How to use the five elements of innovative leadership to become a more authentic leader is the focus of this five-blog series. We will explore each element in depth and provide recommended next steps. The second component of innovative leadership is how an understanding of resilience helps you become more authentic and also create a more authentic workplace.

According to the Forbes article, “Authenticity: Your Greatest Leadership Asset,” leadership guru, Warren Bennis, says: “…letting the self emerge is the essential task of leaders. Indeed, leadership is, first and foremost, all about you. People often have a misguided notion that leadership is about everyone else. But if a leader hasn’t journeyed inside first to get clear on his or her values, strengths, passion and vision, their lack of authentic grounding will cause them to behave in inconsistent ways, eroding trust and undermining their leadership effectiveness.”

The other day I met with a client who is struggling with health challenges for the first time in his life. At forty-one years old, he has been blessed with great health until back problems forced him to take a leave of absence from work He was given surgical and non-surgical treatment options to address his back condition. The non-surgical choices involved managing his stress and lifestyle as well as a daily routine of exercise and stretching. While the non-surgical option may seem easier compared to the surgical option, the underlying dilemma is facing the fact that he cannot live up to his own expectations of himself. He is young and suffering stress-related physical problems that, if he does not get under control, will likely result in chronic pain for years to come.

This week we are examining how resilience impacts authentic leadership. We define resilience as the ability to remain flexible and focused in the face of ongoing change. In my client’s case, he quite literally cannot physically remain flexible and focused.

So, what does this have to do with authentic leadership? To be a resilient leader, we need to attend to several personal elements of ourselves: our physical wellbeing, our thinking, our emotional intelligence, our sense of purpose, and our connections and support system. As an authentic leader, we must be honest with ourselves and others about what allows us to be resilient as individuals and as an organization.

As you read the Forbes reference above, it seems so simple: be true to yourself. For our leader, a major part of him being authentic is facing his physical limitations and being authentic with others about what he can and would be willing to do with regard to work schedule that will balance with his personal health needs. This man works for a large consulting firm where leaders pride themselves on their stamina, persistence, and always achieving results beyond what others could deliver—which may be part of the root of the problem. Now he must rethink who he can authentically be and face the reality of his physical limitations. Although we will all will face this at some point in our lives and careers, most of us never really think about it until a dramatic event such as taking medical leave forces us to reassess the choices we make and how we’re living. Now, my client is coming to terms with his humanness, and facing his limitations for the first time, and needing to figure out what it even means to be true to himself. Does he retain his stressful job as a consultant—the only professional job he has known? What other avenue does he have to pursue his passion and make an impact on the world?

How you can put resilience to work for you to become more authentic? Here are six questions to consider as indicators of your resilience as a leader:

1. Am I taking the actions I need to take to remain physically healthy over the longer term?
2. Do I manage my thinking throughout the day, every day (minimize negative self-talk, be gentle and kind in how I think about myself, express gratitude regularly, have reasonable expectations of myself and others, etc.)?
3. Do I demonstrate strong emotional self-awareness and self-management?
4. Do I have a sense of life purpose that inspires daily and helps me keep the less important annoyances in perspective?
5. Do I have a spiritual practice that supports my well-being?
6. Do I have a support system that supports and encourages me during good times and bad?

If you’ve answered no to any question on the list, my challenge to you is that you be honest with yourself first. If you’ve answered no, what changes can you make in the short term to move toward greater resilience? If you’ve answered no, are you honestly willing to be honest with yourself and others to move toward resilience?

As a resilient leader, you are more able to respond to the ongoing challenges of your role with clear thinking and presence. This, in turn, allows you to continue to be authentic with yourself and others around you. It also allows you to promote resilience in your workgroup so that you can ensure others are also able to perform at their highest capacity.

Authenticity is the alignment of head, mouth, heart, and feet—thinking, saying, feeling, and doing the same thing—consistently. This builds trust, and followers love leaders they can trust.

