Introduction
An underlying presupposition that guides the writing for this book is that the conscious leadership skills managers need to be effective change leaders are often underdeveloped. Conscious leadership skills as catalysts and enablers for the establishment of psychological safety in groups are often ignored as critical training requirements before and during change leadership episodes. This skills deficit leads to fault lines that undermine the potential success of change programmes. This chapter will explore these ideas and identify important issues that conscious change leaders should be aware of. This chapter will also consider the dynamic nature of work and the shift in the cultural profile of both employees and managers. Finally, this chapter will locate NLP as a social change technology with the potential to enable a paradigm shift in management culture towards a model that has a better socio/cultural fit with society at large.
The world of work is changing and we must adapt
Management communities throughout the world’s organizations are experiencing a paradigm revolution. Bureaucratic rational management based on legitimate authority to manage has been the traditional management paradigm which supported the established culture of management practice and thinking. This paradigm has served organizations productively since the Industrial Revolution and is arguably now redundant and outdated.
Many years ago, we could depend on regularity of work, steady markets, and sustainable family incomes. This was the world the baby boomers, now referred to as ‘Generation X’, enjoyed. In this world we worked reasonably hard, tasks were clearly defined thanks to the influence of standardization and established cultures characterized by predictability and stability. Though we went through challenging times in the 1970s, overall, Generation X enjoyed economic boom. Today the security of employment is very fragile. The profile of a typical worker is significantly different today from 50 years ago. The nature of work has moved from manufacturing towards a service and knowledge based economy. Education is much more available. A new generation of worker (Generation Y) is graduating to dominate the employment field and displacing Generation X. We need a model of both management and leadership that fits with the demographic shift in the workforce of tomorrow.
As a result of these demographic changes a significant paradigm shift is taking place across the globe regarding the culture of management practice that has dominated organizations for at least the last 80 years (Alvesson & Willmott, 1996). The group of managers whom we can refer to as Generation X are in their autumn years and the next decade will see their retirement. ‘Generation Y’ or ‘Millennials’ are now populating the managerial establishment throughout the world. This is a generation born between early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000s as ending birth years. Millennials have a very different outlook towards what work means for them, how they respond to authority and what their values are compared to Generation X. Therefore, the importance of conscious leadership to build rapport with both generations during periods of intense and fast change is of even greater importance to change leaders.
What is equally important is how executive teams understand Millennials and build cultures that facilitate their performance at work in ways that meet their needs. Executives need a different leadership approach, one that does not rely on legitimate authority to plan and direct. They need a new leadership model that is based on cultural sensitivity, high capabilities regarding intra- and inter-personal skills and an ability to build rapport and sustain it throughout the organization at large. Conscious leadership provides such a model.
Unprecedented economic, political, social, and cultural drivers of change have resulted in change leaders in many organizations considering how best to connect with their workforce so that both leaders and workers can cooperate more effectively in integrated ways. They need to share a vision of the future that can only develop from generative dialogue. The paradigm of diffusion change leadership supported by the meta-theme of building psychological safety are central to the emergence of conscious change leadership practices. NLP applications provide the catalysts and enablers to support change leadership mediated through conscious leadership skills.
If one takes a little time to search social media such as LinkedIn, or the websites of industrial giants such as Google it does not take long to find examples of quality research conducted by industry leaders which identifies conscious leadership skills such as managing one’s mindset and being sensitive to cultural dynamics as critical competencies for today’s change leaders. As Anderson and Anderson (2010, p. 167) state “Conscious change leaders, because they explore their own internal dynamics, are aware of the influence of their mindset on their perception and consider it in every critical decision or action they take.”
Major change challenges: the soft stuff is hard
It is generally accepted that the most significant challenges when implementing change projects are soft leadership skills which aim to change mindsets and corporate culture. In our own study of cultural change (McCalman & Potter, 2015), we identified that a lack of soft skills was very problematic for change leaders. The concept of soft skills which is defined as ‘personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people’ are the kind of capabilities that conscious leaders need to nurture in themselves. A good example of innovative research into the soft skills required to lead high performance teams is the Google Aristotle research project.
Google have a market value estimated at $498 billion. They are cited as one of the most innovative companies in the world. They employ super-smart people and each year they receive over one million applications from hopeful candidates. Yet, the smart people at Google worry about their culture; they worry about the atmosphere, or cultural climate that their staff experience each day. They employ 55,000 people all over the world, yet they believe that they can align their staff members’ personal mission in life with the greater vision of the company.
They believe in the idea that change starts with the individual, they further believe that the attitudes, values and beliefs that we all hold inside of us can function as ‘new behaviour generators’ if the proper leadership and team-based culture can be produced. The Google Analytics team decided to study human behaviour within their global community of employees. They wanted to understand the social factors that enabled the development of high performing teams. This was not a basic staff survey; this was something very different. This was ‘The Aristotle Research Project’.
