Women in senior positions in organisations is the issue that won’t go away.  Every few months the background hum from this issue reaches a crescendo.  In politics Ed Miliband’s most recent commitment to more women in his Shadow Cabinet saw him create a top team including 11 female MPs. 

In business Prime Minister David Cameron recently wrote to FTSE 350 companies asking them to speed up their response to the Davies Review (pub. February 2011) which recommended organisations set (higher) targets for numbers of female board members.  And beyond the board many big companies have a stated intent to balance their senior management communities too.

But is gender balance the real debate?  Surely it is about seeking to integrate the essence, values and qualities of the feminine into organisations.  Isn’t addressing this far bigger challenge successfully the debate leaders should be having? 

The real opportunity in gender balance isn’t just the quick fix of bringing more women into senior roles.  It’s about bringing feminine values and qualities to the workplace, and into balance with the more traditional masculine values that predominate in many organisations to further sharpen competitive advantage, and deliver sustained higher performance.

Co-operation, interdependence, building trust and relationship, empathy and compassion, endurance, listening, finely tuned social skills, openness, are some of the qualities and capabilities ascribed to the feminine.

 In organisations they underpin effective team working, employee engagement, space for more options to inform better decision-making and purposeful consensus (rather than bland agreement), a more considered approach to risk, a broader embrace of diversity – all factors which are proven to increase organisational success.

 However, contrary to the label, feminine values are available to us all, irrespective of gender.  Bringing them into consistent organisation practise is the challenge. 

 Though not the complete solution development can help, focusing on building self-awareness, self-management and generating more socially-attuned, skilful and people-focused behaviour (the core building blocks or emotional intelligence). 

 Equally, if not more, powerful is a shift in what leaders value and reward – empathy and compassion, relationship-building, communication built on dialogue rather than information, collaboration – and then role-modelled day-in, day-out in their leadership practise.

 Want to bring more feminine power into your organisation? T: 01628 662645 / E: lorraine@azzur.co.uk

As a leader it’s likely you’ve reached the higher echelons of unconscious competence in your day-to-day role, with the majority of decisions and action achieved without conscious effort and with automatic ease.

Though seemingly effective, this ‘autopilot’ state can harm productivity and undermine the performance potential of both individual and the organisation yet it’s entirely avoidable.

Unconscious competence is held as the ideal state, crystallised in ‘The Conscious Competence Ladder’ which tracks knowledge and practise through unconscious incompetence (lack of knowledge and skills and ignorance of the deficiency); conscious incompetence (awareness of limited capability); conscious competence (new skills put into practise, knowingly and with growing confidence); to the automatic ease of unconscious competence.

The danger here is complacency and a ‘stuckness’ in practise which assumes a stable state (unlikely in the dynamic and uncertain environment of business) and a consistency of outcome through a consistency of approach.

The competence ladder needs a new rung – mindful competence.  In this state the leader is fully awake in the present moment, conscious not only of everything they do and how but open and alert to new information and different possibilities, sensitive to shifts in environment and context – data that can support subtle adjustments in practise and more effective approaches to the activities and challenges of leadership.

Mindfulness is a skill that can be cultivated – through practise and perseverance and, well, simply by paying full attention to what you’re doing right now (rather than the next task, meeting, conversation, phone call), by investing all of you in it and by noticing how that feels.

Harvard psychology professor Ellen Langer (with colleagues Timothy Russell and Noah Eisenkraft) conducted some interesting research into the positive effect of mindfulness on performance.  Orchestra musicians were asked to replicate a classical performance with which they were satisfied (mindless) and then make the piece new through subtle adjustments they each chose (mindful).  Not only did the musicians prefer playing mindfully, on playback audiences judged the mindful piece far superior.

Transplant this to the workplace.  What subtle adjustments could be made to your welter of routine daily activities by paying attention to them?

What new discoveries could be made of the talents, perspectives and ideas of colleagues if you’re fully present and open to what they have to say rather than attached to a fixed and long-formed view of their capabilities and mind-set?

What progress could be achieved by more mindful practise and encouraging others to so the same?

