What leaders should do

Learning does not take place in isolation. It requires context and support. It is the role of the Chairman or the Team Leader to set the parameters and describe an expectation for their teams, such that inquiry and challenge is encouraged. Leaders should:

  • listen for and seek out change.
  • learn from experience, especially failure.
  • question the reasons for success, as much as for failure.
  • focus on the imperatives of the meeting, the outcomes, not its format.
  • develop, share and live by core values.
  • confront each other’s anxieties, never allow cover–up.
  • listen and probe constructively to find out meaning.

Achieving this for many leaders is not at all easy. We have established that, to reach their level of seniority, they may be driven characters, unable to listen well to others, let alone to listen to critics or to contrary thinking. Many are themselves surprisingly contrary. Some will hold excessively rigid and ultimately contradicting views about God. Just as Blair and Bush were born–again Christians, so too Haig increasingly spoke to God, and Kaiser Wilhelm’s obsessive anti–Semitism and anti–British and American feelings became inseparable from his conviction that God was on his side and against the rest!

It is for the independent non–executive director or the executive coach to challenge these leaders. But this too is difficult – few have the courage, the stamina, or mental strength to be able to do this successfully. The main route to individual learning is to institutionalise the process, as described in detail by Pete Senge in the "5th Discipline Fieldbook" (Currency Doubleday 1994) The approach focuses always on building into any group the same systematic feedback loop employed by Cisco.

As far as possible, this process is supplemented by keeping teams together to build their own experience curve, and also by ensuring that the feedback is made openly, is fully and constructively heard and is promulgated through the organisation as a badge of honour. Finally, the focus of thinking has to be trained sharply on action, on execution, on achieving results and on output – not so much on providing better input, or trying to justify failure, or changing the methods of measurement – the all too regular habits of political spin.

The point is, as Senge explains, that few, if any, of our actions occur without affecting others, and none should be allowed to go for long unquestioned in a straight sequence.

A then B then C then D and so on.

The organisation, in particular its leaders, should see this not as a linear sequence. Instead they should see it as one that can dynamically shift into different dimensions (the market can change for example). Above all, they need to ensure they have built–in feedback loops. The board, non–executive director or coach creates a regular feedback system from its people and its clients to check ck the validity and value of its actions.

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Above all leaders need to question the feedback process itself with a third level of questioning. "Why did we not challenge our decision making in the first place – it proved mistaken, did nobody have doubts, and if they did – what stopped them intervening?"

So, what does this mean? Where have we got to? The summary so far.

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