“On the Balcony” – A Place for Perspective, and KONU’s New Podcast!

One of the most profound learnings I had on my own development journey is the power of “Getting on the Balcony!” It is a metaphor that was first introduced to me by my mentor and professor Ron Heifetz in his groundbreaking class “Exercising Leadership. The Politics of Change.” 

The idea is simple – but the practice is hard. 

We all get caught up in the busyness of our roles and jobs. The action of the dance floor. That’s where the music draws us. That’s where the energy is - and the sweat. But in order to see the bigger picture, it is essential to step back and get on the balcony. 

In my own leadership practice, I often go on walks, I journal, I talk with close friends. In my practice as a coach, I hold space and help clients find new awareness, new perspectives – to listen to the song beneath the words. 

These are all balcony practices – and they are typically personal and private.

We need more public balconies. That’s why I’m inviting you today to listen to our new podcast “On the Balcony,” where we slow down, have meaningful conversations with allies and confidants, do deep reading and reflection, and practice coaching. 

Listen to the Podcast here

We start this season by exploring Ron Heifetz’s groundbreaking book, Leadership Without Easy Answers (1994) – the book behind the most provocative leadership class at Harvard Kennedy School, which has impacted generations of change agents, executives, and people who care about developing others.

In the almost-30 years since the book was published, the world has gotten even more complex. Collectively, we face a lot of really messy challenges. 

KONU’s mission is to develop change agents to address systemic challenges. This podcast hopes to make a contribution to supporting individuals on their leadership journeys.

Each episode corresponds with a chapter of the book. Episode 1 focuses on the introduction and chapter one, and what makes the adaptive leadership framework so unique in the conversation about leadership.

We start by inviting a guest to share their experiences practicing leadership and we make meaning of a piece of text that stood out to them. In the first episode, leadership coach and facilitator Rosi Greenberg helps us explore the roles of identity and silence in practicing leadership, and how to think about the “messes” we create.

Then, stemming from KONU’s deep-seated belief that everyone can grow their leadership practice, we hold vulnerable space… in which I get coached on air! 

The purpose of this public coaching is to put a spotlight on the power of coaching in helping people – yes, including me – make leaps in our development. For the first two episodes, Andy Cahill, a transformational coach I am honored to call a KONU colleague, serves as my on-air coach.

I invite you to listen to the episode, available now where you get your podcasts. As you do so, consider sharing and discussing the episodes with your teams and colleagues as part of your balcony practice. 

Find On The Balcony on your favorite streaming service

What’s coming up for you? What are you learning? How can you apply this to your own leadership practice?

Shared Pain is Taboo

Shared Pain is Half the Pain Taboo  

How to Manage Loss during Times of Change

Elisabeth Heid & Judit Teichert  

Published in Zeitschrift für Organisationsentwicklung, 3/2021, 60-65, translated from German 

Why do so many change processes lose their momentum?  

Often, it’s because change comes with sacrifice. People will have to incur losses to make the change. Losing something you care for, believe in, or identify with is painful. Worse, those losses are often taboo — unacknowledged elephants in the room.  

In order to successfully manage change efforts, you need to openly name these losses, create space to discuss them, and serve as a role model by facing your losses. 

Practicing leadership requires you to choreograph opportunities for the people to mourn the losses when they arise in times of change. 

Why do so many change projects still fail?  

Adaptive processes in organizations often begin with euphoria, big visions, ambitious milestones, extensive timelines, and resources. Despite all this energy and fanfare, they are still highly likely to fail.  

We’ve worked with hundreds of clients over the years, supporting them through change processes. Again and again, we see that it is only the visible aspects of change that get addressed: the vision and the structures, capabilities, processes, and incentive systems to implement that vision.  

What remains taboo is the invisible: namely, the reality that change always comes with real or feared losses for the people involved. By revealing losses and being role models for mourning and coping with them, managers can make a significant contribution to successful change.  

Most frameworks for change management only focus on “visible” levers 

The fathers and grandfather of change management frameworks regarded change as a process that the management team implements top-down and gradually. Kurt Lewin (1947) recommended that the status quo be thawed in order to then move the affected persons towards the desired target state and then consolidate it. John Kotter (1995) developed this into an eight-stage change model. The decisive factor is, for example, to create urgency, to communicate an inspiring vision, and to form a single-river coalition of supporters.  

In the late 90s and the early 2000s, theorists dealt with the fact that it is not so easy to win over people for change. Peter Senge (1999) admits: "You must be willing to be influenced by another person” and raises the question of the best role of the manager in the change process. Perhaps the common understanding of the "CEO-as-hero" prevents change because it infantilizes the organization. Leadership – in the sense of assuming responsibility for change – must and can come from different hierarchical levels (Senge, 1999, Heifetz, 1994). Otto Scharmer (2007) extended this trend by shedding light on the inner process required for people to change (“organizational learning”).  

“People don’t resist change – they resist loss.”

— Ronald Heifetz (1994)

 The losses behind change are often overlooked or avoided 

Despite the positive developments in prevailing change management theories, a crucial aspect is ignored: how best to reckon with the losses that accompany change? 

Despite the common understanding, it is not change that people are afraid of. People actually embrace change. If it is in their favor. Would you throw away a winning lottery ticket? Or reject an exciting new job? Or a better apartment in a great neighborhood?  

It is not the change itself that causes resistance. Rather, it is the real or perceived losses associated with the change that are so difficult. The new job means saying farewell to beloved colleagues; the new apartment means leaving a familiar environment. Change processes often fail not because the change itself was not properly structured, initiated, or supported with incentives (as the change management theories would claim) – but because losses were not sufficiently anticipated and managed.  

In cognitive psychology and behavioral economics, losses have been considered for some time. Kahnemann and Tversky (1984) speak of loss aversion: As soon as uncertainties are involved, people decide irrationally, and weight feared losses greater than hoped-for gains. As a result, people make unjustified efforts to counteract these losses. Fear of loss has a stronger effect than a desire for change! In addition, there is a negativity bias. We overemphasize possible negative consequences and prefer the status quo instead. In other words, we are overly pessimistic and give the beautiful, new world little or no chance (Sunstein & Thaler, 2008).  

The core task: identify and understand loss  

Similar to how drug companies inform patients about the undesirable side effects, managers should proactively inform the affected people about losses that may accompany the change.  

In some instances, we experience tough managers “writing off” a loss – for example, when cutting costs or getting rid of employees. It’s common to hear a cynical remark when managers engage loss in this manner (e.g., “If you want to drain the swamp, don't ask the frogs”). What is missing here is integrity. It is necessary to truly examine and empathize which losses are most threatening. This is not so easy, because they are under the waterline of the metaphorical iceberg.  

Loss can be real or anticipated, material or intangible (see Figure 1). What these types of loss have in common is that people often view them as embarrassing, self-centered, or self-serving concerns. The loss is often accompanied by unpleasant emotions such as sadness, disappointment, fear, or – when the loss feels socially unacceptable – shame (e.g., “What do others think about me when they know that it is important to me to have control?”). Therefore, many people avoid showing their fears openly.  

Once the various losses have been identified, an important step towards sustainable change has already been taken.  

Figure 1 

Identify and understand loss 

Figure 2 

Practical example: Diagnosing loss during an entrepreneurial culture change  

An organization hopes for managers to take on more responsibilities, more cross-functional collaboration as well as more cooperation within the middle management, and initiates a cultural change process. The euphoria quickly turns into fatigue after a couple of weeks. Implicitly, fears of losses of the people involved become evident. 

Grief is a core coping strategy for loss 

We have to express our feelings in order to be able to look ahead. Unfortunately, Western societies have lost the competence to accompany people in mourning, particularly in organizational contexts that bias towards logic and compliance and shy away from ‘unprofessional’ or ‘inappropriate’ displays of emotion.  

Until the 1970s, it was common in Germany (where our authors are from) for people to keep mourning periods and wear black mourning clothes. The public symbol encouraged sympathy not only from the grieving person, but also from those who encountered them. Today, mourning is done in private – alone or with therapeutic guidance. Public mourning is highly de-personalized and without emotional expression: flags are set at half-mast, sport teams hold a moment of silence.  

In an organizational context, grieving is almost completely absent. Instead, the slogan is issued: We must now look ahead. This is often exacerbated by cynicism or a deprecation of all those who show “weakness” or “aren’t positive or motivated enough.” 

Leadership frameworks can learn from therapy, religious, and cultural traditions in coping with grief  

An essential leadership task during times of change is to hold people through grief. And yet, this is barely taught at business school. Let’s take a look beyond the (management) horizon: What do disciplines that have more experience in coping with grief teach us?  

Therapeutic approaches  

Grief has the function of helping people cope with experiences of loss. Therapists support the overcoming of losses. They name the loss itself and help their clients to experience and express accompanying emotions, sensations, and thoughts. Furthermore, they acknowledge those unpleasant feelings and help the clients both comprehend them and experience them as legitimate. This makes the loss (and one's own reaction to it) acceptable in the long haul (Kübler-Ross & Kessler, 2007). After all, therapeutic grief work is about building a new – supportive rather than restrictive – relationship with the lost (such as a deceased person). Therapists often also support those affected in the development and assumption of new roles, behaviors, and life plans.  

