work climate, leadership and coaching

diciembre 2011, ejecant, santander

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Monday, January 2, 12

day 1 lifelong learningleadership

On day one of the course we looked at how we learn and how we will need to develop what Foucalt called the ‘Technologies of the self’, self knowledge and the capacity for deep transformative learning to adapt to the ever changing world we live in. We looked at different types of learning: cumulative, assimilative, transcendent and transformative and discovered that we had done plenty of the first two types and very little of the last two types of learning throughout our education. We also discovered why exams are absolutely no use at all and only help us to forget what we learn faster.As regards leadership, we looked at Western’s 4 leadership discourses: from the ‘controller’ discourse in , therapist, charismatic and the more recent eco-leader discourse. We also looked at the dangers of what Mendl described as the ‘Romance’ of leadership, or attributing to much importance to the leader and not enough to the context or the team around them.And finally, we looked at what leadership really means, when we ‘do’ it and what makes it different from management and command. To do this we looked at the ideas of Keith Grint and the concept of critical, tame and wicked problems. Grint maintains that the more complex a problem, when it is impossible to separate the problem from its context (think ‘the Euro’, ‘global warming’) the less likely an ‘elegant’ solution exists, and the greater the need for collaborative, negotiated, ‘clumsy’ solutions.

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Monday, January 2, 12

day 2 coaching, work climate and EI leadershipOn day 2 we continued looking at the ideas of Grint and applied them to the cultural theory Grid/Group ideas of Mary Douglas. In this way we started to develop empathetic responses to problems along the lines of “How would a neo-liberal approach this problem? What would the military do? What would my grandparents do? Sadly, we agreed that too many of us are trapped in Fatalist Communities at work.We also started to identify different leadership styles and took a careful look at the ideas of Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis... Why careful? Well, there is a lot of bad, bad science in the world of coaching, business and economics, and Goleman’s idea that we can model our behaviour on others for economic gain sounds a little ‘individualist’. And because it is good to question what we are sold as answers.Goleman and Boyatzis identify 6 leadership styles (commander and pace-setter as potentially dissonant and toxic; visionary, coach, affiliative and democratic as examples of what Goleman calls resonant leadership. We talked about the pros and cons of these styles and where they fit in Western’s leadership discourses and which style might be most useful when tackling a wicked problem.We also practiced a coaching session using the GROW model of a typical leadership coaching session

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Monday, January 2, 12

day 3 and 4 Work climate, collaborative leadership, power authority and persuasion On days 3 and 4 we talked about how culture and organisational context affect leaders.we learnt how to see ourselves as a product of the social group around us and discovered the multiple identities we possess (or which possess us). We are not the same person in a bar on the latest trends in ‘collaborative leadership’ and how this affects the climate of organisations and workplaces. We discovered that when we work as a group towards a clear objective we are all a lot more creative than, say, Renzo Piano, and all we need is some old newspapers, tape and straws. Which led us to the nature of work today and the skills we need. At this point we talked about what works and what doesn’t. Spanish restataurants are a success story today, but why? and more importantly how? With the help of business guru Gary Hamel we looked at companies like Gore, Whole Foods Market and others to see how they had radically changed work culture to improve climate (and results). Without forgetting that Hamel once praised Enron as the best company ever! And although unpleasant men still earn 20% more than the rest, we concluded that change in the way we do things at work is necessary for all of us.

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Monday, January 2, 12

day 5 - Change and leading ourselves

On the final day of the course we looked at why most change is really complicated (according to Grint up to 75% of change programs fails). Most business studies courses teach us the process of change, but not how to get people to accept change. The work by Kubler Ross and others show us that people have a very hard time adapting to new circumstances. And, as we saw earlier, transformative learning hurts.More modern approaches to change take the emotional, social aspects of change management into account. Finally, we looked at leadership of the self and some useful (and some useless) things you can do if you’re ‘between jobs’. The interview material is here. Remember: the capacity to accept responsibility and lead others at work will give you enormous advantages over the rest. Leadership is something we learn through trial and error, observation and practice. It requires psychology, of course, but also sociology, philosophy and values to lead others. Above all, effective leaders are ‘accountable’ for their actions.We’ve seen in the course how culture and context are constantly evolving and how leadership trends evolve with them. We agreed that we are moving into a period where we will demand greater ‘collaboration’, where there is often no single, simple solution to the problems we face. For me , the greatest challenge we face is converting managers into leaders...Good luck!

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Monday, January 2, 12

for further reading• Grint, K, (2005) ‘Problems, Problems, Problems: The Social Construction of Leadership’, Human

Relations, 58,11, 1467- 1494.

• Management challenges for the 21st Century - Peter Drucker

• Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis (2001) Primal Leadership

• The Great Reset - Richard Florida

• Collinson, D. (2005) Rethinking followership: A post-structuralist analysis of follower identities

• Hickman, G. (2010) Leading Change in Multiple Contexts

• Western, S. (2008) Leadership: a critical text

• Douglas, M, (1966) Purity and Danger, Routledge.

• Games for trainers - Harrison Snow

• G. Hamel, (2007), The Future of Management, Harvard

• Knud Illeris et al, (2009) Contemporary Theories of Learning, Routledge.

• Michael Foley, (2010)The Age of Absurdity, Simon & Schuster

• Richard Wiseman, 2010, 59 seconds.

• Dave Grey et al, (2011) Gamestorming, O’Reilly

• Norcross et al Discredited Psychological Treatments and Tests: A Delphi Poll http://

Monday, January 2, 12