Professional Development for Organisational Practitioners

Specialist courses and coaching services from Aubyn Howard

Appendix 1

Philosophy and approach

The challenges facing today’s organisational leaders and practitioners

It is widely recognised that we live in an era of increasing change, complexity and uncertainty, particularly in the organisational and business worlds. At the same time most leaders and managers are under increasing pressure to produce results, improve performance year on year and do more and more with fewer resources. This presents today’s leaders with new issues and challenges for which yesterday’s solutions no longer necessarily work. In particular, leaders need to learn how to manage change, navigate complexity and develop themselves to be able to succeed in these changing times. Our services are aimed at both equipping today’s leaders to meet these challenges and supporting organisational specialists that are there to help them bring about the change, learning and development that achieves healthy and sustainable performance improvement.

With this context, there are several concepts which are core to our approach, which I will elaborate:
• Meta-models
• The Integral perspective
• Second tier leadership
• Developmental approaches

Meta-models

Within a climate that seems to value quick fixes and instant solutions above in-depth understanding, analysis and considered reflection, it is not surprising that we are bombarded with a stream of new ideas, approaches and models to take notice of, a procession of new big thing’s that promise to answer all our problems. Some of the latest fads undoubtedly represent genuinely innovative learning or provide timely tools that really could make a difference, whilst others are more glitz than fizz retreads of the same old themes.

How do you keep up? Do you bother? How do you discriminate those ideas worth further investigation? Or do you wait until a new idea has gained some critical mass and everyone else is talking about it before you take a closer look? Or perhaps you resolutely rely upon your proven set of approaches, models and tools, your own eclectic mix, ground out from experience.

To help manage this increasing complexity and confusion in the field of organisational practice itself, to deal appropriately with all the old or new approaches and identify models that might be useful, both leaders and practitioners need what we call ‘meta-models’ to help them step back and see what’s going on, to keep their heads above the water in the face of increasing complexity and change.

What are meta-models? Meta-models are any models which give you greater perspective, dynamic or contextual awareness about a situation, revealing more of the bigger picture or the underlying patterns. Meta models help uncover our own biases or blind spots as well as increase our systemic awareness, flexibility and choices in any situation. At the same time they help expose the partiality and situational limitations of other approaches and models you may be using. A good meta-model provides a framework within which you can understand the place and applicability of other approaches, models and tools that you might draw upon.

Why is this important? To a greater or lesser extent, most organisational approaches and models are partial in their perspective and fail to alert you to their biases by making their assumptions explicit. Hence an organisation that blindly follows the latest fad may lurch from a measurement and control driven bias (e.g. Kaplan and Norton’s Balanced Score Card) to a psychological bias (e.g. leadership profiling), to a cultural approach (e.g. culture change using Spiral Dynamics), to a systemic approach (e.g. Senge’s Learning Organisation). This is not a problem if the organisation learns to build on each approach and integrate the learning from these different perspectives. In practice, they are often set at odds with each other and the learning from previous initiatives is forgotten.

Many models are also situationally specific and static in they have been derived from a set of circumstances and conditions which are far from universal or no longer apply. Obvious examples of this are Jim Collins’ Good to Great model of Leadership which was derived from analysing corporate performance between 1965 and 1995, or the universal formula for business success (4+2) presented by Nohria, Joyce and Roberson in What Really Works, again using data from 1985-1995. There is nothing wrong with these models per se and they both contain important insights; the problem comes when we tacitly assume that what has worked in the past is what is going to work in the future. Peters and Waterman’s In Search of Excellence was another great example of this. By the time the book comes out the rules of the game have already changed. Meta-models, by contrast, are more future proof in that they identify the parameter’s which might change over time or between situations.

The Integral perspective

You might recognise the qualities of meta-models in some of the approaches or models you already use. What specifically are the meta-models we introduce you to on these courses? At the heart of all our courses is the Integral Perspective model. By integral we also mean holistic, or inclusive. In the past I have called this model different things for different purposes (including the Healthy Organisation Model, Integral Development, etc) and it is essentially the same as Ken Wilber’s Integral approach (or four quadrants model), although I have developed and applied it for specific application in organisational analysis.

We use the Integral Perspective to show how all the different organisational approaches you might come across fit together within a holistic map, giving you a simple way of quickly assessing a new idea and how it might be useful. This will also help you recognise which new ideas are simply retreads of familiar approaches and which may have something important to add to your tool kit.
The integral Perspective becomes a tool to help guide and support leaders in developing their capacity for systemic, integrative, holistic thinking. The Integral Perspective can be applied to any human area of interest: to what is going on in the world; to a specific organisational situation or leadership challenge; to the fields of leadership and organisational change; to your own development as a leader. The Integral Perspective helps you to understand the dynamics behind change and transformation, diagnose complex organisational situations and decide what intervention strategy is needed.

The Integral Perspective complements and integrates other approaches, models, tools and techniques for leaders; it provides a way of understanding how all the other approaches fit together and when each one might be useful to you. It also helps you see the partiality and limitations of specific leadership approaches so that you can avoid their pitfalls. It could be used to provide context and direction to in-house leadership development programmes.

