Emotional Data Is Part Of The New Oil

The well-oiled workplace

Unless you have been living under a rock, you know data is the new oil. You can improve what you can measure, and nothing beats opinion like good data does. If innovation is relevant to scaling your business, then collecting data will allow you to make decisions with less bias.

Yet, in our new ‘data economy’, the focus tends to lie primarily on numbers and facts.
What if I told you that reading and collecting the emotional data of your workplace, the “emotional field”, will contribute at least as much to the achievement of your key business objectives?

This post came about after coaching a young leader in the industrial sector. As a corporate coach, I like to engage the client where the client is. So if my client loves data, I also work with data. The turning point in our conversation was the realization that there was hidden data in the emotional signals of her team members. She had been unaware of these signals, and by ignoring them, it prevented her from connecting to her people and have them fully trust her. So from now on, besides collecting facts, she will focus on uncovering the hidden information in these emotional signals as well.

This article is about the value of all data today, and that data’s network effects. It is also about pursuing conscious leadership by actively seeking an awareness of everything that lives under the surface in the workplace, including dissent and conflict. When handled skillfully, conflict can lead the way towards a transformation that will make you and your team productive today. The kind of transformation that will help organizations evolve from withholding information and creating silos, to a new paradigm of trust so you can design a well-oiled workplace.

 

Scaling Your Culture: Trust, the nature of data and the leap towards the 21st century

In the early 20th century when Standard Oil started becoming too dominant, it was split into an assembly line of 34 companies. Would splitting Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft into smaller chunks today be the solution to taming the enormous power their access to data gives them?

No. The biggest value of data is not its size, but how it behaves in context. Breaking up any of today’s tech giants into smaller companies would not stop network effects from reasserting themselves. Over time, one of those chunks would simply become dominant again. The antitrust solutions of the past do not work today.

Whether being active on Facebook, ordering food, or simply going for a run, every activity on the net creates a digital trace, while at the same time pouring more raw material into the giant data-churning machine. Networks will interact and reassess themselves over time anyway, so why not focus on reading the emotional field? Improving the quality of the interactions between you and your people is worthwhile focusing on today.

Collecting emotional data will allow you to make decisions with less bias, especially if scaling your culture is relevant to your goals. Are you thinking of firing John? Are you fantasizing about replacing your entire team? Nothing beats opinion like good data does.

 

Reading and Unfolding signals

By collecting data, companies like Tesla and Google continuously improve themselves.

Tesla is to self-driving cars what ‘Engaged and Productive Workplace Inc’ is to self-driving teams. Google is to self-informed employees what ‘Engaged and Productive Workplace Inc’ is to self-organizing teams. Being the Tesla or Google of leaders these days could mean that the more emotional data you read today, the better it can make you and your team at driving your business success.

What are signals? A signal is an unopened packet of information. When coaching teams and executives to unfold signals, I like to use ProcessWork where the goal is to unfold those signals in a sensory-based way. Is the team leader always looking at his phone during meetings? Is someone always sabotaging different projects? Instead of making a stand-alone interpretation of what that could mean, ProcessWork would focus on discovering with the team leader what is truly behind his behavior.

Signals are doorways to new information, and unfolding them is about following and giving expression to the information embedded in them in a bias-neutral, non-interpretative way. ProcessWork facilitates opening that packet of information without judging its content based on its external appearance.

 

ProcessWork for constructive conflict and comfort with ambiguity

ProcessWork is a methodology and an invitation to scout all the info present in your team to leverage the power of relationship. Instead of preventing self-expression in order to gain control over your company, ProcessWork helps leaders and teams to facilitate high-quality interactions. If you acknowledge that something is always going to be happening in the background of your organization, whether you are acknowledging or not, ProcessWork will help you and your organization evolve from silos to trust.

ProcessWork neither condemns nor mistrusts what is happening in any given situation and never looks down on the team members involved. Instead, it discovers the missing power of transformation in the tension itself and in people’s behavior. Within the frame of ProcessWork, conflict itself is the fastest way to community and team collaboration. Conflict becomes the organisation’s own healer.

A lack of conscious leadership is the reason why many of today’s troubled organisations end up being their own worst enemy. They assume that conflict is wrong and must be avoided at all cost. In fact, the opposite couldn’t be truer. When handled skillfully, conflict and discomfort can become catalysts for scalable and healing transformations.

