He is the president of Working Resources, a leadership consulting and executive coaching firm. We specialize in helping San Francisco Bay Area companies select and develop emotionally intelligent leaders.

Maynard is a highly sought-after speaker and workshop leader. He facilitates leadership retreats in Northern California and Costa Rica.

“Maynard Brusman is one of the foremost coaches in the United States. He utilizes a wide variety of assessments in his work with senior executives and upper level managers, and is adept at helping his clients both develop higher levels of emotional intelligence and achieve breakthrough business results. As a senior leader in the executive coaching field, Dr. Brusman brings an exceptional level of wisdom, energy, and creativity to his work.” — Jeffrey E. Auerbach, Ph.D., President, College of Executive Coaching

The Society for Advancement of Consulting (SAC) awarded rare "Board Approved" designations in the specialties of Executive Coaching and Leadership Development. Alan Weiss, Ph.D., President, Summit Consulting Group

Are you an executive leader who wants to be more effective at work and get better results?

Did you know that research has demonstrated, that the most effective leaders model high emotional intelligence, and that EQ can be learned? It takes self-awareness, empathy, and compassion to become a more emotionally intelligent leader.

Emotionally intelligent and mindful leaders inspire people to become fully engaged with the vision and mission of their company. Mindful leadership starts from within.

I am a consulting psychologist and executive coach. I believe coaching is a collaborative process of providing people with the resources and opportunities they need to self manage, develop change resiliency and become more effective. Utilizing instrumented assessments - clients set clear goals, make optimal use of their strengths, and take action to create desired changes aligned with personal values.

I have been chosen as an expert to appear on radio and TV, MSNBC, CBS Health Watch and in the San Francisco Chronicle, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Time, Forbes and Fast Company.

Over the past thirty-five years, I have coached hundreds of leaders to improve their leadership effectiveness.

After only 6 months, one executive coaching client reported greater productivity, and more stress resiliency helping her company improve revenues by 20%. While this may depend on many factors most of my clients report similar satisfaction in their EQ leadership competence leading to better business results.

You can choose to work with a highly seasoned executive coach to help facilitate your leadership development and executive presence awakening what’s possible.

For more information, please go to http://www.workingresources.com, write to [email protected], or call 415-546-1252.

Subscribe to Working Resources Newsletter: http://www.workingresources.com

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Posted by Maynard Brusman on October 19, 2016 in Leadership Development | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mindful Leadership and Awe

Awe

The topic of awe has increasingly been in the press, along with mindfulness and compassion. Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at UC Berkeley, has demonstrated that awe leads to greater humility, curiosity, innovation, happiness, and a desire to contribute to the greater good in our troubled world. That makes it a pretty natural fit for the modern workplace.

My executive coaching clients frequently tell me they want to work in an awe inspired culture with greater innovation and better working relationships. We generate ideas on how to make that happen.

Awe is often described as an increased awareness of beauty and mystery, and it’s most commonly induced when we are among natural wonders or with inspiring leaders. Most of the research on awe has focused on taking people out into nature, and documenting better stress tolerance and an increase in creativity.

Keltner believes relying on aesthetic principles helps people become more curious and better at scientific reasoning. Awe triggers a sense of wonder.

The challenge according to Keltner, is how to build mini “awe interventions” throughout the day in order to create a shift in perspective. Daily awe walks also could benefit CEOs, executives, and employees, especially if the workplace environment is not conducive to awe.

Awe interventions include:

Awe journaling while at work—a 5-minute break during lunch to meditate on what’s just outside your window or across your building. This exercise could be related to nature or people. It’s a way to document shifts in perspective and feel awe more often in daily life.
Sharing awe experiences in a group setting has met with great success. Inspiring leaders induce awe amongst the group.

Enjoying nature is key, and it’s where Keltner does most of his research. For me, my daily walks in nature are sources of awe. Observing life unfolding puts me in a state of calm reflection, and I notice my internal thoughts helping me shift my mindset and gain new perspectives.

Some of my most creative ideas are generated when I am in a state of flow working out, biking, kayaking, or going river rafting and having fun. Leading leadership retreats in Northern California, and participating in outdoor ecology travel adventures in beautiful locations like Costa Rica, crossing the Sahara Desert in Africa, and running on the Great Wall of China fuel my curiosity, keeps my body in motion, mind engaged, and elder spirit young.

I taught a self-management class for fifteen years. Some of my most appreciated strategies were to focus on your strengths, savor the present moment, take baby steps, pace yourself, and the power of the environment as a trigger. On those days when I prefer to watch CNN rather than work out I put on my well-worn cargo shorts, “Darn Tough Socks” and comfy trail shoes and get out into nature.

Once I start hiking everything changes and I feel life is good. I even get to have some great conversations with neighbors who also live on our beautiful mountain in Northern California.

I purposely don’t track my steps with any technological device wanting to be fully present. I enjoy the quiet, inner peace, and not being connected to outside distractions only listening to my heart trusting my inner wisdom.

Are you old enough to remember my namesake Maynard G Krebs in “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis” TV show? Monitoring your workout progress with technology or some other method for many is a super idea, but for me it seems like too much work!

Do you create the intention to focus on creating more present moments in your life filled with awe?

About Dr. Maynard Brusman…  

Consulting Psychologist & Executive Coach    
Emotional Intelligence and Mindful Leadership Consultant    

Are you a purpose-driven executive leader who wants to be more effective at work and get better results? Emotionally intelligent and mindful leaders build trust, and inspire people to become fully engaged with the vision and mission of their company. They build coaching cultures of positive engagement.   

