Ep. 128: Embracing the Chaos of Leadership to Foster Growth and Unity

How can organizations create the necessary space for leadership to flourish amidst complexity and pressure? In this episode of Definitely Maybe Agile, Peter Maddison and David Sharrock delve into the intricate world of leadership in complex environments. Opening with a warm exchange, they explore an insightful article by John Cutler, examining the indispensable soft skills essential for leaders navigating complexity.

Reflecting on Cutler's piece, Peter and David dissect various facets of leadership, from self-awareness to patience and self-repair. They highlight leaders' need to create space for diverse perspectives, fostering an environment where multiple possibilities can thrive. Amidst organizations' pressures, they ponder the challenge of finding time for such introspection amidst the relentless demand for results.

This week's takeaways:

• Leaders must cultivate self-awareness
• Encourage the blending of diverse perspectives
• Practice Patience and Self-Repair

Resources:
How Capable Leaders Navigate Uncertainty and Ambiguity- https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-274-how-capable-leaders-navigate?utm_source=activity_item

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Chapters

• 0:04 Leadership in Complex Environments
• 13:45 Keys to Effective Problem Solving
• 17:43 Enhancing Team Collaboration and Development

Transcript

Peter: 0:04

Welcome to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where Peter Maddison and David Sharrock discuss the complexities of adopting new ways of working at scale. Hello Dave, how are you doing?

Dave: 0:13

today. Peter, it is great to see you again. Good to have a chat Close out the day. It's always one of my favourite things.

Peter: 0:20

Same here, same here. I always enjoy these conversations, and so what's on the cards today? You?

Dave: 0:25

shared an article you came across from the Beautiful Mess right, John Kotler's work and Tonko and, in this particular case and this is about, well, one of our favourite topics leadership, complexity and the skills that leaders working in complexity need to bring to the table. Really, it's a short article. It's worth reading Just to kind of get a few reminders of what it means to be a leader in the world of complexity and how to think about, how to solve problems and so on. What did you think of it?

Peter: 0:56

I thought it was a good article. I mean, I'm always amazed by how John Kotler gets all of this stuff out all of the time, as we were chatting a bit about this beforehand. He's very prolific in the material that he puts out and I always enjoy the things he puts out. They always hit a certain note. And this was an article that I thought was interesting in that it covered a lot of different pieces and a lot of different topics and came at it from a slightly different angle. So essentially, it's asking here are a set of questions and a set of soft skills that leaders should develop, and these are questions that they should ask in interviews and they're like well, when they're talking to people. And I thought it was interesting by breaking it down and going through a lot of the different things that leaders need to develop from a soft skills perspective, and that got us talking, as you were saying.

Dave: 1:48

Yeah, and when I? You know, this is one of those things that, for example, we'll do workshops on this and we can get people to brainstorm what it means. How, as a leader, do I turn up, if I'm trying to be that next generation of leaders that we're all, we're all hopefully working towards in our own worlds, and I really liked a lot of the sort of pithy ideas which are there. I think there is a couple of things really struck me as I start reading through the list. One is self awareness as you as a leader.

Dave: 2:20

This is and I think this is so true, it's like professionalization of the role, which means we can't just roll up and say you know, I'm the leader, this is what I need you to do. It's much more nuanced and there's a lot more self awareness about what impact is it that I have on the teams, the people that I'm leading, when I ask them questions, I interact with them. I'm not just contributing to the problem, for sure, but also how, having to think about how to approach the communication in order to get the best out of you know, to provide the best for them sort of environment for the people, the teams that are working there.

Peter: 3:02

Yeah, and really I mean in general what he's looking at, rather than leaders turning up and saying you do A, you do B, you do C, saying okay, giving the team the space to explore, giving them like here's the guardails, here's the areas where you shouldn't go, here, be dragons, but outside of that, go explore, work out how to go do these things. This is generally where I'm looking to get to, and there's there's a lot of other pieces in there too. There's some of the behaviors you and I have talked about in the past where we've seen leaders get irate because the things didn't go their way and they throw all the toys out of the pram, and that type of behavior which is very detrimental to the morale of the teams and the morale of the people in the organization in general. Where it's said looking at like well, why? Focusing on the work, like why did this happen? Why did? Why is this the thing that occurred? What was the causes behind that? Not who's to blame.

