Dare to be Vulnerable, its worth and can be learnt!

Imagine if one knows how to manage and leverage Vulnerability (with its uncomfortable feelings), what would it mean to the way one builds connections, develops creative ideas, handles difficult conversations, leads teams…….amplifying boundaries!  Its worth it and it is doable- that is the big inspiration from the book, that Berne Brown would like us to takeaway. 

Some of the key insights that Ms Brown brings to light:

1.       Courage is not opposite to fear.  Instead it represents the set of behaviors and responses that one display, when in fear.  Courage can be built in all, and is not decided at birth. And yes, courage is contagious, too. 

2.       Courage is built on the individual’s ability to do vulnerability, live in sync with personal values, act and promote trust and finally ability to rise strong from set-backs (kick-ass) that are inevitable.

3.       Vulnerability is an emotional exposure, when faced with uncertainty and risk, and where the outcome is not in ones’ control.  Berne emphasizes the need for doing Vulnerability by the leaders in the organization context, that would go long way in connecting and closing with teams and ensuring openness, innovation, trust and enabling non-judgmental culture.  Neither Vulnerability is sign of weakness, nor is it license to indiscreetly sharing the personal experiences and emotions.   

4.       Contrasting Daring Leadership with Armored leadership indicates the difference in behaviors that go a long way in explain their effectiveness and impact on those led.  Armored leaders act as being a knower, chasing compliance & control, rewarding exhaustion as symbol of self-worth, and zig-zagging and avoiding conflicts.  Daring leadership is characterized by learners’ approach, shared purpose, cultivating commitments, straight talking and empathy, including self-compassion. Daring leaders work from the assumption that people are doing the best they can- leaders with ego, armor or lack of skills do not make that assumption. 

5.       Shame, that reinforces in us the feeling of not been generally good enough, is behind our love for embracing armor.  We need to guard our inadequacies as secret from the world, for the fear of being ineligible for their love and connections, if these gaps get known to the world.  This shame driven thinking is limiting, debilitating and leads to smallness of being and cheap behaviors (including blaming and shaking others or excessive comfort eating).  In contrast, feeling of guilt is a positive emotion, as it involves acknowledging the specific gap that is followed by commitment to actionable gap fulfillment plan.

6.       Empathy seems to be the real antidote to shame.  Empathy is about connecting and staying with the emotions that other is experiencing than rushing to alter the emotions or fix the concern.  While Berne lists the empathy skills, what is more interesting is the empathy busters; fathom saying these quotes while empathizing:  It’s not that bad,  you are over-reacting, I have been through worse, I imagined you were stronger, and do this to fix it up! 

7.       We need trust to be vulnerable, and we need to be vulnerable in order to build trust. 

8.       More than half the population do not take conscious effort to define and recognize their personal Values- something that defines them and provides the filter to use while making tough calls.  Book provides the list of values as reference and for readers to identify their top two values, which requires deliberative and intense effort, especially when trading off between equally appealing values.  Once in touch with values, leaders are able to understand their reinforcing and contrasting behaviors and also their boundaries of acceptance.  Berne explains the concepts using her two values- courage and faith- with great alacrity and incisiveness.

9.       Importance of Trust has been written much about.  Berne brings to us set of behaviors that are learnable, measurable or observable, which would help build trust.  It includes being consistent in ones views on what is acceptable and what’s not, doing what one says, owning to ones gaps, and preferring courage over comfort.  Further it involve respecting confidentiality of stuff shared in confidence, not jumping into conclusions about other and finally being generous in assumptions about others behaviors, and intent (including self). 

10.   Finally how to rise from the fall- low feeling that we often experience in this journey.  Labelling the emotions right and precise, would mean half the job done. This is where having adequate level of emotional literacy becomes important. Can u consciously look at the uncomfortable emotion and call out it as jealousy, fear, hate, resentment, disappointment, anxiousness, frustrated, regret, hurt, or worried?  What is behind anger and sadness? Try this after you are feeling bad after a meeting that has gone well- you would get insight into your own self- values- emotions and help design more effective coping mechanism.  It works, indeed.  

