Module 4 Transcript - Leading Teams Developing As A Leader

Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader
Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd
Module 4: Growing as a leader
Table of Contents
Lesson 4-1: Module 4 Introduction ................................................................................................... 2
Module 4 Introduction......................................................................................................................................... 2
Lesson 4-2: Leadership Growth: The Three C’s .................................................................................. 8

Leadership Growth: The Three C's ....................................................................................................................... 8
Lesson 4-3: Leadership Growth: Curiosity ....................................................................................... 14

Leadership Growth: Curiosity ............................................................................................................................ 14
Lesson 4-4: Leadership Growth: Courage ........................................................................................ 22

Leadership Growth: Courage ............................................................................................................................. 22
Lesson 4-5: Leadership Growth: Commitment ................................................................................ 29

Leadership Growth: Commitment ..................................................................................................................... 29
Lesson 4-6: Wrap up ....................................................................................................................... 39

Module 4 Closing ............................................................................................................................................... 39
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Lesson 4-1: Module 4 Introduction
Module 4 Introduction
One of the themes that we've talked about throughout this whole process is how
leadership is a practice. It's a process of development and a process of growing. We've
explored some of the ways in which we are working on that. Let's just talk a bit about
why we framed this course in terms of the development piece? Why was that important
to us?
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I shouldn't say just anything, it's actually really important that students appreciate the
contrast with a destination versus the journey. The growth mindset is about being on a
journey and developing on that journey, which creates more opportunities to make
some mistakes, try different things, learn from those things, adjust, recognize that we're
in a context. We are literally as humans changing every single moment, and oftentimes,
ignoring that, or discounting it, or forgetting it somehow, or resisting it. For me, the
power of this is understanding that it's a journey and being willing to be on that journey.
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I want to pick up on the use of the word human a few times, and I think about all of this
is human development like writ large leadership as a social science. It's about humans
growing and changing and influencing each other and being in this process of life and
navigating change together. I think that's inherently developmental, and it's like what
you said that we as individuals are changing over time and changing because of all the
influences coming at us all the time. There's really no other way. It's not static.
Leadership isn't a place or a thing or a person, it's a moving, changing, amorphous,
messy, hard process. Yeah. Journey and process. Yeah. Because of that, it's a complex
systems mentality almost. You can't impose one framework on it and expect it to work,
but you do need some structure within which to grow and develop and change and
evolve and whatever. Yeah. Great point. That's what we talk about in this module is the
three Cs, which is curiosity, courage, and commitment.
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I'm not going to pretend that that's the only way to think about developing as a leader.
But it is sketchy. It is great I love three letters or four letters. It helps me so much. Any
three great letters, I think. Three great words. There is a lot in those. Those are three
letters, but there's a lot that we can unpack there that speaks to giving us some
structure for this process of evolving and growing as humans and as leaders. Yeah.
There's one other thing I want to say, in addition to the complicated, messy, difficult.
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It's exciting, rewarding, powerful. When you hear about how you've impacted
someone's life, giving them voice, how you've made change in a space, accomplished
things through this journey, through this process, through these practices. It's just
fantastic. Yes. That's the sweetness of it all, and it's probably why we engage in it.
We study it, is for those rewarding pieces that come along the way. Curiosity, courage,
and commitment. Did I get that right? Did I get the three Cs right? You got the three Cs.
You'll learn the three Cs. Curiosity, courage, and commitment.
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Lesson 4-2: Leadership Growth: The Three C’s
Leadership Growth: The Three C's
When we're talking about leadership development, developing ourselves and our own
leadership capacity. I like to think of it as leadership capacity. It's not as if you arrive. It's not like
a video game where you like you arrive at leadership and so therefore you are now a leader in
all contexts at all times. It's a capacity that we're, it's a health check, right? Like we're still
growing, we're still developing, we're still learning, we're going to get some stuff wrong and
hopefully learn from that and try again. So leadership from a personal standpoint to me is about
a capacity to build skills.
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>> Leadership growth is a process, a life long process for many of us and it's an individual
journey based on the context, experiences and people around us. The best leaders commit to
continuing to grow, to paying attention to the process of developing as each problem at work
changes, as each job evolves and as a career expands. One action, one choice, one job does
not make a leader. The most effective leaders are intentional about consistently learning and
growing. >> I go back to the model that Stephen Covey had, which was a great big bull's eye
and there are three different ends parts to that.
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There's what you can control, there's what you can influence and what you can't control.
And obviously we all live in, I don't care if you're the lowest level person in an organization or
the highest level person in an organization. You have the bull's eye. The CEO has people on
the board of directors that he has to understand and listen to and so on. So everybody's got this
bull's eye. So there's this piece you can control and you have to say, what piece can I control?
What piece can I work on to build my own capabilities and how can I grow strength in that? And
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what Covey says is when you do that and you take control of that middle part of the bull's eye.
The next piece which is those things you can influence, you actually grow that piece and you
begin to influence people around you. And then when that grows, you might even bridge into
those things that you have no control over. So this thing grows from within and out for
everybody and I don't care what position you have in the organization. You always have the
right, the willingness and the responsibility to do your own personal development and make it
grow.
>> I'll suggest here that we can grow as leaders by developing the three C's, curiosity, courage
and commitment. Curiosity is foundational to learning. Being curious about leadership, about
ourselves and about the people we lead can open our minds to growth. Courage is required for
trying new things and learning from things gone wrong. Being open to trying new ways of
leading to be our best facing uncertainty with vulnerability. And commitment is about building
habits that help us to continue to learn and grow. The most effective leaders are reflecting and
learning on their leadership consistently. Paying attention to our leadership growth by focusing
on the three seeds should not come at the expense of solving problems in our jobs. The two are
intertwined. Because leadership classes are taught separately from other classes both in
business schools and elsewhere. It's often tempting to focus on leadership as this thing to focus
on in isolation of the work itself. But leadership exists in the context of the organizational and
team environments. I can practice building trusting relationships, but am I building them in the
context of producing whatever good or service it is that we create for customers? I can develop
my self awareness but am I thinking about how this matters in the context of my relationships at
my current job? These three C's can help us not simply think about leadership but develop as
leaders in the context of our work.
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>> I think leadership, like anything else is a skill that takes practice. So if we want to create
good leaders, we need to give people ample opportunities to practice leadership. These
leadership muscles need training. So one thing that I found does work in in nurturing leaders is
giving them opportunities. And when you give new leaders opportunities, there is a tendency to
stand right behind them. Watch what they're doing or micromanage, which is understandable for
the trainer because it's their first time leading. But maybe I found an approach that works a little
better than that, which is give them opportunities, which are in increasing order of stakes. Give
them low stakes opportunities, but give them their space to do their thing as a leader. And then
give them opportunities later to reflect on what went right and what went wrong with you.
Scaffolding goes a long way, but remote scaffolding instead of being in the scene and meddling
with their leadership process. And I think with time opportunities to reflect and opportunities to
make mistakes, people grow into effective leaders.
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>> Now the three C's is not some magical formula. It's simply a place to start that's rooted in
what we know about personal learning and growth, what we know about how adults learn and
how the best leaders develop. So ask yourself this question, am I ready to get curious to test out
my courage and to commit to growing as a leader?
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Lesson 4-3: Leadership Growth: Curiosity
Leadership Growth: Curiosity
The more experiences I have, the more I realize I don't know. The more I realize there's
more out there, the more curiosity I have, the more I learn. What I try to do is, I do a lot
of things that are outside my comfort zone. I say yes to things that will allow me to have
a different experience. That's very difficult because you also want to make sure that
you're focused. You have to be very intentional about those experiences. I don't mean
intentional that it has to make sense, I mean intentional about that interests me.
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Curiosity is critical for the process of learning and development. Evidence suggests that
learning with curiosity leads us to remember more of what we learn and moreover, to
enjoy the learning process more. What do we mean by curiosity? Philosopher and
psychologist William James defined curiosity as the impulse towards better cognition, or
in other words, a desire to learn and know more. Contemporary definitions of
psychology consider curiosity on internal motivation to seek information. These are
semantically different, but the meaning is the same. It's an individual desire an internal
desire to want to go out and find something new. Some might argue that curiosity is a
fixed and innate trait, either have it or you don't. We can all probably think of people that
immediately come to mind as curious people and others that don't seem so curious. But
what if that is more of a state of being than an intrinsic trait? What if we thought about
curiosity as a competency or a skill to be developed? To be fair most of us have gone
through an education system that values the acquisition of knowledge and there's
nothing wrong with that, of course. But often curiosity goes against the norm and
therefore it's hindered instead of cultivated. When you were younger, especially in early
elementary school, did you ever experience that kid in your class who all of a sudden,
out of nowhere asked a question that seemed completely unrelated to whatever was
going on in the class at the moment? Chances are, that student, was told to pipe down
or wait until later. Or have you ever been in a meeting where you are close to
consensus on some decision with your team and then someone pipes up with a
question that no one had yet thought to ask, and then that person gets shut down?
These are examples of curiosity at work. Throughout our lives, most of us get graded
and evaluated on what we know. How much we studied, how much we remembered,
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how we will be able to work through a problem to get to the right answer. Because of
this, we grow into knowers. We believe we have the answers and we stopped checking
our own assumptions. This makes us feel confident and in control. It helps us to
demonstrate to others our values so we can get that promotion or take on that new
project. But it also completely gets in the way of our ability to be curious, our ability to
learn.
Cultivating our curiosity is about shifting from being a knower to a learner. This doesn't
mean we don't have any knowledge it means we are open to constantly updating our
assumptions by taking in new information. It makes it more likely that we'll engage in a
dialogue in which all voices in a team contribute instead of a debate that turns into an
uncomfortable conversation.
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It means that when we face disappointment, we will explore that experience for what we
can take away from it instead of letting it shut us down.
Question is, how do you get into a learner mindset or how do you know you're not in a
knower mindset? I think you have to almost catch yourself or somebody else can catch
you with it and say that's a solution that you're thinking about and it's not a problem.
That might be one way to do it is you might just say to yourself, am I thinking in terms of
