Dennis Cheesebrow, one of our local consultants has written a book called Partnership Redefined.
A subtitle could be "Hierarchy is Dead." That would be an attention getter!!
Cheesebrow talks about leadership in partnership. Although we experience leadership within hierarchies, we seldom receive training about leadership in partnership. As Cheesebrow describes, partnership is messy, but often gives a better result as we try to implement change.
There are many great diagrams in the book but I did not try to replicate them. They are much better in the book.
Cheesebrow talks about how we often make mistakes by not allowing enough time for a decision to take root. We gather opinion, form a plan, make a decision and then forget to allow enough time to revisit, fine tune, and provide support. Instead, we rush off to the next decision.
The book offers many practical examples.
Enjoy!
Download Partnership Redefined
Download Partnership Redefined
Partnership Redefined
Dennis Cheesebrow
Book notes compiled by Jane Sigford
Introduction:
- Leadership is a truly shared capacity rather than the reserved capacity of management. P.
- Partnership is a key for unleashing the latent creativity and ownership that remains largely untapped in most organizations and it is a strategy for reducing stress and increasing performance at the same time.
- Hierarchy is a fact of life and one way to organize.
- Another way of working is through partnership. Rarely do leaders see the zone of partnership as a strategy or a capacity Loc 245-249
What is partnership?
- Partnership does mean a mutual decision to suspend authority and hierarchy, to interact as peers who are committed to making each other and the organization successful.
- Means suspending one’s own need to control a situation.
- Means assuming that others are worthy of trust and can be relied on to carry their own weight for the good of the whole.
- Empowers all participants. Loc 249
- Enables people at different levels of power and authority to entrust their self-interests to each other to accomplish shared goals.
- Means using all of an organization’s resources— human, material, institutional—with interdependence and service. Barry Oshry describes partnership as “a relationship in which we are jointly committed to the success of whatever endeavor, process, or project we are engaged in.”
- Partnership for Oshry is reciprocal. It means “being a person who sees others—who grasps why they are and what is important to them, who gets behind them and helps move them ahead in their world, as well as being a person who puts your projects out to others—who lets them know who you are and what is important to you, who allows them to get behind you and move you ahead in your world.”
- As a relationship, partnership contains the people, the connections, and the space between them. These three dynamics are important to recognize and steward in an ongoing and intentional manner by all involved.
- Partnership both constrains and enlivens people’s behavior.
- In partnership, leaders are less apt to use their authority and power to impose their ideas and solutions on followers.
Introduction
Partnership: A Different Way of Thinking, Working, and Leading
- Hierarchy and difference are 2 ways to organize. We recognize that there needs to be a “captain”, someone with experience but there are also limitations.
- Relationships governed largely by differences in power and authority can lock people into roles and behaviors that stifle creativity and thwart innovation.
- Complete absence of hierarchy is also unproductive.
Complement to Hierarchy: Partnership
- All of us function best when we have mix of freedom and support. Complete freedom is rarely productive
- Control may leave people feeling safe and comfortable, but also stifled and limited
- Between freedom and control is area where human inventiveness, creativity, productivity, and ownership can flourish= zone of partnership
- Partnership is when number of variables being dealt with is moderate and predictability of outcome is moderate.
- Organizations oscillate among these various states, often looking for magic solution from outside that will lead to calm, control, and success.
Partnership: A Way of Relating, Living and Working
- Partnership—less concerned with defining individuals as equals and more concerned that people are able to contribute to the collective good in ways that maximize their abilities.
- Partnership—mutual decision to suspend authority and hierarchy, to interact as peers who are committed to making each other and the org. successful.
- Suspends one’s own need to control a situation.
- Assumes that others are worthy of trust and can be relied on to carry their own weight for the good of the whole.
- Partnership—empowers all participants to contribute based on their unique skills
- Means mutual acceptance of responsibility and ownership
- Partnership contains people, connections, and space between them.
- Leaders less like to use authority and power to impose ideas and followers are less apt to leave the responsibility for org. success in hands of leaders
Partnership: A Different Way of Organizing
- Hierarchy—one way of organizing
- Institutional—authority may be hierarchical but also embedded in policies and procedures
- Collaborative—often people organized into teams whose members have equal status.
- Most orgs. don’t have way to integrate those entities.
- What works reasonably well during normal conditions might not work when the organization faces a challenge or crisis.
FrameWorksTM --Partnership Capacity Tools
- Shared accountability for org’s mission, vision, and performance
- Less ego and self-centeredness on the part of leaders, employees, and groups
- More creativity, innovation, and ownership
- Greater clarity of roles, responsibilities, and authority
- Grater flexibility and nimbleness in responding to dynamic and shifting conditions
- A shift from a problem-and deficit-based environment to an asset- and strength-based environment, a movement from scarcity to abundance
Chapter 1: Building Trust
Doubting and Believing
- Partnership founded on trust. No greater threat to partnership than mistrust.
- There is a doubting game and believing
game. Behaviors of those who play
the doubting game are:
- Extrication, disengagement
- Detachment, perspective
- Resisting what is new
- Literal
- Rigid
- Stubborn, hanging on
- Impulse for securing
- Unmoving self
- Learning to be sharper, finer, more piercing, harder, tougher
- Aggressive, meeting threat by beating it down
- Deflating
- Competitive
- Solitary or adversary activity
- Talking, noise, arguing
- Defending my position
- Believing Game behavior:
- Involvement
- Projection, commitment
- Willingness to explore what is new
- Opening, loosening
- Metaphorical
- Flexible
- Yielding
- Floating self
- Learning to be larger, more encompassing, softer, more absorbent
- Nonaggressive: meeting threat by bending, incorporating
- Supporting
- Cooperative
- Working in a group
- Listening, sincere, agreeing
- Asking you about your position.
- If doubting game prevails==mistrust more likely
- If believing game prevails==trust and confidence in self and others emerges and influences work and decisions being made
Ask yourself:
- When and with whom is it easier for you to play the doubting game?
- When and with whom is it easier for you to play the believing game?
- How might choosing a believing response to those you tend to doubt bring about different consequences or results?
Choosing Trust:
- When playing doubting game, it’s easy to go from having doubts about a relationship to mistrusting the other person.
- To move from doubt to trust, one can use the
FrameWorksTM Leadership
Choices Framework [diagram] Goal is to operate intentionally in
partnership. Ask the following
questions:
- What do I tend to assume about other people, and how do those assumptions affect my attitudes, actions, and decisions?
- What situations events, or people tend to “hook” me, tempting me to move away from partnership, trust, and collaboration
- How might my immediate reaction to a situation be different in a few minutes, hours, or days?
- What would happen if I took the time and deliberation to respond differently from the way I’m inclined to respond?
Taking Time
- Act of believing usually requires effort and time.
Consensus Caution:
- Too often seeking consensus suppresses differences and generates solutions that lose the creativity and self-organizing potential of the group.” Edwin Olson and Glenda Eoyang.
- Operating in partnership doesn’t always mean operating by consensus. But it does mean trusting others, assuming they’re competent, and being willing to change one’s mind
Partnership: A Choice—of Sorts
- Trusting doesn’t mean being naïve. It means managing daily dynamics of living amid differing degrees of doubt, of trust and mistrust, of competence and incompetence.
- Translates as a leadership choice: to operate in isolation of partnership.
- This choice is continual
Key Points about Leadership Choices FrameWorkTM
- In times of doubt, many people move towards mistrust and isolation
- Moving towards partnership is a leadership choice in the midst of doubt
- Increasing an awareness of the ”hooks” that pull one towards isolation is necessary
- Managing a team’s level of trust is continual because partnership is more relational than conditional and “stuff” happens daily to everyone
Key Questions:
- What words, actions, and events have influenced me/us to move towards isolation in the past days/weeks/months?
- What words, actions and events have influenced me/us to move towards partnership in the past days/weeks/months?
- What patterns exist in responses to the previous two questions?
- What three things do I/we need less of to increase our partnership?
- What three things do I/we need more of to increase our partnership?
Chapter 2: Guiding Change
Change Happens
- “Stuff” happening is a constant. It is change and it is natural. Sometimes we behave as if this is not natural.
- The question is not whether things and people will change. How we experience change determines whether our stories of change are “good” or “bad.” The question is how we respond to change when it occurs.
- Do we manage it or react to it?
- One way we deal with it is to have “end-determined” decisions which means exercising delegated authority and control; it does not involve partnership.
Guiding the How
- One way to carefully and firmly define the questions at hand.
- Another is to specify what is unacceptable the “not-how.”