Approaches from cultural and religious wisdom traditions  

There are big differences between cultures in the way mourning is done, especially in the emotional expression of grief. In ancient Egypt, paid “lamenters” accompanied the funeral procession and drew attention to the death of a person through loud wailing, singing and dancing, and prayers. Public crying and wailing are still part of mourning in many parts of the Islamic world. The Navajo, who mourn in peace to make it easier for the spirit of the deceased to travel to the next world, handle it quite differently. Cultures are united by the fact that there are specific norms for mourning and remembering that provide orientation (Schumacher, 2016). Common to these rituals and norms are that:  

• A common sympathy for the loss: the  person directly affected is invited to grief and joined and supported by the people around them. 

• The loss is organized in a framework, or meaning. For example, by presenting the loss as a sacrifice or renunciation in favor of a greater good (e.g., God, motherland, the well-being of the community or future generations). 

• People are freed from many social norms during the mourning period (e.g. everyday tasks, withholding emotions) and are thus granted that this is a special and intense time. 

• Mourning takes place immediately after loss, suggesting that grief must be dealt with when it arises – and that grieving can be “made up” later, but this is much more laborious. 

• Mourning is limited in time in order to be able to look to the future and renewal. 

Five steps for accompanying losses in change processes  

How can you manage the loss that arises in adaptive work? We offer five recommendations, which we address to managers, but which also apply to consultants in change processes.  

1. Surface and name loss 

Sometimes it is not so easy to hear what losses are feared. It helps to listen “between the lines,” to enter into conversations with curiosity and compassion, and to assume that behind every demand, every complaint, every accusation there is a legitimate need. Deepen your understanding and help loss surface by asking the following questions:  

• What unpleasant emotions does the change provoke for you? 

• What needs to be said out loud (again) so that you can work well together in the new situation or arrangement?  

• What do you need to let go in order to accept and adapt to the new situation? 

• What do we have to do (cling to) in order to sabotage our adaptation?  

It is important to break the taboo and to explicitly address fears in advance. This can be done in the context of strategy or vision development by raising the question: “What might I possibly have to give up for this?” It is important to actually ask the affected people about fears of loss and not – as is often done – to assume them. Assuming people’s losses entails the risk that grief will be blamed for their behavior, when there is in fact a well-founded criticism or a legitimate interest.  

In our experience, the Immunity to Change method (Kegan & Lahey, 2009) is an effective way to identify fears and the assumptions on which these fears are based. In just two steps, individuals or teams work their way up to their (subconscious) worries about a change project – without losing face over disclosing them. In this way, taboo emotions (as well as legitimate interests worthy of protection) surface and thus can be engaged.  

At this stage it is important to name and acknowledge these losses instead of ignoring or marginalizing them. We work with executives to practice saying the following: “Yes, that’s hard, and your reaction (e.g. anger, sadness, fear) is understandable” – and to remain still in the resulting silence. Through this they show their appreciation for the loss and promote a moment of mourning – through which it is then possible for the team to detach themselves from the loss.  

2. Be a role model: Make your own sacrifices and reveal your own learning 

Managers have an important role to play in the change process. True to the maxim that change begins with the "Man in the Mirror", they can be role models for change and reveal their own learning. This means, for example:  

• Make your own sacrifices: give up power or renounce your own privileges and possibly even recognize when it is beneficial for the change for you to leave 

• Share publicly what is difficult to change  

• Acquire new skills that are important in the changed reality of the company, while revealing your own learning process  

• Admit and apologize for your own mistakes in the design and implementation of the change process  

Here is what some executives shared with us during difficult adaptive processes:  

• “It’s hard for me to give up more responsibility and control less. I’m worried that I might be thought irresponsible and that I’m not living up to my role.”  

• “Maybe with my departure it will also come out that I have not managed many things well enough – that is depressing.”  

• “I focused on working with international partners. This was at the expense of the internal management, because my attention was not with you. I overlooked that for a long time and I’m sorry for that.”  

3. Give loss a meaningful interpretation  

Being asked to give something up, voluntarily and “just like that” (or even more so, “because the bosses say so”), generates defiance and resistance. For many of us, when we have to accept losses, it is extremely helpful to see meaning in it. Managers can support grief work by:  

• Asking employees why it might be good to take the loss 

• Naming the loss and the associated efforts and appreciating them as a “high price” or as a “great sacrifice”  

• Explaining for which organizational good the price or sacrifice is needed 

• Inviting the people concerned (not requesting) to pay this price and to make the sacrifice 

 

4. Accept (unwanted) side effects or casualties 

Sometimes not everyone can be taken along. For some, the losses are so great that it no longer fits. In order for people to be able to save face, it is important to give them the opportunity to make this decision themselves. Elisabeth Heid (co-author) has accompanied schools in difficult situations in processes of change. For the heads of these schools, there eventually came a point when they needed to say to their staff:  "For some of you, this may no longer be the right school. We do not have to be exactly in line with everything, but you should share the main features of the realignment for the benefit of the organization as well as for your own satisfaction." It often took great courage for the school management to express this – but their staff was thankful for the clarity. 

5. Celebrate farewell  

A real farewell is the necessary downside of reorientation. Therefore, we recommend giving room to say goodbye. Managers can use farewell rituals to steer the recognition and overcoming of loss in a tangible and structured way. One of our colleagues reports on a company he co-founded: "We celebrated and mourned the departure of Phase 1.0 when three founders left us and the company became much more professional – but also a bit more bureaucratic. We made a photo book, laughed and cried over old stories and departure from 'Phase 1.0' together."  

In some cases, it might even be relevant to think about compensation for loss. Here we’d suggest you ask employees what they need to overcome the loss and to negotiate appropriate compensation. Compensation does not have to be monetary and often money is not the appropriate means to meet the need behind the loss. The decision is to make the effort to find out together with the employees what it is about, what exactly the wound looks like – and then to find a suitable remedy (or consolation).  

The High Art: managing fear and loss for employees, executives, and consultants 

Typically, as consultants, we also encounter resistance in the implementation of the above points – just as with any change. In the first place are objections of this kind: "But we do not want to wake up sleeping dogs" or "The word 'renunciation' unnecessarily stirs up the already existing worries". For managers, it is unusual to “only” name the difficulty without directly presenting a solution for it. “Don't bring me any problems, only solutions” is a well-known management maxim. Because naming losses also threatens a loss for executives: How much do I lose reputation among my employees if I just let my naming of the loss stand and do nothing actively to make the mood better?  

Interestingly, the same loss dynamic hinders progress here twice: employees are inhibited by change because they find it difficult to overcome a loss; and managers are also inhibited from publicly appreciating the loss of employees because they themselves fear a loss (e.g., of their reputation). As consultants in change processes, we are therefore asked to do three things: to manage the fear of loss of the management staff, while at the same time enabling these managers to do this with their employees, and last but not least, managing our own fears of loss (i.e., "how does this go to the client?"). We have the choice of cultivating these worries as taboos – or putting them on the table with a little serenity and humor.  

Bibliography 

Heifetz, R. (1994). Leadership without Easy Answers. Harvard University Press.  

Kahneman, D. & Tversky A. (1979). Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk. In: Econometrica. 47, 263—292  

Kegan, R. & Lahey L. L. (2009). Immunity to Change. Harvard University Press.  

Kotter, J. P. (1996). Leading Change. Harvard Business School Press.  

Kübler-Ross E. & Kessler, D. (2007). On Grief and Dying: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss. Scribner.  

Lewin, K. (1947).Frontiers in Group Dynamics, In: Human Relations 1 Nr.5.  

Scharmer, O. (2007). Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.  

Schumacher, K. (2016). Wo Trauernde lächeln. Spektrum. https://zoe.ch/trauernde  

Senge,P. (1999). The Dance of Change: The Challenges to Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations. Doubleday/Currency.  

Thaler, R. & Sunstein, C.(2008). Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Yale University Press.  

The Power of Polarity Management

If you’re like our clients here at KONU, it’s likely you’re facing increased polarization in your organization, team, or community. These polarizations show up in questions like these: 

• Should we lean into change? Or focus on stability? 

• Do we let ourselves get messy and innovate? Or should we focus on improving efficiency? 

• Are we more productive with a distributed, work-from-home workforce? Or do we need everyone back together again so we can rebuild our sense of team and culture? 

• Can we get more agile, increasing freedom and autonomy? Or do we need to centralize, ensuring consistency and quality? 

• Should we welcome dissenting points of view from across the aisle? Or rally together to strengthen our shared identity? 

Polarities like these feel like a zero-sum game. One side wins and the other loses. But they’re all rooted in an assumption. A way of thinking so common, it pervades virtually every aspect of our culture: “Either/or” 

Either we lean into change, or we batten down the hatches and play it safe. Either we open ourselves to dissenting points of view, or we close ranks and protect our own. Either we decentralize and become more agile, or we centralize and become more consistent. 

This way of thinking can tear a group apart at the seams. We need only look around us to see plenty of evidence for that. One of our favorite tools for navigating these polarities – which, in turn, can reduce polarization – is polarity management. 

Polarity management is an approach to these questions that is rooted in a more sophisticated ‘both/and’ way of thinking. Where ‘either/or’ offers us only binaries, ‘both/and’ invites us into complexity, paradox, and nuance. 

