change

How do you reach the problem person?

May 17, 2013 By Dr David Fraser 1 Comment

Three people in a meeting It’s so often the way, isn’t it? Somebody you’re in touch with really sees the change you can help them make in their business.

The trouble is…

The person who most needs to change is someone else in the organisation, quite probably somebody very senior, perhaps the boss. They’re the business’s greatest strength but also it’s greatest weakness, simply because they have so much influence and everything they do is greatly amplified for good or for bad.

(OK, that’s assuming we’re already being the change we want to see and so on.

How do you help your contact successfully suggest a meeting with you to begin the process of change? How do you help them see what they need to see? How do you get started?

One way is to begin by seeking the problem person’s knowledge and input.

What works for you?

Filed Under: Change, Leadership, Organizations Tagged With: change, Dr David Fraser, greatest strength, greatest weakness

The trouble with profiling

March 29, 2013 By Dr David Fraser Leave a Comment

Informal meeting Well, one of the troubles with profiling…

In forming teams, it’s a good idea to bring together complementary skills and personality types. Diversity brings performance, though it may not be comfortable at first.

So we reach for the psychometric tests—how handy to be able to profile people and select them for roles in teams.

But there’s a problem…

Actually, probably several problems, but let’s focus on one…

Unless we’re very careful, the use of profiling strengthens the belief in team members that they don’t need to change; that they don’t need to develop their flexibility. After all, they’ve been told they’re an xyz, and perhaps even encouraged to play to their profile, to be an xyz to the full—to avoid flexibility, in fact.

In letting this situation persist, we make a fundamental error…

For a team to be successful, it needs to learn, and for a team to learn, it needs its members to be searching out their individual development, not staying in their boxes.

Otherwise one of the conditions for learning and growth in an organisation—personal mastery (responsibility for one’s own change)—isn’t present.

We’ve taken it away with our profiling.

Filed Under: Change, Organizational Learning, Personal Mastery, Systems Tagged With: change, Dr David Fraser, personal mastery, psychometric profiling, responsibility for one's own change, teams

Sustaining a purpose

March 8, 2013 By Dr David Fraser Leave a Comment

Three people, two shaking hands How do you keep it going?

How do you build your earnings to sustain what you are doing without compromising your leadership “mission” (if that’s the right word)? If you’re not careful, you end up contracted to deliver something that’s at odds with what you see as important, because sometimes money flows more easily to sustain the status quo than to facilitate change.

But if you do it well, you can attract the revenue you need to sustain your mission, assuming it has fundamental merit of course.

So what makes the difference?

1. Articulating your message clearly enough.

2. Committing to what you have to say—going beyond the point of no return—accepting the risk of it not working out.

3. Living the principles you espouse.

In short, being real. Then you attract the right people and the right resources.

Oh and finding how your approach meets the customer’s need at a higher level, as in, “Here’s another, more sustainable way to achieve what you ultimately want.”

What’s your experience of this?

Filed Under: Change, Leadership, Wisdom Tagged With: change, Dr David Fraser, facilitating change, mission

Your innovation – A small step or a big leap?

February 8, 2013 By Dr David Fraser Leave a Comment

Person on a rocky mountain with a large drop Occasionally you learn something truly new and advance the field in some way. It feels like a tiny step to you—one you hardly think worthy of the name.

And yet…

For the rest of us, getting to that new layer you’ve added on top on an existing body of knowledge is a real jump.

Why?

Because we need to catch up with the ground-work before we can get to the innovative step.

Be patient with us please, and help us find a way up. Show us where to place our feet.

Filed Under: Change, Leadership, Learning Tagged With: big leap, change, Dr David Fraser, innovative step, learning

Don’t like change or don’t like feeling unsafe?

October 12, 2012 By Dr David Fraser Leave a Comment

Group of people listening We hear it so often: “People don’t like change.”

That isn’t quite right: After all, most of us would like a doubling of our income, or the gift of a free holiday with everything taken care of. We like that kind of change.

Really, it’s that we don’t like feeling unsafe.

When tackling something new or leading change, remembering that people don’t like feeling unsafe puts a slightly different light on it. It suggests different actions.

Saying “people don’t like change” is too broad-brush.

People might be OK with change, or even welcome it. It depends how you handle it; how you deal with the fear.

Filed Under: Change, Communication, Organizations, Wisdom Tagged With: change, don't like change, don't like feeling unsafe

Do you solve a problem when you can?

April 18, 2012 By Dr David Fraser Leave a Comment

Exhausted and frustrated woman at a computer If you’re anything like me, your first reaction to the question might be ”Of course I solve a problem when I can.”

But do you?

Do you always make the choice to deal with an issue when you have the means to? Or do you sometimes leave the problem because actually it’s easier to be working against something, to have something to push on, or even something to blame.

If somehow—and I know this may be unlikely—you could eliminate all your problems and be free of them completely, would that be a comfortable place or an uncomfortable one? What would you do with your freedom then?

Do you sometimes avoid adopting a simple solution and continue looking for a more complex one that’s somehow more justifying?

I know I do.

But the path of personal mastery, wisdom, and growth means choosing to solve our problems when we can, and moving on.

Filed Under: Change, Personal Mastery Tagged With: blame, change, choosing to solve our problems, Dr David Fraser, freedom, growth, personal mastery, solve a problem, wisdom, working against something

Your “power to”, do you use it?