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a solution without a problem defined? Or am I thinking about a problem and am I my
asking all the right questions to try to find out all the different aspects of this
interdependent problem situation that is going on. I think that might be the simplest way
of asking yourself, am I a knower, or am I a learner? A knower would be like Richard
Feynman and his dad versus his friend. Feynman was a theoretical physicist, brilliant
guy.The story goes that they would go out into the forest and see birds and trees and
his friend and his father would say to him, "You know, that's a cardinal or that's a birch
tree" or he would explain to him what he was seeing. Of course, his friend would
memorize that and he would be a knower of all of those things. Richard's father would
say to him, "Why do you think the beak on that bird has that shape?" It's a completely
different thing. It opens up a set of questions. I think to that example, I would say that
maybe the way you become a learner, always start with a set of questions that you don't
understand the answer to, and then you ask, how can I get answers to my questions?
That puts you into a learner mode.
Curiosity is powerful. I was a really shy and awkward kid. I had bad anxiety and I didn't
like uncertainty or anything new. I was just afraid of everything. We moved to a new
school system when I was in fourth grade and the school pretty shortly thereafter called
my parents because I wasn't playing with any kids during recess and they were worried
there was something wrong with me. They probably should have just given me some
time to acclimate, but at any rate, they called my parents in. But thankfully, I was raised
by parents who understood the value of helping their kids grow. My dad has this pretty
highly developed sense of curiosity when he has cultivated over the course of his life as
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a third child, as an engineer, and now as a leadership coach who helps teams develop
cultures of problem-solving. His approach to helping me overcome my anxiety was to
act as a coach, to ask me questions, to help me get curious, to find my own sense of
curiosity. We moved again when I was 16 and I finally at that point had this great group
of friends. I was comfortable, and now I found out I was going to have to spend my
junior and senior year of high school in a new school, in a new city and a new state. He
knew this was scary for me. He asked me what my fears were. I told them I was afraid
people wouldn't like me, that I wouldn't be able to find good friends like the ones I had. I
said I didn't know how to make friends and he said, "What do you think would happen if
you just went up to somebody and said, 'hi, I'm new here, it's nice to meet you."' That
got me thinking. They'd probably say hi back and we'd have a conversation, and of
course, I had to try to think of the worst point to come up with. The worst thing I could
say was maybe they would laugh and walk away. My dad's response was, "So what if
they do? They are always more people to talk to." He continued this line of questioning
with other fears I had like, what if they didn't have a dance team. They didn't and I
ended up joining a competitive cheer-leading team, which I never thought was an
option. One of the teachers were helpful. They were wonderfully helpful. My physics and
precalc teachers used to let me come in early to ask questions about my homework and
they'd work with me one-on-one. They made learning fun. I continued to practice being
curious in my own learning. It's led me to have all kinds of fun adventures, including
living overseas and experiencing things I could have never imagined. Quite frankly, I'm
here teaching this course because I asked myself what would happen if I left my first
career and got an MBA. Then when I was getting my MBA, I was like, what happens if I
get a PhD? Then what if I become an educator and a coach to help others grow and
learn by tapping into their curiosity? How can cultivating curiosity contribute to your
growth as a leader? Curiosity can help you to explore jobs or projects you had not
considered. It can open doors. Curiosity can help you to learn more about yourself. It
can facilitate development of your awareness of self. Curiosity also helps you learn
more about others. The next time you meet someone, take a minute and get curious.
Ask them a question you might not have considered asking them before. See what you
learn. Curiosity can help us be more empathic towards others and vice versa. The more
we know about someone, the more likely we are to connect with them, the more open
we are, the more likely we are to build trust in a relationship. The next time you find
yourself at work saying, this is how we will do x. Rephrase to ask, are there other ways
to do x? Curiosity contributes to creativity and innovation, both in your leadership
development and in the problems you're solving at work.
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Let's talk about some ways to start developing curiosity for your leadership growth. First
and foremost, start with questions. When you catch yourself thinking in declarative
statements, swap it with a question. Use the principle of humble inquiry. Ask questions
that tap into what you don't know, be okay, starting from a place of not knowing, and ask
open-ended questions about your journey, about yourself and about others. Second,
pay attention to your assumptions. Our assumptions are operating at all times. Check in
and see what assumptions are leading you to make that particular decision to engage in
a particular way with another person. Along with our assumptions comes evaluation.
Play around with shifting from evaluation to observation. Be like an anthropologist of
your own culture. Take a look around and see how things are going at work. How are
people interacting? What norms are they following? Third, get curious about your
feelings. Emotions are a part of being human and they are always present. Explore how
certain things make you feel and then consider how those emotional feelings make you
feel physically. Be present in your own body so you can start to look for signs or your
fist clenching before you go into a meeting that might be indicative of anger or anxiety. If
you're curious about these emotions, you will start to see patterns and connections that
will help you get to know more about yourself and how you build relationships with
others.
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But I think anybody who's truly in a leadership role needs dentify themselves first is
curious. You have to say, listen, I'm here to figure things out. If you are not curious in a
role, then you lose humility. When you use humility, then you start to become the center
of gravity in an organization. That's dangerous. Curiosity makes life more fun. Get
curious about yourself, get curious about others, get curious about your work, and use
this curiosity to learn and grow as a leader.
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Lesson 4-4: Leadership Growth: Courage
Leadership Growth: Courage
It's actually quite fascinating to me and nothing that I've studied whatsoever, but that
adage or 90 percent of our communication is not verbal is so powerful and so true, and
we can't even process it. This communication happens in milliseconds. We pick up