- Group decision-making can be facilitated by distinguishing between divergent and convergent thinking.
Committing to Partnership
- Not without risk. Some people interpret the leader as wishy-washy.
- Have to manage your own self-image and identity along with the process.
- Leaders are disingenuous when they invite suggestions and contributions and then revert to command-control mode of operating. It’s also destructive because it affects morale.
- Operating Principle: “Partner when WE should & Mange when I must.”
- If you partner then partner. If you need to manage, then manage with fairness, consistency, and efficiency.
- If, when partnering, the new course of action is clearly superior to the one you came up with, you have to support and champion the new choices as much as you would one of your own. In short, you must be willing to own something that you didn’t think of.
- Partnership is not about controlling everything, but is a matter of adapting to life in the context of organizational or personal purpose, mission and vision. May not be convenient or easy and choosing it means not taking the path of least resistance.
Change as Opportunity
- No getting around it. Change is hard. Human beings are creatures of habit and we don’t like being jarred out of our routines.
- But it can be productive and renewing.
Key Points about Guiding Change FrameWork
- Use the FrameWork to “Partner when WE Should” without staying in the room
- Maximize the level of detail in the Why/Reality and What/Results column
- Minimize the number of points in the NOT How/Unacceptable Means column
- Treat Guiding Change document as something not set in stone, but a dynamic document reflecting the best and most recent knowledge and understanding among those in partnership
Guiding change Document: Key Steps and Questions
- Define the Focus Issue or Question –(This is the title) Start by creating a relevant and manageable focus question—should be higher-order, not answerable by yes or no but narrow enough to focus group’s energy
- Define the current reality, the “why.”
- Name the key assumptions operating.
- Detail the relevant and compelling data.
- Review the organizational policies and resources and external trends and influences.
- Use demographic and market research.
- Describe the in-place barriers and blocks to consider.
- Describe the desired results, the “what. Define the measurable results as well as the org., cultural and relational conditions that go beyond the numbers
- Identify the unacceptable means. The “not-hows” things the org. is not
willing to do,
- Describe the parameters of what is not acceptable, especially if known tensions exist regarding some ideas and proposals.
Chapter 3: Seeing Authority and Power
Authority as Capital
- Acting authoritatively is hallmark of effective leadership, and deferring to legitimate authority is essential for the productive operation of groups and orgs.
- Authority is dynamic, not static
- It’s a way of exercising power, and strategically exercising power means being able to size up a situation and determine what type of authority is called for.
- Competency authority and capital is what you
develop by acting effective—You build up capital when you meet a challenge
successfully. Competency can also
be developed and demonstrated through education.
- Can acquire competency through experience, hobbies, and interests
- Org authority and capital is what’s conferred upon you by an employer—embodied in titles and job descriptions
- Cultural authority and capital is what’s achieved by learning the ins and outs of a particular org or group. This can be institutional. You can build up cultural capital by learning the stories (culture) of the group(s). It’s complex and doesn’t lend itself to a snapshot
Taking Stock of Authority-3 types
- Competency Authority—In most orgs, the greater
the competency, the greater the compensation.
- Hard to get and extremely hard to lose
- No one can take away certain abilities, credentials and experience
- However, one must be aware that in the work place, competency is both a fact and a judgment.
- Organizational Authority—earned and delegated in
most orgs.
- Some authority comes with job and title
- Can be complex in large orgs.
- Can develop conflict. “Because I’m the boss” should probably NOT be the first line of offense or defense
- Easy to get and hard to lose.
- Not static—Titles can change, job descriptions can change
- Cultural Authority
- No single person will be able to provide a complete view of the culture he or she is apart of. To get the whole picture you have to talk with more than one individual. Talking with insiders is only part of picture.
- Can’t get it by sitting in the office
- Hard to get and very easy to lose.
- Most powerful and yet most tenuous authority to manage.
4+. Political capital is combination of all 3—but largely cultural. Politics is the art of acquiring, organizing, and using the resources of an org, system, or community to advance one’s philosophy, beliefs, goals, and agenda.
This skill requires a high level of cultural knowledge, experience and capital.
Amplifying and Softening Authority
- Authority not static
- Can sharpen it, soften it, broaden it, etc.
- Education may amplify authority yet in some situations, people may have a narrow perception of a person’s practical competency. Clothing matters in these situations. Sometimes one must dress up and sometimes, dress down.
