Solve personal problems, and then you build capacities

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For more than 30 years I have been coaching and training people with the underlying theme that 70% of what we do in the workplace is relationship management and we as leaders or workers, have to change if they want to lead change. A lot of what we do in Red Cross and Red Crescent is capacity building, and to do this effectively, we have to deal with people's personal problems. I really clicked with this recent article by Rick James which I share below.

Making it personal

Posted by Rick James on 27 June 2014

According to research by Harvard University[1], 85 per cent of the reason people get a job, keep it, and move ahead in it has to do with people skills. Only 15 per cent is because of their technical ability. Yet many of us in the NGO sector have reduced capacity building to a technical intervention. We have ignored the element of personal change, perhaps because it may be more complicated and even threatening. But the fact is, if people and relationships do not change, there can be no capacity building.

I remember working with a group of consultants in Africa. They were discussing a dilemma they often found in their capacity building work – they were having to spend extra time helping people deal with personal issues the process was bringing up. On reflection, they decided that this was not actually a distraction, but in fact their core business. They decided to build more time for personal issues into their work.

In my own organisational development work, I usually get asked in to solve a problem at a level below the person asking me. If it is the leader, then the problem is to do with staff… or so I’m usually told at the beginning.

I have often tried to follow Robert Quinn, who writes: ‘When I discuss the leadership of organisational change with executives I usually go to the place they least expect. The bottom line is that they cannot change the organisation unless they first change themselves.’[2]

Change is not an easy thing for anyone. It involves giving up past ways of behaving that may have become comfortable. Change requires letting go, not just taking on the new. As human beings, we naturally resist letting go. Yet if we hope to build capacity and bring about organisational change, then we have to help people within organisations to change on an individual and personal level.

People aren’t always willing to change. A while back I was facilitating an event to resolve board-staff tensions at an NGO. Communication was an obvious issue but the board in particular was unwilling to explore some of the differences in values and attitudes that were the cause of the communication breakdown. It would have required board members to confront themselves and each other at a deep level. In the end they kept it to safe, superficial statements of intent to communicate more, leaving the underlying issue unchanged. Unsurprisingly the tension persisted.

I have found that taking a more personal approach to change often involves:

• Engaging people’s emotions, not just their rational, cerebral selves. It’s often necessary to bring emotions to the surface to provide the energy and even anxiety needed for change. 
• Creating opportunities for people to hear negative feedback in a context where they feel psychologically safe enough to react constructively rather than simply defensively.
• Working with cultural norms. For example, what is appropriate feedback is highly culturally relative. I need to find out what feedback is tolerable in a particular context. In many countries any confrontation must be done gently and privately. As one African colleague said to me, ‘In all my interventions I find I have to give leadership feedback that they have stopped getting from staff. This often entails us going for walks in the forest together.’
• Engaging with the spiritual beliefs that underpin people’s values and sense of self and which therefore affect how they behave. Successive studies[3] have found that faith and religion are central to the worldview of the majority of people in Africa and Asia. People’s spiritual beliefs may be the most powerful and important lever for change. Inspiring Change and Creating Space for Grace provide plenty of examples for how this might be done in a church context. Even in a secular context, it is still important to give people space to connect with their conscience, intuition or deeper selves.  
• Taking it personally myself. If I have the audacity to engage with the personal dimension to change, especially in other cultures, I have to know myself, my own biases and baggage intimately.

Though not without its technical elements, capacity building is not a mechanical process. First and foremost it is a process of human change. This is personal, emotional, and I believe it is also spiritual. If capacity building is to make a difference, people have to take it personally.

---

[1] Ziglar, Zig (1986), Top Performance, Baker Book House Company

[2] Quinn, R. (2000), Change the World: How Ordinary People can Accomplish Extraordinary Results, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. p106

[3] Narayan, D. (2000) ‘Voices of the Poor: Can Anyone Hear Us?’ Washington OUP, World Bank; Marshall, K and Keough, L. (Eds.)(2004), Mind, Heart and Soul in the Fight Against Poverty, Washington DC: The World Bank; Commission for Africa (2005) ‘Our Common Interest: Report of the Commission for Africa’, March; Barron, M. (2007) ‘The Role of Pastoral Care in Development – is it really development?’, IMU Report, March-May

Image credit: 'Soul Searching' by gaspi *yg, via Flickr. Used under creative commons licensing.