Would you like to become a conscious leader? Drop me a note.

 

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Sonsoles Alonso – I help CxOs and Founders Build Highly Efficient Happy Teams in 6 Months or Less with the Right Hires, using Systemic Tools and Serious Games.
sonsoles@sonsolesalonso.com
www.sonsolesalonso.com

Are you in tech? I recently teamed up with top-rated instructor Mark Farragher for our online course ‘6 Tools To Improve Your Tech and Leadership Communication’.

Check also my 5-week online masterclass:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/break-free-from-the-assembly-line/

And my online class on Team Delegation and Leadership:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/team-delegation-and-leadership/

Would you like to read some other posts? My most successful one so far is The War Against Talent, with over 100000 views.

 

The 9 Lives Of A Leader

Today’s post is about the inner work of a leader, about you being the change you want to see in your team or organization in the era of adaptability.

It is about using the wisdom of the Alexander Technique, Tao, professional athletes, and cats, so you can land on your feet and enjoy the 9 lives you will need to stay in business today.

 

Are you laughing enough? Being the change you want to see in your team

One of the threads going throughout all of the different stages of my life has been wanting to gain an awareness of how my body works, and how to use it efficiently and productively. For that reason, chiropractors, physiotherapists, orthomanual therapists, Rolfers, Tai Chi masters and all kinds of body workers around the world have been some of my best teachers throughout the years. In fact, I could speak about different world cities in terms of the body workers I have met.

The other day I paid a visit to Fernando Rosa, a physiotherapist, athlete and board member of the Skyrunning Federation (ISF). He asked me about my smile, and I said it’s not easy to smile when you are in pain.

And then, boom! He said it, just like that: you just need to laugh more! The man I was hoping would fix my cervical pain so I could laugh and smile again, was actually telling me to do the exact opposite, to laugh so my neck would get better!

It reminded me of a time when I practiced Healing Tao with a woman called Ka Wah Choy in Amsterdam, in a studio overlooking one of the many canals of the city. All of a sudden, she would start laughing, gradually making it louder and bolder, and inviting all of us to join her. It was contagious, and its effect on the room, measurable. In just a few minutes the energy of the space would have shifted and we would move on to the rest of the practice still in the same physical room but from an entirely different inner place.

I have been putting Ka Wah’s and Fernando’s advice to good use. I have made it my mission to laugh boldly and loudly as part of a daily meditation. Lately, while leading a virtual team I also prepared for it by intentionally coming from a place of joy. I observed what laughter was doing, and today, 12 weeks later, a new global business is being born.

Laughing works. It creates a connection, brings down geographical and personal barriers, and propels people into getting things done.

As a leader, ask yourself: from which inner place am I addressing my team and how is it impacting the atmosphere in the workplace? I invite you to literally do what I did next time you have a meeting with your team. And if you do, drop me a note, I would love to see what 5 minutes of laughter meditation and intentional joy did for you and your people.

 

Leadership through the eyes of Tessa Marwick, Paul Westerman, and cats

Tessa Marwick, Alexander Technique – Awareness
Using just a chair in front of a large window overlooking another of Amsterdam’s many canals, Tessa Marwick taught me how to sit and stand using my body efficiently. I had a tendency to close my eyes to focus on the movement of the body. The work would only be complete when I could sit and stand efficiently while simultaneously tracking what was happening around me. I had the job of being aware of myself, of others, and of the environment, all at the same time.

Open your eyes and become aware of what is around you! Develop an interest in what is happening outside while simultaneously moving with flow! Tessa would say.

What do you have to become aware of as a leader? Being a leader today is no easy feat. Especially if you are in charge of a dynamic, global organization. You will find yourself in need of three key traits: self-awareness, other-awareness, and systems-awareness.

Self-awareness will mean having an understanding of how your emotions and behavior impact others. Being self-aware will help you create a safe workplace for others. Other-awareness will mean having an understanding of how others’ emotions and behavior impact you. Systems-awareness will help you keep track of and leverage the power of the interaction between team, customer, users and desired business outcomes.