– Lance Secretan

To learn more about becoming a more authentic leader using Innovative Leadership we recommend taking leadership assessments, reading the Innovative Leadership Fieldbook and the Innovative Leaders Guide to Transforming Organizations. We also offer several workshops to help you build these skills.

Photo credit: www.flickr.com Army Medicine

How to use the five elements of innovative leadership to become a more authentic leader is the focus of this five-blog series. We will explore each element in sufficient depth and provide recommended next steps. The first component is how an understanding of developmental perspective helps you become more authentic and also create a more authentic workplace.

I had a conversation today with Colleen, a colleague, about the question of authenticity—specifically, “if I’m not transparent, am I authentic?” The basis for the question rose from Colleen’s dilemma that the more transparent she is with one of her colleagues, the greater the tension is between them. She found that with SOME people, less is more and with others more is appropriate. So, the question became: Can I be authentic and yet edit how much I share? If I edit what I say or do, how much of my authenticity is lost? Are there models to help me determine what and how much to share and in which settings?

As an analogy, we came to the easy conclusion that throughout our personal lives as we speak to children or young adults, we adjust our conversations to be age appropriate and we feel authentic adjusting our language and complexity. So, can and should we adjust our conversations in the workplace with our colleagues in the same way to match their level of development (developmental perspective) or type preferences. Adjusting conversation to match our listener’s preferences is as appropriate and authentic as adjusting conversations to match the level of development of younger or less experienced people. Not only is it appropriate, it is required to optimize our effectiveness and theirs.

Colleen and I decided that as leaders we must be authentic with ourselves. It’s not helpful to hold secrets, or be unconscious about our own inner “algorithms” or the way we make sense of the world in how we make decisions, set our ground rules, determine our goals and values, and so on. This is the lead-self component—knowing your type and the importance of introspection in getting to know ourselves more fully that we talked about in last week’s blog.

Now we turn to the lead others component. What does “authentic” look like? For this discussion we turn to the developmental perspective model for guidance.  Leading others means we need to be authentic in a way that meets others’ needs. This rule would apply whether we are talking about our stakeholders, peers, bosses, or followers.

Now let’s turn to how this applies to developmental perspecitve. We will start by defining developmental perspective/level, the term “Developmental Perspective” can be described as “meaning making,” or how you make sense of experiences. This is important because the algorithm you use to make sense of the world influences your thoughts and actions. Incorporating these perspectives as part of your interactions will inform your decisions about the blend of authentic and useful. This model of developmental perspectives can guide us in shaping our conversations with others in a way that allows us to be true to ourselves and frame conversations in a way that is helpful to others. When working with Developmental Perspective, it is important to remember there are not better or worse developmental perspectives—all are necessary to make an organization function optimally, there are, however, better and worse ways to interact based on the perspectives of those involved. People whose center of gravity is earlier (lower) tend to be more concrete, have a shorter time horizon for decision making and generally demonstrate less complex thinking. People with a later (higher) level of developmental perspective tend to be more complex thinkings, have a longer decision horizon and have more nuanced approach to leadership.

The guiding principle is that our communication must be both authentic and useful. We must be authentic and true to ourselves and communicate that is useful to the other person in order for us to collectively accomplish our desired goals. Anything we communicate that pulls us away from our goals may be authentic, but not useful. A note of caution, I’m not suggesting withholding anything that may violate ethics; rather, advocating that we share information that is helpful. In many cases, leaders I coach find that people around them struggle to understand them. In most of these cases, the leaders are expert in their fields and those around them do not share this expertise. What is most useful in these communications is to respectfully communicate to the listener at the level of detail they can understand.

The Developmental Perspective model is a complex model that allows you to augment your instincts within a structured framework, and get close enough to help us understand the communication that would be most effective. This model is quite robust and can be used in many different ways. For the purpose of this blog post, it is focused on authentic communication. For more information about this model you can refer to our brief article The Story of Jill– How an Individual Leader Developed into a “Level 5” Leader or those of leading researchers in this field, Susanne Cook-Greuter and Terri O’Fallon. Both O’Fallon and Cook-Greuter provide extensive information on their websites.