- Language indicates the status—High status is up (judges sit up above the people) and Low status is down (He’s at the bottom of the heap.)
- Posture—standing vs. sitting—is an implicit claim of authority. Where you sit at a table—head?? Middle?? Foot?? Can imply authority. Do you stand behind a lectern???
- Where an office and/or desk are located implies authority. Some organizations now who are stressing collaboration put everyone on a floor separated by cubicles that are equal. If someone needs private space, they use a conference room.
How we say what we say makes a difference
- Deborah Tannen’s work here is important about the function of language. “report talk” vs. “rapport talk.” Report talk=mostly reports to inform, negotiate, argue. Which is most meetings. Rapport talk—establish connections and explore relationships. Rapport talk asks a lot of questions.
- Report talk—people tend to use this to have power over.
- Rapport talk—language to reinforce partnerships.
- The type of language used is determined by the purpose of the conversation.
- Point is—verbals and nonverbals are inevitably bound up with issues of authority and power. Leaders must think about this and the 3 types of power as a component of effective leadership and a key to a productive working relationship.
Authority and Partnership
- Effectively exercising authority and the power that goes with it is facilitated by practicing partnership.
- Partnership recognizes differences in authority and power—does not equal egalitarianism. Does involve give and take and sometimes someone with greater authority may defer to someone with lesser authority.
- Deferring is not weakness—it’s probably a strength.
- Partnership isn’t always natural and sometimes isn’t easy. Doesn’t guarantee success in any given venture, but practiced consistently, Cheesebrow is convinced it’s the best way for individuals and orgs to grow and prosper.
Authority and Power (Cheesebrow has a diagram)
Key Points about Authority and Power FrameWork
- Always be aware of your level of capital in each of the 3 authority arenas and your political capital.
- Assess what forms and combinations of authority and capital work most effectively in the culture of the group or org.
- Play “chess” by maintaining a list of the anticipated future authority “plays” you and others need to make. Strategize accordingly. Choose delegation, alliances, and partnerships over direct use of cultural capital unless it is absolutely needed.
- Challenge the misapplication or ineffective use of authority by others. Do so courteously and tactfully, perhaps privately rather than publicly.
Key Steps and Questions.
- Assess your authority and capital in relation to situation and those who will be affected by decision. Map these assessments on the FrameWork Ask yourself some key questions:
- What combination of authority/capital is needed for the action you are about to take?
- To what extent will this action use up a particular kind of authority?
- To what extent do you need to build up capital before undertaking this action?
- Will this action be best facilitated by sharpening or softening lines of authority and power differences?
- How will this action affect the balance of power in the group or organization
Chapter 4: Managing Transitions
Whom do you Serve?
- If one looks at work as a calling, this means striving to balance individual and group goals.
Personal is Political
- No healthy organization remains static, and because any org. experiences continual cycles of transition, the responsibilities of its employees also evolve.
- A nimble org. must be able to respond to a variety of influences: new legislation, shifting markets, new competitors, and technological advances.
- A nimble employee, in turn, must be willing and able to adapt to different responsibilities and a revised job description.
- In an org there are Tops, Middles, and Bottoms. Previous information has been about the responsibility for assessing the environment in which an org does business—usually the responsibility of the TOPS.
- Middles and Bottoms also carry leadership responsibility to assess, see, imagine, innovate, plan, and implement constructive and positive change to achieve org. goals and vision.
- Cheesebrow has DIAGRAM. Called Transition and Development FrameWork
Awareness—First step
- Means taking in information, seeing, hearing
understanding. For Tops, promoting
awareness within org is facilitated by presenting information clearly, in a
timely fashion, and concisely.
- Here is the current reality.
- Here are the internal and external emerging influences.
- Here are possible ways to respond
- Here is what it would take to make the change
- For Middles and Bottoms—becoming aware means listening carefully, reading thoughtfully, seeing politically, and questioning strategically.
- One’s awareness at any given time is affected by one’s frame of reference—the beliefs and values that function as a filter through which one processes new information
- Peter Senge—“we don’t have mental models, we are our mental models.
- Culture is the very means by which we make sense of things. It can be limiting but is also way of ordering information.
- The fact that any org has a culture can lead Tops to short-circuit or overly simplify the information dispensing stage of a transition because of an assumption that everyone shares a mutual understanding and processes information the same way.