This kind of thinking is often counter-intuitive, but it allows for new kinds of questions:  

• How might we welcome dissenting viewpoints and strengthen our shared identity? 

• How might we increase agility and ensure higher quality and consistency? 

• How might we make space for change and provide more stability? 

Human beings love solving problems. The satisfaction that comes with a job well done is perhaps one of life’s great pleasures. But polarities aren’t problems! They are dynamic, interconnected forces that can and should be engaged, managed, and allowed to weave together. 

This aligns with one of the core tenets of Adaptive Leadership – an innovative framework for leadership pioneered by Ronald Heifetz and his colleagues Riley Sinder, Marty Linksy and Dean Williams at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government: 

True Leadership is the repeated act of mobilizing a group of people with a collective challenge to make meaningful progress on that challenge. Adaptive Challenges can’t be solved. They can only be evolved. For progress to happen, people must shift their hearts and minds so that new, more productive behaviors can follow. In other words, people have to adapt. 

Polarity management offers us a path towards that adaptation.  

If you’re wrestling with polarizations in your work, and you’d like to explore how polarity management might help, reach out to us.  

And for a deeper dive into polarity management, I highly recommend Dr. Barry Johnson’s fantastic book ‘Polarity Management: Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems’, Brian Emersons / Kelly Lewis: ‘Navigating Polarities: Using Both/And Thinking to Lead Transformation’ as well as the Certificate on Managing Polarities at Georgetown University. 

References 

https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/are-you-facing-a-problem-or-a-polarity/ 

https://www.harvardbusiness.org/navigating-complexity-managing-polarities/  

"I was hired to bring hope and fix problems. But I soon realized I can’t do it all."

“It is so easy to get caught in the savior mentality. I needed to find out which stakeholders could be my partners. I needed create a coalition. And I also needed to accept that I am only human.”

In our inaugural round table for executives leading non-profit organizations with national or global impact, our long-term friend and client Dario Soto Abril kicked of the conversation with this vulnerable reflection about being caught up in savior mode. It was part of a larger conversation where he described his own learning journey as first time CEO of a globally operating federated non-profit organization.

Together with a group of fourteen executives, my colleagues Elisabeth, Andy, and I explored the typical challenges executive of complex systems face:
- Everyone expects you to solve their problems
- You are constantly balancing the (sometimes conflicting) expectations of multiple stakeholders
- You work long hours and often feel overwhelmed and/or underappreciated

Everyone in the room was equipped with a large strategic toolkit and several leadership frameworks to do the outer work of leadership. Despite that, what emerged in our conversation was the clear realization that the most difficult part of being a CEO is often the personal inner work; honoring our humanity and our desire to belong and be loved while letting go of mindsets and assumptions that may have served us well in the past, but no longer serve the work now

We are successful because we have a history of solving problems and taking them off of people's shoulders – but now that might get in the way of way distributing the work where it belongs.

We often are good at relating and serving others, but now we might need to disappoint people, say no, set healthy boundaries.

And finally, we have been very committed, and successful – and actually not very comfortable with failure or “good enough,” which leads us to long work hours, over-drive and sometimes even burn out.

Being a CEO is like being a top athlete: you need a team. And that is not necessarily only your colleagues. You need peers who help you normalize the new experience. You need coaches and confidants who help you take care of yourself and distinguish between the difficult role you have, and the beautiful self you are. And you need partners who give you permission to not do it all at once.

As one participant of our executive group put it so beautifully: “I sometimes think my organization has a garden full of problems. And it is only I who sees the most of the picture. But I realized I don’t need to attend to all of them at once. Some little plants can grow a little larger until others see them too.”

Conflicts, Tension, Heat: When are Conflicts Harmful - and When are They Helpful?

Conflicts can be very helpful! That is why it is crucial to build your stomach for handling them. (Does that sound strange to you? Have a look here.)  

We use a lot of time, energy, and money to prevent conflicts from developing or at least to clear them from our table as fast as possible. Executives I coach often tell me that they avoid passing on “pressure from above” to their teams in order to keep away from conflicts. Why are we doing this if conflicts can be productive? 

There is a good reason for this behavior: Not all conflicts are productive or helpful. But how do you know when that’s the case? What makes some conflicts harmful – and others helpful? Imagine the following: A conflict creates a certain heat or tension in a group the extent of which can vary:   

1. Low heat = comfort zone. Here, the conflict is not productive because it is being avoided, denied, or ignored.

2. High heat = panic zone. Here too, the conflict is not productive because it is overwhelming the stakeholders involved.

3. In between these zones = learning zone. This is the range of conflict in which engagement, learning and progress is possible.  

As you can see, conflicts are productive when the metaphorical heat is dosed well. The heat needs to be high enough for the parties in conflict to move out of their comfort zone and into confrontation and learning. Meanwhile, the tolerance threshold mustn't be exceeded – it cannot get too hot.  

Humans react emotionally towards heat and tension – me included. To find out where you, your team, or your organization stand, you need to be able to perceive emotions carefully and accurately. This is what we mean by emotional intelligence.  You’ll want to diagnose whether the emotional reactions you observe are indicators of learning, panic, or comfort. It is best to start with yourself. Think about a regular workday. When do you learn the most? How much do you develop and grow on a business-as-usual day? How much do you learn when there are small moments of tensions in your team? How is your ability to learn   affected when the tension is too high?  How do you react?   

You can apply these same questions to your team and organization.  

Possible indicators for a group that is in the learning zone are:  

• Discussions are authentic and deep 

• Controversial points of view are welcomed and grappled with 

Possible indicators for a group that is in the panic zone are :  

• Mentally zoning out 

• Physically leaving an ongoing meeting  

• Attacking or finger-pointing 

• Criticizing the meeting style, facilitation, setting etc. Focusing on technical aspects of the problem and denying adaptive elements (Want to know what we mean by technical aspects? Have a look here!) 

Please note: Panic does not only mean acting angry or anxious – panic can be expressed in multitude of ways, from fight to flight to freeze.  

Indicators for a group that is in the comfort are: 

• Passive participation 

• Unwillingness to take on responsibility  

• Limited involvement (verbally or engagement in thinking) 

On your journey to becoming more effective at handling conflict, you’ve taken two important steps: 

1. You’ve built your own stomach for conflict 

2. You’ve learned to step back when faced with conflict and assess how productive the conflict actually is 

The question that comes up next is: What do I do when faced with a conflict that is languishing in the comfort zone – or causing upheavals in the panic zone? How can I regulate the temperature so it’s just right – so that my organization, team or I can manage the conflict productively. Learn more about that in my next blogpost.
 

Workplace Conflicts - Curse or Blessing? Learn How to Become an Expert at Navigating Conflicts

Workplace conflicts are annoying and incredibly unproductive. Just like in private relationships, fighting is exhausting. Imagine a world without conflicts! Wouldn’t that be great? 

Really? Of course, it would be lovely if life always were harmonious. But, if I’m honest with myself, some of the most profound lessons I’ve learned have been the result of me facing a conflict (with myself or others) and getting to the bottom of it. This is also true of the work I do with individuals, teams, and organizations: Development is almost always the result of confrontation. So, let’s reframe conflict: Conflicts are almost always productive. And they offer a great opportunity for growth and development. That’s because conflicts show us:   

• Where change needs to happen 

• Where disagreement needs to be taken seriously  

• Where bridges between different parts of a team or an organization need to be built  

• Where curiosity, rather than persuasion, is necessary (“You seem to have a different perspective than I do. Can you please tell me more?”)  

On an individual level, our ability to handle conflict varies greatly. Looking at myself, in my role as executive coach and consultant, I find it fairly easy to face a conflict and hold steady, because I am able to observe impartially from the outside. The story is very different when it comes to my personal life: There, I am part of the system, and I need to stand up for my own interests. As you can see, one’s ability to tolerate conflicts varies depending on the situation (and not only on one’s personal inclinations).   

If you are a person who panics as soon as conflict surfaces, your impulse might be to run, or to freeze, or to intervene to restore harmony. Perhaps you try to offer quick fixes or play down the conflict all together. However, if those are the only action options available to you, you’ll have a hard time exercising leadership effectively (exercising leadership? You can read more about what I mean by that here). Exercising leadership is difficult when you prevent conflicts from surfacing and being resolved by those people who are party to the conflict. 

Building a stomach for conflict is a skill that can be learned, just like you’ve likely learned how to swim or how to ride a bicycle. The first step is allowing the conflict to surface – not solving it. Here are five strategies you can apply the next time you encounter a conflict:  

1. Tell yourself: “What a great opportunity to build my stomach for conflict!”  

2. Take a moment to get in touch with your emotions. Assess your feelings of tension on a scale from 0-10, where zero means “no tension at all” and ten means “the most tense I have ever felt.” Describe your feelings. Tell yourself, “I have this feeling – but I am not the feeling.” 

3. When holding steady and saying nothing at all is no longer an option, name the feeling that is “in the air” (rather than solutions or measures to fix the situation). For example, you can say: “I have the impression that many of us are annoyed. Why is that the case? What is going on here?” 

