Leading ourselves

I was reading a wonderful article today on transcendent leadership. I kept thinking about how I see so much success manifested in organizations and their brands when the individuals inside the organizations also work to develop their own brands.. I kept thinking about the concept of solutions and promises and how we show up in the world.

So what I ask of everyone else is:

If you cannot lead yourself, how can you lead others?

My recent study of neuroscience and the interdisciplinary study of Interpersonal Neurobiology strongly encourages me that how we reflect on our own values, mission and vision will in part ultimately help lead or destroy a team we are part of.

Obviously these values and Softer side of management cannot alone create success or failure. Still, without the ability to reflect on our own strengths, weaknesses, past histories, how re relate to stress, how we communicate – and even if our communication is coherent – we are doomed to mediocrity. Let that not instill fear – even as it did when I first began to understand how important our brains and minds are. You see what makes interpersonal neurobiology so fascinating and engaging to me is the notion that what happens BETWEEN brains and minds can help shape the future.

As leaders, it is imperative that we are able to look inwards, to understand our limitations and where can improve. Leadership is a process not a position. When we fully digest the power of the mind, we also understand how flexible it can be. Neuroplasticity tells us we CAN change and we can also HELP others change as well.

What we do – how we act – what be believe and how we communicate that– affects others. And the cycle continues.

Just another perspective on the power of FullSync thinking.

“The strategic leader who has mastered the level of self should be able to communicate value-based visions, not of a specific future, but of a set of processes & principles that will lead to a higher state of capability”  Transcendent Leadership, Mary Crossan, Daina Mazutis

Is Your Silo Thinking Holding You Back

Silos or Systems – Is Your thinking holding you back?
By Jessi LaCosta

It’s tempting – especially in flux or crisis – to focus on silos in your organization. The quarterly sales numbers are down, so you concentrate on the sales team. After pushing and not seeing results, you fire the sales director, and hire a new one. Numbers don’t improve. If you had approached the situation from a systems-thinking perspective, you may have uncovered:

• The HR department was pulling newer sales staff into all day training sessions.
• The PR department, so excited about a new product line, got an article published in an important trade magazine.
• Customers only wanted to buy the newest products.
• New products were on back-order. The plant manager concentrated on speeding up the machinery, not the people, and didn’t share this issue with the sales director.
• Unfortunately, orders were coming faster than the sales department or plant could manage.
• All you saw were the numbers slipping so you focused only on the sales department.

Strategies to develop an awareness campaign, move experienced sales reps quickly onto this product, ramp up training people in the plant and having integrated departmental meetings, would have induced the change you needed to effectively promote the new product and keep customers happy. In the latter scenario – you were approaching business development from a systemic vantage point.

If you have not applied systems-theory to your operation, you may be missing out on one of the most powerful approaches to change management.

“Traditional analysis focuses on separating the individual pieces of what is being studied; the word “analysis” comes from the root meaning “to break into constituent parts.” Systems thinking, in contrast, focuses on how the thing being studied interacts with the other constituents of the system—a set of elements that interact to produce behavior… This means that instead of isolating smaller parts of the system being studied, systems thinking works by expanding its view to take into account larger numbers of interactions. This results in sometimes strikingly different conclusions than those generated by traditional forms of analysis….”

Systems thinking requires “thinking” in terms of relationships, connectedness, and context…as well as several shifts in perception, according to Fritjof Capra, Ph.D., physicist and systems theorist.

When we move from a place of separate parts to a place of an integrated whole – we are actually building a sustainable organism. This theory can be applied to small companies, large organizations – even social movements. Think of this as a way to grow vision, power and potential from utilizing the strengths of individual people and parts to maximize the final outcome. The interaction is as crucial as the actions alone. Growth, change, optimal efficiencies, effectiveness and healthy organizations are the direct output from a systems-theory approach.

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972) Father of Systems Theory

“It is necessary to study not only parts and processes in isolation, but also to solve the decisive problems found in organization and order unifying them, resulting from dynamic interaction of parts, and making the the behavoir of the parts different when studied in isolation or within the whole…” Ludwig von Bertalanffy

“General system theory, therefore, is a general science of “wholeness…The meaning of the somewhat mystical expression, “The whole is more that the sum of its parts” is simply that constitutive characteristics are not explanable from the characteristics of the isolated parts. The characteristics of the complex, therefore, appear as “new” or “emergent”…Ludwig von Bertalanffy

Endorsing me for Shine the Light

First – thank you to all who tried to endorse me. It seems to have been a frustrating experience for some of you. If you just clicked “endorse” well, it actually never endorsed. They do not make this clear at all.

In fact, You must register first, be logged in and then you can endorse me. And some of you tried that – and it still did not work. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your efforts!!!!

If you were one of those who thought you had endorsed me by just clicking “endorse” and if you have 5 minutes to spare today, could you register and try endorsing me again?

I believe our team has a great chance of winning if we can get the 50 endorsements to go to the next level. It would mean a lot to me to launch the new business model – which I truly believe will make huge impacts on our society. So again – if you have 5 minutes to spare – I would be VERY grateful. If you did actually complete your endorsement – YEAH – and if you do not have the time – I understand. Sunday is the deadline to reach “50.”

First Register: http://shinealight.ivillage.com/register/

Then once you are logged in, you can endorse:
http://shinealight.ivillage.com/sbo-profile/?ProfileID=7087