While for those who have gone through other books by Brene, there may be some repetition- but for others, it has lot of fresh ideas and actionable suggestions.  If nothing else, it not only take topic like courage from the genes-attribution to learnable realm, and provides good start-up kit, provided one is ready to experiment.  

Book worth taking along as you retire for year end vacations and plan for courageous, bigger and bolder next year!

Liberalism or Democracy: A Choice, we are best to avoid making?

We are living in interesting times, where nothing can be taken for guaranteed, even if it is liberal democracy that has been existing in the country for long. The type of leaders emerging within democracies across the world, the tenure and content public discourse and the everyday challenges made to the established engagement norms, all point towards winds of change. 

It is this phenomenon that Mounk very lucidly and comprehensively explains in this book- explaining the emerging trend, the reasons behind these trends and what possible remedies to arrest shifts in the political systems prevailing in consolidated liberal democracies.

Author uses his academic astuteness and global experiences, mainly from North America and Western European Countries, to explain the threats to liberal democracies in a way, which is easy for layman with no political science background to not only understand fully, but pause to deliberate upon.   

Mounk presents several supporting surveys and trends to underline the declining appeal of Democracy:  Young are less interested in politics, growing appeal for strong leaders (2017: 33%-Germany, 48% France & 50% Britain) who may not bother about congress or elections, and living in democracy is not essential for large part of populace instead there is growing acceptance of army rule.  

The reasons for this democracy recession could be disappointment with present situation and also limited understanding of what it means to live in authoritarian society, among the younger population.

In this context, there has been rise of Populist leaders, who present themselves as strong leaders, with scant regard to democratic norms and institutions, and claim to be true nationalists.  Once in power, these Populists can take society away from being a liberal democracy to illiberal democracy and finally authoritarian rule, following almost a predictable trajectory. 

Mounk has almost presented almost a handbook, which explains the Populists winning behaviors and strategies, after studying across rise of Populist leaders across America and Western European countries (Turkey. Poland, Hungry, France, Germany, Italy, Greece eg.).

The Populist Handbook starts with:

Pitching for office……..

1. Populist claims that there are common sense simple solutions possible for issues that bother the majority in the society- ban imports to create domestic jobs, ban immigration to improve security etc. etc. 
2. Further, Ruling dispensation is not willing to take these obvious steps, as they either want to protect the interest of special groups (cronies, financers, foreign friends) or have other priorities than serving the society at large.  The whole system is rigged by the economic elite, narrow interest groups and financers, at the cost of common man
3. There is another set of populace (ethnicity, social class, religion, or political conviction) who is gaining at the cost of majority, adding to the vows of common public.  They need to be contained and placed behind in the overall hierarchy of social and economic hierarchy.
4. I am your voice and true nationalist- anyone who opposes me is a traitor!  

And once in office…..

1. Reality of the complex situation and limitations of simplistic solutions become evident- It starts with blaming the guiding intellectuals and lamenting that situation is much worse than expected.
2. Discredit institutions that question solutions with biased loyalties to earlier establishment or foreign funders- limit foreign grants and funding to these institutions or bodies/NGOs.
3. Take stringent measures against independent journalists and build up a network of loyalist media that cheers every move and celebrate imagined accomplishments
4. Systematically fill the positions in independent institutions with loyalists and avid supporters.
5. Curtail the power of independent institutions including judiciary, who has the power to question or comment upon the actions of the Populist- as he is the sole and true representative of the will of people.
6. And if there are provisions like direct democracy possible – in the form of referendums, Populists are able to exploit their appeal to majority to inflict further constrains on the outsiders- immigrants, religions, communities, institutions etc.  