4. Ask yourself in a quiet moment afterwards: “What is difficult for me about tolerating conflict? What is being triggered in me right now?” This will help you to understand what limits your ability to tolerate conflict. Your answer will also help you to pinpoint a personal growth edge  😉  

5. Do take criticism seriously – but don’t take it personally. Instead, view critical feedback in the context of the role you are in in that moment. An example: Your team is overworked and voices their frustrations at you, their manager. Their criticism is directed at how you are practicing your role as manager, but it is not directed at you, the person.  

I hope you find these strategies helpful for building your stomach for conflict! You may find that you come up with additional strategies. Having said all of this, I must acknowledge: There are also conflicts that lead to nothing or are even harmful. Have a look at my next blogpost to find out how to distinguish productive from unproductive conflicts.

Why You Can Lead With and Without Authority

In part 2 of this blog post series, I defined leadership as an activity: Leadership means mobilizing people to take on and make progress on their collective challenges. If you think of leadership as an activity, it becomes clear that you can lead both when you have a lot of authority in a group and when you have very little authority. What is also clear is that both situations have advantages and disadvantages.

If I have a lot of formal authority, then I might be the CEO, the team lead, the facilitator, or even the president or chancellor.

• Leading from a formal authority role brings with it certain advantages, the most important being attention and resources: When I invite people to a meeting, they show up; when I give a speech, they listen. Therefore, I have opportunities to draw attention to collective problems. Furthermore, I am more likely to have the resources to engage people in problem solving and learning. For example, I can set up working groups for my staff to work our problem together.

• The big disadvantage to leading from such an authority role is that people expect me, their boss, to solve their problems – and not to give the work back to them. “That's why you're the boss,“ they’ll tell me. If I expect people to develop new capacities, to endure losses, or question privileges, many will not be pleased. To exercise leadership as “the boss” is therefore a balancing act between meeting and disappointing expectations. 

In my work as an executive coach and trainer, I often encounter the assumption that leadership is only possible from a formal authority role – or at least, that that makes leadership much easier. I’d like to vehemently disagree with that! Leadership is very much possible from a position of low formal authority. Typical examples of such roles are: The activist, the whistleblower, or – most mundanely – the new hire or intern.

First, the disadvantages: 

• I have little attention and limited or no resources. 

• Few people listen to me. 

• Maybe I'll even be dismissed as a troublemaker. 

• When I make suggestions, they’ll tell me it’s all be tried before. 

Discouraged? You shouldn't be, because your situation also has advantages for leadership: 

• Low formal authority means that people do not expect you to solve their problems. This can make it much easier to bring up a sore subject.  

• At the same time, you’re likely to have fewer responsibilities (for example, for the company's success or for staff satisfaction) and therefore less to lose. This allows you jester’s license – using it requires courage, of course, but offers many possibilities. 

Think of climate change: Here, we see leadership coming from both Greta Thunberg (with very little formal authority), and Angela Merkel (with high formal authority). At the Digital UN climate summit in December 2020, Chancellor Merkel pledged 500 million Euros for climate protection measures in poorer countries and she declared that Germany will uphold its commitment to doubling its climate contributions. Despite having little formal authority, Greta Thunberg used the attention she’s gained to criticize the summit's results on Twitter: "Atthe Climate Ambition Summit, leaders celebrate their shameless loopholes, empty words, inadequate long-distance goals, and the robbery of current and future living conditions – and they call it ’ambition.’ There are no climate leaders. The only ones who can change that are you and I. Together.”

Let’s turn away from world politics and towards mundane worklife: What does leadership with little formal authority look like in the corporate world? 

An example from my company, KONU: Fortunately, our team is growing. This means that staff are frequently working together for the first time on a client project. One of our partners recently set up a weekly team meeting. So far so good. What would often happen next is that the formal authorities decide how the meeting will be run and what will be discussed. Not so with us. During meeting number two, three staff came forward asking to share a challenge they recently encountered: Working on a client project, there’s been some internal friction: Some staff felt they’d done too little to prepare a workshop, especially in light of the many innovations it contained. Others felt it had gone great: The workshop went well, and the client was happy. Debriefing their experience, the staff felt that what they were experiencing was symptomatic for our growing company – and therefore worth delving into more deeply at the staff meeting. This took courage: In many workplaces, disagreement is something you’d hide – particularly from authorities – and not something you’d purposefully try to shine a light. Through that courage, the staff were able to foster organizational learning – and also set a standard for what we discuss in our team meeting (namely, the uncomfortably!).

As you can see, everyone can lead! Give it a try!

Go back to the beginning of this series.

Leadership – The Undisciplined Discipline

Everyone is talking about leadership these days. A look at recent new headlines: “Leadership transition in the White House”, “Armenians feel betrayed by their leadership”, “European Union leadership decided about the transmission of COVID vaccines”, “Leadership today does not look like Martin Luther King.” 

But what does leadership actually mean? Is leadership a position or a role? Does it mean a specific individual? Or is leadership an activity? Does it mean influencing others? Is leadership something that can be learned – or is it something one is born with? 

What becomes apparent is that the term “leadership” is used in a myriad of ways and is not clearly defined. This is not only true of colloquial or journalistic use, but also in academia. Academic researchers do not agree on what leadership is. They offer several, at times contradictory, definitions.  

I want to shed some light into this leadership jungle with this series of blogposts – hopefully – offer a clear definition of what leadership truly is.  

This blogpost series consists of three parts:  

1. Part one is about authority, which is often mistaken for leadership.  

2. In part two, I present a new way of thinking about leadership - leadership as an activity.  

3. Part three explores how everyone (including you!) can lead. 

Personally, I find it very enlightening and helpful to think about leadership (and authority) in this way – and I hope you do, too!  

Full disclosure: These ideas are not mine. They originate in Ronald Heifetz’s research about leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, where I was one of his students.  

Start reading here. 

Authority: The Ambivalent Power

Often when we talk about leaders, what we actually mean are authorities. This is why I am dedicating the first part of this series to authority.  

What is authority? Authority is a role in a social system. A group of people (the “authorizers”) give one or several individuals (the “authority”) power or trust. This comes with expectations; in return, authorizers expect authorities to provide them with services. Services such as: protection, direction, order, or representation.  

Authorizers and authorities tend to be highly attuned to each other. Authorities are busy delivering the services expected of them, lest they lose power or trust. Think of the attention politicians’ give to opinion polls, or that a manager gives to the annual feedback he or she receives from subordinates. 

At its most basic, authority relationships are be a useful way to organize groups. Consensual decision making can be inefficient and tiresome, so why not name or elect a person to make decisions and provide services on our behalf? Of course, authority can be abused. Many of us have experienced authority figures who did not use their power or trust awarded to them well. So, it’s no wonder some of us mistrust authority. Our individual experiences shape our relationship toward authority.   

In my work as a leadership development trainer, I use an exercise to demonstrate the expectations we all have of authorities: I might show up to a workshop as the facilitator, but then intentionally do not perform the duties expected of a facilitator: I sit down and don’t do or say a thing. The group will respond with discomfort, unrest, perhaps even anger. Participants begin to demand that I provide protection, direction, and order. In the “here-and-now” of the workshop group, the desire for “good” authority becomes apparent – and can be debriefed. 

The exercise also illustrates the distinction between formal and informal authority.  

Formal authority is something that is given – through an office, a job description, an election, or a title. Once given, the authority remains unchanged and stable for a certain time – say, as long as we hold an elected position. During my workshop, I am given formal authority through the contract I have with the client.  

Informal authority, on the other hand, is earned – through expertise, experience, seniority, popularity, or credibility. Since our authorizers constantly re-evaluate the authority they award us with along these dimensions, informal authority is more fickle.  

Two examples: 

• Mark Zuckerberg is the highest formal authority at Facebook. His board members expect that he develops the overall product strategy and the general direction of the company. However, as a Facebook user, I am one of many users who determine his informal authority depending on whether I believe Facebook secures my data or not.  

• Greta Thunberg: The 17-year-old student and climate activist does not have any formal authority because she does not hold any formal office. However, many people are drawn to her message and place their trust in her. Greta-supporters, such as the many students who attended the weekly Fridays-for-Future demonstrations (pre Covid!), award Greta with high informal authority, because they feel represented by her.   

What does this mean for you? 

 Looking at your environment (for example, your workplace), you can reflect on your own authority.  

• Who gives you formal authority and which services do they expect in return?  

• Looking at your informal authority: Whose trust have you earned and why? Who are your critics – and why? 

Is more authority always better? Or might the many expectations placed on authorities prove to be a burden? And what does all that have to do with leadership? You can read more about that in part 2 here.

Go back to the beginning of the series.

Leadership is a Verb

The first part of the blog post series dealt with authority. We give authority to others, and in return, we expect those people to protect us, to solve our problems, to guide us, or to represent us.  

This blog post is about leadership. In colloquial language, leadership is often used interchangeably with authority. If we speak about “leaders”, we usually mean those individuals, who have lots of (formal) authority: The President, the CEO, the manager, the boss. 

I’d like to invite you to think differently about leadership and to distinguish between leadership and authority. Here’s a new and different way of thinking about leadership:

LEADERSHIP IS AN ACTIVITY. IT IS THE ACTIVITY OF MOBILIZING PEOPLE TO ENGAGE IN ADAPTIVE WORK, TO MAKE PROGRESS AND THRIVE.

Leadership involves “giving the work back” to the people, not taking it off their shoulders.  