Capacity Building blog series by Rick James Calling our bluff on capacity building Cultivating capacity: Returning to first principles Obsessed by assessment tools It's (almost) all about leadership Cultivating character in capacity building Cultivating trust in partnerships

 

Advice to your children - leadership personified.

The leader has his or her eye on the horizon or the summit. Photo: Bob McKerrow

My last posting was on leadership and management and it engendered some lively feedback and discussion. Having been in leadership positions for a number of decades from leading mountain rescue teams and having to make life-saving decisions, directing outdoor education centres where the wrong decision could result in death, or being caught near the front line between two warring factions, and having to decide to evacuate my team or stay put, makes you realize there is a lot of clap-trap written about leadership by academics who have spent little time in the trenches. I was fortunate in being able to learn from my own experiences and by listening to my elders over the years, both Pakeha (European) and Maori.

I love that story I first heard when I was young from that great Kaumatua (Maorichief) Turi Elkington, of Ngato Kuia, when he asked me “What is the most important thing ? (“He aha te mea nui?"} When I was silent he answered, "He Tangata, He Tanhgata, He Tangata" ( People, People, People.)

In my last posting I listed the qualities and differences between leaders and managers and the most important to me is this one.

• The manager focuses on systems and structure; the leader focuses on people.

My two youngest children are boys and I am sure they will soon start asking more difficult questions about what to do in life and seeking advice on personal
qualities.
What will my answer be ? I believe I cannot fail them if I quote Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘ IF.




















IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt
you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too
wise:


If you can dream--and not make dreams your
master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your
aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've
spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to,
broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out
tools:


If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and
sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"


If you can talk with crowds and keep your
virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt
you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in
it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!


--Rudyard Kipling

Are you a leader or a manager ?.

As Dwight Eisenhower once said: "Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it".

The question I pose today is, are you a leader or a manager ?

Having had a mixed bag of leaders and managers over the years I try to jot down my observations. So many of us work for companies or organisations that are management driven, and neither promote leadership or recognise it. With B replacing B in the US of A, we are able to compare George Bush's style with Barack's.
Chalk and Cheese and Night and Day are a bit hackneyed: Barack Obama is resuscitating a nation and a world. God, if ever we needed the kiss of life in leadership, that in the last five years has been like Friday's hot meal served up cold and stale on Monday, the time is nigh.

Distinctions between Manager and Leader:

The manager administers; the leader innovates.

The manager is a copy; the leader is an original.

The manager maintains; the leader develops.

The manager accepts reality; the leader investigates it.

The manager focuses on systems and structure; the leader focuses on people.

The manager relies on control; the leader inspires trust.

The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective.

The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.

The manager has his or her eye always on the bottom line; the leader
has his or her eye on the horizon.

The manager imitates; the leader originates.

The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.

The manager is the classic good soldier; the leader is his or her own person.

The manager does things right; the leader does the right thing.

Leadership is also about:

 Design
 Story
 Symphony
 Empathy
 Play
 Meaning

Not Just function but design

Not just argument but story

Not just focus but also empathy

Not just logic but empathy

Not just seriousness but also play

Not just accumulation but meaning


Thanks to Warren Bennis and Joan Goldsmith, Learning to Lead and my brother Mr. Pearl
who gave me a few ideas, but most of my examples above are from 40 years of leadership ranging from very bad to slightly above mediocre. I am sorry if I have offended anyone, but there were three outstanding leaders I had the pleasure of being inspired and led by, and I will write about them soon.

As Dwight Eisenhower once said: "Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it".

Take care and learn to improve your leadership, but first distinguish between management and leadership.