Three key causes behind the ascendancy of the appeal of populist strongmen type leaders

a.       Economic anxiety about the future, which is caused by globalization, technological advancements, especially among the masses who have seen prolonged period of economic stagnation and wherein the present generation is not relatively as better-off as their parents were at same stage of life. The prevailing disillusionment and anxiety is often translated into frustration and mistrust of the ruling politicians that often belong to liberal democratic cadre. 

b.      Demographic anxiety faced by the majoritarian natives (who were the original mono-ethnic groups that lived within the nation boundaries) of the increased influence and voice of the immigrants (and those who look/ wear and appear differently) in the resource sharing and decision making, exercising their democratic and legal rights, makes majority resentful of the present system and enhances the appeal populists, who promises recreating pure, monoethnic, blissful national identity of yesteryears (Make America great again!. Take back the control-UK).

c.       Virtual echo-chambers that social media offers to public be part of means that there is increased intensity and frequency of the conversations between the like-minded people about others, without much need to differentiate between the truth, perception and bias and also without need to make an effort to understand the others’ perspective. It is easy to coordinate and share the messages that questions establishment and organize revolts using the power of social media.  Populists leaders seems to be really effective in its usage, with their stronger messaging mixed with conspiracy theories, hatred laden quotes, and imaginary good-old-days.

If we have to save the liberal democracy remedies Mounk suggests:

a.       Stop populists from making further power grabs- oppose erosion of institutions and norms, embolden judges to question unconstitutional laws, support embattled media houses, and force international governments and organizations to put pressure. 

b.      Successfully avoiding reelection of the populists is the only and most effective remedy to save liberal democracy.  This would require opposition unity, alternate positive development narrative that would address real concerns, and to be communicated in the language of the ordinary people.  Only highlighting the failing of the populists isn’t enough.

c.       Liberal democracies need to define the economic reforms agenda that address real and imagined economic deprivation and sense of inequality. Some of suggested economic reforms include reforming taxation, reducing housing costs, enhancing workforce productivity and recommitting to state welfare obligations.  These steps would not only help  improve standards of living, but also convey to populace that the government is in control and not overly giving to forces of technological advancements and global competition and compulsions- the blame that populists fully exploit.

d.      Liberal democracies need to do better job in ensuring that principles are uniformly applied to all its citizens, whatever their ethnic or religious backgrounds.   This goes beyond passing laws to removing structural impediments and implicit discrimination, as is often seen in the children composition in different schools or employment in Corporate. Off-course, to address phobia against reckless immigration, liberal democracies need to establish clearer and appropriate norms on who gets to acquire citizenship in their land.

e.       It’s important the young and next generations have deeper understanding of political context and principles that influence their lives, so that they are fully engaged in the democratic processes.  Mounk laments the loosing importance of teaching Civic in schools and reiterates the need to strengthen the Civic coupe teachings that not only educates the young and would-be voters about their political system, but also present its evolution, strengths and gaps in a balanced positive manner.

There can be debate on the exhaustiveness or the relative significance of the three reasons for the decline of liberal democracies, and also the applicability of proposed remedies in all contexts.  But there is convincing case made against the growing appeal of Populists and threat to Liberal Democracy, and hence the need for the concerned populace to actively work towards arresting and possibly reversing the trend.    

Choosing to live between “Democracy without Rights” or “Rights without Democracy” is not an easy one, especially those who have lived better part of their lives in Liberal Democratic system. 

Evolving and serving Tech solutions, with ethical, empathetic and engaged spirit: The Microsoft Way

Rarely, you get a chance to get perspective on impact of Technology innovation on societies by a legal counselor, who understands both the nuances and capabilities of new technologies and also different perspectives and concerns around these technologies seen from wide range of stakeholders. 

What, if government asks for an enterprise data from tech company, at the same-time restrict the tech company to let the concerned enterprise know about the request?  What if the government asks of global tech companies, for information that resides in data-center located in another country? The bigger question is that shall as owner of my face, do I deserve to be asked by tech companies before using my facial signature for whatever purpose, especially when I fear this may lead to bias or discrimination?

Brad smith brings to life, with help of instances, the balancing acts tech companies have to ensure, between individual and enterprise privacy rights and governments rights to know for genuine reasons of preventing or investigating crimes or public safety, for example.  He goes on to describe the evolutionary path tech sector has gone through to help address these challenges situations in a principled, legally supported (CLOUD ACT), technology enabled (say encryption) manner, and also given the Microsoft’s stand on some of the contentious concerns.