Hence, leadership often means helping people:  

• Facing a harsh reality  

• Bridging a gap between aspiration and reality  

• Resolve a conflict of values 

• Questioning own privileges and managing losses 

• Renegotiating loyalties 

• Develop new skills and capabilities  

What becomes clear from this list: Leadership is anything but easy. When I confront people with their problems instead of solving them on their behalf, I do not make myself popular. In fact, I am likely to disappoint others, because leadership means mobilizing others to leave their comfort zone and to move into the unknown.  

Climate change is a good example: Climate change harsh reality, which many of us are trying to avoid. I, too, am a frequent traveler (well, I was, pre-Covid). Greta Thunberg mobilized me and many others to think about the privilege of air travel. She demanded that I reconsider my frequent flying and venture into new travel terrain (might a “good vacation” also be possible locally?). 

What does leadership, was we are defining it, look like in politics? During a televised speech at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic (18th March 2020), German Chancellor Angela Merkel demonstrated what leadership can look like from a formal authority role: She promised to  

• provide authority services (“the state will continue to function and guarantee [food] provisions”) and  

• gave the work back to the people by asking her listeners  

• to accept the harsh reality of the pandemic (“This is serious. No challenge since World Word Two has required more solidarity from us”),  

• laying the onus of responsibility on the people themselves (“I believe we will brave this challenge if every citizen views the challenge as their challenge, “every person can contribute”), and  

• helping people manage losses (“no handshakes, keeping 1,5 meters distance, ideally no physical contact with the elderly – I know how hard it is what I am asking for”) and develop new capacities (“We have to find new ways to show affection and friendship: Skype, phone calls, emails, or perhaps writing letters again”). 

When I think of leadership as an activity, rather than a position or role, the following becomes apparent: Anyone can lead – at any time. Leadership is possible, irrespective of the authority I have or I lack. For example, think about a company that wants to create an open feedback culture (this is something we frequently encounter with clients). The gap between a aspiration (“everyone can make mistakes here and it’s no problem!”) and reality (“mistakes are hidden and covered up”) has to be acknowledged and closed step by step. Employees have to learn to name mistakes and to manage the discomfort that may come with that. I can model this behavior as the CEO – or as the intern. Leadership is therefore possible from all different parts of an organization. Our hierarchical position brings with it advantages and disadvantages. You can read more about that in part 3.  

Can leadership be an activity? What do you think? Is this new way of thinking about leadership exciting to your – or discomforting? 

Go back to the beginning of the series.

Withstanding the Pressure for Quick Fixes and Easy Answers

Whenever I facilitate a leadership workshop, I stand in front of the room as a supposed expert and feel the group’s expectations of me: Tell us what to do. Tell us what is right and what is wrong. The pressure to offer quick fixes and simple solutions, to please (or at the very least not to fall from grace) is immense. Sometimes I am able to give guidance and advice – but sometimes I cannot. Because I, too, do not know the answer. Or because I will never actually know – because people will have to have to cut out their own path. 

This mirrors many peoples’ experience in their professional lives, especially if they have authority and people look to them when times are tough. In these situations, when should leaders offer solutions? When should leaders delegate problem-solving to experts? And when should leaders create spaces for the affected people to come up with their own answers? 

Here’s a distinction that can help approach these questions more deliberately: It depends on the type of challenge you’re facing – whether that challenge is technical or adaptive (Heifetz 2009). Here’s an example to illustrate the difference between the two: 

In most of the industrialized world, a patient experiencing a heart attack will –luckily– quickly be brought to a hospital. There, doctors will diagnose that the blood supply to the heart is blocked. The problem is clear. From this, the responsible doctors will deduce a clear solution: A medicine or surgery is needed to remove the blockage and restore blood supply to the heart. The problem is “solved”. The patient can readily delegate problem solving to the experts (in this case doctors and nurses). Where obstacles exist, these often lie in the realm of resources (time, money, or a country’s medical infrastructure). This type of challenge is technical. 

After the surgery the patient is confronted with a whole new type of challenge: Recovery, rehabilitation and prevention. Here, the doctor will tell the patient: You have heart disease – but we don’t know what’s causing it.” Changing one’s diet, managing stress, being more physically active – all these might be solutions, but they’ll differ from patient to patient. Moreover, none of these are “solutions” the patient can delegate to the doctor. He or she has to change their own behavior. And none of the solutions are the neat-and-tidy kind amenable to a check mark – they’ll require ongoing effort. Money, time and resources are less likely to be obstacles than our habits, values, culture, loyalties, or worries. These types of challenges are adaptive (example taken from Heifetz 2009). 

Distinguishing between technical and adaptive challenges can help you exercise leadership more strategically. When I’m confronted with a problem that is primarily technical in nature, I can solve it as an expert (or I look for someone who has that expertise). When a challenge is primarily adaptive in nature, my job is to help the affected people learn. This means I have to be able to “give the work” of learning and change “back”. And it means I have to build a stomach for complexity and uncertainty.   

Many of the problems we are confronted with in our professional lives have technical and adaptive components. Here’s an example from our practice as consultants: A client of ours is a company that would like to promote collaboration amongst its staff working in different divisions and locations. To do this, the company has hired programmers to develop an online platform with a chat and video conferencing function. This is a technical solution to technical components of their challenge. But half a year later, little has changed. Few staff visit the online platform and during conference calls, staff are preoccupied with looking good and covering up. This part of the challenge is adaptive. In our work as consultants, we often find that the adaptive work is neglected – causing change to stall. Shining the spotlight on adaptive challenges and helping individuals and organizations make progress on them is crucial leadership workshop. 

What are your experiences with different types of challenges? Can you think of examples when problems were confronted on a purely technical basis? And how do you approach adaptive challenges?  

Based on: Heifetz, R., Grashow, A., Linsky, M. (2009). The Practice of Adaptive Leadership. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. 

Leadership for a Crisis Challenge: It's impossible to learn if people are not feeling safe

Fundamentally, a crisis is a grave and urgent challenge that threatens a group, community, organization, or nation. In medical parlance, it is critical rather than acute. Danger is in the air, and the situation is volatile. The symptoms of a crisis challenge include the following:

• Hostile forces, from without or within, threaten survival of the group.

• The situation is explosive, fueling a group’s fear and anxiety while creating an urgent need to take some sort of action – to fight or flee.

• There is a widely perceived danger that the groups accumulated “value” (its resources, culture, and goods) will be lost and significantly diminished unless immediate action is taken.

- Dean Williams, Real Leadership

Sound familiar?

Over the past two months, we have been thrust into an intense crisis challenge. The many restrictions and fundamental life changes resulting from the Coronavirus outbreak have created ongoing social, economic, physical, and psychological effects. Most people are struggling to deal with the new realities of everyday life, and many of us are wondering how we might practice leadership in our businesses, families, and communities through this challenging time.

Even in normal circumstances, Leadership is a practice to mobilize people to do adaptive work. It often requires exploring different perspectives, holding complexity, and focusing attention on tough issues. It requires learning in the face of uncertainty, which can raise tensions in a group.

What does Leadership look like during a crisis challenge?

Leading people through times of crisis is complex leadership work, for which there are no easy answers. A crisis challenge holds up a magnifying glass to the Leadership practices required in normal circumstances. Exploring different perspectives, holding complexity, and focusing attention on tough issues become doubly important during a crisis challenge. Executives may feel pressure to take some action, any action, to appear as if they are addressing the crisis while not bringing the group closer to any sort of meaningful resolution. The better approach will be one that involves a measured, steady response that addresses true problems while building a sense of community among the affected individuals. Leadership during a crisis challenge will shape the future of the group, so it is crucial to pay attention to both technical and adaptive components. In his book, Williams outlines four strategies addressing the crisis challenge and common traps to avoid.

Four Strategies for Leadership in a Crisis Challenge

Address the Imminent Danger

The very first priority in any crisis challenge is to establish safety. Without this critical step, it is impossible to address any of the emotional or adaptive elements. These measures decrease the imminent danger to many people and buy time to think. For the current Coronavirus crisis, social distancing, hand washing, stay-at-home orders, and the closing of non-essential businesses have been some of the methods our politicians and executives have used to get people to safety. By taking measures to flatten the curve of Coronavirus cases, leaders can (we hope) use that time to understand and plan for more adaptive elements. Depending on the type of crisis, addressing the imminent danger might take days (e.g. a broken leg) - or as with our current pandemic 12-18 months until we have a treatment or a vaccine. For organizations, the imminent dangers are not only health considerations, but also economic ones. How to ensure liquidity for the next few months? How to stabilize the sales pipeline? Or how to secure a government loan?

Common Traps: There are two common traps that prevent leaders from effectively addressing the imminent danger. Leaders may play down the danger, thinking they can establish safety by claiming the threat is not as dangerous as others claim or feel. Leaders may also only focus on addressing the imminent threat and creating a sense of safety, ignoring the more emotional or adaptive components of the crisis.