Meta-models such as this are a vital tool for what we are calling second-tier leadership (or meta-leadership), which describes an evolutionary or developmental step that leaders need to make if they are going to successfully manage increasing change, complexity and uncertainty.

Second tier leadership

First tier leadership approaches describe an ideal leadership model based upon what has been successful in the past, usually in terms of a competency model (against which leaders can be assessed), leadership characteristics, qualities or behaviours. This is what great leaders and like, this is how they think, this is what they do. First-tier leadership models are situationally specific, in that they describe an ideal which works in certain types of organisations at a certain stage of development, that relates to a certain era and paradigm of business, in other words a view of leadership that works in some situations and not others. To some extent the general view of the ideal leader is always changing and being updated based on the latest research or book about leadership, but is also always lagging behind the most difficult leadership challenges being faced today. The way that today’s most successful leaders are behaving, thinking and being, will become tomorrow’s new model of leadership, but then it will be too late! First tier or conventional models of leadership are useful starting points for leadership development, but eventually they fall short in meeting the next challenge.

To be able to transcend situationally blind and static views of leadership, we need to take a developmental view of both how organisations develop and how individual leaders develop within them. A developmental approach recognises that our way of thinking and relating to the world changes and evolves over time, in response to changing life conditions and challenges, according to recognisable principles and patterns. In general, our worldview or developmental state evolves from the less complex to the more complex, from pre-conventional, to conventional, to post-conventional views of the world. As the organisational and business situations we face become more complex, more systemically inter-dependent in a rapidly changing world and consequently harder to control or manage through conventional leadership and management approaches, so our leadership worldview and approach needs to evolve match it. The type of leadership we need to evolve is what has been variously described as post-conventional, second-tier or meta-leadership. What can we do to help ourselves or others become second tier leaders? To some extent, there is not much that can be done to speed the painful process of personal development and those that are not ready to make this transition should not be pushed into it (nor would they be interested in it). On the other hand, those leaders that are awake to second-tier issues can be given both developmental support and the maps and models to help them recognise the territory.

Developmental approaches

The Leadership Development Framework (based on the work of Jane Loevinger) describes the shift that takes place in leadership development from conventional to post-conventional in perhaps the clearest terms. The transition from the conventional to post-conventional development is described in the Individualist stage, where the leader needs to distance self from conventions; understands self to be a player in a complex game; focuses own reality. This is followed by the Strategist stage where the leader is “concerned with self–actualisation; enjoys complexity inherent in people's differing world views and capabilities; focuses on processes as much as on outcomes. Sees through dysfunctional "games" and intervenes; tailors roles to given contexts. On rare occasions we may find organisational leaders activated at the Magician level, when the leader seeks common good for all. Understands multiple realities. Holds up mirror to others of what is and what could be. May appear somewhat aloof, chameleon-like, and powerful to others.

Spiral Dynamics maps a similar progression, describing a spiral evolution of eight world views or value systems, culminating in the Systemic-Integrative and Holistic-Global systems that represent a step change in worldviews, a ‘Second Tier’ of thinking that is aware of and able to work with the whole spiral of value systems present within any situation.

The aim of the Integral Leadership course is to help leaders and practitioners recognise and understand this evolution in leadership, the step change or fundamental shift that is required to be able to deal with the new challenges and complexities facing organisations. It is also designed to help with the developmental challenges facing themselves or others making (or having made) this transition. To understand what these are, I will now elaborate of what this world of second-tier leadership looks like in a bit more detail.

Today’s leaders need to simultaneously address challenges of improving organisational performance, releasing the potential of their people, building strong teams and cultures and managing complex systemic inter-dependencies within their internal and external environments. Achieving long term sustainable health in an organisation requires success in all of these and an integral perspective is needed to embrace them. Second tier leadership involved developing that perspective.

To meet the challenge of increase change and complexity, a new type of thinking is emerging, which can be described as ‘systemic’, ‘integrative’ or ‘holistic’. This involves the ability to embrace ambiguity and paradox, to synergistically work with seemingly conflicting or contradictory forces, for example; the competing pulls of performance and well-being, short term results and long term health, or initiating change whilst maintaining ‘business as usual’. It involves being able to include and transcend different perspectives and worldviews, as well as balancing individual and collective needs. Second tier leadership involves learning to steer a course between control and chaos, finding a balance between keeping it simple and looking for deeper causes.

Paradoxically and rather unfortunately, tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainly seems to be shrinking not expanding within business organisations. There is a strong bias towards action and results, with little emphasis placed on reflection, or building critical awareness or understanding before taking action. We know that at least in part we create our reality through our perception of the world, yet we do little to examine how that happens. Our way of thinking about the world, our individual mindsets and psychological history, generate the very problems and issues that we want to resolve. At an organisational level it is common to observe structural traps in which leadership behaviour unwittingly reinforces the very behaviour that is seeks to remove. Second Tier Leadership concerns our ability to work with the context, thinking and perceptions that shape ours and other people’s realities. It involves developing personal mastery and drawing upon meta-frameworks which enable us to meet the new leadership challenges. It requires deeper understanding about how our thinking and perception creates our outcomes, how the way in which we view the world shapes our reality.