Paul Westerman, Tai Chi & Alexander Technique – Whatever happens, whatever you do, do so with a soft flexible neck.
I met Paul at a time when I was still a pianist and working on an incredibly difficult piano piece by composer Willem Jeths. I would tense my neck, which would make the piece even more difficult to play. My job, Paul said, was getting out of my own way, so the music could play itself.

As a leader, could you perhaps be in your own way, preventing your team from ‘playing’ itself?

Could it be your job today to get out of your own way, so the team can organize itself?

Paul finished that session by showing me a photo of a cat fall and saying: whatever you do, do so with a soft neck. Whatever happens, be present with a soft flexible neck.

So, what about those cats? How can you as a leader provide your organization with a soft neck?

 

Falling like a cat in the era of market instability

In search of Organizational Agility? Combining Lean, Systems Thinking and Design Thinking could provide you with the 9 lives a leader needs to stay in business today.

Cats have a large body surface in proportion to their weight, helping them reduce pressure to their bodies when hitting the ground. What is weighing you down, and increasing pressure to your organization when experiencing setbacks today? Are you hitting the ground with excess weight? Have you considered becoming Lean(er)?

Cats spread their legs when falling, making their surface area even larger, and slowing their fall by increasing the air’s support on their bodies. What is detrimental about falling is how rapidly a body accelerates on its way down. A cat’s long legs allow cats to slow down, which reduces the seriousness of the impact. The more you are a systems thinker, the more variables you are aware of, effectively decelerating your way into the ground. What is supporting you? And, how long are your legs? How far do your design experiments reach? Did you know you can break down a project into core assumptions, tie them into hypotheses and design experiments so you can test the riskiest ones?

Cats are equipped with an aerial righting reflex, spinning themselves around if falling incorrectly, so their feet always face down when impacting the ground. Along the way, they keep a flexible back and neck, which is key to their survival. Is your team hitting the ground with their main shock absorbers? In a time of volatility, do you have a consistent Systems Thinking strategy that connects your team to customers, users and desired business outcomes?

See my vlog #3 Johan Cruijff – A Guide For Product Discovery where I tell how Lean, Systems Thinking and Design Thinking can help you today.

 

* * * *

Sonsoles Alonso – I help CxOs and Founders Build Highly Efficient Happy Teams in 6 Months or Less with the Right Hires, using Systemic Tools and Serious Games.
sonsoles@sonsolesalonso.com
www.sonsolesalonso.com

Are you in tech? I recently teamed up with top-rated instructor Mark Farragher for our online course ‘6 Tools To Improve Your Tech and Leadership Communication’.

Check also my 5-week online masterclass:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/break-free-from-the-assembly-line/

And my online class on Team Delegation and Leadership:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/team-delegation-and-leadership/

Would you like to read some other posts? My most successful one so far is The War Against Talent, with over 100000 views.

My 8 Weeks As Rotary Chairperson Without Buy-In

Are you perhaps a CTO pushing for technology-driven change without having buy-in? Or a high-potential pushing for a new direction, and not sure if others are on board? Are you running hard, yet doing so pretty much on your own?

Research by the Corporate Executive Board confirms that half of the executives promoted to the highest ranks fail within 2 years.

Two years is what it took me too to become a member and chairperson of a Rotary club. Yet a mere 8 weeks into my term I had to leave. That was a spectacular failure, one that would definitely qualify for Fuckup Nights.

This article is my very own self-hosted Fuckup Night. I failed, I learned a fantastic lesson about leadership, and I moved on. This is also a post about one of the most common traps of power: using it before earning it, thinking your positional power alone gives you authority.

 

Hitting the ground running 

Let’s back up 4 years when I was living in the Netherlands. I was under 40, a woman, and a foreigner. Very cool, I thought, when Rotary asked me to join, and shortly after, to become chairperson.

I wasn’t exactly sure how a bold thinker like myself would fit into a conservative organization, but I felt acknowledged for my previous successes, and my sense of adventure was definitely pushing me to go for it. This club was in the land where, for years, I had had the privilege of designing a truly quirky professional path. The Netherlands had been that kind of amazing place for me.

My plan was to make the club more agile while setting up new projects in the same manner I had seen succeed during my performing and producing career. On the way leading up to my term I organized several presentations in which I shared what I was going to do, and from there, I hit the ground running. Running hard, fast…… and completely alone.