The initiatives and demands made by some governments (Denmark, NZ or EU) often forces global tech companies to develop solutions that would become easy to be offered across the globe.  Microsoft commitment to offer same level of protection to all customers irrespective of their location across the globe, means that the most demanding customers or stringent regulations define the base level for privacy for all, across the globe.  

Similar set of interesting questions and relevant lessons from history are raised around Cybersecurity, rural broadband, social media, public safety and use of AI. 

Brad presents a very balanced assessment of likely impact of AI on workforce, using impact of introduction of automotive and replacement of horses as historical disruption that created new industries (eg. Consumer credit) and decimated existing ones (farms producing horse feeds, eg.).   Yes, in the intermediate, there would be economic losers and winners, but in the long run technological advancements leads to overall improvement in quality of life for all.  Most important question, and most difficult to answer, is how soon will AI type of technologies become mainstream! Agreed.

As Bill gates puts it, BRAD SMITH offers a clear view of the questions raised by new technologies- and yes, also his suggestions of path forward, that needs considered deliberations among the stakeholders- Governments and Company Management. 

Governments, especially within democracies, needs to act fast to match the pace of technology innovation.  Brad suggests that governments approach towards regulation needs to be similar to introducing minimum viable product (regulations) and then build up as more data, experience and understanding comes their way.  Waiting to understand technology in its full nuances and its impact in totality, in quest for comprehensive fool-proof regulation may not work. 

As Technology companies are global, their effective regulation would require multi-lateral comity of nations coming together to design and agree to global standards and principles for regulations- which in increasingly complex world is difficult to achieve.  Brad has hope on the part of the 75 odd democratic nations to form coalition of the willing, to develop some common regulatory provisions and principles, with US taking the necessary lead.     

Self-regulation within companies, are within the control of Companies Boards and can provide necessary support in gaining and retaining stakeholders trust.  Brad proposes principles based approach to handling issues then case-to case handling of instances and then sticking to principles, whatever be the cost help retain trust.  Microsoft, own decision by its ethics committee to refuse selling facial recognition technology to Government, on citizens liberty concerns, is a case in point. 

Brad has very well brought forth the issues and concerns facing linked to technology innovation and the increasing might and responsibilities of global tech companies in defining better future for the globe, working with stakeholders in a proactive, engaged and enlightened manner.

Off-course- this book is of interest to all, besides lawyers and tech-professionals for whom it falls in must-read category. Don’t read too much in its title though!

HR Practices: Debatable Assumptions, Questionable Effectiveness!

The book critiques the operating assumptions behind popular HR practices and how these flawed assumptions, affects the quality of outcomes that most organizations seek- be it greater productivity, service excellence, leadership bench-strength or engaged workforce.    Let us consider the assertions made in the book, on the basis of experiments done at CISCO and also taking inputs from research elsewhere:

1: People care for the Mission of the company and its Future…..The talk about company culture is good to convey some of the beliefs to outside world and helps attract the right fit among the potential employees.  Once in, the most employee cares about is the team he works with- its shared values, practices and mutual trust. Author suggests taking team as unit of analysis for diagnosis, and interventions more often than is prevalent today. This would allow for greater insights and more nuanced intervention designs- which would off-course involve team leader at its core.

2. Best crafted plan rarely wins, as it is based on fleeting reality and general assumptions- and expects adherence by team members who know that realities are continually changing.  Plans often dictate sequencing of activities and timings, resources allocation, and member roles, which bring in certain structure and predictability in the execution. To keep plans relevant, companies do undertake periodic revisions at regular intervals. Alternately, author talks about broad plans that are detailed on weekly basis and primarily driven by sharing of intelligence and data among all and relying on users’ ability to make sense of the data or new intelligence.   Weekly check by team leader leads to 13% increase in team engagement while monthly check in decreases engagement!