Interested in building your mindful competence?  T: 01628 662645 / E: lorraine@azzur.co.uk

In organisations talk is a free and abundant resource and every employee has some level of skill in it.  Indeed, that old cliché will have us believe that talk is cheap.  Yet in its purest form – dialogue – talk can deliver a powerful and sustainable boost to performance. 

The more formal communication in businesses (beyond the informal social interaction of colleagues) takes many forms from the ubiquitous email through to the more impactful and engaging – conversation, consultation, dialogue.

In each of these forms (or modes) communication is generally face-to-face/in person, with two or more people involved and two-way with ebb and flow – talking and listening – between the participants.  So, what’s different about dialogue and why can it be so positive? 

To understand and use the power of dialogue it is worth considering the distinctions between conversation, consultation and dialogue in an organisational context.

In conversation, the parties may each share their views and opinions on a topic but leave the encounter still nurturing their own, possibly enhanced but probably largely unchanged, core perspective.

Consultation involves one party asking for views and input from others on a decision, idea, plan.  The activity may simply validate what is already on the table or help refine and expand it.

Dialogue, however, is about generating something entirely new – an act of co-creation in which participants bring their contributions to an issue or opportunity and, through the course of their interaction, synthesise a genuinely shared meaning, understanding and outcome that is different (sometimes surprisingly) from each individual’s starting point and often tightly-held position.

On paper, of course, dialogue sounds like a sensible, simple and achievable approach to communication.  In reality it requires significant investment of effort, will and commitment from all involved.

Participants must overcome the natural tendencies to defend their own position and thinking, to seek out and agree with views that are similar to their own, to refer only to their own life experience, to want/need to win.  And they must stay open and present to everyone in the dialogue, listening actively and suspending judgement however uncomfortable.  Commitment is tested further by the organisational desire for efficient process and answers and outcomes arrived at rapidly.

This effort, though, is worthwhile.  What flows from a dialogue approach to organisational communication isn’t just a superior level of output (idea, plan, decision) but a greater level of engagement with and commitment to seeing it enacted in the organisation, greater appreciation of others and stronger relationships between them, and a genuinely shared and enduring sense of purpose and direction.

 Want help unleashing the power of dialogue in your business? T: 01628 662645 / E: lorraine@azzur.co.uk

Whilst the departure of business titans can often be relied upon to generate as many brickbats as plaudits for them and their track records, two recent examples of this truism caught my eye.

First up was the less than flattering (I understate) portrait of the people management and relationship skills of ex-RBS chief Sir Fred Goodwin…based on the anecdotes of former colleagues as told to authors of a new book about his reign at the bank.

Though amusing at one level, the tale of Sir Fred’s rage at the allegedly poor quality of the Boardroom biscuits belies the eminence of the position he held at the time.

Hot on the heels came news of Steve Jobs departure from Apple, the world’s most valuable (or second most valuable, dependent on share price) company.  Accounts of his brilliance were swiftly followed by examination of professional and personal persona that suggested employees were often caught in the crosshairs of another towering and often unmanaged temper.

Both vignettes reminded me of a boss early in my career who proudly stated it was his job to be unreasonable!  He was rather good at it, as proficient, in fact, as media coverage suggests my other examples are.

Despite this, I believe unreasonableness is a key quality of leadership – wielded appropriately it can generate exceptional performance.  Appropriately is, of course, the critical word. 

Appropriately unreasonable leader are relentless: in pursuit of excellence, in themselves as well as others; in not settling for good enough; in setting the bar of standards ever higher – stretching the capabilities of their people in fulfilling challenges in service of the organisation.

Of course excellence can be pursued through terrorising colleagues and employees…to a point.  Performance in the fearful and demoralised falls away very quickly.  Creativity is squashed and energy sapped by the fear of making mistakes.

Effective leadership that motivates high performance is a subtle art in which bullying behaviour has no place.  Foundations of deep awareness of self and others, coupled with skills in self-management and relationship building, support the engagement of colleagues and employees in the organisation’s purpose and motivate their desire to continuously improve in its service.

It is in this space that unreasonableness plays its part: in due reflection before action irrespective of the pressure to act; in the rigorous assessment of how things get done with extraction and integration of learning for the better next time; in the unrelenting focus on encouraging and developing others in a way that works for them and the business; and in an absolute focus on ever improving the organisation so that it can best serve its customers, its community and wider society.