Action Learning Forum 2013 - The Power of Questions, Leadership and Leading Change

photo credit: Ng Choon Seng

Dedicated half of my day and personal time on 28 March 2013 to share with a group of Action Learning (AL) practitioners from all over Asia on my take on leading CHANGE with the power of questions. 

photo credit: Ng Choon Seng

My talents, skills and experiences have uniquely qualified me to do something in this world. Whatever that something is, I know I need to pass it on. I may do it with a single person, a small group or with thousands of people. The number is not within my control. What is within my control is whether I do it.

My intention was to share my personal stories as a leader on how to lead and manage change using questions. I hope that through my stories, AL practitioners and leaders will see leadership and change management from a different perspective.  I hope to inspire. As a certified AL practitioner myself, this is my small way of giving back to the AL community.

Summary of my sharing

On Leadership

As a leader,

• Always work on the relationships and trust first!

Everything you do as a leader, you need to work through people. You need the head, hearts and hands of the team you lead in order to achieve your organisation's objectives. When the relationships are strong, the quality of your team's thinking and conversations becomes better! Team members are more comfortable and open to share their thoughts and they are also more open to other ideas or perspectives. The quality of your team's actions will be affected when the quality of the thinking is high. As a consequence, the quality of the results produced will be much better. When the key results are good, it will further enhance the quality of the relationships because the team morale will go up. 

• Give people meaning and direction

As a leader, you need to pay attention to the experiences you are creating for your team. In today's context, to define work purely from the performance perspective is very limiting. How your team members are feeling is also a result of work. As leaders, we need to give our team clear direction and create meaning in what we do.

• Be mindful of the experiences you are creating as a leader

Besides meaning, the environment, the enjoyment at work, daily interactions of team members, etc. are important factors for a leader to consider. You have great influence over the experiences you can create.  

• Build the capacity of your people

While working, you can grow; develop know-how and skills and so on. Like performance and experience, learning is a universal and fundamentally human result of work. The effectiveness of your team can be determined by their capacity to learn and improve over time. As a leader, you need to pay attention to your team’s capacity and capabilities. Come on, how can you expect your team to perform if their capabilities and capacities are not developed. Common sense but not common practice.

• Performance, Experiences and Learning are all interdependent!

How are these fundamental results of work—performance, experience, and learning—related? They are unquestionably interdependent. If individuals aren't learning, their performance will decline over time; if their predominant experience of work is boredom or stress, both learning and performance will suffer. 

From my personal experience, as a leader, if you work on the experiences and learning of your team well, the performance part will almost happen on its own!

For more details of my leadership thinking, read about my 4 C leadership model by clicking on the links below.

Step 1: Change the way you think and your behaviour will change. When you behaviour change, the results you get will change too!

Step 2: People needs to buy into the leader before they buy into their message or leadership

Step 3: Talk your walk and walk your talk

photo credit: Ng Choon Seng

On Change Management

Due to time constraints, I was not able to share more on Change Management with the group. Here are the 5 keys points I wanted to make about leading change.

1.Is your change worthwhile and possible?

Before doing anything, ask yourself two questions: Is this change worth making? Every change you make requires you to pay a price. Are you willing to pay the price? As a leader, you need to assess the change you are about to make carefully. Change will not happen in a vacuum. Factors to consider - Context, Situation, Team capabilities and potential, political power, type of bosses you have and their priorities, culture of your organisation, current systems and structures, etc. The questions you ask yourself before any change initiative are key. Frame your questions carefully and ask empowering questions.

2. Get your leadership team to buy in.

Change won’t be positive unless your leadership team believes in the new vision. If you need to make changes, go through the right process. Shortcuts will never lead to anyplace worth going. Do not rush. Change involves people. When it comes to people, fast is slow and slow is fast. Engage your leadership team right from the start. Ask powerful questions to engage them.

3. Change should feel uncomfortable.

If change doesn’t feel a little weird, it’s not really change. Anticipate the discomforts your team will feel and guide them through those difficulties. Paint the picture for them ahead of time. I always tell them, "let's begin with the end in mind" —let them know what’s coming and what they might expect. Then remind them that stress, uncertainty and upheaval are normal and temporary. Offering comfort and reassurance is a key part of your job. In my unit, I am always the Chief Combat Engineer - I clear the path for my team to do their best work!

4. Evolution or Revolution. 

One of the key question you need to ask yourself as the leader is "Are you going to make an “evolutionary” change or a “revolutionary” one?" Make sure you understand the difference because if you’re making the latter, you’d better prepare your people for significant upheaval. Be clear. For some change efforts, you really need to "rock the boat" aggressively but for some, incremental improvements will be suffice. You need to be very clear what you need to do.

5. Change yourself first.

Finally, as a leader, you can’t be a change agent for your organisation if you’re stagnant on the inside. You need to commit to your own personal growth if you are going to lead your organisation through changes and improvements. You can’t give what you don’t have. You need to keep learning and growing. You need to lead change by example. My personal leadership philosophy is - I will not ask my team to do anything I am not prepared to do myself. I expect a lot from my team but in exchange, I will help them grow, engage and meet their personal career goals. If I expect the best from my team, I expect nothing less (often more) from myself.

I hope the AL practitional from all over Asia will find my sharing useful. All the best my AL friends :)

Jim