things very easily, oftentimes from other people and some of us are better at it than
others. But if you're someone who's good at picking that up from someone else, that
they spoke up and whatever the reception was not necessarily welcoming. We can be
the one that says I just wanted to point out that if it were me, it would've been really hard
for me to say that. I just want to commend John for saying that thing and calling out
maybe we're feeling uncomfortable right now because of what was said. Whether I even
agree with it, I'm going to call out that it probably took courage. If it was me, I think it
would have taken courage for me to say that thing. I'm just going to point that out. Let's
talk a bit about courage and its relevance for leadership growth.
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Dr. Bernie Brown, whose work on vulnerability has become widely known, defines
vulnerability as uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. Vulnerability is when we are
at our most human and it is not a sign of weakness, rather our willingness to get into
that state of discomfort and emotional exposure is exactly a measure of how brave we
are willing to be. Based on her research, she argues that vulnerability is our most
accurate measure of courage, and it is a prerequisite to the behaviors that her research
has found are important for what she calls daring leadership, which are rumbling with
vulnerability, braving trust, living our values, and learning to rise. Being a leader takes
courage. It takes courage to let go of the assumption that we as leaders have it all
figured out. It takes courage to let an employee or team members take ownership over
a project. It takes courage to have a difficult conversation with members of our team. It
takes courage to look at ourselves and be willing to say, I'm going to try to grow as a
leader even if it's hard. Again, it's a sovereign responsibility.
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Is it that you're being watched all the time? The answer is unfortunately yeah. A lot of
times we have unrealistic expectations of our leaders. I remember being junior and
being in a meeting and sitting with a VP and I was like, they must know everything.
Then when I was a VP, I was like, yeah, I don't really know anything. Because
sometimes you don't know anything about the topic and you have to have the humility to
ask the questions. But people often will have unrealistic expectations and part of what
you can do and part of that soul is being very human and being willing to be vulnerable
sometimes. That's part of the challenge with that authentic style of leadership and
leading with soul is yeah, there's some vulnerability, but there wasn't protect yourself as
well. But at the end of the day, you are much more fulfilled and you feel much better.
When you put your head down on the pillow at night, you can rest better knowing that
you are your authentic self and you are bringing your best to your team or whatever
situation you're working in as a leader. As leaders, we are in a prime position to have to
deal with uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.
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Meaning we have to get messy with vulnerability. Just think about it. Relationships with
people who are looking to you to make decisions, to be a role model, to empower them,
to do great work, and to grow themselves as leaders. Just to name a few of the
responsibilities of leaders that require us to be vulnerable. Because of all of this, it can
be easy to build up a emotional armor. What does this armor look like? Defaulting to
making a decision without listening to others, avoiding hard conversations, being a
knower instead of a learner, blaming others instead of considering our own role in a
situation. Being courageous is about getting vulnerable and learning to lower that armor.
How do we practice lowering the armor? How do we develop that sense of courage?
Requires practicing vulnerability. Play with vulnerability. Bernie Brown calls this
rumbling with vulnerability and I like that too. Test out what it feels to acknowledge your
vulnerability instead of hiding from it.
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Start by acknowledging those places of risk, uncertainty, and emotion with people you
trust, employees, team members, supervisors, or maybe even family members. Finding
a leadership coach can help here. Coaches are trained to help you explore your
vulnerability in a safe space. Don't think of it as, I have to get vulnerable to be a good
leader. Get curious, ask yourself, I wonder where vulnerability appears for me? Look for
opportunities to shift from blame to internalization. Good problem-solvers look for the
source of a problem. In teams and organizations that often turns into finding someone to
blame. This is a great place to practice being vulnerable. It's easy to blame others,
armor up. It's harder to acknowledge our own role in a problem, or sometimes even to
forgive when someone has done something wrong. If you find yourself leaning toward
blaming someone, turn inward. Acknowledge any resistance you are feeling and see if
you can figure out why. Then consider other elements of the system around you that
may be playing a role in this problem. An example here is a lazy teammate. Have you
ever worked on a team and there is one person or multiple people who just aren't pulling
their weight? What's the first thing we think of? They're lazy, they're free-writing. But
what if it's actually because you are taking too much control? By the way, the first to
admit that this is me. I'm a firstborn type A person. I control. When I was younger and I
worked in team projects, I would often find myself doing all the work and it took me
years to get vulnerable here and figure out what was going on. I'm part of the problem, I
would prevent others from feeling they had a voice. I would make them too nervous to
speak. You know that old adage about if you point your finger at someone, you're
pointing three back at yourself? Taking a look at those three fingers and what they are
telling you is a step toward practicing vulnerability to build courage. Finally, practice
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somatic awareness. Somatic awareness simply means learning to feel your emotions
and your sensations with your body. It is about getting out of your head and into your
physical and emotional presence. Pay attention to how vulnerability feels. When you
acknowledge a vulnerability, how does it change your mood? How does it manifest itself
in your body? When you're facing a difficult conversation that you don't want to have,
what happens? You might feel anxious. This means your heart rate increases and your
palms sweat. How will this emotional and physical anxiety response affect your difficult
conversation? Well, it's probably not going to make you more comfortable or more open.
It's going to come across to the other person. That difficult conversation is going to get
even harder. Armor up on both sides. If instead we can be in that moment and say, I'm
anxious and I don't want to be that way. Then we can start to get curious and we can
even practice breathing or meditation to center ourselves and put ourselves in a better
place to get courageous to have that difficult conversation. The Navy buzzword that we
use is honor, courage, and commitment. Courage is, again, that's hard to do.
Especially, I'll step into some of the fray here. I think male egos are a little bit more
fragile. It takes some courage to basically walk into your room and be the idiot. But it's
okay. In this job I'm doing right now, I don't know anything. I'm working in general
construction and sourcing of materials. I know nothing about. It's okay to walk in and
say, I don't know what you're talking about. Can you please enlighten me? It's amazing
that you've learned because again, you're making people feel important. You're
demonstrating some courage by saying cheese, I'm just not sure about this. Then you
gathering that new information. But then when you do have the information enough to
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say, I'm willing to develop a strategy now, having the courage to stick with it's important
because consistency and leadership is also very important. I love the work Bernie
Brown has done because it's opened up a conversation about emotions and the very
humanity that we all share that we so often tried to hide it work.
Being courageous means being honest with ourselves about how we feel and sharing
that with others and listening to how others are feeling too, so that we can forge ahead
together, solve problems more effectively, and find a path to enjoyment at work. The
courage to say, I'm willing to practice growing as a leader means getting vulnerable with
ourselves and others for the sake of growth.
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Lesson 4-5: Leadership Growth: Commitment
Leadership Growth: Commitment
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To grow as a leader requires commitment. I'm fairly confident in saying that anyone
watching this knows the feeling of setting a goal and then not being able to commit for
some reason or another. Maybe you want to eat healthier or exercise more, or read
more books or take a class, and it never happened. There are a variety of reasons
excuses we make that get in the way of our commitment to our goals, especially goals
related to our personal growth. I'll share two excuses here for us to consider. Those are;
it's too hard, and I don't have time. Let's break those down a bit. The first excuse; it's too
hard. Of course, it is. Growth is challenging. But research on goal-setting and motivation
can help us deconstruct this excuse. Setting big picture goals, stretch goals or other
goals that involve substantial change are helpful for setting up our future vision. But they
can seem daunting and can undermine our motivation to achieve those goals in the
moment. We can make it more likely that we will feel motivated to work toward our goals
by making smaller, more precise steps toward these big goals. Maybe you've heard the
term SMART goals. Goals that are specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time-
based. I'm far more likely to work on developing a trusting relationship with a single
employee at a time instead of my whole team. I'm more likely to commit to self-reflective
practices to improve my self-awareness if I start with a few minutes a day or even just
once a week than if I say I'm going to engage in personal self-assessment for an hour
every day. The second excuse, I don't have time.
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As my mother would say, "Well, you won't if you keep thinking you won't." It feels like
there is never enough time in the day to achieve everything we want to. Work, family,
the daily rituals of life; getting through a to-do list sometimes seems impossible. We're
living during a time when most people around the world glorify productivity. Being busy
is almost considered a virtue.
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But it's worth asking ourselves why this is and how we can overcome it. There are a
couple of problems with this excuse. The first is that we do make time for things that are
important to us. Actually, it's a really interesting test of your personal values to see what
you spend time on. Another problem is that we are often more engaged in meaningless
actions instead of productive activity. Productivity and time management research
demonstrates that we spend a significant amount of time answering emails that are
reactive and less time in deep work or working without distraction on creating
something, depending on your field of work, that could mean writing, connecting with
clients, building a product, coding, etc. Ask about employees that say you just don't
have time to do this. I think it's almost a universal thought and reaction to doing this.
I get it everywhere and I understand it because there are two types of waste that are
imposed by managers on people and organizations everywhere. It's mura and muri,
that's the Japanese word for two things. One is overburdening and forcing variation or
creating variation. If you think about it, almost every company does that. Particularly the
good employees get more work to do all the time because their bosses say, "Sally will
get it done." Sally all of a sudden gets all of this work to do and she's overburdened,
then she can't do anything very effectively. The second thing is that bosses say they
come in on Monday and say, "We need to fix that, " and on Wednesday they go, "You
need to fix that," and on Thursday they say, "You need to fix that." It's variation, they
create variation. Those are the two things that everybody has. Given that you're in that
situation, your overburden, your feeling this pressure, this variation, and everything.
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Now, you come in with this lean stuff and you want me to carve out time and do this. I
don't have time for that. Everybody's got it. My comment is if you really can't do anything
other than what you're currently doing to get the job done, keep doing it. Put this off until
you have some space, you'll have some space. But if you don't do it, you'll never have
space. Carve out a minute a day or two minutes a day or three minutes. Just think about
it a little bit and see if you can create more space to sharpen your own saw to get rid of
all of those things, many of those things that are causing you to be overburdened and
dealing with all this variation. When I go through and do a workshop with a group of
people, I save five percent max. Don't even start anything on this and expect to do any
more than five percent. Just take five percent of your day on. How much time is that?
What's five percent each week? To be honest, people take stuff home with them too so
you might just take five percent of right before you go to bed at night and think about
this stuff and say, I might try something different tomorrow. Just start off real small and
don't make a big deal of it. Over time, you'll grow more and more space to do
continuous improvement and think how to solve problems.
To commit we need to move beyond these excuses and create a practice for developing
habits that will stick and habits that will help us commit to growing as leaders. Creating
habits is more than just being motivated to do so, it requires discipline. I have a good
friend who is an executive coach in business school professor who always reminds
people that motivation is just one part of the equation. Discipline is key to building
sustainable habits. Discipline really means a sustainable plan of action for you. Have
you ever gone to a seminar or workshop and been so inspired to change your behavior
33