In hindsight, I realized that the club preferred meals, presentations, and talks over actual action. They chose me as their chairperson because of my ideas, but when it became apparent that I was actually going to do what I had said I would do, all hell broke loose. I am not a talker, I am a doer, and apparently, that caught everyone by surprise.

After an unprecedented barrage of personal attacks on my person, I realized I could not continue in this environment and made the decision to leave.

Where had I gone wrong?

 

Using power before earning it 

I had perceived myself to have a mandate to repeat past success, without being fully aware of the context I was now in. I had embarked on a new initiative without having gained the trust of the club members. I needed buy-in, something that takes time and relationships to build. Instead, thinking that my role alone made me the leader, led me to actually losing my legitimacy.

I learned that authority is granted, not automatic.  When it comes to leading, it is not a matter of ‘or-or’, but of ‘and-and’. Leadership is leading the way and doing so with buy-in.

The moment I realized I was not going to be able to do what I was there to do, it was time to go. That was it, a mere 8 weeks into my term I was chairperson no more.

 

As a young performer receiving a prize from Princess Cristina of Spain.

Self-reflection and moving on

If you are a leader, you are probably a high performer. I myself was groomed to be that way ever since I gave my first performance at an age when my peers were still playing with dolls. Besides learning about leadership and power dynamics, the experience with Rotary taught me one more thing. I also had to learn how to create relationships with different people all operating at different speeds. Before, I had thrived in an ecosystem in which everyone else had an operating system pretty similar to my own.

As a leader, you have a choice to make when deciding if a certain organization is the place for you to be. I encourage you to make that choice consciously. But once you become part of that organization, it will be your job to design and uphold a working space that makes everyone feel part of it. A space that integrates and interconnects all of the different operating systems, while helping you further your vision.

I got to work, and found the answer in Processwork, a powerful and creative framework for individual and group development that increases overal team performance while tracking how rank dynamics play out in group conflict and organizational life. Training for 2 years to become a processwork-based Organization and Relationship Systems Coach helped me in two ways: by making me a better leader, and by providing me with the competences and skills to help you become one too.

Just recently I also became certified in Coaching for Power Intelligence. I now use a 360° developmental tool specifically designed to help you lead effectively in all directions. In fact, I am using it right now with a high-potential at Bosch.

 

Power doesn’t have to be a taboo anymore

Power is hard to get right. Yet, the good news is, talking about it makes it possible to gain the awareness and the skill to use it well. When issues of power are left unattended, two things will most likely happen: conflict will increase and productivity will diminish. If swept under a rug, power issues will most probably find their way out in the form of political games, political alliances, endless arguing, gossiping and personal attacks. Just like I had to endure during my Rotary days.

If you are in a position of power or about to be in one, be mindful that stepping into a position of high rank affects how we think, feel and do. As a leader, it is your job to design and uphold a working space that creates and leverages quality interactions among all.

Would you like to master Power, the skill of the 21st century? Consider this Power Play or the shorter, a New Paradigm of Power.

Or you could drop me a note at sonsoles.alonso@outlook.com. I can help you talk about power and see your productivity increase while handling conflict in a constructive way. Been there, done that.

 

* * * *

Sonsoles Alonso – I help CxOs and Founders Build Highly Efficient Happy Teams in 6 Months or Less with the Right Hires, using Systemic Tools and Serious Games.
sonsoles@sonsolesalonso.com
www.sonsolesalonso.com

Are you in tech? I recently teamed up with top-rated instructor Mark Farragher for our online course ‘6 Tools To Improve Your Tech and Leadership Communication’.

Check also my 5-week online masterclass:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/break-free-from-the-assembly-line/

And my online class on Team Delegation and Leadership:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/team-delegation-and-leadership/

Would you like to read some other posts? My most successful one so far is The War Against Talent, with over 100000 views.

The War Against Talent

Did you say War for Talent?

The other day, Pablo, a data scientist with international experience, an impressive cv, and a passion and capacity for learning, posted on LinkedIn. He had had an awkward but unfortunately commonplace experience with a recruiter.