Offer for Emotional Holding

People will have strong emotional reactions to a crisis challenge, and it is a crucial act of leadership to give space for these emotions, be it fear, anxiety, grief, anger, or stress. In our current crisis challenge, people are facing incredible loss of financial stability, routines, freedoms, human connection, and most traumatically, life. In my own life, my husband and I have faced a changing routine in our small apartment, social distance from our parents and friends in the US that we normally see regularly, and deep uncertainty about when we will be able to travel back to Germany to see my parents and friends.  Honoring that loss at every level of society – individual, community, and country – is a necessary part of moving forward. Only once the loss has been honored can the group begin to re-establish hope. Working towards a common goal or purpose and recognizing the opportunities for transformation will help people gain resiliency to better cope with their losses. Shared purpose turns loss into sacrifice for something bigger. I found these two articles particularly useful in thinking about providing holding:

• That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief

• The Psychology Behind Effective Crisis Leadership

Common Traps: Sometimes leaders fall into the trap of spreading false optimism or worse, outwardly denying the emotions those in a community may be feeling. Sometimes leaders feel discomfort with strong emotions or worry that by acknowledging strong emotions, it will only make those emotions worse. However, without genuinely honoring the emotions of a community, it can be nearly impossible to move forward and address more adaptive elements of the crisis.

Focus on Underlying Issues

Crises reveal and magnify deeper underlying issues. These might be issues that are directly caused by the crisis, or they could be entirely unrelated to it, but come to the forefront as a result. The leadership work here is to keep people in learning mode around this challenge, allowing them to experiment and innovate while still feeling safe. This is where the difficult conversations will happen, and those exercising leadership need to allow for conflicting opinions and expression of views. It is important to analyze the situation and create time to think to prevent rash actions that only address parts of the underlying crisis. At a macro level, the Coronavirus crisis has magnified the underlying issues of globalization, capitalism, industrialization, economic and environmental injustice, poverty and inequality, and climate change. At a more micro levels, the crisis has opened up deeper issues around our education and work environments. What the Coronavirus has helped (and forced) us to understand is that virtual education and development is possible, but we must adapt our own behaviors, content, and expectations to virtual teaching and learning.

It is impossible to learn if people are not feeling safe.

Make sure the, imminent dangers are addressed first, and people feel held, before you move to the underlying issues.

Common Traps: Keeping people in learning mode is difficult work, especially when there are no easy answers. Leaders can fall into the trap of focusing in on the technical components to avoid the difficult, learning-focused adaptive work.

Manage Uncertainty

No two crises are ever the same which means that nobody will automatically know and understand every part of a crisis. It is important to acknowledge what is known and what is not known transparently, both internally and to the group. Learning together, openly and honestly, will strengthen the community and allow for shared responsibility in the development of strategies to manage the crisis. In the Coronavirus crisis, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern models transparent communication of uncertainty in this short video about the impact of a stay-at-home order.

Common Traps: Rather than transparently admit to what is not known, leaders may feel the pressure to convey a false sense of certainty. We have a word for those who offer confident certainty when things are uncertain: charlatan. The confident certainty offered by charlatans prevents shared learning across a community.

Leadership in a crisis challenge doesn’t fall only to those in a formally recognized position of authority, but on every person involved in the crisis. At KONU, we believe that you can lead from anywhere in a system. Taking the time to test your own assumptions and examine alternative perspectives can only help to strengthen your community’s resilience. The complexities of a crisis challenge will rarely allow for an easily agreed upon strategy, but working together will increase the likelihood of keeping people alive, moving forward, and making progress on adaptive issues.

How to run engaging virtual meetings and workshops in times of the COVID-19 pandemic

Many of your work meetings are taking place virtually as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic? You’re already dreading dull conference calls? 

It doesn’t have to be that way! This past week, we’d had to switch to offering workshops online and have facilitating multiple virtual meetings. Thankfully, we’re able to rely on years of experience doing so. I’m happy to share with you our expertise in hosting engaging virtual meetings and workshops.

Here are three recommendations for productive virtual collaboration:

First, use a tried and trusted technology for your virtual meetings – and make use of all of its features. We like to use Zoom – but not just for conference calls. Zoom offers many features that allows you to involve all participants and create diversity in your workshop methods: 

• Break-out session feature: This function lets you team up your participants into pairs or small groups. This way, all participants get to speak and there is room for some topics to be discussed more in-depth by breakout groups. Smaller groups often also provider a safer environment for participants to speak to difficult topics, something that many of us find hard in a large group. 

• Survey feature: Use the survey function to get a sense of where a group stands with respect of an issue or for decision making. 

• Video function: This is an obvious one, and yet I find that too often it’s still not used. It’s much more fun to speak to people you can actually see! 

Secondly, strong facilitation is crucial for ensuring that a meeting or workshop covers all critical points and leads to the necessary decisions. 

• A simple and to-the-point PowerPoint presentation orients your participants around what you have planned and where you are at. Important slides are: (1) an agenda, (2) clearly stated objectives (“What needs to be achieved or decided during this meeting?”),  and (3) well formulated instructions or questions for the group (during break-out sessions, instructions should in addition be typed into the chat window).

• Be a stringent timekeeper and stick to the time frame you’ve set. If you notice that certain issues need more time to be discussed, intervene in order to dedicate separate meeting time for this point. Time-limit break-out sessions, which will ensure that all participants will automatically rejoin the larger group at the same time. 

• Establish norms that encourage all participants to contribute. For example: Each person may speak twice during the large group session. You may post additional remarks or questions into the chat window. 

• Use ice breakers, check-ins and check-outs to encourage everyone to speak.  

Thirdly, from a participant’s perspective: Give virtual gatherings a chance – and seize the opportunity to ditch bad habits and default behaviors.

• Take the plunge get started with your virtual meetings and workshops! Be aware that it may take a few tries to iron out any bugs.

• In virtual meetings and workshops, we may be prone to falling into default behaviors. Try to proactively counteract this tendency: If you’re the kind of person who is shy about speaking up: Speak up at least once! And do take advantage of features that make it easier for you to engage, such as the chat function. If you’re the kind of person who tends to speak (too) much: Keep it brief and get to the point. Allow for others to speak. Ask people who haven’t spoken yet for their opinion. And if you’re the kind of person who is easy distracted (and that’s most of us!): Turn off your email program and browser beforehand and keep your mobile phone out of reach.

All the best for your virtual experiments! What are your strategies, experiences and no-gos for virtual meetings and workshops?

Enabling Humanity on Zoom - how to facilitate deep learning virtually

Don’t compete with the internet -- you won’t win.

If you are teaching or meeting online, you are competing for your participants' attention with literally the entire internet. Not to mention their phone, every social media platform, and their fax machine, beeper, or Alexa, depending on what generation they’re in.

If you try to compete on the internet’s terms -- that is, text, information, moving pictures -- you will fail. Fancy slides, information-heavy lectures, movie clips...you won’t win. You cannot out-internet the internet. So don’t try.

Instead, win with the main thing the internet cannot provide: true human connection. Relationships. Interaction and care. Helping people learn about themselves and others through provoking dialogue in real-time.

Offer your students the main thing they otherwise will not have in their quarantine: true humanity.

In my work teaching leadership development courses online, I've had the unique challenge of helping people from Malaysia to Tanzania to Mexico connect in deep ways with one another, despite being twelve time zones apart and in different organizations. With such a span of distance, only ever meeting in two dimensions, creating true human connection is not easy. I have had to develop a set of pedagogical tools that I use to increase humanity in my online spaces. I offer a few below, including both technical and emotional elements.

As I teach in my courses, emotion is what creates motivation and movement. In order to motivate people to act and move together toward a shared purpose, you need to help them feel agency, connection, solidarity, possibility, and hope. In this moment of fear, that is needed more than ever.

I believe that we can create pedagogy and structure to design for connection, solidarity, possibility, and hope. I see this moment as a unique opportunity to re-frame our meetings and the way we connect with one another to enable these emotions in our teams and groups. As a meeting facilitator, this is your chance to re-invite your team into their full humanity and motivate them in a new way. While this may sound daunting, I offer a few structures and practices that can actually go a very long way.

So here are ten ideas, from one human to another

1. Set norms at the beginning, and set them together.

Your online community -- just like your in-person one -- will have norms, whether you set them or not. For example, is it alright to log in five minutes late? Is it alright to call in, or have your video off? How do you share speaking time? If you do not intentionally set these types of norms, your group will implicitly set them through its actions. So consider asking: how do we want to be human together here? What a unique opportunity to re-set the terms together.

• Consider the purpose of your community and what norms will best suit. In many cases, it’s not a problem if you don’t see people’s faces. Yet in other cases, it will significantly reduce the classroom experience if half of the people are not showing.

• Consider the following norms: We will... Have our video on at all times. Have access to the chat and be ready to type. Mute ourselves when we are not speaking. Be in a quiet location and use headphones to reduce background noise. Have a good internet connection. Be at a screen, rather than on the phone. Start on time. End on time. Use timers in between to ensure that we stay on time. Be off all other work and phones. Participate actively with full presence. Use the “rename” function to add pronouns to our names -- include first name, last name, and your pronouns (ie: Rosi Greenberg, she/her/hers). What else do you want to commit to one another?

• This is not about imposing norms on your group. It's about having them commit to one another about how to be in your community together. This is your chance to invite that conversation, not to impose rules.

• Norms are intentions, which means they are always in. tension. So, what will you do in those moments when people don't follow through on their intentions? How will you lean into the tension then and use that moment for calling people to be their highest selves? Use that for being extra-human, too!