at work only to have that wane once you get back because of the regular cadence of
your job? That's because you needed a plan; a plan to build habits and I'm going to
suggest four key things to help with this plan. Develop a regular practice for reflection
and learning, be prepared to fall off the wagon, connect with others, and know your
purpose. How can we build commitment in a way that is sustainable? Number 1, have a
regular practice for reflection and learning.
Are you familiar with the scientific method? Scientists develop hypotheses, design
experiments to test these hypotheses, evaluate the results, and then make adjustments
to their hypotheses, and complete the whole process over and over again. This is how
scientists learn, and actually, it's how adults learn too. Models of adult learning suggest
that the way we absorb and integrate new knowledge is that we take in new information,
we test it out, we evaluate the results, and we adjust. In this context, we can think of
creating a meaningful plan as engaging in the scientific method, we need a regular,
consistent, and easy way to follow experimentation and learning.
34
Learning is hard. What I find is helpful for reflection is to structure it. I typically think
about reflection in four steps. The first thing I'm trying to do as I reflect on something is
to identify some kind of, if then, cause-effect relationship. When I look back at this
meeting, or I look back at this project, or I look back at this situation or events or
whatever, I want to digest my feelings, I want to see if I miss something, all that, but
then I want to, at the end of that, see if I can pull away some generalization, some
lesson for myself. Then what I want to do is provide the argument for why I believe that
lesson. If I think in this situation that instead of talking, I should've listened. Why?
What's the outcome that would have produced? Listening more makes people trust me
more. There's a potential generalization. Why do I believe that might be? What's the
argument for that? If I was going to try to convince my colleague to listen more in order
to foster trust, what would I say to make them believe that to be true? What happened in
this experience that led me to believe that? Is there anything else in my life that makes
me think that's a good lesson? What's the lesson? Identify not just moods, feelings, etc.,
but what's the lesson? Then what's the argument for that lesson? Then the next step is
what I think of as complexities. What are the boundary conditions? When might be hard
to do this? When might it not work? There are always limitations, nothing is always true.
Things are usually true or often true or sometimes true, true under some conditions.
What are the conditions under which this lesson holds? Then the last one is
implementation.
35
What am I going to do differently now that I appreciate this lesson? What is the
behavior, practice, saying? Photo on the wall. What am I going to do differently so that I
remember to use this lesson rather than forget about it? When I think about reflection,
what's the lesson? What's the argument for the lesson? What are the limitations? What
am I going to do to make use of this rather than leave this behind and forget about it?
The second is to be prepared to fall off the wagon and have a plan. Part of the reason
this is so interesting to me is because I have always been really good at setting a great
big goal, getting excited about it, breaking it down into daily goals, and then I miss ones
day, maybe I wasn't feeling well or I was preoccupied or whatever, I think, "Well, I
missed that day, I might as well give up." We actually need to have a practice for what
happens when we aren't achieving our smaller goals. Is it because we didn't set the
right goal, to begin with? Maybe we need to course-correct.
36
Or did we simply have a bad day and we need to forgive ourselves and think about
tomorrow as a fresh start? Research on fresh starts show that they do matter; they
matter for motivation and commitment to our goals. Decide whether your practice needs
to change or if you just needed a break, either way, you can keep going. The third is to
connect with others. You might have heard it said that if you share your goals with
others, you're more likely to achieve them, and this is true. Making a commitment to
others holds us accountable. It's why gym buddies are such a good idea. It's easy to
skip the gym if it's just you, it's harder to tell your friend who's already in the car and
headed to the gym that you're going to leave her hanging. Growing as a leader is an
individual journey, but it is not an isolated one. Other people are on leadership growth
plans of their own, and creating these connections can be so helpful. When I was
completing my leadership coach training, I found that my commitment to my own
practice of leadership growth felt like it took off because I had this group of like-minded
people to talk to, share ideas with, and to go to for advice.
37
The fourth is keep the big picture in mind. What is your purpose? Don't get scared by
the word purpose. I don't mean you have to write a treatise on your reason for
existence, I simply mean know why you're interested in developing as a leader. Why is
this journey important to you? What are you hoping to accomplish throughout it? Why is
a powerful concept and having that big picture goal in mind can be a powerful way to
help us stay committed to our daily exercises. Growing as a leader requires
commitment, and that means we have to build sustainable habits that will help us stay
on track while we grow. Create a practice for experimentation and reflection, course-
correct, and use a fresh start when you course-correct. Connect with others who want to
grow as leaders and know your why for choosing to focus on your own leadership
growth.
38