Many organizations and recruiters go around screaming terms like ‘skills gap’ and ‘fighting the war for talent’ from the rooftops, but for starters, they aren’t even capable of acquiring it. They wouldn’t recognize talent even if it fell on their heads.

Today, it looks as if recruitment has effectively embattled itself in a war against talent.

 

The phone conversation

Here is the call between Pablo A. Rosado and the recruiter:

HR: Hello, I’m calling you from [company name] regarding your application for a data scientist position (…). Do you have experience with Hadoop, Spark, R, or Tableau?

Pablo: No, I don’t, but I would be happy to learn those tools, and I believe it would not take me long to get used to them.

HR: Then what do you know about data science?

Pablo: Well… Since I started my Ph.D. in 2010 I have been doing research in gravitational waves and radio astronomy, fields in which data science is crucial (…). I am fluent in mathematical modeling, Bayesian statistics, signal processing, analysis and visualization of big data sets, I have some experience using machine learning (…). I use Python (and libraries like Numpy, Scipy, Matplotlib, Scikit-learn…), Mathematica, Matlab/Octave, SQL, Fortran, Unix shell, Git (…). I have attended a dozen international schools and courses on data analysis applied to astrophysics. I have experience working in big, international collaborations including LIGO, which has recently been awarded important awards, including the Princess of Asturias, for the discovery of tiny signals buried in long, noisy time series, using sophisticated matched-filtering techniques (…).

HR: [Silence]

Pablo: Hello?

HR: So you don’t know Hive?

Pablo: … ( ‘-_-)

 

So, what went on in that conversation? – The translation

The recruiter is calling about a position in data science and is asking about Hadoop, Spark, R, and Tableau. These are software tools typically used by data scientists. Pablo happily admits he doesn’t have any experience with them, but then goes on to list a huge number of similar tools, some of which are much more complex than anything the recruiter was referring to.

Pablo also cheerfully mentions that he is an astrophysicist who has worked on several international collaborations, all of them requiring a deep understanding of data science. This is very relevant because academia is, in fact, the birthplace of data science.

But all of this goes completely over the head of the recruiter, who stubbornly continues going through his keyword list, triumphantly ending with Hive, a much simpler tool than anything our data scientist holds in his toolbox.

Wouldn’t it be great to have a time machine so we could see Pablo’s face when the recruiter asked about Hive…What?!?! Did you just listen to anything I said?

 

There is a gap

Can you imagine Jamie Oliver not getting a job as a chef at the Cheesecake Factory because he never made a cheesecake before? No. You’ll want to hire him because not only do you know that he will make great cheesecakes (or anything else for that matter) but because you are also looking forward to seeing how his extensive experience with cooking will contribute to the unique cheesecakes he will make for you!

Yet, being overlooked is what happens all the time to many of today’s brilliant employees.

Contrary to what recruitment wants the world to believe, there is no skills gap, that is unless we speak about recruitment itself lacking the skill of understanding what is available and what is needed.

There are brilliant and capable people everywhere you look. Get real in your hiring, stop blaming imaginary talent shortages for your problems, and start talking to the amazing, living, breathing job-seekers around you right now.
– Liz Ryan, CEO Human Workplace

Besides, now more than ever, in a volatile world of ever changing variables and requirements, employers need the sorts of employees who can confidently dive into messy business situations (a messed-up database migration, an overloaded tech-support function, or an ever-slipping product launch) and sort it out. If you don’t want employees who are capable of solving these kinds of problems, you probably shouldn’t lead a business in the first place, because business is all about solving problems.

 

How to talk to a recruiter: Be a Diane Lockhart 

If you find yourself in Pablo’s shoes, here is what you can do.

In The Good Fight’s episode Requiem for an Airdate, ballistics expert and Diane Lockhart’s love interest Kurt McVeigh has to give a talk about the future of ballistics. According to him, the subject of the talk is the impact of interferometers on 3D renderings. According to Diane, who is helping him prepare for the big day, the subject is 3D technology in ballistics. Watch here the dialogue between the two so you too can get ready for your next ‘talk’ to a recruiter.