Dave: 4:05

Essentially, Well, it's almost like a maturity piece and I think what I find quite interesting and again, as you read through the, the various ideas of capabilities and approaches leaders can take this isn't about you know. You read a lot about people on teams who need handling in a certain way or have a certain expectation about what their, what the approach should be when asking them to work or moving them on to different problems, and things like this. What I really liked about this is this has nothing to do with this. This is about how are you working as a team? How do we make sure that you're recognizing that complexity? We talked a little bit about complexity.

Dave: 4:45

That's one of the favorite topics, if you like. So this is understanding. You're working in a complex environment. So going in and expecting a single solution, expecting you to know what the solution is to a problem or be able to identify it straight off, all of those things don't actually help. It just makes it makes for a missed communication. So all of the, all of the capabilities here aren't about softening the conversation with the, with individuals.

Peter: 5:11

No, and there's there's some interesting pieces in here as well around thinking about things like even Kaiser Analyzer strategy how do I incrementally move towards a to a goal? How do I look at like where am I now identify that gap and appropriately like, break down the problem and help the teams with, like what is the next piece they need to do, rather than say, hey, go climb the mountain and how do you?

Dave: 5:35

it's avoiding this sort of obvious. This is what you've got to do, which is useful in a complex environment, but putting constraints on that environment while not actually, you know, mapping the path towards a solution which is preordained in some way. So there's a there's some really subtle things in the ideas which are shared in that blog post.

Peter: 5:57

Yeah, and it's fun to watch it presented this way as a set of questions.

Dave: 6:04

Now. Now I have to say there's a sort of an elephant in the room as I'm looking through this and I think this has been haunting a lot of conversations that we've had over the last couple of months, which is all of this is fantastic If we have time, space, the sort of the luxury of being able to formulate ideas, think about things and bring those to the table as we go into that conversation. In the current climate, it doesn't feel that maybe it's just the clients that I'm working with, but it doesn't feel like there is time to be able to have these conversations or there's a lot of pressure on organizations right now.

Peter: 6:42

Yeah, and I wonder. I mean there's kind of the two things happening at once. Right, there's a lot of pressure on the organizations. There's a pressure we've got to get things done. We've got to get things done. There's like fewer people, you know. Often it's like, hey, how do we manage? How do we do this? How do you do more with less? Like, how do you solve these problems? And that in turn, creates a lot of downward pressure into organizations and that causes leaders to potentially going to struggle a little more with this. It becomes a little harder to sort of. Well, I'm not going to worry too much about the fact that my boss is yelling at me. I'm going to take a step back and I'm going to start to ask these questions and get the team room to explore. And it's like, whereas I'm being told you've got to get this done, yeah, and then trying to balance those two worlds.

Dave: 7:31

Well, and I think this is an interesting one, because, on the one hand, let's say you're a, you're an excellent, mature leader in complex spaces, then a lot of this is subcontracts, it's unconscious capabilities that you perform anyway, right? So in those cases, in theory at least, that overhead of having to really plan your interactions with your team and think about how to do that, because it isn't second nature yet that cost is removed, hopefully, right? So those leaders who are already there, they're already doing this when they interact with their team in many cases, yeah.

Peter: 8:13

And then I think this is where we run into that form where, if they're not, then this is a lot to hold in your head. It's a long list of questions I mean I didn't count them, but there's quite a few there and this is a lot to hold in your head if you're not thinking this way already. So there's this need to say okay, well, I'm gonna start somewhere and then I pick some of these and I'm gonna focus in on these ones, and next time I'm in a conversation having a one-on-one with somebody and it feels like we're struggling to work out how to move forward, maybe I'll draw upon this Well, and I think that's I mean, that's part of any journey, right?

