Seeing and assessing leadership culture

© 2017 Center for Creative Leadership. All rights reserved.
CONNECTED Community Webinar Series
Featuring the Big Idea of Relational Leadership
06 December 2017
Seeing and Assessing
Leadership Culture
Charles J. Palus, Ph.D.
Sarah Stawiski, Ph.D.

cop.ccl.org/connected/ Opt in at http://eepurl.com/ctHWeP

Q: What is relational leadership?
A: The idea of relational leadership is a powerful way to understand leadership
as the capacities and actions of social systems.
Leadership is an emergent property of relations (Denis, Langley & Sergi, 2012).
Leadership is a relational process of shared sense making and meaning making
(Bill Drath,The Deep Blue Sea, 2001).
Our purpose is to share and create knowledge, and to shape the
Center for Creative Leadership’s research agenda in this area.

cop.ccl.org/connected/
CCL has a body of research and practice which
builds on a relational view of leadership.
• Network Leadership
• Boundary Spanning
• Vertical Development / Transformation
• Leadership Culture
• Leadership Strategies
• The DAC Framework
• Dialogue
• Leadership for Societal Impact
Opt in at http://eepurl.com/ctHWeP

THE CONNECTED WEBINAR SERIES 2017-2018
1. DriveTime: Transforming Your Leadership
Culture.
2. The DAC Framework and Relational Leadership.
3. Barry Oshry: The Structures We Fall Into Shape
Our Consciousness
4. Leadership Beyond Boundaries and SOGI.
5. Boundary Spanning Leadership: Top Ten
Lessons of Experience.
6. CCL Points of View on Leadership Development
Through the Lens of Relational Leadership
7. Vertical Leadership Development in a Complex
World
8. Relational practices for DAC: Project Review and
Input

Seeing and Assessing Leadership Culture
with Sarah Stawiski, Chuck Palus, & John McGuire
Wednesday December 6, 1 pm (Eastern); 11 am (COS); 10 am (Pacific).
Join us for a conversation about seeing and assessing leadership culture. In the previous webinar we explored
how leadership culture is key to change leadership. This week we take a closer look at leadership culture:
What it is, how to see it, and how to engage and begin to transform it.
Vertical Leadership Development for Societal Impact
with Kara Laverde, Senior Learning Leader, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Tuesday January 9, 1 pm (Eastern); 10am (Pacific)
Join us for a conversation with Kara Laverde at the Gates Foundation on how they have used the framework of
vertical leadership development as both “spotlight” and “scaffold” in developing their people and promoting
positive culture change.
View the Gates Foundation white paper, Lead Your Culture or Your Culture Will Lead You.
CCL white papers on vertical leadership development are here.
http://eepurl.com/ctHWeP

©2017 Center for Creative Leadership. All rights reserved.
• Leadership Metaphor Explorer™ exercise
• What is leadership culture?
• Seeing and assessing leadership culture
• Leadership Culture in a Box: Tools and frameworks you can use
Agenda

In your organization or community …
When you are doing your best work together:
How are shard direction, alignment,
and commitment (DAC) created?
Choose one card that describes what that’s like.
Put the letter of the card in the chat box,
and say why you chose this card.
Make sure the chat is set to “Everyone.”

Leadership Culture: Introduction
Much of our success in the world depends on our abilities to learn, grow, and change as
groups of people in organizations, businesses, communities, and societies.
Culture is the key. Culture can make or break our collective ability to adapt. The good news
is that culture itself can change in positive ways that create collective success.
Leadership culture is the meaning we make, and the tools we
use, to create direction, alignment, and commitment
among people with shared work.
 A healthy leadership culture is a key part of the success of any group, team,
organization, or community.
 The ability of a collective to learn, grow, and change depends on the leadership culture
of that collective.
 Leadership culture itself can evolve and even transform in ways that support collective
success and the greater good.

Leadership culture in an organization shapes the answers to:
How do we define “leadership”?
What does good leadership look like around here?
Who are exemplary leaders?
How do we talk to each other?
How do we make decisions, engage conflict, give and receive feedback?
How do we get things done?

Leadership is a
collective activity
Leadership emerges out of
individual expertise and heroic
action
People in authority
are responsible for leadership
Palus, C.J. McGuire, J.B., & Ernst, C. (2012). Developing interdependent leadership. In The Handbook for Teaching
Leadership: Knowing, Doing, and Being. Snook, S., Nohria, N. & Khurana, R. (Eds.). Sage Publications with the Harvard
Business School. Chapter 28, 467-492.
The Evolution of Leadership Cultures

Global
Adaptive
Sustainable
Multi-regional
Entrepreneurial
Heroic
Local
Routine
Regimented
Business Strategy
current
capability
ceiling
new cultural
core capability
Leadership
Strategy
What behaviors & beliefs will drive your business strategy?
Capability