Recommendations to improve your ability to communicate authentically using the focus on developmental perspectives:

1. Read an article on developmental perspectives to gain a general understanding of the framework and your level;
2. Take the MAP assessment created by Susanne Cook-Greuter to determine your developmental perspective profile;
3. Evaluate those around you and create a map of the predominate level of your key stakeholders;
4. Create your own guidelines for how to best communicate with different levels based on the articles and links in the blog post;
5. Experiment with tailoring communications to levels appropriate for your audience;
6. Get feedback from others on the impact these experiments to gauge if you are communicating effectively.

As an innovative leader, developing yourself isn’t enough. You must also have an ability to understand others through the developmental lens and relate to them using Developmental Perspective as an important filter for interactions. When working with Developmental Perspective, it is important to remember there are not better or worse developmental perspectives – all are necessary to make an organization function optimally, there are, however, better and worse ways to interact based on the perspectives of those involved. The best and most authentic leaders understand that the role they play—and how effective they are in that role—is linked to everyone with whom they interact and work.

To learn more about becoming a more authentic leader using Innovative Leadership we recommend taking leadership assessments, reading the Innovative Leadership Fieldbook and the Innovative Leaders Guide to Transforming Organizations. We also offer several workshops to help you build these skills

Metcalf & Associates, Inc., is proudly sponsoring the third biennial Integral Theory conference, the world’s premier academic conference devoted to the field of Integral Theory and its application in both academic and professional contexts. Maureen Metcalf will be a featured panelist. The three-day conference from July 18 through July 21 will be held in San Francisco.

With over 100 presentations, the theme of the conference is “Connecting the Integral Kosmopolitan.” Dictionaries define a cosmopolitan person as one who holds a view that is “worldwide rather than limited or provincial in scope or bearing.” The Integral Kosmopolitan has this expansive understanding of the integral field—one that sees “integral” as a broad and diverse tradition comprising multiple authors, lineages, and influences. The goal of ITC 2013 is to bring together Integral Kosmopolitans to connect and engage with one another, so that they may continue to promote integral as a burgeoning academic discipline. The conference will offer students of Integral Theory, graduate students, and practitioners access to the world’s leaders in the field.

Save up to $60; offer expires May 15 – private link to register.

To learn more about Innovative Leadership we recommend taking leadership assessments, reading the Innovative Leadership Fieldbook and the Innovative Leaders Guide to Transforming Organizations. We also offer several workshops to help you build these skills.

We hope to see you at the conference!

How to use the five elements of innovative leadership to become a more authentic leader is the focus of this five-blog series. We will explore each element in sufficient depth and provide recommended next steps. The first component is how an understanding of leader type helps you become more authentic and also create a more authentic workplace.

First, understand your leadership type by taking an assessment to understand yourself; then, learn about your colleagues’ types. By knowing who you are and who they are, you can create an environment in which people are able to comfortably be themselves and create a common language where they understand one another. An environment in which people are given tacit permission to be themselves allows them to focus their energy on their skills, rather than using it to fit into an expectation and aligns individuals aligns with the culture of the overall group.

Paul, an engineering leader, is a Type six personality,(the loyalist). He is committed, reliable, hard-working, responsible, and trustworthy, and security-oriented.  .  Though he is cautious and has problems with self-doubt, he’s quite methodical and also passionate about the value his work provides to our community. He evaluates how his projects will impact his children and future generations, and is focused on building the physical infrastructure required to promote a better future. These qualities make him an exceptional engineer. He’s an excellent “troubleshooter” and can foresee problems and foster cooperation, but Paul—often running on stress—can also become defensive, evasive, and anxious.

He focuses heavily on process and has insufficient levels of empathy to be an exceptional leader of people and projects. After taking the Enneagram assessment, he was able to identify his strengths and deficiencies. By understanding his authentic type (Enneagram Type six) and building on his strengths, he has improved his leadership ability. To augment his strengths, he also needed to build the capacities where he showed limitations—one of which is the capacity to show authentic empathy. He started by trying small experiments in leading with empathy that was appropriate for his work environment. He documented these experiments in a journal that allowed him to reflect on what was blocking his success as well as what was working well.