2. Set roles for each session.

Roles, like norms, will emerge implicitly. Perhaps someone is always the Devil’s Advocate, or the process person, or the naysayer, or the one who reminds us when the meeting is almost up. Consider noticing these and designating explicit roles that will serve the purpose of your work.

• For technical online elements, consider assigning a whiteboard scribe, a chat monitor, a note-taker, and a mute captain. If you are able to assign a co-host, consider having them take care of breakout rooms for you. Perhaps also assign a health monitor to lead people in stretching, taking bio breaks, and washing their hands!

• If you have over 40 participants, consider designating 5-7 representatives with whom the facilitator will primarily interact. The reps can be in touch over chat or in breakout rooms with a designated group of their peers and be responsible for channeling questions, ideas, or comments to you. The reps can shift every session.

• You might also play with less technical roles. For example “The One Who Holds the Fear” -- then anytime someone speaks from a place of fear, you can “hand off” that fear to The One Who Holds The Fear. Or what about “The Optimistic Visionary” or “Keeper of the Heart”? Perhaps these are ‘hats’ that you all wear and can explicitly don when needed.

3. Call on participants (by name).

Normally I am a huge fan of “wait time” -- waiting for several people to have hands up before calling on someone, or before speaking again. But I find that this can get awkward online, because people are worried about talking over one another, so I find that it helps to call on people to participate. This circumvents awkward silences while people wonder if they should talk. If the question you’re asking requires some critical thinking, you might say “I’ll give you a few moments of think-time and then I’ll call on someone.” Raising hands can work, but can be cumbersome, especially if you have a lot of people in the room. Consider whether you need a response to be truly voluntary or not. How do you want to increase the human participation in this meeting?

• Calling on people yourself gives you the ability to target certain questions to certain levels of learners, to ensure equitable participation, and to bring out multiple viewpoints. Consider keeping a list of who you call on, or little cards with their names next to your computer, so that you don’t leave anyone out. Consider gathering 3 answers to the same question without responding right away, if it’s one that invites critical thought. Or, facilitate conversation by asking one participant to build off of another’s answer.

• If you’re going “around in a circle” consider calling on someone and telling the next person who is “on deck” (Jennie, you’re up, and Carlos, you’re on deck… Carlos, you’re up, and Jaqui, you’re on deck…) OR let people choose the next person. Just keep track of who has gone so that you don’t leave anyone out! Don’t go around in a circle if you have more than 20 participants. In that case, do breakouts, use the chat, or limit to a few who share.

• Consider letting people know how long of a response you are looking for. For brief responses, consider saying “in the span of one breath...” or “in one sentence…” (if you say “in 2-3 sentences,” people often go for 5 or 10)

4. Consider what you want participants to look at.

When should they be looking at you? (use speaker view). When should they be looking at each other? (use gallery view. When is it helpful to see a slide or an image or someone taking active notes on the session itself? (use screen share). When is it helpful for everyone to contribute to a shared document? (use the whiteboard or a Google document on screen share)

• Consider beginning and ending with people looking at one another, if you are aiming to build relationships in your learning community. Looking at a slide deck can get tedious, so if you’re using slides, either make your slides visually engaging or switch back and forth between speaker view (when they can see you) and screenshare of your slides.

• While it can be tempting to just record audio and pair it with a slide deck, that's way less engaging, relational, and, well, human. It doesn't create a holding environment for your students or build connections.

5. Use Breakout Rooms to increase participation and interaction.

Breakout rooms are an excellent way to increase participant engagement. They allow more participants to talk for more of the time. They also raise the bar for engagement and reduce people’s ability to multitask by increasing social presence.

• To use breakout rooms well, have a clear task, a clear agenda, and clear timing. Consider designating a facilitator or time-keeper to keep each breakout on task, even if they are just pairs.

6. Use the chat creatively.

You can use the chat to ask a quick question that everyone chimes in on, in one sentence or less. Then, follow up on any interesting answers by calling that student by name to share more. This way, everyone needs to be ready at all times to engage.

• You can ask participants to summarize a few key points or offer takeaways at the end, as well as questions throughout. If you have a “chat monitor” (see roles), they can follow along and gather questions that pop up.

• The chat can be a great place to have everyone check in by answering one check in question. These can be funny, quirky, or emotionally resonant.

• For longer writing or shared work, consider using Google Drive simultaneously.

7. Do a check-in.

Start class right on time -- if you wait 3 minutes after the hour to start, you set a new norm that it is OK to miss those first 3 minutes. Use that time creatively to make people feel seen and held. You might offer a fun check in question in the first three minutes of class, while people are signing on. Everyone can either type their answer in the chat or share verbally. Make them engaging and creative enough and you’ll create a whole new culture for your classroom that students don’t want to miss. Such as: What’s the most distracting thing about the room you’re in? What’s one “guilty pleasure” you have? What did people say about you as a child? What did you eat for breakfast this morning? What’s the one thing you wish you’d stockpiled for Coronavirus but didn’t? (anything related to your session content!!) You can also do a check out by asking for one key takeaway or summary point. Capture these and check them against your lesson objectives!

8. Good pedagogy online is very similar to good pedagogy in person.

• Limit lectures and long stretches of presentation whenever possible. Break up long lectures by asking for quick responses in the chat or calling on someone by name to answer a question or summarize. Ask: Who do I want to be doing most of the talking? How much interaction do I want between participants, and why? Pause for key insights, summaries, and takeaways. You can ask students to write these in the chat or whiteboard.

• Laugh, have fun, be a person. Get curious. Enjoy the social art of learning together.

• Speaking of having fun: make it fun and playful! Have a theme of the day, like “pajama day” or “flowered shirt day.” Invite everyone to wear a cool hat. Invite everyone to have tea or bring their favorite snack to class (at their computer). You might even take a “screen capture of the day” with all this. If you want to get really creative, mail them all something -- a lei, a party hat, a backdrop!

9. Ask your participants what needs they have,…

… and what accommodations would most help them succeed and thrive in this new environment. They are the ones doing the work, so they know their own learning best. This can be a great opportunity to learn from them.

• Consider asking them “What worked well about this?” and “What could we do differently next time?” at the end of the first session or first week. Saving a few minutes for this -- even through the chat function -- can help you get valuable feedback about the learner or participant’s perspective.

10. Record and watch yourself at least once.

See how you look from the participant’s perspective. How engaging are you? What might you improve? And if you’re thinking “Why in the world should I watch myself?” consider this: If you’re not willing to watch a segment of your own class, why should students?!

I offer all of these with love and curiosity for the unique opportunity and experiment of this moment. Who knows -- maybe once we're back in classrooms and meeting spaces the humanity can continue there, too!

Thanks & Credit to: Aditi Parekh, Marshall Ganz, and many others who have influenced these ideas!

Overcoming Peer Learning Phobia

Standing before his students, Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) lecturer Tim O’Brien remains silent. For the first few weeks of each semester, he doesn’t lecture. He barely says anything. He asks his students what they think, has them talk it out amongst themselves, and then invites them to share their ideas with the class.

Students are initially weary of their instructor’s silence—they are used to lectures and want an expert to explain things to them. But they inevitably rise to the occasion. For O’Brien, the purpose of education is not just to passively lecture but rather to “draw out” from students. This is the basis of the Socratic method and perhaps the biggest obstacle for educators when it comes to peer learning: shifting from schooling to developing what’s within students.

In his recent article on HBR, KONU partner and Harvard Lecturer Tim O’Brien shares insight from his courses at Harvard Kennedy School and allow his students to evolve their own thinking.

Read the full article here.

Anchoring Yourself

Staying Alive while practicing Leadership | © Rosi Greenberg

To lead is dangerous. Leadership comes from the root -leit, which means "to go forth" and "to die." When exercising leadership, burnout, neutralization and even assassination are always constant possibilities, Harvard Leadership Professor Ronald Heifetz reminds us.

To survive in this context, to continue making progress on adaptive challenges, requires not only listening to others and understanding the system, but also listening to and understanding your self.  It means self-care. Self-care not as a luxury, not as something you do once the work is done, but ongoing, daily, essential-to-your-existence self-care.

One practice of self-care is to simply distinguish your roles and your Self. Heifetz and the field of Internal Family Systems, as well as others, teach us that we each embody many roles, yet these are not our Self. Perhaps you are a daughter or son, sister or brother, partner, or employee. Perhaps a friend, student, a cis-gendered person or trans, a person of color or a White person, the list goes on. Sometimes we identify so closely with a role -- say a CEO, for instance -- that we begin to think we ARE that role. When that happens, we take everything so personally, every failure, every shortcoming. We BECOME that failure and shortcoming. Yet this is just a role you are playing in the system you are in, it is not YOU. It is NOT PERSONAL. Create self-care practices to remind you of this -- have transition rituals between roles, such as a commute home from work, a change of clothes when you arrive home, a pause before going to your mother’s house. Having multiple strong roles in your life can also help you not take any one role too personally. You don’t have to quit your roles -- they are an essential part of your life and relationships and what it means to be human -- just know they are not you at your core.

What roles do you play? Which do you most closely associate with? What might you need to do to distinguish more between those roles and your self?