 

Here is a list of things you can consider:

  1. Go through your regular vocabulary and do a narrative makeover just like Kurt McVeigh did. Watch him on the stage HERE
  2. Reverse think. You want recruiters to understand you. Make it you who wants to understand recruiters. Why is a recruiter naming certain tools? What does that say about the job? What does it say about what the recruiter is looking for? If a recruiter insists on Hive, is that recruiter seeing you? Would you want to put your future in that person’s hands anyway?
  3. Help your recruiter talk to his or her customer by becoming proficient at putting yourself in other’s shoes, in all directions
  4. Don’t talk to a recruiter the way you talk to your buddies. You can tell your buddies that you don’t know a certain tool because they know you, but when you are talking to a recruiter, don’t happily admit what you don’t know until you understand what the recruiter needs
  5. Use keywords, by all means, you want to be found. Just make sure you adjust them to the position or at least industry you are interested in

Practice, practice, practice. And if none of that ends up landing you your dream position, at least you will have learned a new way of communicating that could help you not only professionally, but in all of your social interactions.

It can be very helpful to talk to a career advisor. Larry Cornett can help you get ready for your own war against recruiters! He has helped many people in situations similar to yours. Join his Facebook Group Brilliant Forge to find out more.

You can also consider moving away from traditional recruitment altogether and approaching your job hunting in a design thinking kind of way, having prototyping interviews with real people with real problems in real businesses of your interest. Drop me a note if you’d like to know more about that.

 

Recruiters, this is how you talk to candidates!

  1. Understand the purpose of the tools/keywords you are working with, and put them into context. What do they do? How do they serve the need of your customer? Could the tools in your candidate’s toolbox serve your customer’s need?
  2. Stay curious and mindful. You have others’ future in your hands. Handle with care
  3. Be a facilitator between offer and demand, continuously translating back and forth between what both candidate and client tell you. Be a Diane Lockhart too!
  4. Don’t hire for skills, hire for attitude. Skills can always be taught. Or you hire the likes of the Pablos, who teach themselves, the only thing being needed is for you to give them a problem to solve
  5. And since we are at it, revitalizing our current market would enormously benefit from enterprises hiring employees with different experiences from different industries

If you want to renew and re-energize an industry, don’t hire people from that industry.
– Arkadi Kuhlmann, CEO ING Direct USA

 

* * * *

Sonsoles Alonso – I help CxOs and Founders Build Highly Efficient Happy Teams in 6 Months or Less with the Right Hires, using Systemic Tools and Serious Games.
sonsoles@sonsolesalonso.com
www.sonsolesalonso.com

Are you in tech? I recently teamed up with top-rated instructor Mark Farragher for our online course ‘6 Tools To Improve Your Tech and Leadership Communication’.

Check also my 5-week online masterclass:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/break-free-from-the-assembly-line/

And my online class on Team Delegation and Leadership:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/team-delegation-and-leadership/

 

 

Are You A Disruptor?

What my father’s illness taught me about the threat of the high performer

Somewhere in my early twenties, when I was a student in New York, my father, who was living in Spain, was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis. The condition was chronic, and judging by the doctor’s comments and the life a friend of the family with the same condition was living, the future didn’t look bright. Overtime pain would definitely increase and mobility would definitely diminish.

My father was not much of a pill popper and I had always had an interest in natural health, so my first instinct was to learn about the condition.

I was thrilled when I came across Norman Cousins ‘Anatomy of an Illness’. Cousins, a doctor himself, had cured his own spondylitis with a combination of massive vitamin C intake, and the power of the mind, something my father definitely had a lot of. He had to read the book! Only one problem, this otherwise well-read man didn’t speak a word of English.

After weeks of hesitation and different calls with Bantam Books assuring me they didn’t have any plans at that point in time to make a Spanish edition, I decided to translate it myself. I didn’t own a computer at the time, so armed with a stash of white sheets, a pen and patience, I started handwriting the translation of the book in my student room on New York’s West End Avenue. Harold Nicholas, my hospita and one half of the fabulous tap-dancing duo The Nicholas Brothers, would be in the living room firmly put in front of his beloved TV. But back to the book. Each time I visited Spain for holidays, I would bring a bunch of papers, several translated chapters at a time.

My father didn’t seem to respond much to what I was doing, but I kept telling myself that it would really happen once I had finished the whole book. Except that didn’t happen. When I handed him the last batch, my father unceremoniously put the whole thing together, and locked it away in a closet without uttering a word.