Over time he began to receive very positive feedback that these experiments were working, and his ability to be empathetic evolved into an authentic skill. While this may never be his strongest skill, he has made great progress in understanding what others need from him and developing the skills to relate more effectively. His success is attributed to both his willingness to learn about himself and also to take corrective action to address a gap in his skills and comfort level.

Part of the challenge in building authentic leadership is learning to leverage the clarity of your introspection. You can only be authentic if you understand who you truly are. Looking inside yourself and examining the makeup of your inner being enables you to function in a highly-grounded way, rather than operating from the innate biases of uninformed decision-making.

First and foremost start by simply considering your disposition, tendencies, inclinations, and ways of being. Authentic leadership hinges on understanding the simple, native manner in which you show up in your life. One way to observe this is by examining key aspects of your inner being, often called Leader Type, which reflect a leader’s personality type. The leader personality type is an essential foundation of your personal makeup, critically influencing who you are as a leader and greatly shaping the effectiveness of your leadership. The ancient adage “know thyself” holds true as a crucial underpinning in leadership performance.

When the sixty-five member Advisory Council for the Stanford Graduate School of Business was polled several years ago on the topic of what is most important to include in the school’s curriculum, there was an overwhelming, and quite impressive, agreement that the most important thing business school graduates needed to learn was self-awareness and the resulting ability to reduce denial in their perceptions of themselves and their actions. This speaks to the emerging deep recognition that we are highlighting in authentic leaders: Leaders who are unable to manage their authentic personality quirks and biases, can derail the most progressive initiatives toward an organization’s sustainable success. The real goal is to understand who you are at your core, build on your strengths, and  manage prejudice and idiosyncrasies.

Recommendations to improve your leadership authenticity using the focus on leader type:

1. Take a personality type assessment;
2. Learn about your type;
3. Get input from others on what they think is most effective and least effective about your leadership style relative to your professional goals;
4. Do a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) assessment to evaluate how your type maps to your work;
5. Identify the strengths on which you can build, and the weaknesses and threats that may interfere with your success;
6. Create a development plan that includes defining  daily practices to support development, including introspective routines;
7. Seek assistance in accomplishing your plan and getting feedback from trusted others;
8. Make the changes you defined in your plan.

Your ability to use deep introspection relies on your development of, and a capacity for, self-understanding and self-awareness. Both allow you profound openness of personal perspective as well as a greater understanding of others. These critical traits support leaders’ abilities to self-regulate, communicate effectively with others, and encourage personal learning. Employing a deeper understanding of Leader Type for both yourself and others is a powerful tool to promote effective leadership.

To learn more about becoming a more authentic leader using Innovative Leadership we recommend taking leadership assessments, reading the Innovative Leadership Fieldbook and the Innovative Leaders Guide to Transforming Organizations. We also offer several workshops to help you build these skills

Photo credit: www.flickr.com h.koppdelaney

Maureen Metcalf, CEO and Founder of Metcalf & Associates, Inc., presented a webinar for the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce on how to move business forward by enhancing leader and employee ability to respond to continual changes and remain focused on their goals. For those interested, we are offering the presentation and the resiliency test online at no cost.

Resilience is one of the five leadership components of Innovative Leadership as described in the Innovative Leadership Fieldbook, winner of the 2012 International Book Award for Best Business Reference Book.

In leadership terms, we define Resilience as the ability to adapt in the face of ongoing change while continuing to be both fluid in approach and driven toward attaining strategic goals. In our very dynamic work environment, leaders, their employees and their organizations must be resilient to accommodate swift and continual change. The underlying premise is this: as a leader or employee, you need to be physically and emotionally healthy to do a good job. In addition to be physically and emotional health, the resilient person also has a clear sense of life purpose and strong supportive relationships. Organizations need to consist of healthy people – and that happens when leaders, culture, systems, and processes promote health during times of stress. For people and organizations, enhancing resilience requires a personal change.