Dave: 8:52

So there are always things that we kind of have locked away and we know how to deal with it, and that there are things that we can rely on and there are things that we're practicing and so on. I think there's a great list here to kind of work towards that. I think it just takes energy and time and planning and thoughtfulness that maybe under high pressure, people just don't have the luxury of that.

Peter: 9:14

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? I think it's one of those things that, at the moment of high pressure, you're less likely want to adopt anything other than how you already know how to behave.

Dave: 9:26

Well, I always think of as your home base, as I always talk about if somebody wakes you up at 4am, that's what you're gonna get. Home base You're not going to get oh, let me think about how to deal with this You're gonna get home base mentality coming out right and that home base can change. It's not like you're trapped there. But it takes time and effort and practice to move that home base as you go forward. I think the other bit that really concerns me in the current scenario, current situation, which is the reality, is organizations are overloaded and the big thing that's sort of missing is that support of leadership to take things off the table.

Peter: 10:04

Yeah, well, and this is the if you say yes to this, what are you saying no to? It's like if I'm going to take something else on, what am I not going to do now, whereas there's this tendency just to say yes to everything and work just piles up and then slowly, nothing gets done, because you're not even actually that slowly, pretty quickly, nothing gets done because everybody's just spending all of their time context switching and nobody can actually get anything enough focus on any one thing to move it forward and everything starts to drag out. And especially I see this where there's there are things that need to occur, like changes which are instrumental, where there's, say, you've got a some kind of centralized system that everything is drawing upon, so everything is running at the beat of whatever. That centralized system is, just that centralized system.

Peter: 10:52

Clearly, the best thing for the system as a whole would be to fix or isolate that piece from the rest of it. But there's absolutely no chance that you're going to do that because more and more work piling in. Nobody's going to take the time to step back and say, okay, if we fix this piece of the engine right here, we're going to be able to deliver all of that and more, all of the stuff that's coming in and more. It's just that requires enough visibility and enough understanding to be able to take that step back and say, okay, we need a layer in between these two so that we don't have to wait on that other system to finish whatever they're doing before we can move forward.

Dave: 11:26

And it's almost, I think and as I'm looking through the list, there's almost maybe it's just adding one more which is that awareness of how do you immediately depressure a system, remove pressure from that system. And that part of that is those constraints. If you think about complexity, one of the key things we want to be able to do is put a constraint on that so that we can get control of the system, so we can understand it well enough to take constructive steps and learn from that and get better and gain control of it. And I wonder if that ability to identify constraints, which we'll talk like limiting work in progress, is one of those constraints. It doesn't have to be the only one, doesn't have to be the primary one, but a constraint on the system that becomes one of those primary goals of any leader to be able to create the space so that, well, probes can be tried, so the experiments can be tried, different channels can be followed, so the teams have the space to be able to collaborate and identify and explore different ideas.

Peter: 12:26

I think that one is in there somewhere, is it?

Dave: 12:28

No, I'm ready to throw it. I didn't find it, but I'll take your word.

Peter: 12:33

I think it's a great list of questions. I think there's a lot that leaders can learn just from meeting through this and even just thinking about this, like exploring how have you reacted in these circumstances, these situations. I feel we're talking about this a lot in the abstract, and so perhaps calling out some examples might make sense. So, if I pick one, which one looks like a fun one to call out, how about blend diverse perspectives, like the abilities to seek diverse perspectives, especially those that challenge our beliefs and defaults, resist seeking to be the most informed, realize the person who is most wrong in any situation, the one who believes they have the most holistic view. Instead, see the blending of perspectives as a source of multiple possibilities, enabling many paths to emerge. And then have the interview question, which is like can you tell me about a time that you've needed to make space for those perspectives, and particularly ones you found challenging?

Peter: 13:32

So I think it's a good example of a question Like how do you create space for diverse perspectives on different ways of doing things and help the group work through that?

