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Showing posts from August, 2017

Math and Insights for Human Development

Please note at the outset that I am assuming individuals who hold the various views and perspectives that are outlined below have positive intent (as I do). My experience is that most individuals who are passionate about a point of view are sincere and believe that their insights will benefit everyone, if they could only see the value of their insights. Not so long ago I was invited to talk at a forum at a large public university on the “evidence” for various personality models and how these models inform perspectives on development. One of my companies at the time was certifying professionals in several personality assessments, which were based on different models of personality. As the forum unfolded, my co-panelists unloaded all critical cannons on the MBTI® assessment as an unfounded, unscientific, bad psychological model, and I was asked to defend it. Every single criticism of the MBTI®, using the 1984 Manual, lobbied at me was reasonable and analytically sound. I asked my as

Power to Encourage Creativity in Constructive Discontent

Imagine a highly experienced senior executive team in a manufacturing organization reaching an impasse on an issue of strategic importance.  The tension is so thick you feel the pressure in your chest.  The decision facing them involves a billion dollar bet. There are multiple, deeply felt and argued for perspectives that are completely at odds.  All arguments are equally robust; the depth of feeling about the perspective to take on the choices at hand are equally compelling.  They are facing a complex challenge, not simply a complicated one.  With complicated issues you can bring forth enough expertise and analysis to find the best path forward; with complex issues there are so many dynamic, paradoxical, ambiguous, and multi-factor elements that all the expertise and experience does not reveal a best path.  The path can only emerge by acknowledging and honoring the perspectives and discontent in the room among fully committed and hard working colleagues and by finding a construct

Situational Awareness and Social Intelligence: Critical for Effective Leaders

I did not plan to annoy the CEO when I reminded him, “You can’t talk yourself out of what you behaved yourself into.”  The problem he was facing related to a large group of employees who had sent anonymous letters to key customers and the Board of Directors complaining that he was a “flaming racist and sexist.”  He had been hired six months before to fix the operation which he believed came with the demand, “fix it no matter what it takes.”  He had instructed his executive team to actively seek out the under performers and get them to move on, and to get all teams engaged in a turn around discussion.  During a company wide meeting to explain the need for all hands on deck, he explained that there would be an elevation of performance standards that some would find uncomfortable and he used a couple of examples which highlighted people of color and women. “I simply was being truthful about our financial challenges.  Maybe I used a bad example,” the CEO said to me. And as we reviewe