Resilience is a hot topic these days as people try to figure out how to bend with the winds of economic change without breaking. The challenge is how to develop resilience or rebuild it when it gets low. This webinar provides some suggestions and basic practices of how to begin on the path of building resilience and to cultivate the ability to deal with today’s frantic pace of change and stress. If you are interested in more indepth information, we offer a half day workshop that includes comprehensive exercises to help participants build resilience.

The Columbus Chamber provides connections, resources and solutions to help area businesses thrive. Leveraging a customized, consultative approach to support members that range from small businesses to Fortune 500 enterprises, the Chamber assists in the growth of the Columbus Region economy one business at a time.

Founded nearly 130 years ago, the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce has evolved to become the largest business services organization and primary
advocate for the Columbus Region business community.

To learn more about becoming a more authentic leader using Innovative Leadership we recommend taking leadership assessments, reading the Innovative Leadership Fieldbook and the Innovative Leaders Guide to Transforming Organizations. We also offer several workshops to help you build these skills.

We share reading recommendations when we come across authors whose work is well aligned with what we believe is requried for leader success. This is one of those books we think you will really enjoy because of its depth and practicality. This new book distills practical wisdom for addressing 21st-century business challenges into six key leadership capabilities.

CEO coach and advisor Prasad Kaipa and strategy consultant Navi Radjou have been studying the concept of wise leadership since 1989. Having worked with hundreds of executives in global Fortune 500 companies and entrepreneurial ventures, they have developed a unique way to assess leadership skills and help leaders to be effective, innovative, and successful.

Based on their research, experience, and insights, these internationally admired thought leaders have written a new book that presents stories of well-known wise leaders, an integrated self-development framework, and step-by-step strategies and tools leaders can use to ignite genius within themselves, their teams, and their organizations.

In From Smart to Wise: Acting and Leading with Wisdom (Jossey-Bass, 2013), Kaipa and Radjou present a compelling argument for why intelligence, or smartness, alone won’t be sufficient to deal effectively with the escalating complexity of the 21st century. Rather, what leaders need is practical wisdom—a set of new capabilities that enable them to see the potential benefit in complexity, and to turn it into an opportunity to bring new value to their organizations.

Kaipa and Radjou show why being smart, while exhilarating, can prevent leaders from paying sufficient attention to qualities like prudence, humility, ethics, and the common good.

They identify two broad styles that characterize smart leaders— functional smart and business smart. Functional smart leaders generally excel in one field or function, such as R&D or operations; effective execution, not risk taking, is their forte. Business smart leaders are big picture thinkers, visionaries, and risk takers with a competitive drive. Both styles of smart leadership have great strengths and serious limitations.

The smart leader who evolves into a wise leader, however, is able to discern which kind of smartness is appropriate for a particular situation, and to focus on business specifics and what’s personally beneficial, while simultaneously paying attention to intangibles such as shared values, ethics, and the greater good.

Using real-life stories of leaders who have struggled or excelled in their roles, the authors illustrate how six wise leadership capabilities can be cultivated and applied.

The strategies, insights, and advice in this book enable smart leaders to cultivate wise leadership by learning how to:

• Shift one’s perspective and connect to a noble purpose. Start thinking holistically and focus on a higher purpose rather than purely on execution or strategy.
• Act authentically and appropriately. Become fully engaged in the process, yet emotionally detached from the outcome.
• Lead from any position. Learn when to lead from the front and when to let others lead and take credit.
• Decide with discernment. Make decisions that are intuitive, ethical, yet pragmatic.
• Demonstrate flexible fortitude. Know when to hold on and when to let go if the situation calls for it and is aligned with the larger purpose.
• Cultivate enlightened self-interest. Be motivated to create value and bring benefit to the greatest number of people.

The book includes a self-assessment that enables readers to measure their leadership effectiveness across six key capabilities so they know where to focus self-development efforts. For each of the six leadership capabilities, there are practical question guides, exercises, and other strategies to help leaders delve into, understand, and cultivate new skills.