3 Basic assumption behind emphasis on top-down cascading of goals, is that the deficit in performance is on account of misaligned efforts and actions by the team. Is it really so? Goals are seldom able to influence performance, although they help predict performance at aggregate level! Associated with the goal exercise is the calendar based tracking and evaluation system- which has some obvious limitations. Author professes the need to align meaning, purpose, mission across the organization hierarchy and teams instead of only goals for enhancing the engagement level among teams.

4 While competencies framework aims to create well-rounded managers and templated leaders, the excellence comes from people who have spiked personalities with clearly supreme abilities and associated idiosyncrasies.   High performers understand their unique and distinct skills and cultivate these skills intelligently. If leaders are in outcome providing business, should find ways to exploit team members’ uniqueness and not make each to focus on personal deficits.  Competencies profiling at team levels may be a better option.

5.  Ability to provide negative feedback is an important skill and that employees finally gain from such candid feedback- goes the prevailing corporate wisdom.  Neurologically speaking, we are more comfortable in learning in areas, where we are already good.  People gain lot more, if they are interrupted when they deliver their best, help them analyze their own flow and push them to extend that state in other new and adjacent areas.  Do not confuse social media behavior of the millennium as need for feedback for improvement, it is for attention and positive reinforcement.  

6 Rating others objectively on abstract parameters like business acumen, suffers from various limitations including raters own bias, limited data availability and often lack of shared meeting of the term being evaluated. Decisions based on such flawed assessments about someones’ potential are questionable.  And if the errors are more systemic, then averaging assessments of multiple raters won’t help.  Author suggest that to make the data about people more reliable, valid and variable, questions needs to be reframed in a way that managers respond basis their experience and intend then overall raring the person. Instead of asking how collaborative person is, ask how comfortable team feels when he is the part of the team!  How often you ask a team member for suggestion instead of rating member on his innovation competency! 

7 Is potential a trait in a person with which one is born or a state, which is an outcome of what he has learnt and experienced before? And if potential is linked to learning and performing, then each has its own areas where he can be better at and none of us can rewire our brain to be excel at everything.  As value maximization machines, organizations need to extract maximum potential from all then only from those in labeled Hi-Po.  Authors suggest that instead of potential, we should look at individual momentum, which included his inherent strength as mass, and learnt skills and experiences as velocity (with defined direction) which allows individual to herald with certain momentum in one directions than another.  This allows for constructive dialogue around selecting appropriate career paths that capitalizes on the current momentum of an individual.

8 Work is inherently bad and you get compensated for indulging in work and that compensation help you live life…is the prevailing assumption behind the work-life balance dialogue.  Not all work is boring and not everyone finds excitement in the work in a particular way.  Everyone may love some dimension of his work, that component needs to be consciously enhanced and interspersed, so that everyone can get to spend time in love with work.  Instead of get work done through people, get people discover self through work!

9 Leadership is best described in terms of felt experience of followers on their ability to be collective and individual best, when associated with a particular leader.  Leading isn’t a set of characteristics but a series of experiences seen through the eyes of followers..  Leaders are not followed for they have no faults or gaps but they have something unique and deep that we value. And as followers, we are fairly forgiving to the flaws of a leader, so long as he brings confidence and certainty to us on the dent of unique and personal mastery.

Authors, through this provocative book tried to bring forth the flaws in our ways of thinking and managing people growth and performance challenges at workplace, by labelling them a lies. They have also provided alternate truism against each lie, and to some extent also shared ways to manage basis the alternate trues.  

At the core, author wants organizations to: give more recognition to individual uniqueness then template-driven predefined clustering of employees; use teams as unit of analysis and intervention more often than individuals and organization; introduce life in work; and stop developing perfect leaders.  

RIGHT leadership selection: Right type of Men & more Women

This book brings out common biases in our leadership selection process and how it disadvantages women, besides wrong selection impacting organization performance and team motivation. Here are the central arguments put forth by the author, supported by quotes and research findings from multiple sources:

• The projected confidence by an individual is often perceived as competence by others.  Competence is how good you are at something, while confidence reflects how good you think you are.  The more you know about a topic, the more you know what is still to know, and hence makes you more conservative in projecting confidence.  On the contrary, those who know less are often better positioned to project greater confidence, than the real talented ones. There are several research findings supporting this lack of correlation between actual competence and projected confidence.   Only 10% overlap between competence and confidence.   In the situation where leaders are expected to be confident, the self-critical competent and talented may often get ignored and this set may include women in greater proportion. 