Another anchoring practice is to find confidantes. Adaptive Leadership teaches us that a confidante is someone who is outside the particular system you are in. They have no stake in the perspectives or factions related to a particular issue. For example, your mother could be a confidante for your work system, but not for your family system. Your co-worker might be a great person to complain to about your kid’s school, but not about your boss. Find people who will hold you as you cry, laugh with you about your embarrassments, listen as you rail against the injustices, and strategize with you as you try to make change -- all without their own stake in the game. A confidante only cares about you.

Who are your confidantes for your work life? For your home life? Where do you need another confidante?

Lastly, self-care involves anchoring practices and sanctuary. In Leadership on the Line, Heifetz reminds us of this, drawing on years of ancient wisdom used in faith traditions, mental health support systems, and cultural spacemaking. Find places and practices that help you unwind and relax. Maybe that’s soccer practice, a meditation space at home, a garden, a journal, a bedroom where you ban all electronics. These are not practices that go on your “to-do” list, or become yet another burden on your time. They are also not luxuries for when you finish everything else. These help you do everything else with more love, intention, and clarity. These are rejuvenating moments where you can truly step out of your hectic life and just reset.

What are your anchoring practices? Where is your sanctuary?  What will you do to create time and space for yourself to truly re-center?

You are not a luxury. Your body and mind and wellbeing are not to be taken for granted -- they are essential to your leadership.

Staying alive means more than just breathing and eating. It means staying alive to possibility, to your contributions on this planet, to the song beneath the words, to the creative energies that plant seeds and tend growth. And to stay that kind of alive, you need nourishment too.

Keep yourself alive.

When Your Job Is Your Identity, Professional Failure Hurts More

“It is critical that we learn to distinguish and differentiate our roles from our self. We get into trouble when we lose ourselves in our role instead of thinking in a detached way about how the role is viewed by others. It can be very rewarding to throw all our education, training, talent, and passion into our work roles, but we forget that others in our organizations are reacting to the role we represent in their work lives, not necessarily the interesting and thoughtful people we think we are.”

In his recent article on HBR, KONU partner and Harvard Lecturer Tim O’Brien shares insights from his courses at Harvard Kennedy School, where he tries to help students disentangle themselves from their roles so that they can be better leaders and make the differences they want to make.

Read the full article here.

Tear down the Walls in our Minds - Leadership Lessons from Angela Merkel

by Michael Koehler and Erich Nussbaumer

A huge wave of excitement went through Harvard Kennedy School’s graduates at this year’s Commencement when German Chancellor Angela Merkel mentioned the course “Exercising Leadership” in her graduation speech. This course, originally developed by Ron Heifetz more than 35 years ago, and now also taught by KONU Partner Tim O’Brien, has been the cradle of the Adaptive Leadership framework, from which KONU draws much of its work.

Angela Merkel didn’t mention the class on accident. Both, her legacy and lessons, are filled with Adaptive Leadership principles. Here are six highlights that stuck out to us. The quotes are all from her speech which you can see in full here.  

Adaptation is Human

“Nothing has to stay the way it is. Anything that seems set in stone or unalterable can indeed change.”

Merkel, who grew up surrounded by the Berlin Wall, reminds us that change is possible. 35 years ago, it was hard to imagine a Europe free of borders and today, only a generation later, former enemies live in peace and prosperity, sharing a single market and freedom of movement and residence. This is not an exception. Going back in history, people have survived and thrived through fundamental social and technological transformations. Adaptation is inherently human.

Heifetz actually borrowed the metaphor of “adaptation” from nature, drawing connections between evolutionary biology and social systems. In order to survive and thrive all life needs to adapt to changing conditions.

In Adaptive Challenges, People are the Problem AND the Solution

“[Protectionism, Wars, Digitalization and Climate change …] are caused by humans. Therefore, we can and must do everything humanely possible to truly master this challenge […] each and every one of us must play our part.”

Climate change and digitalization would not exist without people’s creative genius nor would they be issues without people’s faults. The global, systemic challenges we are facing are the product of people’s behaviors, of our inability to respect our differences, our inability to acknowledge the difficulties that come with innovation. These challenges have in common a requirement for us to adapt, to respectfully challenge each other’s values, to discuss how we want to move forward. This is only possible if we all take on responsibility.

Heifetz reminds us that overdependence on authorities is one of the most common defense mechanisms that prevents groups from adaption. Merkel’s take is that politicians only hold one piece of the puzzle. Yes, climate change can be battled with regulation and legislation. But it also needs people to change their mindset around energy consumption, nutrition, and mobility.

Get on the Balcony! (And Listen!)

“I have found that we can find good answers even to difficult questions if we always try to view the world from the eyes of others. If we respect other people’s history, traditions, religion and identity. (…) And if we don’t always act on our first impulse when there is pressure to make a snap decision. But instead take a moment to stop, be still, think, pause.”

One of the biggest criticism Merkel faced throughout her time as Chancellor was the fact that she didn’t always act fast. We, however, think this might have been her biggest asset and one of the reasons that kept her in power and gave her a tremendous diagnostic advantage. Who wants a doctor to go straight to surgery without a proper diagnosis?

The Adaptive Leadership framework states that people far too often leap to action and don’t take enough time to “get off of the dancefloor and onto the balcony”. Progress requires deep compassion and curiosity – to see the world with different perspectives. You can’t do it when you are in the midst of action, nor when you are doing the talking the whole time.

Crossing the Frontier of Competence is Risky and Requires Courage

“So let’s not start by asking what isn’t possible or focusing what has always been that way. Let’s start by asking what is possible and looking for things that have never have been done like that before. […] The moment when you step out into the open is also a moment of risk taking. Letting go of the old is part of a new beginning.”

Tearing down the Berlin Wall was an act of courage. The courage of Eastern Germans standing up to the authoritarian governments that built and secured the Wall. The courage to imagine a world without it and leap into the unknown. Letting go of the known is hard because it requires us to cross our frontier of competence and risk a lot – our careers, our relationships, or even our lives.

Leadership is the activity of getting people to confront hard realities, to resolve conflicts of values, to question privileges and manage losses, to build new capacities on behalf of improving the human condition. This can only be achieved if we cross our frontier of competence. And this makes leadership is an act of courage.

When Merkel allowed over 1 Million refugees into Germany in 2015, both German citizens as well as local and federal government had to move beyond their frontiers of competence. Despite a lot of challenges and some mistakes in the process, mainly people still agree that these actions were grounded in deep humanitarian values and worth the effort. Yet, it cost Merkel some popularity put both her government and her party at risk.

Don’t Do it Alone!

“Changes for the better are possible if we tackle them together. If we want to do it alone, we cannot achieve much.”

While Angela Merkel was referring to multilateralism, this lesson holds true for adaptive challenges not only at the global level, but also for organizations, communities and teams. Far too often we think of leadership as a heroic act of a single person. But adaptive challenges are deeply systemic. They require changes in values and behavior of entire groups.

That cannot be done by a single man or woman.

Partners are essential to help us see more, to show us where we are wrong or ignorant, and finally to take care of us if things get a little too hot. Partnership is the only way ahead.

Michael Koehler wins Julius E. Babbitt Memorial Volunteer Award!

Congratulations to KONU founder and CEO Michael Koehler, MPA 2014 for receiving the Julius E. Babbitt Memorial Volunteer Award! This award recognizes alumni who have made exceptional contributions to the Harvard Kennedy School community by volunteering their time, creativity, and energy and by advancing the spirit of volunteerism and service to the School.

Michael was recognized for a commitment to the school’s alumni and particularly for  co-founding the Adaptive Leadership Network (ALN) with Professor Ron Heifetz MC/MPA 1983 and Kirsti Samuels MC/MPA 2012.

The ALN is a shared interested group created to engage the community of alumni and practitioners in adaptive leadership. The ALN’s mission is to catalyze, connect and support leadership capacity to meet the challenges facing our world. Through conferences (some bringing together more than 200 people), workshops and online offerings, the ALN supports its members’ learning and practice of the adaptive leadership framework. It also allows change-makers from various horizons to (re-)connect. These encounters foster the learning, creativity and support necessary to work on difficult systemic challenges.

Congrats again Michael for co-creating an organization that convenes and supports engaged, and compassionate individuals working on improving the state of the world!

Register now for the Young Leaders' Project on Crete, Greece!

For a third time since 2017, KONU joins the Andreas Papandreou Foundation to organize this years’ Young Leaders’ Project.

The Young Leaders Project serves as a model for preparing the next generation of influencers. In the past, we worked with several cohort of rising European Leaders from public and non-profit sectors who demonstrate an exemplary commitment to social challenges, democracy and peace, including government officials, bureaucrats, politicians as well as social activists and students. They all shared the passion to tackle the new wave of populism and authoritarianism and were eager to deepen their understanding how to distinguish simplistic solutions and “alternative-facts” from the real underlying root causes.

The experiential program does not only expose participants to Harvard's leadership frameworks, but also allows them to learn from senior officials and intellectuals, activists and entrepreneurs. Among the presenters were former Leader of the British Labor Party, Ed Milibrand, journalist Misha Glenny, and former Senior World Bank official Mats Karlsson as well as Prime Minister George Papandreou and Nobel Price winner Joseph Stiglitz.  

Are you a change agent working on global challenges in your communities and organizations? Join Tim O’Brien and Michael Koehler at this year's Young Leaders' Project on the beautiful island of Crete, Greece!

Learn more and register here.