If smartness was the currency of success in 20th century, wisdom will be the currency of success in the 21st century. Wisdom is grounded in ethics, shared values, and in serving a larger purpose—all of which are important qualities in today’s complex, interdependent world. Wise leadership leverages smartness for the greater good; this is achieved by balancing action with reflection and introspection.

From Smart to Wise shows us how we can achieve greater success and feel more fulfilled by thinking and acting as a wise leader.

Bill is a highly skilled leader. Self-aware, Bill makes a concerted effort to create an environment in which each of his team members can be their most effective at work. He has assembled a diverse staff with unique skills and a lot of idiosyncrasies. Bill has worked hard to help this staff of stars come together as a cohesive team.

One morning he arrived to find an obviously upset employee sitting in his office. He has a conversation with the employee who is clearly concerned about the condescending behavior of another colleague. The upset employee, Michelle, suggests that the work environment Bill created is hostile and clearly not supportive of her doing her best work. She feels belittled by her colleague and is seeking Bill’s support to ensure the office in which they work is conducive to delivering top quality service to their clients. As she leaves, Bill thinks about his leadership style. He asks himself if his style has created an environment that promotes a positive work environment for all employees. Is he allowing some people to treat others in a negative or unsupportive way? Is there anything he should do differently to promote a more productive and supportive environment? How can he create an environment that allows unique people to be themselves and at the same time work as a cohesive team? Bill’s instincts say he has created a positive environment but now he hears from a valued employee that he may not be doing as well as he thought. Fundamentally, the question for Bill becomes – is his authentic leadership style supportive of organizational success? Does he need to refine his style or develop as a leader to be both authentic and create a positive environment?

The question that comes to mind is: How can leaders be authentic and encourage others to do the same while concurrently meeting the needs of the overall team and organization?

Let’s start with a definition of authenticity from a recent Forbes article: “Learning about yourself is perhaps the single most important outcome of a powerful educational experience. Self-awareness can lead to an ever-increasing authenticity, which in turn leads to powerful leadership abilities. Authenticity is not about “accept me for what I am”; authentic leaders are self-aware, willing to adapt and change and “be who they are in service to others.” Education should be a powerful process of increasing self-awareness, of coming to know yourself and of learning the intrinsic value of who you are as a human being. . . and then understanding the need for constant change, personal growth and learning for the rest of your life.”

Now let’s turn to innovative leadership and how it can help leaders become more authentic. As you examine the pyramid you will notice five key elements. By using these elements you can become a more authentic and effective leader:

1. Understand your leadership type by taking an assessment to understand yourself; then, learn about your colleagues’ types. By knowing who you are and who they are, you can create an environment in which people are able to comfortably be themselves and create a common language where they understand one another. In an environment such as this, the balance allows colleagues to be completely who they and aligned with the culture of the overall group.
2. Understand developmental perspective and how individuals are able to take the perspective of many different levels. By understanding the level of your colleagues and meeting them where they are, you are showing the highest degree of respect and appreciation. The golden rule of authentic leadership could be “treat people as they need to be treated to perform at their best.” Since we are all unique, treating others as you want to be treated may create some significant problems in a leadership role.
3. Building resilience includes developing a strong sense of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence includes self-awareness, knowing your strengths and preferences. It also includes understanding others’ strengths and preferences, and demonstrating the flexibility to respond to another’s level appropriately.
4. Situational Analysis is, in part, your ability to adjust your communication and behavior to the cultural norms and behavioral expectations of the organization. This means you can read the situation quickly and respond accordingly. If you are an introvert and prefer to process solo, you will benefit—as will your team—when you can expand your capacity to process with the group. This is particularly helpful if you are surrounded by extroverts who process “out loud” with others. This does not mean you change your innate preference or act in a way that is not genuine, but rather you expand your ability to do both. It is a bit like learning to swing forehand and backhand in tennis. You’ll continue to have preferences, but, by expanding your abilities, you can be both authentic and agile.
5. Leadership behavior means behaving in a manner that is authentic to you, and appropriate to the organization and situations in which you find yourself. To do this well it means you need access to a broad range of behaviors.