Leadership
Culture
Shapes
Direction,
Alignment &
Commitment

Tools for Inquiry Culture Walkabout tool
Storytelling tool
DAC Assessment tool
Six Box Learning Grid tool
Tools for Assessment Leadership Culture Assessment
Leadership Culture Indicator
Leadership Culture Gap
Strategy Line-Up
Team Workstyle continuum
Transformations™
Tools for Dialogue Dialogue tool
Fishbowl tool
Putting Something in the Middle
Leadership Explorer™ tools (Visual, Metaphor)
Developing Leadership
Culture
Overview: The arts and principles of development; Service
connections to CCL; Evaluation Guide: Measuring effectiveness
Leadership Essentials for Change™

Seeing & Assessing Leadership Culture
Why?
• To pay more attention because of general curiosity;
• An interest in learning more to preserve what is going well;
• Current leadership culture is not supporting strategy and in need of
development;
• To evaluate the effectiveness of your change efforts.

Becoming More Attentive
• Starting to pay attention to your
leadership culture in a different way
and starting to ask different questions.
• Example: Are we direct in our
communication?
• Ranges from simple awareness to
ethnography
• Examples:
─“Culture Walk About” tool
─Training Culture Observers

© 2 0 1 3 C e n t e r f o r C r e a t i v e L e a d e r s h i p . A l l R i g h t s R e s e r v e d .
How are leaders
interacting
in Hawley Garcia to
get
things done?
Culture Walk About

(1)Identify area of
leadership culture
to observe
(2)Workshop for
observers to define
indicators of success
and orient
(3)Observers
track
observations
systematically
Culture Observers Pilot
(4) Actions
recommended;
success stories
are shared

Frame the change
Inform the change
Demonstrate results
Test Principles and Guide the Future
How can ongoing evaluation help your
leadership culture change efforts?

And that’s not all, folks!
BONUS EFFECT SPECIFIC TO LEADERSHIP CULTURE CHANGE
Integrating evaluative thinking, and collaboratively
collecting, sharing, and making sense of your data
about your leadership culture
is in itself a practice that can help
develop the leadership culture.

• From evaluation as separate
to evaluation as part of the change effort.
• From waiting for the polished report
to facilitating learning through the use of data.
• From linear and pre-determined plan
to adaptive and iterative.
• From relying on survey data
to integrating multiple methods.
Mindset Shifts: Evaluating Culture Change Efforts
Preskill, Gopel, Mack & Cook, (2015). Evaluating Complexity.

Getting real about where you are, where you need to be, and
progress in getting there.
• EXAMPLE: How developed are we on the practice of feedback, ranging from
practices that look like dependent leadership culture to practices that look
like interdependent leadership culture? What is the gap between where we
are and what our organization’s strategy will require?
Aha! We must need a survey so we can get a numeric rating, right!?
Maybe …
From Survey Data to Multiple Methods

• Example: The Leadership Culture Rubric
• Provides five “levels” of development for four different leadership practices.
Assessing Current State and Change Over Time

The Leadership Culture
Rubric can be used to track
change over time, in
combination with other
data sources.
The Leadership Culture Rubric

Tools for Collective Sense Making
• Complex and dynamic situations require a diverse group of people to develop a
shared understanding in order to make decisions about what actions to take.
• Certain tools can help promote more creative and insightful sense making.
• Example: Leadership Metaphor Explorer, Visual Explorer, Transformations.

Leadership Essentials
for Change™
card deck
www.ccl.org/Essentials

Two federal agencies with vastly different cultures provide
a lesson in boundary spanning at its greatest in a delicate
transition of the U.S. role in Iraq prior to the December
2011 withdrawal of U.S. forces. Read the intriguing
account of how CCL helped the Departments of Defense
and State achieve unity of effort despite their daunting
differences and complex challenges.
On Sept. 1, 2010, Lloyd J. Austin, III became
Commanding General of U.S. Forces-Iraq (USF-I). Just
days before, James F. Jeffrey was confirmed as the new
U.S. Ambassador to Iraq.
https://www.ccl.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/BoundarySpanningBattleRhythm.pdf

Our colleague Philip
Kakungulu is working with
leaders in South Sudan.
“A door has been opened
in South Sudan as I will be
speaking to the South
Sudan Parliament on
conflict transformation. …
We speak to the next
generation.”

October 2009 45
CTS
working
Our relationships
NOW
Our relationships for the
FUTURE strategy
Across
Clusters
with
Partner A
with
Partner B
A few
key
words
for each
…
Flow together
Harness power
Unified agenda
??
TAPE cards to
chart
Create one
chart per
small group
Capture a few
key words for
each
Debate and
decide one
card per each
cellConnected
Mutual
respect
Virtual
spaces
What behaviors & beliefs will help
drive the business strategy?

October 2009
What behaviors & beliefs will help
drive the business strategy?

Thank you!
Thoughts and questions?

Seeing and assessing leadership culture

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