Answer Is Irrelevant: Leadership In A Changed World

2015 • Kevin Callahan • www.agiledojo.net • kevin@interactionagility.com
The Answer is
Irrelevant
Kevin Callahan
Interaction Agility
kevin@interactionagility.com

Session Goals
• Spark your curiosity about leadership.
• Begin examining what it means for you to be a
leader.
• Give a brief look at effective leadership for
today’s world.

But First…
• Why are you here?
• What is the best of what brought you here?

An Essential Premise
• Think back on your life to a leader you worked with
in any capacity who you would gladly follow again.
• What did she do?
• How did he make you feel?
• What behaviors did he exhibit?
• Examples?

An Essential Premise
• Now think back to a leader you’ve worked with that you
couldn’t wait to get away from, someone you would go
to great lengths to avoid working with again.
• What did she do?
• How did he make you feel?
• What behaviors did he exhibit?
• Examples?

We Know Leadership
• Reflect for a moment on the exercise
• What was your experience of remembering
working with these two people?
• We already know effective leadership!
• Start thinking about specific ways you would
like to become more like the first type of leader.

The World Has Changed
Have You?

“The only sustainable source of competitive
advantage is your organization’s ability to learn
faster than its competition” - Peter Senge
“The task of leadership is to create an alignment
of strengths making a system’s weaknesses
irrelevant.” - Peter Drucker

“Your firms are built on the Taylor model. Even worse so
are your heads. With your bosses doing the thinking
while workers wield the screwdrivers, you’re convinced
deep down that is the right way to run a business. For the
essence of management is getting the ideas out of
the heads of the bosses and into the heads of labour.
We are beyond your mindset. Business, we know, is
now so complex and difficult, the survival of firms so
hazardous in an environment increasingly
unpredictable, competitive and fraught with danger,
that their continued existence depends on the day-to-day
mobilisation of every ounce of intelligence.” -
Konosuke Matsushita

The Industrial Org
• Pyramid-shaped, control based
• Emerged from industrial-age factories
• Produces and reinforces heroic modes of
leadership

Heroic Leadership
• A note about leadership levels
• “The way the world is”
• Developmental
• Authority stems from domain expertise and
experience
• Reliance on commanding and pacesetting

So What?
• What percentage of US workers self-identify as
being fully engaged in their work?
31%
• Slightly higher among managers and
traditionalists
Source: http://www.gallup.com/poll/181289/majority-employees-not-engaged-despite-gains-2014.aspx

Still So What?
• What percentage of US managers operate in
Heroic modes?
70%
• Coincidence?
Source: Joiner, W. and Josephs, S. Leadership Agility: Five Levels of Leadership Mastery for Anticipating and Leading Change. 2006. Jossey-Boss, San Francisco

“Your firms are built on the Taylor model.
Even worse so are your heads. With your
bosses doing the thinking while
workers wield the screwdrivers, you’re
convinced deep down that is the right way
to run a business. For the essence of
management is getting the ideas out of
the heads of the bosses and into the
heads of labour.”

“Employee engagement
drives the bottom line”
- Teresa Amabile

The Network Org
• In 2015 Uber, the world’s largest taxi company
owns no vehicles, Facebook, the world’s most
popular media owner creates no content,
Alibaba, the most valuable retailer has no
inventory, and Airbnb the world’s largest
accommodation provider own no real estate.
• The Network is the new organizational structure
• Heroic leadership utterly fails within it

A leader is best when people barely know
that he exists, not so good when people obey
and acclaim him, worst when they despise
him.
Fail to honor people, they fail to honor you.
But of a good leader, who talks little, when
his work is done, his aims fulfilled, they will all
say: We did this ourselves. - Lao Tzu

Post-Heroic Leadership
• Not new, though also no longer optional
• Leader’s focus changes from self to those being
led
• People, not the work, are the life blood of the
organization
• The organization itself is alive; the mighty oak in
the acorn rather than a machine prone to
breaking down

The *ology Findings
• fMRI studies of emotional intelligence
• Task Positive & Default Mode Networks
• System 1 & System 2
• Sympathetic & Parasympathetic Nervous Systems
• Positive & Negative Emotional Attractors
• Books: Primal Leadership, Daniel Goleman; Resonant
Leadership, Richard Boyatzis & Annie McKee; Switch, Chip &
Dan Heath; Drive, Dan Pink; Positivity, Barbara Frederickson;
Daring Greatly, Brené Brown; Mindset, Carol Dweck; The
Progress Principle, Teresa Amabile

Resonance
• Leader’s ability to establish shared positive emotional space
internally, with others, and entire organizations
• Stances
• Visionary
• Coaching
• Affiliative
• Democratic
• Also Commanding and Pacesetting!

It’s About the Question
• Resonant Leadership is built on curiosity and
deep inquiry about ourselves and the world
• The simple act of forming a powerful question
begins the change process
• Connective Inquiry

What Can You Do?
• Become a visionary; start with your own:
• What is your purpose?
• What is amazing and incredible that you, and
only you, are uniquely able to bring into the
world?
• Why do you exist, really?

Discovering Vision
• Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits and 8th Habit
• Richard Boyatzis & Annie McKee’s Becoming a
Resonant Leader
• Warren Berger’s A More Beautiful Question
• Simon Sinek’s Start With Why
• David Whyte’s The Three Marriages

Final Thoughts
• We simply cannot do this work solo (though
Heroic Leaders will try)
• Ask a friend to be a buddy, find a mentor, hire a
coach
• Effective leadership can be learned; the world is
calling us to do this; it needs us to do this!

Thank You

Answer Is Irrelevant: Leadership In A Changed World

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