Lesson 4-6: Wrap up
Module 4 Closing
All right. Well, we've made it to the end of Module 4 of this MOOC. There is a lot of
content we covered here and so many different directions that you can go as a learner. I
guess I think we should wrap up with some thoughts about how this all fits together,
some thoughts about how to integrate this. What sort of messages would we like to
have our learners take away as they wrap up this MOOC? Well, we've covered a lot of
territory, that's for sure, and some of the heaviest topics as it relates to leadership.
39
I think for me it continues to dial back to this idea of step when you're in an
interpersonal leadership situation, this on-going ability to Meta, if you will, step outside
yourself, watch yourself, how you're interacting, are you getting it right, are you in your
values, are you aligned with what you want to be doing, do you have that uncomfortable
feeling like maybe you're out of your values or you could be doing this better and then
making time on your calendar, making time to spin reflective periods, deciding how you
might continue to grow and do better? So there's a lot here to think about. I like that
observer piece, in particular.
40
I love that. It feels very connected, very supportive of each other, symbiotic. But there
was me and I have to understand myself, my values by influences and there is always
the other and oftentimes many others and that is a dynamic interaction that embodies
change because we are influencing and we are being influenced. For me, I just feel like
it all really fits together with that foundation of recognizing this as a journey and having
that growth mindset, that if you step into it in that way, then it won't always come easy,
but it will be a natural of reflection, engage, feedback, and grow. For me, the mental
model I use for this and I'm hearing the same, this growth process, is the scientific
method.
41
My approach to developing and growing is I create an experiment for myself based on a