The antidote to being forced to make the choice between being authentic and responding appropriately to many diverse situations is to expand your “range of behaviors” and increase your comfort with this broader range. A personal example is that I am an introvert by nature, yet I teach and speak publicly  as part of my work. I love the role of faculty member even though the specific task of teaching is not in my innate comfort zone. The key for me was to stretch my comfort zone so that I can be authentic in front of a class or an audience at a conference. When I started teaching I really struggled with this, and now it is second nature. I continue to be an introvert—and I probably teach a bit differently than an extrovert would—but through self-awareness, pushing the confines of my comfort zone, and practice, I’ve found a way to be authentically myself.

To learn more about becoming a more authentic leader using Innovative Leadership we recommend taking leadership assessments, reading the Innovative Leadership Fieldbook and the Innovative Leaders Guide to Transforming Organizations. We also offer several workshops to help you build these skills.

Photo credit: www.flickr.com sweet dreamz design

Many of you know that I was certified through The Deep Coaching Institute whose Founder wrote this exciting book.  It takes the Deep Coaching work into a profound and meaningful guide for everyone to use.  I highly recommend it!

In Deep Living, Roxanne Howe-Murphy, EdD, offers a radically compassionate, rare, and mature approach to personal change. She integrates the ancient wisdom of the Enneagram with presence-based practices for everyday living, revealing unexpected healing processes that will transform how you see and experience yourself—and the world around you.

If you yearn to live with ease, to move toward your soul’s true purpose, to feel at home in your own skin and to live at ease in the world, this new book will guide you along the path

• from inner inadequacy to real inner authority;
• from struggle to real inner peace; and
• from Self-limiting ideas and stories to real inner liberation and authenticity.

You have an innate and evolutionary capacity for the deep intelligence of direct, in-the-moment experiences, and the Enneagram—used consciously—is a map of nine profound journeys from separateness to wholeness and love.

Find the reflection of your particular true nature with Deep Living.

Roxanne’s personal style, breakthrough methods for sustainable transformation, and her deep honoring of the soul’s journey have inspired people around the world. A pioneer and global expert in integrating the Enneagram with executive and spiritual coaching, Roxanne authored the internationally acclaimed book, Deep Coaching: Using the Enneagram as a Catalyst for Profound Change, and founded the Deep Coaching Institute, which offers accredited training programs to growth-oriented professionals. Now, through the Deep Living Institute, the same expert guidance and compassionate, presence-based approaches for true Self-deepening are available to the lay public.

With a doctorate in education, Roxanne served on the faculty at Boston, San Francisco State, and San Jose State Universities for over twenty years. Her professional life also encompasses three decades of work in rehabilitation, consulting, and coaching.

Title: 2013 World Conference on Quality and Improvement – Innovate How You lead
Location: Indianapolis, Indiana
Link out: Click here
Description: Today’s successful executives need to optimize their performance at individual, organizational, and global scales, within complex business environments. They need to innovate the way they lead at the same pace as they innovate their products, services, and processes to ensure they receive the value they expected for their investment in change. During this session we will: look at a comprehensive model of innovative leadership; assess yourself against the innovative leadership criteria; identify one area of focus for professional development; and set a goal and identify a partner to provide support. Participants will understand the model of innovative leadership so they can make informed choices about how to invest their time and money to produce a significant impact. Learn how to identify and close personal gaps to build on your personal and professional success.
Start Time: 9:15
Date: 2013-05-07
End Time: 11:45

Sarah was the Vice President of Marketing for a Fortune 100 company when we met several years ago. She was known throughout her division for the bright colors that she wore and for her equally bright disposition. Her ability to help people she feel almost instantly comfortable was a well-crafted skill. Sarah rose through the ranks in the company starting out as a sales assistant and then slowly earned her way to progressively more responsibility.  As an executive she was centered, focused, and highly successful. Having a conversation with Sarah in this setting felt that something of importance was about to transpire.

