AN INTRODUCTION FOR HR, OD AND LEARNING PROFESSIONALS

Strategies for Leadership are for leaders and members of corporate teams, individually and together. Self-discovery and self-management are learned in a phased approach as leaders and members implement strategies that enhance their:

• Relational or external awareness (Increase Leadership Bandwidth)

• Intentionality or self-motivation (Collaborate to Innovate).

• Self or internal awareness (Aspire to a Vision)

Here are some important program values. For maximum personal and situational relevance, the context is provided by important individual, project or enterprise objectives. No "right way" to lead is assumed. Learning is by self-discovery in and between real or virtual, weekly, Leadership Conversations. These differ from much coaching because they are non-directive and are facilitated with co-designed, multi-channel learning models.

Leaders come into these conversations with workplace issues on their minds and leave with opportunities to immediately apply new leadership practices. A program can be spread over three to twelve-plus months depending on need and progress through the phases, participants taking responsibility for measuring and reporting their progress.

Strategies for Leadership emerged during decades of personal learning reframed in an amalgam of teaching, psychology, organizational development, philosophy and learning disciplines. This original approach is offered by its designer who invites you to discuss your interests in a personal, no obligation Leadership Conversation.

"Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because s/he wants to do it." Dwight Eisenhower

Increase Leadership Bandwidth

Bandwidth is the capacity a leader and the team-members have to get things done. As friction and stress in their working relationships are removed, their bandwidth increases. We have experience high bandwidth leadership when everything satisfyingly comes together. We are then empowered, stress-free, and relating most effectively.

Stress often shows up as unconsciously adopted roles. If a leader or members adopts one and then adds his/her assumptions about other's, communications go sideways and a stress spiral begins! An isolated event can result in an important lost opportunity and an ongoing habit of role confusion can make the establishment of productive relationships quite difficult. After such an encounter one might find oneself blaming others for their attitude or kicking oneself when, after the stress of the encounter has passed, one recognizes the missed opportunity.

The challenge is to access a natural real time relational awareness, an awareness of one's personal behavior and others' responses. Only when team leaders and members have identified the real nature of their working relationships, these roles they and others play under stress, can they see how to change their approach, reducing the friction and tension.

In Leadership Conversations, team leaders and members discover high bandwidth practices and broaden or discard narrower ones. They can expect to learn powerful new practices even in the first conversation and only four or five may be needed for them to significantly increase their leadership bandwidth.

"Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation." Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Collaboration for Innovation - Tapping the resources hidden in underdeveloped relationships

While technology makes information sharing so much easier, collaboration and innovation still depend upon the intentions of those sharing. Virtual does not necessarily mean virtuous. The new leadership challenge is to bring real collaboration to an increasingly virtual world.

If you grew up among collaborative relationships, where everyone was a winner, chances are you have long experienced the freedom with others that is necessary for innovation. Many of us, however, learned our behaviors in a competitive culture of winners and losers and find collaboration difficult if not impossible. We may have thought that we collaborated when we followed but that was just cooperating, which can be helpful but doesn't lead to innovation.

Leaders struggle between the demand for results from today's implementation and the knowledge that future success also mandates innovation today. Fortunately, it is unnecessary to de-prioritize innovation when we can tap into the resources existing in underdeveloped, collaborative relationships among team-members, whether employees, investors, customers, competitors, providers or partners.

The tactics of Collaboration for Innovation can be learned during a series of Leadership Conversations supporting an enhanced self awareness that guides specific kinds of participation, according to whether the need is for implementation or innovation.

"Visualization and belief in a pattern of reality activates the creative power of Realization." A. L. Lina

Articulate a Vision - Express an actionable understanding of your motives

You can help a person find their motivation or inspiration when your words or actions resonate with their intentions so they can then see a way forward. Imaginative people may perceive something visual but what we all "see" in our "mind's eye" is a perception of a deeply held understanding of what is important - our values. A vision is values made visible. To aspire to a vision is to open up to inspiration that will ground us further in our values. When we articulate a vision we recognize what is valuable in ourselves and in others, and others recognize that in us. When we articulate a shared vision we become united in its values.

Individual and team success lies in accomplishing what you and the team value most, and these values made visible constitute your vision of success. When you or your team aspire to a vision of success you are open to whatever reinforces the values of success that you hold, whatever touches your emotions and stimulates your individual or shared motivations. This vision of success is empowering because it affirms what's relevant, suggests what's possible and informs how it can be realized. It is actionable.

Practically, in Leadership Conversations, an individual or team articulates his/her/their vision using an interpretive structure that can become a physical or virtual desktop object. (You can see an example in A Vision of Leadership for Collaboration and Innovation.) New light is shed on assumptions and opportunities emerge that were not apparent before. This object can be used to reflect upon, focus communication and provide a powerful context for action. Reflection, communication and feedback refine the vision, further focusing individual and collective energies.

"The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another person's observation, not overturning it." Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

Leadership Conversations

Leadership Conversations are developmental conversations, in and between which team-leaders and members implement their individual and collective Strategies for Leadership.

Conducted by Chris Newham, either in person or on line, they are designed to support leaders and members as they Increase their Bandwidth, Collaborate to Innovate, and Aspire to a Vision. In each conversation they identify new leadership practices to apply in their work and then, in the next conversation, further develop them.

Individually, leaders and members learn to manage themselves in their working relationships, learn a deeper appreciation for the contexts in which they work and the personal alternatives they have for shaping outcomes. Together, leaders and members develop an appreciation for what each can best contribute to their collective effectiveness and strengthen the leadership culture of their team.

To learn more about of Strategies for Leadership, you're invited to participate in a preliminary Leadership Conversation without further obligation.

© 2007 Strategies for Leadership. All Rights Reserved.