• Being Narcissist enhances your chances of being selected as leader.  Narcissist have higher sense of superiority, entitlement and delusion of talent.   Their innate need for power, prestige, and status-seeking, make them better at impression management, ideas-selling and networking with the powerful.   While bit of narcissism is good- as it energizes and reassures teams and project confidence, it is difficult to check the level of narcissism in a leader, once I that position.  Narcissist leaders are prone to displaying deviant behaviors including bullying, fraud, harassment and unethical actions. In its pursuit for grand vision and bold projections, leaders during initial period may go in for extravagant acquisitions that may bite on later date.  Hence actual cost of choosing narcissist as leaders come-out after the initial honeymoon period is over. Worst is that these leaders are less coachable and put-up stiff resistance to any kind of negative feedback.

• Psychopaths is another favored category that tends to be more sampled among the leadership set- than are available in the overall population.  Psychopaths display lack of moral inhibitions and strong desire to break rules, and lack of empathy, but what gets them chosen as leaders include their celebrated character traits as cool disposition under stress, greater resilience, courage and often better verbal ability!  Once made leaders, their performance is often sub-par marked by lack of diligence, disdain for processes and deadlines and passive approach to assuming responsibilities.  

• Charisma is what followers attribute to leader and not something leader can claim on its own.  Followers associate greater faith in charismatic leader to take them out of difficult situations.  Further followers are more accommodating and less critical of the under-performance by leader they find charismatic than not.   The veneer of Charisma wears down a followers get to work closely with Charismatic leader and performance gaps start becoming too evident to be ignored or explained away.

• Given that the leaders have high impact on organization performance and team morale, and also that it is not easy to replace or coach wrongly selected leaders.  If we make the selection criteria more in line with research findings (using standard tools) than driven by appeal and intuition, we are not likely to select narcissist or psychopaths, but proven talent with high EQ and Social capital.  This would not only mean that we would select right male leaders, but is also likely to get more women leaders selected as they are naturally endowed with more aligned traits.  That also means that the need for direct intervention to add female gender ratio among leadership will not be there. 

The book does justice to the question it asks, although the remedy to fix the situation could be lot more descriptive and insightful. Its notes section does provide reference to interesting findings and follow-up read for those interested to explore the topic further.

However, the challenges associated with redefining the leadership selection process, which can disadvantage the existing power structure needs to be looked into.  Case studies and research findings in making the transition from intuition-based to process based leadership selection would be of interest to users. 

An easy read and good reminder for us all to be wary of biases as we move to select next leader for our organizations. 

  

Trillion Dollar Coach is extra-ordinary in delivering known Management Wisdom!

One key take-away from this book is the reinforcement in the known beliefs: Importance of Teams- it’s composition and dynamics, Trust and integrity matters most, leaders to encourage people to believe in themselves, and strive for excellence.

Besides the foundation for all this starts with leaders’ genuine interest in people – reflected in the way they listen, support and even provoke! And Yes, a good manger is now expected to be a good coach as well.

In Bill’s case achieving all the above is more commendable, given the kind of personalities, teams, companies and issues he dealt with. Book provides glimpses of how well Bill managed various challenging situations.

The book is written with inputs from 80 plus individual who knew Bill well and also the context in which he operated, and have first-hand witnessed his coaching technique and its effectiveness.

For readers, who have not personally worked with Bill, the incentive to pick this book is to learn some useful tips around coaching- which as managers or coaches they can employ. It is here the book falls short of the expectations.


Neither the situations are in the form of detailed case studies which can be studied for insights, nor are the techniques or frameworks that Bill applied shared for reference. 

In most of the instances and situations covered in the book, the effectiveness of Bill gets attributed to his unique personality and his application of established management wisdom, which may be praiseworthy, but not of much use in making you a better coach.