weLEAD
Online Magazine
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Copyright
2005 ã weLEAD, Inc.
Welcome to the June 2005
weLEAD editorial
By Dr. Howard Baker
In their book, NUTS!
Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success, Kevin
and Jackie Freiberg state:
“Perhaps the most morally uplifting thing leaders can do for
people is to help them learn how to learn. In doing so, people grow and become
more wholly integrated, functional adults capable of equipping themselves to
handle future challenges.”
This
is compatible with Robert Greenleaf’s test of a true servant leader. In Greenleaf’s The Servant as Leader,
he states that the best test of a servant leader is that those who are served
by the servant leader grow as persons.
They should become “healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more
likely themselves to become servants.”
Unfortunately,
I see at least four learning leader problems with many in leadership positions
today.
First, many in leadership positions today have never been taught
how to learn. They are products of an educational
system that has focused almost exclusively on content and has neglected
teaching pupils how to learn. Therefore,
these leaders do not know how to teach others how to learn. This means that mentoring from such leaders
will be poor if not nonexistent.
Unfortunately, when you don’t know how to develop and “grow” people, you
resort to controlling them through coercive power, fear, and manipulation.
Second,
many in leadership positions do not want their people to learn, or learn how to
learn. They fear that their people may become more competent than they
are. They display what Stephen Covey
calls the “scarcity mentality.” Again
the use of coercive power will be the chosen leadership style.
Notice
that both the first and second problem involves fear. In the first it is the use of fear by the leader, and in the second it is fear in the leader.
In
Principle-Centered Leadership Stephen
Covey states:
“Coercive
power is based on fear in both the leader and the follower.”
True
servant leaders have what Stephen Covey calls the “abundance mentality.” They encourage their people to ask questions
and even challenge existing systems.
Servant leaders exhibit humility and do not come across as knowing it
all. They know that the best way to
influence others is to first listen and be influenced themselves. They seek first to understand the perceptions
and insights of others before seeking to be understood. They have an inner strength from being
principle-centered, so they are not threatened by competency greater than their
own. They see their job as not competing
in the competency arena, but rather serving
and helping people work
together and grow. Servant leaders excel
in their competency to “grow” people and make mentors out of mentees!
Third,
many leaders are not equipped with the cognitive tools to help their people
think and learn. Many in leadership
positions do not know the first thing about how the human brain works or how to
enhance thinking using brainstorming or mind mapping. In their book, Ten Steps to a Learning
Organization, Kline and Saunders identify mind mapping as one of the ten
steps in creating a learning organization.
Cognitive tools can be very valuable in facilitating creative thinking,
capturing ideas, and then organizing and communicating those ideas.
Fourth, learning from others requires truly understanding what they are communicating, whether those
communicating the message are customers, employees, or family members. Real understanding involves understanding both the logical content of the message
and the emotional content of the message.
Unfortunately, many leaders are insensitive to the emotional content of
messages.
People speak in two different languages at the same time. One
language is conveying the factual, logical content, and the other language is
conveying feelings and emotions about the subject. Therefore we must listen not only with our
ears, but with our eyes and our heart.
Observe body language. Pay
attention to nonverbal cues and facial expressions. Ignoring the emotional language may be more
efficient, but is certainly not effective.
When a message has a high
emotional content, we need to switch from attentive listening to empathic listening. When we practice
empathic listening we don’t advise or evaluate. Instead, we try to get into the
hearts and minds of other persons and see things from their perspective and
mental framework. We may reflect content
and feeling back to confirm that we truly do understand. The goal of empathic listening is to make the
other person feel understood. People can’t feel appreciated or respected
while they are feeling misunderstood.
Stephen Covey says that next to physical survival, feeling
understood is the greatest human need – “to be understood, to be affirmed, to
be validated, to be appreciated.”
Of all the 7 Habits, Stephen Covey says that the one that often becomes the
most exciting, the most immediately applicable, is Habit 5 – “seek first to understand, then to be understood.” However, in over ten years of facilitating
the 7 Habits material, I have found
this Habit to be one of the most
difficult to actually live.
We are so much into our own experiences and paradigms – what Covey
calls our “autobiography” – we don’t really listen
to understand. We only listen to
reply or respond. We may only listen
selectively to what piques our interest and ignore the rest. We are not truly open to be influenced. Therefore, we do not learn and the person we
are listening to does not feel understood.
We may grasp the logic of the message, but we often miss the important
emotional content. The result is that
the person does not feel understood.
Learning
leaders practice empathic listening.
They seek first to understand.
They also teach and model it to others.
As they do, they raise the level of trust, which is the cement of effective communication.
Helping organizations learn means helping people learn. Organizations learn how to learn as people learn how to learn. Learning leaders learn with, from, and through their people.
Comments
to: hbaker@leadingtoday.org
To read more
of Dr. Baker’s articles, click
here to locate the “Baker Collection”.
About the
author:
Dr. J.