April 11, 2012 By Dr David Fraser 6 Comments

Woman reflecting We all have power to achieve things or to be a certain way, possibly more than we’re comfortable admitting. As Marianne Williamson said, “it’s not our darkness but our light that most frightens us.”

This is quite a different thing from “power over” other people which might come to us through formal authority. “Power to” comes from our presence and indeed our personal mastery, our sense of purpose and our authenticity, our wisdom.

Abraham Maslow and others would say it’s our “power to” rather than our “power over” that counts in the end.

The more “power to” others perceive us to have, the more we will be able to help them. They will believe in us more than they will believe in the power of the problem they are trying to overcome. Denying our own “power to” and shrinking away from it doesn’t serve the people we might help.

Here’s the thing…

What do you choose?

Do you use your “power to” as a force for good, or do you hide from it a little (or a lot) and diminish what you can do for the world and for yourself.

It’s a choice.

How do you sit comfortably with your own power?

Filed Under: Change, Personal Mastery, Wisdom Tagged With: Abraham Maslow, change, Dr David Fraser, it's not our darkness but our light that most frightens us, Marianne Williamson, personal mastery, power over, power to, sitting comfortably with your own power, wisdom

The head or the heart, where do you start?

April 10, 2012 By Dr David Fraser Leave a Comment

Three people in a meeting, two shaking hands Progress on anything challenging typically needs a balance of head and heart perspectives; some emotional intelligence alongside the logic and rationale of the numbers and the processes. Neither on their own will be sufficient.

But where to start? Where to meet the other people involved?

With the head stuff, or the heart stuff?

With professional and business people brought up to “use their heads,” it often seems to make sense to meet them in that left-brain place that is so familiar, and then lead them to an emotional perspective once a level of trust is established.

With other individuals, less conditioned to be “professional”, beginning right from the heart might well work better. Or maybe that’s better in every case.

Does it depend on the context? The same individual in different circumstances might respond differently.

Perhaps the key is to connect with the person, one way or another, starting where they’re most comfortable, and then lead them to the other.

What do you think? Where do you begin—in your head or in your heart? It makes a difference.

Filed Under: Change, Communication, Leadership, Learning, Organizational Learning, People Magic, Personal Mastery, Wisdom Tagged With: change, communication, Dr David Fraser, emotional intelligence, head and heart, leadership, learning, logic, organizational learning, people magic, personal mastery, process

Not where you’d like to be?

April 4, 2012 By Dr David Fraser 4 Comments

Bridge across a gap We’re pretty used to being clear about what we want, what our vision is—clear enough that if it showed up, we’d recognize it.

But what if we can’t get to that straightaway?

That’s where “creative tension” comes in.

Creative tension is what Peter Senge (author of “The Fifth Discipline”) calls the gap between our vision and our current reality, which may not wholly fit with what we want.

Part of the practise of “personal mastery” is being able to sit with both a vision in mind, and a clear view of our current reality (and the emotions that go with it), and accepting the difference between them, and just being cool with it.

Now here’s the good bit…

If we hold this creative tension diligently, accepting the gap between where we are and where we want to be, and not stressing about it even as we work away to move toward our vision, it’s funny how our environment starts to rearrange itself in such a way as to close the gap. Things show up that help us move toward our vision; people get that we’re on a journey and support us; they accept that things are changing.

How does this work?

Well, we could go metaphysical about it and say that we manifest the change we want, but even at a prosaic level, somehow we just give off clear signals about what we’re looking for that others respond to, and, at the same time, we’re ready to recognize opportunity when it appears. They key is calmness. Nothing flows without the calmness.

Being OK with the creative tension of a gap between where we are and where we’d like to be not only helps us get there, but sets us free from stress in the meantime.

Pretty cool, I think.

And part of being an inspirational leader.

What’s your experience of this?

(With grateful thanks to Peter Senge and Robert Hanig for my own learning here.)

Filed Under: Change, Energy, Leadership, Learning, People Magic, Personal Mastery, Systems, Wisdom Tagged With: calmness, change, creative tension, current reality, David Fraser PhD, emotion, gap, manifesting, opportunity, personal mastery, Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline, vision

Is “tribal” behavior at work in your world?

February 22, 2012 By Dr David Fraser Leave a Comment

Team supporters We all belong to clusters of people with something in common: values, beliefs, aims, norms of behavior, and more. We could call these clusters “tribes,” and in fact, we belong to lots of them—families, friendship groups, workplaces, supporters of teams, members of on-line groups, and many more. Some exist in our face-to-face world, others are less tangible but just as real.

The need to belong is part of our human wiring—a deep-seated brain function. Prehistorically, if we didn’t belong to a group, we wouldn’t survive.

So…

People behave in particular ways because they want to belong. They want to fit in. In fact, some also want to define themselves as against something else—some other tribe. That’s psychologically comfortable, if not very resourceful.

Here’s the thing…

In many situations, tribal behavior will be a powerful force, quite likely much more powerful than the explicit authority structures.

Tread warily when intervening. If you don’t understand the tribes in the game and the tribal behavior at work, you’re heading for a rough time. Take note of it and use it for good effect and you will harness a powerful force.

What unnoticed tribal behavior might be influencing your world?

Filed Under: Change, Leadership, Organizational Learning, People Magic, Relationship Skills Tagged With: change, Dr David Fraser, intervention, on-line groups, Relationship Mastery, tribal behavior, tribes