As we have already commented, businesses today would seem to be addicted to instant solutions, quick fixes and simple all encompassing answers like never before – understandably so, given the pressures to achieve ever improving performance. More and more, business leaders demand silver bullet solutions to their most complex and challenging organisational problems, even though deep down they know the reality isn’t that simple. Internal and external consultants feel compelled to offer silver bullet solutions, even though they know the real causes to their client’s problems run much deeper. Often no one is willing or has sufficient perspective to tell the truth that there is no silver bullet and that that what is really needed is a carefully coordinated combination of strategies, solutions and core disciplines that are right for that business in that situation. Second tier-leaders need the courage and the capability to rise above the simplistic and work at the level of complexity needed to solve the problem. Our courses provides the diagnostic frameworks or meta-models which will enable leaders and their internal specialists to do this.

How is our approach different to what else is out there?

There are key differences in our approach to leadership, to change, and to personal development, to those that you may find elsewhere.

Many leadership development approaches are either trait based (you need to be like these other successful leaders) or behaviour based (this is what other successful leaders do) and appear to offer a quick and simple formula to achieve success. They posit an ideal of leadership which is apparently universal and enduring. More recently, situational approaches acknowledge that the type of leadership needed varies according to each situation. However, even these are blind to how organisational culture evolves and develops, and how leadership models need to be appropriate to an organisation’s stage of development. We know intuitively that the type of leadership needed for business success is constantly evolving and that it also varies according to specific challenges. So many formulas for leadership success are based on historical research where the conditions no longer apply. We also know that we can’t all be the same type of leader and that there are individual factors which must come into the equation. Our second tier leadership approach builds on competency and situational approaches, by adding both developmental and individual dimensions to leadership.

Most organisational change approaches will identify with either a planned and structured approach to change or an emergent and facilitative approach (for example as described by Beer and Nohria in Breaking the Code of Change). Although this is a very useful dichotomy to use as a starting point, it only applies one axis of the Integral Perspective (i.e. the micro view versus macro view) and by applying the other axis (objective versus subjective reality), we identify four distinctly different perspectives on change which are all equally valid in different circumstances.

Most theories of personality focus exclusively on either horizontal type (e.g. MBTI, Belbin, StrengthsFinder, etc) or vertical development (e.g. LDF, Spiral Dynamics, etc). We seek to bring these two approaches together, along with a depth perspective that sheds light on the self or “I” and how personality and personhood evolve over time. We introduce a holistic model of the person as a meta-model which can be used to fit together the many different personality approaches and profiling tools you may have come across into a congruent whole.

The developmental framework that runs through these courses

The five levels of development:
• Personal mastery
• Competencies and skills
• The integral perspective and developmental approach
• Approaches and models
• Tools and techniques

* Deepening personal mastery

Peter Senge describes personal mastery as “the discipline of personal growth and learning – people with high levels of personal mastery are continually expanding their ability to create the results in life they truly seek”.
There is increasing understanding that we cannot intervene effectively and successfully in organisational situations without including ourselves in the equation. For those of us who want to get involved at the messy end of change, leadership and learning, there is an overlap between personal and professional development. At the heart of achieving excellence in organisational practice lies personal mastery, which we are using to refer to the discipline of personal development (as in Peter Senge’s definition above). At the heart of personal mastery are awareness and will – our ability to see ourselves and the world more fully as well as the ability to actualise ourselves in the world. Related to this are a set of
(i) personal and interpersonal abilities and qualities (including self-knowledge, self-discipline, self-expression, dynamic balance, conflict handling, relationship, listening and communication skills),
(ii) change related abilities and qualities (including change adaptability, tolerance of ambiguity, maintaining wide and long term perspectives, understanding and facilitating change processes)
(iii) systemic and integrative abilities and qualities (including systems thinking, developing inter-connected awareness, working with the unconscious and synchronicity, and holding creative tension).

* Improving leadership and role specific competencies and skills

There is also an important place for clearly defining and assessing competencies in helping people develop. As well as providing a generic leadership competency framework, we also provide competency frameworks for specific organisational roles, including consulting, facilitating, coaching and change agency. The scope of these competency frameworks includes skills, behaviours, knowledge, attitudes, qualities and characteristics.

* Developing an integral perspective and a developmental approach

As we have already discussed, we need meta-models to help understand the complexities of our organisational situations as well manage as the different approaches and tools we might draw upon to deal with them. We introduce the Integral Perspective as our primary meta-model for making sure we take account of all essential perspectives, and show you how to use this as a powerful tool for organisational diagnosis and intervention. We then explore the value of taking a developmental approach to organisations, groups and individuals, and provide an overview of developmental models, including Spiral Dynamics.

* Understanding relevant approaches and models

Having established an integral context for exploring different approaches, we then provide an overview of other relevant and useful theories, approaches and models in the fields of leadership, change, learning and development.

* Learning to use tools and techniques.

We also show how to use specific tools and techniques associated with the approaches and models we have introduced.

Contents

• Introduction

• Courses overview

• Client cases and testimonials

• Facilitator profiles

• Appendix:

© Aubyn Howard 2006