- The truth—a shared culture is necessary for perception and understanding, each of us processes our experiences differently
- Awareness is social and individual
- Awareness is both external and internal dimension.
Acknowledgement. How will this affect me?
- Becoming aware of what a change will involve for me is first step toward acting. Next stage involves acknowledging the implications of the change?
- If change is significant, it involves what Thomas Kuhn calls “a paradigm shift.” Loc. 1372
- Paradigm shifts don’t happen overnight and represent a major change. They’re always challenged and contested but if it’s sound, it will become standard operating procedure.
Acceptance: Can I live with this?
- No real change occurs without acceptance.
- Acceptance means understanding it and willing to undertake it.
- Some won’t accept for whatever reason
Acceptance and Ownership
- One way to see if someone has “owned” a decision is to see if they will defend it when adversity arises.
- That doesn’t mean that people won’t modify it but they will make changes lightly.
Acquire: What do I need?
- Responsibility at this stage of transition and development is shared. Tops are responsible for anticipating what their subordinates will need to accomplish a change. Middles and Bottoms are responsible for stating their needs clearly, respectfully, and firmly. Loc 1428
- Most common mistake at this point is to not allow enough time.
Acquire: Requires Awareness, Acknowledgement, and Acceptance
- Achievement gap is example. Everyone acknowledges the gap. However, “owning” it means undergoing a paradigm shift—from an emphasis on teaching to an emphasis on learning, from a focus on curriculum to a focus on s=instruction, from seeing a class of students to seeing individual students.
- This shift must occur with administrators, school board members, teachers, and students.
- Also requires ownership at least of one’s part, in the conditions, performance, and experience of self and other.
- Ach. Gap is not local issue—it’s a national one.
- Teachers need to see expectations gap, inspiration gap, and aspirations gap.
- Need to broaden their understanding of their own role, from dispense of knowledge to a co-learner with students
- Helping people acquire what they need is responsibility of Tops and Middles. Need adequate time for reflection and for development of their employees. Loc 1465
Acquire can take many forms
- One successful model is Japanese lesson study
- “One and done” professional development does not work because people need time to change and accept.
- Some Tops announce a decision, expecting everyone to accept and move to implementation but it doesn’t work that way.
Action: So Now What do I do?
- Need to be certain there is enough groundwork laid before action so that people have time to get on board.
- Changes should be planned and organized and should take place with what Cheesebrow calls Guiding Change document. It serves as reference point.
- Another component of action stage is continuous improvement loop. If something comes up that was unanticipated, it is necessary to go back to Acquire stage to gather more information.
- Things rarely go as planned.
- Development cannot be “one and done.”
Transition? Development and Partnership
- Partnership takes long than a command-control way of operating. Loc 1556
- Takes time for reflection, deliberation, and lots of practice.
- Awareness of a change is not enough
- People who won’t change are usually in service to themselves.
- People who operate in partnership, on the other hand are in service to the mission and people of the organization.
- Whom do you serve????
- DIAGRAM on Transition and Development FrameWorkTM
Key Points about Transition and Development FrameWork
- Awareness + Acknowledgment does not always = Acceptance. Often, it results in denial
- My awareness is different from another person’s awareness.
- Awareness rarely results in ability, and acceptance makes all the difference
- Acquire and Acting requires feedback loops and continuous monitoring and improvement for any major change in core professional practices and beliefs. Loc 1578
Key Questions:
- What are the Awareness points in my/our current reality? What is my experience and sense making?
- What differences does that Awareness make for my current assumptions, beliefs, and practices? What do I need to Acknowledge to change?
- Of all that I need to Acknowledge, what do I Accept to change?
- What development is needed to Acquire the necessary skills and capacity?
- How can I continuously improve on my ability to Act, deliver, and perform as needed?
Chapter 5: Making Decisions
Knowing your role
- Knowing one’s role involves accepting your place in the larger org.
- Means trying to become the best at what you do while also helping others become better at what they do.
- Everyone has a role with a legitimate division of labor.
- Tops and Middles must constantly clarify and describe roles of all employees
- Acceptance doesn’t mean stasis, doesn’t rule out having aspirations to move up.
- Accepting your role also means being able to trust others with their abilities and in their roles.
- It’s a balancing act—between individual initiative and aspiration that fuels innovation and progress, and an acceptance of one’s place that acknowledge an interdependence on others.