hypothesis. Maybe I was talking before about vulnerability and so I decide I want to
practice that. That doesn't mean that all of a sudden one day I'm perfectly vulnerable,
whatever that means, I'm not even sure that's a thing. But instead, I pick somebody I
trust and I say, I'm going to try to address this differently today. Then I have a process
for going back and saying, okay, did that work, did that not work? Do I need to get
feedback on whether or not that worked? Then I iterate my experiment and that's the
scientific process. So I love thinking about ourselves as little scientific labs that are
running experiments all the time and that's what's helping us grow. I think that's a
mental model that I use to just solidify this observation, reflection, change, and
adaptation, learning, and then changing again. Yeah, to me, this is such an important
piece of this MOOC and what we really want people to walk away with is this is not a
codified body of knowledge. This is a skill development.
42
It's a way of being, it's a way of practicing, a way of being, a way of developing oneself
and recognizing the power and potential in other people. Then how can I make myself
and be myself in a way that maximizes that power and potential that the others have.
43

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Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Module 4: Growing as a leader

Lesson 4-2: Leadership Growth: The Three C’s .................................................................................. 8

Lesson 4-3: Leadership Growth: Curiosity ....................................................................................... 14

Lesson 4-4: Leadership Growth: Courage ........................................................................................ 22

Lesson 4-5: Leadership Growth: Commitment ................................................................................ 29

Lesson 4-6: Wrap up ....................................................................................................................... 39

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Lesson 4-2: Leadership Growth: The Three C’s

Leadership Growth: The Three C's

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Leadership Growth: Curiosity

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Lesson 4-4: Leadership Growth: Courage

Leadership Growth: Courage

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Lesson 4-5: Leadership Growth: Commitment

Leadership Growth: Commitment

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

My approach to developing and growing is I create an experiment for myself based on a

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

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