When we last met, she told a story of a senior director. “He was a top salesman when he came to us and was quickly moved into our high-achievers program. His numbers were always solid and his group was very productive when he was a manager.” At that, she looked down and paused.  “But even then” she remarked, “I would hear of incidents where people left meetings feeling demoralized—he has such strong people skills and is so bright—I thought these incidents must have been attempts to help his staff stretch. Now, in retrospect, I think I missed some warning signs. We are at the point where he has stepped on so many toes that nobody wants to work with him.”

Problems like those of this senior director are as complex as they are common. Though he had all of the technical skills, intelligence, and motivation to be a very effective leader, staff turnover, poor collaboration, and a reputation as being difficult to work with found him doing as much harm to his company as good. Part of the challenge in building innovative leadership is learning to leverage the clarity of your introspection. Looking inside yourself and examining the make-up of your inner being, enables you to function in a highly grounded way, rather than operating from the innate biases of more uninformed decision-making. This ability to reflect and consider how as a leader you need to change as part of the larger change initiative is critical to leading successful organizational transformation efforts.

Accelerating change continues to impact every facet of business. To thrive long term, business leaders must make implementing change a core competency that allows them to capitalize on our changing world instead of merely attempting to adapt to it.

Organizations clearly need innovation to successfully navigate the new economic landscape—and they are not getting it. It’s relatively rare for transformation programs to deliver the results that were projected in the original business case. Simply put, companies attempting to traverse the new economic landscape with incomplete tactics will not succeed. In addition to looking at tactics used to implement change, we also need to look at the impact leadership has on the organization’s ability to successfully implement change. An exclusive focus on systems’ performance and analytics can prove costly. Enhancing organizational capacity must extend beyond increasing system functionality.

If, in addition to developing better functional processes, you begin to clarify strategic vision, grow leadership capacity, and build a cohesive company culture, you will achieve much greater and more sustainable success.

Complex challenges illuminate deeply held beliefs and force a change in how work is done, and also in the leaders themselves and an organization’s values. What results is more than a process change or innovation translation. A complex solution not only creates changes in processes, but allows a natural progression and forum in which to explore and develop personal values and beliefs, behaviors, and interactions. The most effective solutions to complex challenges are those that change the leader and the organization’s relationship to processes, values, behaviors, and interactions. In other words, the change process works on the leader at the same time the leader works on the change.

The concept of leading change starts with leadership and yet in many organizations the process often omits the idea that transforming leaders is part of the overall transformation process.

Innovative leadership is based on the recognition that four dimensions (intention, behavior, culture, and systems) exist in all experiences, and already influence every interactive experience we have. To deny the interplay of any one of the four dimensions is missing the full picture. You can only build innovative leadership by simultaneously addressing all four dimensions.

Because innovative leadership influences by engaging the four dimensions equally, balanced leaders are uniquely qualified to implement complex change with a much higher success rate. A primary reason for transformation failure is that leaders focus primarily on the systems, rather than the larger context that includes themselves as leader and the organizational culture.

Combining innovative leadership with a comprehensive change model to solve complex problems leads to a higher success rate. This success rate is possible because this new model:

• Addresses complex problems by analyzing them and developing comprehensive solutions beyond those found in traditional problem-solving approaches;
• Addresses the four dimensions: a leader’s intention and behavior along with the organization’s culture and systems in a systematic manner that creates alignment between them;
• Includes the innovative leader in the change process by expecting the leader to innovate how they lead to keep pace with the challenges they are solving.

During this era of increased complexity, an accelerated need for change, and failed change initiatives, it’s critical for organizations to identify new models which address these challenges while maintaining efficient and effective operations.

To learn more about Innovative Leadership and the process of implementing transformative change, we recommend the Innovative Leadership Fieldbook and the Innovative Leaders Guide to Transforming Organizations. We also offer several workshops to help you build these skills.

photo credit: www.flickr.com suez92