Dave: 13:44

Yeah, it must have been. I died like if I'm looking at one of the questions here to sort of take away and go. Let me go and put this into practice immediately. I was captured immediately by the very first one. Except, we're part of the problem, and I it's. All of us need to be self aware enough to know that and all of us catch ourselves occasionally thinking we aren't part of the problem. We know how to solve this. Let's just you know. If only they knew what I was thinking, then they'd be there.

Peter: 14:11

Yes, yeah, and I, when I catch myself doing that, I try to remember, like, put things down, take a step back and go. Okay, really, like, have I given people the space here that they need Understanding if we are part of the problem? And being able to have that introspection is a really critical part.

Dave: 14:30

So any, do you want to pick another one out? Maybe we'll end with a couple more that we pull out.

Peter: 14:35

There's patience and self-repair. I quite like that one too the ability to patiently let certain situations play out. Say that one again. I'm speaking over you. Yeah, the ability to patiently let situations play out and fix themselves over time instead of repeatedly intervening, yeah, that's, that's.

Dave: 14:53

I'd pick that one. I think it's a fantastic one, because what I really like about that one is is people giving people space to just trust that they're going to get there, and I feel that is especially in a high pressure environment. We everything you know there's a lot of weight on the outcomes that different groups are trying to achieve. How can you step back a little bit and just trust that they're going in the right direction? What's involved in letting things play out and self-correct?

Peter: 15:21

Yep, I agree. Should we wrap it up there? Did you want to add any more? Did you want to any others that really jumped out at you and said I got to tell everyone about this one.

Dave: 15:29

Well, maybe the abduction and intuition piece. So there's a couple that they kind of fall in different groups. There's a few more about how to help the teams go out and, you know, strengthen their ability to solve problems and so on. But what I liked about this particular one is we get really caught up in solving problems and we, you know, go straight in with logic and deduction, with, and especially in complex environments, for sure, but also when we're under high pressure, the blinkers come on and all we can see is the sort of road stretching out in front of us of that logical. This is where we have to go, and what I like about this one is that reminder to find some way of stepping back, creating space and just putting something weird on the table to discuss. That maybe doesn't feel like it's, it's part of this well, critical path. I mean, we get stuck in that critical path mindset, especially under pressure.

Peter: 16:20

Yeah, that relates back to the first one I gave, though it's the diversity of perspectives. Are you willing to take a step back and listen to other people's point of view on what makes it might be the possible solution? So?

Dave: 16:31

yeah, right, let's wrap her up. So what did you take away from our conversation? A couple of take away.

Peter: 16:36

I think it's a. I think it's a good list of things as well with reading through for, and we'll obviously include it in the show notes, and I think some of the stuff I took away from that is the. It is a lot told in your head at one time but, as we were just talking about, some of these do definitely overlap and play into each other quite a bit. So there are themes around this which I think is key to when you're going through and thinking about well, how do I use this in my day to day interactions with people. So there's there's definitely some of the pieces there, and at the bottom of the article there's some tips as well about like, hey, how could you bring these as interview questions into your organization? So what's?

Dave: 17:14

the Well, and I think that that's. I'll add two kind of one comment, one absorb, or one summary, one observation, the summary being there is this sort of elephant in the room which is so many organizations are just under pressure. The blinkers are on, they've got their heads down. How is it? How can they create space? And and let's leave that as an open question it's tough, but that's probably one of the things that has to happen very much alongside this sort of before, this sort of interaction can happen.

Dave: 17:43

And the second one is just to follow up on your point. Which is one of the things I really like about things like this and lists that we can go and discuss is go and put that in front of your leadership team so that now everybody has that same list and there's an opportunity to learn from one another, to hold one another accountable to using various of these little practices that are identified, these intervention patterns or capabilities here which are which are identified, so that the whole organization is growing and practicing with one another as they go forward. I think really helps with that adoption.

Peter: 18:13

Yeah no, that's a great point. Well, thank you as always, dave, and we'll look forward to next time. Don't forget to hit subscribe. We always like new subscribers and any feedback is welcome, so as always, a pleasure. You've been listening to definitely maybe agile the podcast where your hosts, Peter Maddison and David Sharrock, focus on the art and science of digital agile and DevOps at scale.