Project Aristotle aimed to understand the critical success factors that enabled the emergence of the perfect team. The Google Analytics department (HRM) established a multi-disciplinary research team including team leaders, behavioural scientists, anthropologists, analysts, researchers, and operational leaders. The team adopted the following research model:
1 They reviewed 50 years of academic and practitioner leadership literature.
2 They surveyed thousands of ‘Googlers’ to understand their experience of team working and their motivations.
3 They interviewed hundreds of Google team leaders.
4 They participated in hundreds of Google team meetings as participant observers.
5 They conducted a global network of focus groups.
Overall the Project Aristotle research team invested millions of dollars to build a model of team leadership which would enable the consistent cultural production of high performance teams. The findings were not unique in terms of established knowledge, what was of immense interest was the scarcity of the model as a standard organizational phenomenon that they identified as generating consistently high performance. This model was the establishment of psychological safety between leaders and their teams.
Psychological safety
Project Aristotle attempted to solve a puzzle that has plagued organizational theorists for decades and, in doing so, they confirmed an important leadership theory. The theory was that leaders in organizations at every level of operation have a primary responsibility (and it is not to manage tasks) to build a climate of psychological safety through which team members could bring their authentic self to work without fear of ridicule, marginalization, or any other form of limiting social behaviours. I would strongly argue that this is a fundamental capability required in order to be an authentic conscious change leader. Google established principles of normative conduct that enabled high performance teams. Many of the principles they diagnosed are the target of change work imbedded in the NLP tool box. The findings were as follows:
• Googlers enjoyed 10 to 15 minutes at the start of each meeting to build rapport within the group and indulge in personal conversations of a light nature.
• Team leaders were sensitive to this need.
• Team leaders placed emphasis on ensuring that all team members were welcomed and included in the group dialogue.
• Team leaders encouraged free expression.
• Googlers felt authentic; they did not need to mask their authentic selves.
• The team leaders calibrated and paced the experiences, behaviours, mental models, and emotions of team members in a balanced and effective way to build rapport.
• The team could connect with each other, with the group and with the vision, ambition, and mission of Google as a company.
• Googlers felt that their work really mattered and that what they were doing could make a difference for good in the world.
• The individuality of each Googler was openly recognized and celebrated by team leaders.
• Googlers wanted respect and a chance to feel recognized.
• Googlers wanted social enablers as leaders not bosses.
• Googlers expected their model of the world to be paced and acknowledged.
• Googlers actively sought opportunities to express their ideas and thoughts.
• Googlers wanted dialogue.
• The group felt psychologically safe, motivated and in a very resourceful state of mind and attributed much of this to the leadership style of their team leader.
The meta-finding of Project Aristotle, implied by the research notes, was that the team leaders could instinctively create what Global NLP developer Dilts (2016) refers to as a ‘coaching container’, they were able to build psychological safety throughout the team that enabled social risk-taking and the presentation of the authentic self among team members. What is impressive about the findings of Project Aristotle is that the success factors involved in creating psychological safety in a group context were all conscious change leadership skills which belonged to both the ‘intra’ and the ‘inter personal’ dimension of social interactions. These soft skills could be clearly identified, and they could be modelled; and NLP training methods are very capable training vehicles to enable a successful modelling process. In future chapters, I will explain just how this modelling process can be conducted.
Core message: ‘Conscious change leadership development really does matter’
The core message is that the conscious change leadership capabilities detailed below should be culturally wired into the fabric of a change leadership approach. These skills, as NLP co-developer and pioneer Judith Delozier states, should be imbedded into our muscles. They should become culturally normative and habits of mind. NLP applications provide the methods to enable this inculcation process. The overarching aims should be to work with both change leaders and their teams to do the following:
• Build excellent rapport with individuals and teams.
• Create supportive change networks.
• Model trusting collaborative relationships.
• Widen their leadership choices.
• Communicate with confidence and impact.
• Master their ‘inner game’.
• Work with resistance effectively.
• Develop cognitive, behavioural, and emotional flexibility.
• Manage productive meetings.
• Present their case convincingly.
• Manage challenging thinking styles.
• Build an atmosphere of trust.
• Build stakeholder commitment.
The research team at Google called the sum of all the above ‘The quest for a culture of psychological safety’. Google cite Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson who describes psychological safety as “a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking” (1999, p. 354). So, what does a culture of psychological safety look like? Google researchers identified the following success factors:
• Generative dialogue was normal.
• Pacing the experience of others was important.
• Respecting the model of the world of others was valued.
• Conversational turn-taking was to be encouraged.
• Enabling collective intelligence was a key leadership trait.
• Generative collaboration was a critical group dynamic.
• Co-authorship of corporate vision and mission and ambition mattered.
• Bringing one’s authentic self to work was essential to a healthy work experience.
• Above average social sensitivity and empathy was a development skill.
• Feeling secure in a group free from fears of censorship or embarrassment was important.
• Speaking up was to be encouraged.
The challenge facing Google was how to build such a culture throughout their organization. They studied examples of such group dynamics that had emerged organically and, using what we call in NLP a modelling approach, they designed an archetype of the perfect team and a supporting development programme and proceeded to implement a cultural shift throughout their organization. They have developed a simple five-point programme which guides their cultural development which could be described as a cultural model that serves the core Google paradigm.