- It’s also important to know everyone’s place and determine how the various roles in an org. can function together most efficiently and productively.
Decision Making as an Exercise in Partnership
- DIAGRAM: loc. 1664
- Gathering input is a valued and important act to crate the best, most informed basis in developing options for making a decision
- Effective decision making starts with identifying who has what roles and when a choice must be made.
- Followed by mapping the work of many people, operating in partnership across multiple roles
- First group to identify are the Choice Makers—those held accountable for the implications of a choice
- Next is Design Team—organized largely according to knowledge and implementation accountability
- Design Team typically includes operational managers and technical knowledge experts both internal and external
- Finally, there is the Input Team, organized largely according to representation of the stakeholders and constituencies affected by a choice.
- Input team purpose—create shared understanding, an environment for most informed decision to be made in partnership and in consultation with the Design Team. Input Team provides feedback brainstorming, risk identification, and consultation to Design Team regarding options being developed for Choice Makers
- Design Team—generate options based on information. Members should be those who are most familiar with organization at all levels.
- There is a feedback loop between Input and Design Team. The loop reflects that as options arise, there may need to be more thinking and training.
Common Perils of Making Choices—Mistakes to avoid
- Not specifying who Choice Makers are, or making
that group too large.
- Involving stakeholders at input stage does not create an obligation to use all that input or to invest them with choice-making authority.
- Better approach is “Who will be accountable for this choice?”
- Naively commit to consensus—can result in group
getting bogged down. Can be used
to abdicate authority.
- Partnership is not relationship among equals; it is a relationship of shared leadership across differences in authority.
- Choosing a decision too soon—Partnership takes time. The greater the change, the greater the risk of making a decision too soon.
- Another mistake—Choice Makers to insert themselves in interaction between Input and Design teams. Leaders should welcome, participate, listen and serve cookies. When asked, can say, “I’m here to listen, answer questions, take notes, and not to offer opinions.
- They can signal in many ways that they are there to serve and listen. By the clothing, how they assist people, etc.
- Another error –solicit input and options, but not take them into account in making decision. Not every opinion will be the decision but opinions need to be considered
Guiding Change Revisited
- Choice Makers should have already determined unacceptable means and have Guiding Change document in place prior to Input and Design teams meeting
- GC document not set in stone but it shouldn’t be changed casually.
Implementation: Making it Happen
- Greatest threat to implementing a choice? It is that those charged with implementation won’t actually enact the plan
- Or that they will implement poorly by lowing it down, ignoring it and letting it languish until it goes away.
- When Tops make executive decision and deliver them to Middles with little prelude, process, or previous involvement, those choices stand a good chance of never being fully realized Loc 1768
- As a Top—unless you’re prepared to implement all phases of major decisions your org makes, you need to involve people in decision-making process.
- Implementation rarely cut and dried—can have host of consideration, targets, measures, etc.
- If implementers are part of previous stages of process, they are more likely to be committed to decision.
Refinement: Making it better
- After going through the process of input and design and decision-making, the tendency is to go to next decision.
- Don’t!!
- There needs to be a feedback loop to make continuous improvement and can go on indefinitely
Using the Decision Making FrameWork
Managing is the Better Option When n:
- Time is limited
- A choice is clear
- An end can be determined easily
Partnership is better option when…
- Time is open or flexible
- Choice is not clear
- An end is in view but not determined
Giving Credit: How the Buck Got Here
- It is Oshry’s labels of Top, Middle and Bottom. A person can be a Top in some situations and a Middle in others.
- Remember:
Hierarchy is necessary and good
- Organizations depend on people occupying different roles.
- Partnership is about softening of hierarchy
- Partnering is also giving credit where credit is due
DIAGRAM: loc 1878
Key Points about Decision Making FrameWorkTM
- Decision Making Framework—used for mapping roles, responsibilities, relationships, and process
- Choice Makers are those accountable for implications of the choice
- Design Team—organized around knowledge.
- Input Team organized around representation
- Design Team—provide 2 options to Choice Makers that each satisfies the conditions and parameters if the Guiding Choice document.
Questions:
- Who will be accountable if choice made is the best, or worst, ever made?
- Is the end determined or in-view? If determined, do not use FrameWork
- When must a choice be made and implementation occur?
- Who are the real stakeholders affected by a possible choice and change?