Over the past thirty-five years, I have coached hundreds of leaders to improve their leadership effectiveness. After only 6 months, one executive coaching client reported greater productivity and more stress resiliency helping her company improve revenues by 20%. While this may depend on many factors most of my clients report similar satisfaction in their EQ leadership competence leading to better business results.  You can choose to work with a highly seasoned executive coach to help facilitate your leadership development and executive presence awakening what’s possible.     

For more information, please go to http://www.workingresources.com, write to [email protected], or call 415-546-1252.

Posted by Maynard Brusman on October 12, 2016 in Leadership Development | Permalink | Comments (0)

Developing Mindful Leaders

5 Developmental Stages

Like all maturing adults, leaders progress through sequential developmental levels. At the higher stages, they become more successful. With increased effectiveness, there’s a 38% probability of seeing higher business performance, according to one study.

The increasingly complex and chaotic marketplace poses an urgent need to grow better leaders. Leaders remain confused, however, about how to strengthen their competencies.

Rather than focusing on training, skills and knowledge, developmental-stage theory involves expanding one’s “forms of mind,” defined by leadership coach Jennifer Garvey Berger as our changing capacity to cope with complexity, multiple perspectives and abstraction.

Robert J. Anderson and William A. Adams, authors of Mastering Leadership: An Integrated Framework for Breakthrough Performance and Extraordinary Business Results (Wiley, 2015), applied developmental-stage theory to create the Leadership Circle Profile, a 360°assessment tool that measures leaders’ developmental stages.

Similarly, William B. Joiner and Stephen A. Josephs use developmental-stages as the foundation for Leadership Agility 360°, their 360° assessment tool, in Leadership Agility: Five Levels of Mastery for Anticipating and Initiating Change (Jossey-Bass 2007).

By identifying stages of progressive development, we can use behavioral action plans and coaching to expand a leader’s forms of mind and modify behavior.

Foundations of Developmental Theory

Developmental theories have been around for decades, based on 50 years of psychological research into how adults mature. The basics are summarized here:

Just as children improve their cognitive capacities with age, so do adults.
Adults, however, develop according to needs and opportunities, not because of age.
Some adults can function only at lower levels of development. A small percentage attains higher levels of awareness, wisdom and compassion.
As leaders progress through developmental levels, they expand their mental and emotional capacities and become increasingly skilled at handling complexity.
Each stage describes a form of mind: a way of thinking about responsibility, conflicts, perspective and assumptions (about self, others and the world).
Leaders may operate partially at one stage and occasionally at the next, but return to old habits before transitioning.
Transitioning requires changing one’s previous assumptions to expand consciousness.

5 Levels of Leadership

The following table explains how four leadership experts define levels of leadership behaviors and mindsets. Unfortunately, there is no uniform agreement on vocabulary, which has created a confusing array of names and definitions.

(Please note: The rows of stages aren’t equal; that is, while there may be some similarities, the stages are not defined as equivalent to others across the rows.)

Using a broad brush, we can summarize the various stages of leadership development as follows:

Level 1: Leaders who operate at the first stage of development are focused on their own need to excel, which explains why it’s referred to as an Egocentric, Opportunist or Expert stage. These leaders are acutely aware of what they need to do to succeed and how they must be perceived by others. Leadership at Level 1 therefore tends to be autocratic and controlling. Growth requires one to become aware of, and interested in, other people’s needs and to reach out co-relationally. This is a normal developmental stage for young adults, but ineffective for leaders (although 5% appear to operate at this stage).

Level 2: Leaders’ abilities to simultaneously respond to their personal needs and those of others is the hallmark of Stage 2, referred to as the Socialized or Reactive mindset by some, and the Diplomat or Achiever stage by others. At this stage, a leader plays by the organization’s rules and expectations and builds alliances, but with a focus on how to best get ahead. One’s emphasis is on the outer game to gain meaning, self-worth and security. At this stage, identity is defined from the outside-in and requires external validation in one of three ways: relationship strength, intellect or results. Leaders fall into three categories at Level 2: Complying, Protecting or Controlling (reflecting overdependence on heart, head or will). Most leaders (nearly 75%, as with most adults) operate at this level.
Level 3: Referred to as the Creative, Self-Authoring, Individualist or Catalyst stage, Level 3 is marked by personal transformation from old assumptions/beliefs and a quest for external validation to a more authentic version of the self. These leaders want to know who they truly are and what they care most about. They’re on a path to becoming visionary leaders, accepting that authenticity carries a risk of disappointing others, potential failures and hazards associated with contradicting accepted norms. Leaders trade their need to be admired for a higher purpose. They don’t feel the need to be the hero and begin to share power. About 20% of leaders operate with a Level 3 mindset.
Level 4: Called the Integral, Transforming Self, Strategist and Co-Creator stage, Level 4’s hallmark is one’s ability to focus not only on an organizational vision, but the welfare of the larger system in which a company operates. Servant leadership emerges, as one considers more interdependent components and systemic complexities.

Level 5: Level 5 is referred to as Unitive, Alchemist and Synergist. Other stages of development may be unexplored, as very few leaders grow past the fourth level. To some theorists, Level 5 encompasses a spiritual focus.

As leaders progress from one level to the next, they expand your strengths and abilities. Leaders can grow into the next developmental stage, recognizing there will be a learning curve and inherent challenges.

Leadership development programs must take developmental stages into account if organizations are to grow better leaders.