1 Psychological safety: Can we take risks in this team without feeling insecure or embarrassed?
2 Dependability: Can we count on each other to do high quality work on time?
3 Structure and clarity: Are the goals, roles, and execution plans for our team clear?
4 Meaning of work: Are we working on something that is personally important for each of us?
5 Impact of work: Do we fundamentally believe that the work we’re doing matters?
Pulse checks
Google approached their cultural change initiative with a simple yet very powerful strategy; they created a tool called the ‘great teams exercise’. This involved:
1 A 10-minute ‘pulse-check’ on the five dynamics.
2 A report that summarizes how the team is doing.
3 A group ‘dialogue circle’ to discuss the results.
4 Tailored developmental resources to help teams improve.
To date more than 3,000 Googlers across 300 teams have used this tool. Google employs people analysts to study human behaviour and to build interventions or create social dynamics which enable Googlers to be the best version of themselves and to feel secure in bringing their authentic self to work.
Psychological safety and NLP rapport building methods
This organizational development strategy at Google resonated with me enormously because at the heart of NLP philosophy is the paradigm that advocates the establishment of psychological safety to enable individuals and groups to be the best version of themselves. In NLP terms we refer to this process as building a coaching container (Dilts, 2016). Another reason this idea chimed with me was that I had worked for many years in environments where I did not personally experience this phenomenon. During these difficult periods, I was out of rapport with significant others.
NLP methods are based on the guiding principle of building rapport with clients, of pacing their experience, of matching their model of the world, of remodelling subjective experience in a collaborative way that involves utilizing collective intelligence and enabling generative change. All these practices were at the very heart of the emerging Google paradigm. I think this paradigm is required to enable the diffusion model of change management or leadership (Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2015) and this model, I think, is exemplified by the Google organization. The diffusion model advances the idea of collaboration and dialogue and counterpoints the transmission model which advances the idea of top down leadership based on hierarchical authority to instruct change. The diffusion model should be augmented with conscious change leadership. I believe that the transmission model is now redundant and part of the traditional management paradigm. The diffusion model is very relevant and part of the new management paradigm.
The critical ingredient that made the difference at Google was the degree of active generative rapport that existed between team members and inter-teams. This is the basic starting point of NLP intervention. NLP practitioners, coaches, and trainers believe that without rapport you only have a transactional relationship which can often disable meaningful dialogue and transformational change. I fear that transactional cultures dominate many Western organizations and this, for me and for the staff in these cultures, is a terrible waste. To enable a change in basic assumptions towards diffusion-led leadership cultures led by conscious change leaders who are in balance with both their ego (ambitions) and soul (greater purpose and mission) we need change management technologies that deal with subjective experience, identity work and micro social interactive skills; NLP offers a toolkit ideally suited to these tasks.
Closing comments
It is the ability of conscious change leaders to manage relationships both internal and external to self that will make the difference in future careers.
We have huge demographic shifts to contend with. We have Generation X (born in the 1960s) trying to relate to the work-based expectations of Generation Y (born in the 1980s) and Generation Z (born mid 1990s). So, it is clear that the key to enjoying one’s experience of work and leading productive change management situations lies in the quality of one’s relationships. And this is where NLP can support change leaders at every level in organizations to build active rapport that leads to productive relationships and a high-performance culture.
Unprecedented economic, political, social, and cultural changes have resulted in senior managers in many organizations debating staff engagement methods and how to connect with their work force so that both leaders and workers can cooperate more effectively in integrated ways. The question should be ‘how are they going to build this engagement culture?’ This was the topic tackled by Google as part of their Aristotle research project into what created the perfect team.
Organizations need to build a new cultural paradigm that emphasizes an engagement culture based upon psychological safety. If a management team is stuck in a transmission model of change management this is because of the nature of the paradigm that controls their expressive choices. To move to a new paradigm which supports the alternative change management model of diffusion they need to undertake a change in basic assumptions. This process can occur naturally in an evolutionary sense or it can be accelerated through a direct and managed intervention using NLP technologies, ideally drawing on industrial examples of winning organizations that have made such a shift.
Perhaps if we turn our attention towards alternative places regarding leadership and the role of all stakeholders in collaborating to generate change based upon a climate of psychological safety we may all discover ways to compete with greater success that we can all afford. To do this we need to unpack the social dynamics that produced psychological safety and identify a model of human behaviour that could meet with the requirements of today’s organizations, one that is capable of being modelled by team leaders to the wider organization. NLP offers a practical and proven pathway for change leaders that meets with all the above requirements.
References
Alvesson, M. and Willmott, H. (1996) Making Sense of Management. A Critical Introduction, Sage.
Alvesson, M. and Sveningsson, S. (2015) Changing Organizational Culture, Routledge.
Anderson, D. and Anderson, L. (2010) Beyond Change Management, Pfeiffer.
Dilts, B. R. (2016) Generative Collaboration, Dilts Strategy Group.
Edmondson, A. (June 1999) Psychological Safety and Learning Behaviour in Work Teams, Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), pp. 350–383.
McCalman, J. and Potter, D. (2015) Leading Cultural Change, Kogan Page.