- What is the process flow of meetings and work to achieve the time frame?
Chapter 6: Leveraging the Strengths of Personality
Human Difference
- No issue more consequential for an org’s success than how it deals with members’ differences.
Cheesebrow uses 4 color schema based on work of Dr. Carol Ritberger. Loc 1929
4 personality types:
Red: approach matters logically, concrete, conscious of time
- Favor quick decisions
- Thrive in competitive situations
Greens:
- Intuitive, imaginative, love to brainstorm, but may be gullible
- Approach matters artistically and are good at seeing things holistically
- May appear flighty or overly sensitive.
Oranges
- Relationships important, caretakers. Like being information hubs
- Excel at anticipating how a particular decision will affect others
- Can be worriers and emotionally vulnerable
Yellows
- See big picture, often nonconformists
- Good at imagining different possibilities, can get bogged down in planning
- Can see forest AND trees
Power of Personality
- The challenge is to recognize other’s personalities and assess how your own can fit with theirs to accomplish a purpose. Loc 1994
Making “Colors” Work—2 lessons
- Know yourself and get to know those around you. Learn your strengths and maximize what you are good at
- Flexibility: learn to determine when it’s worth the effort to move outside your dominant type and adopt a less dominant personality type
- Misuse=Don’t use different personalities to let yourself off the hook.
Use personality Awareness to Communicate Effectively.
Reds
- Know what you are going to say before you start talking
- Be confident and assertive
- Stick to the facts and to the point
- Tell before you show
- Stress how what you’re presenting can be put to immediate use
- Expect frank, blunt response
Yellows
- Don’t equivocate. State things honestly and forthrightly
- Focus on big picture
- Use language that stimulates divergent thinking
- Present possibilities rather than offering conclusions
- When possible, present information in writing first
- Resist temptation to finish someone’s sentences
Greens
- Use metaphoric, visual language
- Provide options
- Let your voice reflect commitment and passion
- Ask open-ended questions
- Address people by name
- Share ideals and dreams
Oranges
- Be courteous, avoid offensive language
- Use personal experiences to illustrate a point
- Say something positive before offering a criticism
- Be clear about what you expect
- Give sincere compliments
Effective Communication
- Effective communicators are good listeners and observers. Able to adjust verbal and nonverbal components
- Nonverbal behavior can give clues about type of personality.
- Partnership depends on an awareness of and sensitivity to others.
- Learned that at group and system level most disagreements center on how something will be done. Many groups spend most of their energy arguing about how without having adequately considered and reached a shared understanding of the what, why, and who.
- Effective dialogue, especially for boards and executive teams, is to focus a critical conversation on the elements of what, why and who before moving to the how and ending with an action plan.
- Ultimately purpose is to help answer the question, “What does our work together need us to be, say, and do?”
- Shift focus from individual to group.
- We need each other—all types.
- DIAGRAM Loc 2164 of Four Color FrameWork
Key Points about four Color View FrameWork
- All people have elements of all four colors
- All people can operate out of their dominant personality type, although it takes focus, energy, and intention
- FrameWork can be instant assessment tool, communications strategy, and conversation tool.
Key Questions:
- What is my dominant Color Personality Type?
- When interacting with others, what are their dominant types?
- What type best serves the needs of the org. and others? What will it take for me to provide that type? If I am unable, who else can assist more easily?
- In tense conversations, what color is missing? Ask questions in that arena.
- In a group that is unproductive, what color type is overly present, and what color type is missing? What structures, practices, and roles will help provide a more balanced use of personality strengths?
Conclusion: Intentional Choice
- Partnership not new, but it is not default setting for most of us.
- Our individualistic and competitive nature (and culture) reinforces the notion that we rise and fall largely on our own efforts.
- Collaboration and partnership beginning to change in schools, particularly with students and professional learning communities [when done correctly NOTE MINE]
Partnership: A Recapitulation
- Partnership is based on trust in the competence of self & others
- Partnership is not an alternative to hierarchy but a different view of how hierarchy works in a human organization.
- Partnership maximizes human potential
- Partnership means adopting a different attitude toward time
- Partnership means a willingness to change your mind and the plan
- Partnership is an ongoing commitment, not a one-time experiment.
Final thought:
We are all individuals but we need others.
May you, may we, keep learning how to live and work together, partners in what we’ve been given to do. Loc 2371
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