The few times I inquired about it, he cut-off the conversation abruptly, and when one day I mentioned a ‘thank you’ would have been nice, he spelled it out loud and clear for me: that was never going to happen. Things had just gotten odder.

That was one of the weirdest experiences of my whole life.

 

What happened? The inner workings of disruption 

My work as a leadership and team coach has given me an understanding of what happened back at home, and what happened back at home has helped me become more skilled at coaching teams and bosses. Because yes, for the purpose of this blog post I am going to liken my father to a boss, and myself to the disrupting employee. What happened with my dad was the unfortunate clash of two different planets. I saw a situation I could advance, he saw a loss of rank.

Are you a CTO hell-bent on using GANTT charts and your direct report on using Jira? This is not about dethroning you, this is most likely about Jira being better suited for software development in a volatile world.

Disruption does uproot and change things. It changes how we think, behave, do business, learn and go about our day-to-day, but its life force is producing something new and more efficient and worthwhile, it is not altering existing dynamics for the sake of power games.

What is the solution to working successfully in the midst of disruption? Radical collaboration. Cherish your Jira guy!

But where issues of power are involved, simply adopting the mindset of radical collaboration isn’t simple at all.

 

The prerequisite for radical collaboration is feeling significant and competent enough

Becoming more skillful at radical collaboration can be learned though, and it has two layers. The 1st layer is about developing both Self-Awareness (Emotional Intelligence) and Other-Awareness (Social Intelligence).

When we are self-aware we understand our emotions and their impact on others, and we are self-motivated. When we develop other-awareness we understand the impact of others’ emotions on us, and we motivate others. This is why from the perspective of collaboration, and where organizations are standing today, EI and SI are becoming not just nice-to-haves, but must-haves.

Self-awareness grants us the personal power to appreciate ourselves and what we bring to the plate, and having other-awareness makes us appreciate what each person brings to the plate as well. This is the place of mutual success. This is the place where there is both me, and you plus me. Developing EI and SI is a way of increasing our personal power regardless of the positional power we hold within an organization.

The 2nd layer is about copying the cool mindset of radical collaborators. This is 3 Things Radical Collaborators Do And How To Get There.

 

Empowerment for both bosses and high-performing employees

Are you a boss feeling threatened by your high-performing employee? Here are 3 things you can do:

  1. Ask yourself, are you a manager or a leader? Do you see others’ successes as a threat or do you see your people’s success as your success?
  2. Would you consider training in today’s hot skills of EI and SI?
  3. Would you consider learning about power and healthy use of it?

Are you a high-performing employee being sabotaged at work? Here are 3 things you can do too:

  1. Be proactive showing how your recognition benefits both your manager and the company
  2. Keep in mind your problems at the office could have to do with the unfortunate clash of two different planets operating on entirely different building blocks. Be proactive clarifying your intentions
  3. Sometimes empowering yourself means leaving your current company to join one that appreciates you

 

Final thoughts: For talent retention, cherish your high performer

Leading today’s knowledge workers requires a different skillset than in the past.

Is someone being a disruptive force at the office? Change the way you look at things. Consider your disruptor is someone who advances things, because that is what he or she does naturally. Remember, I didn’t help my father because I wanted to rise above him. I helped him because well, I wanted to be of help.

In the battle towards talent retention, help yourself and your employees see how the benefits of collaborating with high performers can outweigh the threats, so your high-performers don’t feel sabotaged, and leave. You could make the Disruptor 50 list, with the likes of WeWork, 23AndMe, or GitHub.

 

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Sonsoles Alonso – I help CxOs and Founders Build Highly Efficient Happy Teams in 6 Months or Less with the Right Hires, using Systemic Tools and Serious Games.
sonsoles@sonsolesalonso.com
www.sonsolesalonso.com

Are you in tech? I recently teamed up with top-rated instructor Mark Farragher for our online course ‘6 Tools To Improve Your Tech and Leadership Communication’.

Check also my 5-week online masterclass:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/break-free-from-the-assembly-line/

And my online class on Team Delegation and Leadership:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/team-delegation-and-leadership/

Would you like to read some other posts? My most successful one so far is The War Against Talent, with over 100000 views.