I attended an incredible IBM Leadership course yesterday titled “Embrace Healthy Conflict”. A BIG thank you to Lisa Glatz (née Poulton) our coach and facilitator. This course resonated with what I value and my higher purpose for work.
One of the things you that I really would to love about the course, is available online – Jim Whitehurst Ted talk, so I highly recommend you check it out:
The sooner you watch this, you’ll see the power of leveraging the team to come together!!
Key message that Lisa shared was taking collaboration seriously requires Leaders to embrace healthy conflict and this comes through in spades in Jim Whitehurst’s Ted talk.
When you watch the TED Talk, you’ll see at Delta, Jim Whitehurst implemented massive change top down. He thought Red Hat hired him to change its ways of working top down as well. Instead, things didn’t play out like he expected and it changed his approach to leadership.
Jim came to find that successful leadership is about being open to changing decisions as circumstances demand and giving the right people the right information so they can act independently of management for the betterment of the company.
In Jim’s TED Talk he shares when he first joined Red Hat, as the CEO, how he was not used to more junior members challenging very senior members in the organization. Now just goes, it’s the only way to lead to be able to have that constant constructive challenge – letting go the hierarchy and giving everybody that platform to challenge you, even though you’re the leader.
Some further take-aways that Lisa and Jim emphasised: It is really important to encourage the team to be able to speak up, regardless of who’s in the room. And at the same time to do it constructively and set up that process that promotes inclusion. When you are able to engage as a team many perspectives, different perspectives, you can get that full, full lens on. You’re really leveraging all of that intelligence around the table, or on the Virtual meeting wherever you might be, and it really gets your team to stretch their thinking – they stretch their thinking when they articulate what they’re thinking. The team also stretch their thinking when they start listening and learning what others think to make sound decisions as a team, through rigorous discussions for the betterment of the company.
These lessons resonates with my experience in the Air Force. The Air Force Training places high priority to “Connected Leadership”. Let me explain.
Command-and-control leadership of the Army, does not work in the Air Force. The reality is that the Air Force has a very different culture from its sister services – Army and Navy. With the Air Force, its focus on aerial missions, the officers fly the planes in the area of conflict whereas in the Army the soldiers are sent out the face the conflict face on.
Enlisted Air Force personnel are typically assigned technical roles, such as weapons or aircraft maintenance that support the Officers combat role and they do not entered the area of operations. Thus the Air Force Officers are the people at risk and thus highly value connected leadership – mission alignment and trust to ensure the Enlisted Air Force personnel prepare the plane is the best possible way to keep them safe. With the Army, Officers issue orders to the Enlisted Army personnel that directs them to enter dangerous situation and thus the Army focus and training on instinctive discipline and obedience is required under all conditions (Command-and-control leadership).
Digging deeper:
- Book: “The Open Organization Igniting Passion and Performance” by Jim Whitehurst (2015)
2. Book- Connected Leadership by Simon Hayward
This book with consistent with Jim Whitehurst’s recommendations. If you have customers and people in your life, then connected leadership provides a framework to boost your capability in agility and customer centricity. Building on from other thought leaders, Dr Simon Hayward delivers great case studies, great reasons and great tools to lead with purpose, direction and authenticity.
Connected Leadership creates agile, collaborative, customer-centred businesses that are responsive to change. It’s about leading through influence and engagement. Leaders connect and communicate based on a consistent set of assumptions and beliefs. Five signs of a connected leader:
- They’re inspirational. They build belief in a shared sense of purpose and vision.
- They’re authentic. They act with integrity and earn trust.
- They share power. They involve others and encourage them to take responsibility.
- They collaborate.They share knowledge, seek ideas and encourage cooperation.
- They’re explorers. Always learning and seeking new ideas, they encourage innovation
3. Trail Brazer by Marc Benioff
This book is inspiring, if you get your Values right, live your Values and share your Values, others will follow you and your organisation. The sequel to Behind the Cloud this covers the human dimension to the Salesforce journey. Benioff generously shares invaluable lessons on how values like trust, inclusion and giving back are the foundation of successful businesses and careers.
Marc’s intent is that this book will inspire you to look inside yourself, ask the right questions, and blaze your own trail. What you do next matters!!✅ . The top priority was “to create the kind of culture where people felt that what they did when they arrived at the office every day truly mattered, that they were consistently contributing to something other than just the company’s bottom line with their efforts. By incorporating volunteerism and giving back at the start, we could build a culture with meaning“✅
Published here on LinkedIn: