The Power of Story

When I asked him what his values were, he looked a bit lost. After some thought, he said the 7 Habits book had influenced him greatly. But as a coach,  I saw a difference between ‘influencing’ and ’driving’. For, values not only influence - they drive every one of our actions and define our emotional states. Experiences aligning with our values are considered reward and violation a threat.
So I had to make him think deeper.
The solution?  Tell a story, a personal experience that shaped my own life. I shared one such, and voilà, he immediately came up with five of his own values.
That's the power of the story. It has the power to shift your thinking.

The Values Compass

“When I first came into the industry, I wanted my work to speak for myself and my aim was to earn a good name. Over the years,  my priorities changed and I wanted to make more money. But in the last four years, I’m back to square one. My character certificate became important for me.” - Actor Prabhudeva

Insight
Our values determine the choices we make. The priority of values tend to change as our definition of success changes. It is a good idea to revisit our values periodically to determine whether the things we do and the behaviours we exhibit are in sync with our values. Old or new.

Doing What's Right For You

Liz Wessel is a former Googler, and at 26, already the CEO of her own startup. She attributes her success to two pieces of advice she received. The first was to say yes to taking risks and trying new things, and the second;  to not chase money but happiness.

INSIGHT
Eminently good piece of advice no doubt, but not everything that works for others, may work for you. So, before accepting the thoughts of others, ask yourself:
Are they
- resonating with me?
- in alignment with my values?
- applicable to me this stage of my life?
If yes, then embrace and practice the thoughts.

Creating Your Own Leadership Framework

“Great leaders complicate leadership development. The sheer volume is overwhelming, and the lessons that emerge from one leader’s experience may be completely inapplicable to another’s”. - McKinsey research

Insight
Leadership material is voluminous and other's experiences are not transferable. So how do you develop your leadership skills? Inner engineering by yourself. Here's how:
1. Understand your work context,
2. Inventory your strengths & choose the the ones the ones to use/build,
3. Define your values & set boundaries,
4. Examine & reset your paradigms
5. Create own leadership framework

Or, #Connect2Coach.

Values Based Leadership

Narayan Murthy,  when asked what management ideas influenced him on his journey with Infosys, replied that more than management ideas, he "set store in values:fairness,accountability, transparency. The rest then fall into place." Citing an instance of fairness, which says you have to provide equal opportunity, he says he once had four women direct reports - an instance of diversity,  which flourishes in such an environment.

Call to #action
Which of my values are reflected in my leadership?

Coaching For Ethical Dilemmas

Recently, I came across an article from Fast Company, The Nine Faces of Leaders which dealt with the attributes FedEx uses to identify it's potential leaders. Among the nine,one was Integrity. Now Integrity to my mind, is colored with shades of both moral as well personal values, as a result of which,  Integrity based leadership-decisions are likely to be fraught with personal and professional  conflict. Having written my last blog piece on the subject of Managing Value Conflicts, I was curious to understand the  definition of this attribute, and since the Fast Company article gave only an edited version, I decided to explore a bit more for the complete version. This, I found, was how FedEx explains this leadership attribute

Integrity; A leader with integrity adheres to a code of business ethics and moral values, behaves in a manner that is consistent with the corporate climate and professional responsibility, does not abuse management privilege, gains trust/respect, and serves as a role model in support of corporate policies, professional ethics, and corporate culture. 

In my experience as a coach, I have found clients having to deal with conflicts managing their personal vs. business values everyday in the memos on their desks, in their engagement with difficult employees and in their negotiations with their clients. Finding it challenging to adhere to a code of business ethics and moral values, they look to a coach to help them work through their conflicts. I have often found coaching in these situations to be less than easy. How, exactly, should I help them clients think through their ethical issues, what questions should I be asking, and what are the factors I should consider? 

Hence my attempt to create my personal framework for coaching clients with ethical dilemmas.Hope it helps you too!

The Five-Step Ethical Coaching Framework
Manuel Velasquez is a professor of Business ethics and the author of a widely used text book.In their article Thinking Ethically: A Framework for Moral
Decisions Making he and his associates describe
five different approaches which philosophers down the ages have developed to deal with moral issues. 

More important, he and his co-authors offer a useful 5-step framework for coaches to help their clients explore ethical dilemmas and to identify ethical courses of action.

Step 1: Recognize an Ethical Issue

1. Could this decision or situation be damaging to someone or to some group? Does this decision involve a choice between a good and bad alternative, or perhaps between two "goods" or between two "bads"?
2. Is this issue about more than what is legal or what is most efficient? If so, how?

Step 2: Get the Facts

3. What are the relevant facts of the case? What facts are not known? How can I help the client  learn enough about the situation to make a decision?
4. What individuals and groups have an important stake in the outcome? Are some concerns more important? Why?
5. What are the options open to client for acting? Have all the relevant persons and groups been consulted? Have?How can I help client  identify creative options?

Step 3: Help Client Evaluate Alternative Actions

6.  Ask following questions to help client evaluate the options:

• Which option will produce the most good and do the least harm? (The Utilitarian Approach)
• Which option best respects the rights of all who have a stake? (The Rights Approach)
• Which option treats people equally or proportionately? (The Justice Approach)
• Which option best serves the community/organization 
  as a whole, not just some members/employees/stakeholders? 
  (The Common Good Approach)
• Which option can lead client to act as the sort of person he wants to be? (The Virtue Approach)

(For details on the Approaches click here)

Step 4: Make a Decision and Test It

7. Considering all these approaches, which option could best help client address the situation?
8. If the client told someone he respects-or told a television audience-which option he has chosen, what would they say?

Step 5: Help Client Act and Reflect on the Outcome

9. How can the client's decision be implemented with the greatest care and attention to the concerns of all stakeholders?
10. How did the decision turn out and how can I help client review learning from this specific situation?

Coaching for Ethical Practices

Dov Seidman is a consultant who helps corporates develop values-based cultures, he believes that in the 21st century, it is no longer what you do or what you know that counts most. It is how you do what you do that has become the greatest source of advantage. We are deep into what he calls the 'era of behavior'. 

By using The 5-Step framework coaches can help their clients to work through their moral and value conflicts, and shape behaviors for conceiving and re-conceiving how they can build for growth. 

The Essential Element of Leadership

For an organization to succeed, it is vital for teams to have clarity of direction. Three elements which can help establish a clear direction for any team are:
- A Team Mission Statement
- A Team Vision Statement
- Team Values

Most organizations who conduct workshops for defining the three elements would do well to remember the words of Charles Schwab, the former CEO of a brokerage house. He used to say that people will work hard for money, but will give their lives for meaning. And the most powerful way of giving meaning to people's lives is by helping teams to define their Personal Mission, Vision and Values, BEFORE they do so for the organization. This will have a powerful impact on the employees engagement with the entire process of defining, as well as the practice of the values. Apart from making their individual lives more meaningful, this sequence of workshops helps in two ways;

1.  the understanding of the importance of values in their personal lives renders the task of defining the organizational values (challenging at best), much easier.
2. it helps individuals draw a line-of-sight between the personal and the organizational mission and values

Living the Vision
The task accomplished, the leader has to embark on what Tom Peters calls "the essential element of leadership" - living the vision vigorously and practicing the values diligently. To do this, he needs to ensure open and continuous channels of communication with his employees. This constant contact will help the business leader to support his teams to live the defined vision, practice the values and to shape the culture and the way that things get done. Here are some way of doing it:

1. Keep leaders, managers, HR staff and others engaged in the process through conference calls, email bulletinsand online forums
2. Create an intranet page focused on the implementation and practice of the three elements where you can put a list of FAQ's as well as experiences of the people with the new practices
3. Maintain focus on monitoring and course correction. Provide channels for feedback and ideas. Document questions and issues and share responses in different media.

Keeping at it
Once the mission-vision and values are sufficiently integrated into the system, its no time to stop. For, to quote Robert Levering, the co-founder of Great Places to Work Institute, "there is no such thing as 'too much communication". He cites examples of two CEO's who did it successfully:

1. One of the values of Genentech, a biotech company was   'open communication'. The CEO did an extraordinary job of being transparent. Any question asked over email, would be responded to within 48 hours.
2. Medtronic, a medical devices company has an event where actual patients come and talk about how their lives have been saved by Medtronic heart devices. This way, employees can see how people's lives have been saved. During the session, says Levering, there's not a dry eye in the house.

 Can you think of similar creative ways of living your values and connecting your organization's vision to it's impact on your customers?  Doing so should pay you rich dividends.

"I am Anna Hazare" True or False?

A recent survey  of India's youth conducted by by MTV, showed that over 50% of them were OK with paying bribes to succeed in life. Surprisingly, Anna Hazare's recent campaign against corruption had struck a cord with the very same youth, and they had come out on to the streets in large numbers! So what explains this strange contradiction?

Maybe some kind of an answer may be found in yesterday's Economic Times. In the issue's Blinkers off cartoon by Salam, one executive is telling another, "I can't say for sure what is important...self-respect, integrity or being on the right side of the boss...?" The cartoon aptly sums up the dilemmas and the challenges  of  the youth viz., if self-respect and integrity be part of one's values set, to what extent would one be of willing to sacrifice them at the altar of career success?

 These were also the kind of dilemmas expressed by the young participants at my recent workshop on Goal setting. One of the activities required participants to identify their personal values and the importance of  identifying and living our values in our life. After my presentation one of them asked, "If the value of my time to my company is Rs 3000.00 per day, and I have the option to pay a tout Rs 1000.00 and get a ticket (or a form etc.) delivered at home instead of waiting in a queue to buy one, what should I choose to do? And that's the dilemma most of us face - should I forgo my value of not paying a bribe  and settle for the 'efficient' and 'cost-effective' option of saving my time and pay a bribe? Or do I stick by my values and principles no matter what it costs?

In reply to the participant's question, I cited the example of how Narayana Murthy of Infosys handled such a situation.There were several incidents when Infosys was asked to grease palms to get its work done. in 1996, the company refused to pay a bribe of Rs 4 lakh to buy the land where their Bangalore office was built. Instead, it paid Rs 40 lakh extra, about 40% more than the amount other companies had paid to build offices in that locality. Over the years, Infosys' clean image became a benchmark in India Inc.

So if one chooses to strictly  live by one's values then no price would be too high to protect them. The choice of course is a difficult one for most of us. But for those who choose to tread the difficult path - it can be life of fulfillment.

And success?

The Secret to Long-term Personal Success

The most powerful way to achieve long-term personal and business success, is to redefine success as something internal rather than external. It has been my experience time and time again that success begins with defining values, and then consciously creating a life where those values play a central role. And this is true as much of people as it is of organizations.Using this 'inside-out' approach, I have discovered in my experience as a Business coach and consultant, gives gratifying results. Success I have realized, begins with defining values, and then consciously creating a life where those values play a central role. So what exactly do we mean by values, and how can we plan a values-driven life?

What are Values?
Roy Posner, on his highly informative website, describes values as “a belief, a mission, or a philosophy that is meaningful.” Whether we are consciously aware of them or not, every one of us has a core set of personal values. Values can range from the commonplace, such as the belief in hard work and punctuality, to the more psychological, such as self-reliance, concern for others, and harmony of purpose.

When we examine the lives of famous people, we often see how personal values guided them, propelling them to the top of their fields. In the book, Leadership@Infosys (Penguin India), the editor Matthew Barney describes the time the company had imported its first computer to the office. A customs official indirectly asked for a bribe. Narayana Murthy pretended he did not understand the request. As pay back, the official refused to recognise the a government certificate that entitled Infosys to a concessionary import duty of Rs. 1 lakh instead of Rs 10 lakh. Murhty did not budge. The company paid the higher duty and went through a long process of six years to reclaim the extra money it had paid.

It is this personal as well as business commitment to his values that has brought Murthy such glory - personally as well as to Infosys, the company he created. On a personal front, his commitment to his values brought respect to businessmen as a class. Kiran Karnik1, the former NASSCOM chief explains the reason thus,”For the first time, the middle class had an icon who came from an ordinary background and yet made money without doing something underhand and being upright.” On the business front Murthy’s commitment powered by his intellect, and driven by his values has brought Infosys to the forefront of a new India Inc. since 1981.

we can “create a life of our own making” and live our life with meaning and peace of mind, rather than “letting our life live us.”  An important learning from Murthy's example is that values drives our behavior and also our commitment.                                                   The most important advantage of identifying our values is that the exercise helps us to align and shape our behaviors in a way consistent with our goals in life.

Call to Action

To begin the unraveling of YOUR secret to long-term personal business success, begin by of identifying your values from the list on Roy Posner's site. Using your identified values as your decision making paradigm, you can now create a life of your own making and live your life with meaning and peace of mind, rather than letting your life live you.

Importance of values in our personal and professional lives

Becoming a leader, says Warren Bennis the leadership guru, is if not identical, similar to becoming a fully integrated human being. Leadership, says Bennis is about self awareness, as well as being aware of the effect of others. I have experienced the truth of Bennis' observation in my coaching practice where I adopt the 'whole person' approach.

A man they say is the sum of his parts and in the whole person model, we call these parts

1. The domain of self management
2. The domain of people management and
3. The domain of organization management

In my experience,  the best outcomes happen when we focus on the first, i.e. the domain of self management. This domain deals with values, attitudes, beliefs and emotional intelligence - the building blocks of self awareness. Once self awareness happens, it becomes much easier to deal with one's relationships and environment (aka organization). Of all the elements in the self management domain, I find working on  values  to be the most useful in getting a handle on one self. Unfortunately however, I find that values in the minds of most business leaders are something which are either too abstract, or thought to be  irrelevant. Why are values so important? 

Jack Welch's definition of values brings out their importance in the organizational context, as well as describes them best.  Values according to Welch, are just behaviors – specific, nitty-gritty, and so descriptive they leave little to the imagination. People must be able to use them as marching orders because they are the how of the mission, the means to the end -- winning. In other words, values are an organization's formula for winning in business. In fact, Welch thought values to be so important, that he developed a matrix of 4 types of managers -  those who lived by their values and those who didn't. Those who lived by them, could continue in his organization and those who did not, were summarily fired!

Thus managers falling in the Q2 and Q3 category, were to be fired, those in Q4 were to be coached and the ones in Q1 were considered invaluable. So invaluable,  that they were to be "handcuffed, making sure they did not leave the company for the next five years!"

Given this understanding and critical importance of values, it is not hard to understand the importance of their role in our personal lives too. Values are our personal formula to winning in life, and inventorying of our values gives us a deep insight into the moorings of our aspirations, and help us immensely in carving a solid goal plan to achieve them.

Here is what Mr A, the MD of a large chain of hospitals, wrote to me after  doing one such exercise,

" ...the coaching process that I went through with you was extremely useful in helping me to understand myself. It helped me to focus myself for the first time of the direction that I always wanted to take and it helped me to make a commitment to myself.  I am now very aware when I take any action as I go along and do question whether the action and outcomes are in sync with the goals that I set for myself."

On Humility

Recently at meeting with an HR head, the conversation veered to the subject of leadership and Jim Collins' take on it - specifically about his concept of  the Level 5 hierarchy of Leadership.

According to Collins,  Level 5 leadership is about humility and fierce resolve. These leaders manifest humility by routinely crediting others, the external factors and good luck with their companies success.But when results are poor they blame themselves.

However, the HR head thought differently. He believed there was no way that humility could be an essential ingredient to success as a leader. Though he did not say so explicitly, he probably meant that success as a leader breeds more arrogance than humility and is not necessarily a deterrent. So firm was in this belief, that he said he intended to do a PhD on the subject and prove Collins wrong! I daresay this observation and conviction left me bemused.

Soon after the meeting with the HR head, I came across an interesting insight on humility by Clayton M. Christiansen, the professor of Business Admin at Harvard University in the July-August issue of the HBR.. The professor had been invited to speak to the Class of 2010, because the financial meltdown had forced the students to recalibrate their careers in view of the changed business world they would be entering. In his talk, Professor Christiansen's  touched upon the importance of humility in the life of a successful leader. 

The professor began by asking all the students to describe the most humble person they knew. One characteristic of these humble people stood out: They had a high level of self-esteem. They knew who they were. The students also decided that humility was defined not by self deprecating behaviour or attitudes but by the self-esteem with which you regard others. "Good behaviour flows naturally from that kind of humility....Generally, you can be humble only if you feel good about yourself - and you want to help those around you feel really good about themselves too."

The HR head's take on humility had left me bemused  and wondering about the importance of humility in the success of a leader. The article helped me to place humility in context and realize the importance of  Jim Collins' findings of the attributes of a successful leader.

The theoretical aspects to Manmohan Singh's gut feel

At a recent lecture, to a question whether he was guided by theoretical reasoning as against gut feel, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh responded, " I have no definitive answer to your question whether I am guided by theoretical reasoning as against gut instinct"

He went on to qualify his statement by saying "Everybody who is in politics and seeks to influence economic policy and history has some notion about what is workable and feasible. He must have some theoretical perspective while formulating views. Whether it is good or bad, " said the good doctor, "will be judged by history."

A definitive theoretical reasoning, and the answer to Dr Singh's uncertainty lies in the Kolbs Learning Model. According to Kolb "learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the combination of grasping experience and transforming it." Let us look at some of the characteristics of experiential learning and see how they apply to the PM: 

• Learning is a continuous process grounded in experience.The Economic Times headlined the story with "Singh gets politician's tone" So the PM (in the eyes of the all-powerful media) has certainly learned well from his experiences!
• Learning requires the resolution of conflicts between dialectically opposed modes of adaptation to the world (learning is by its very nature full of tension). Dr Singh, who attained renown as an academician and a man most comfortable in the rarefied world of economic theories, was suddenly thrown into the hurly-burly of Indian politics. His growth as a politician called for his balancing what his heart and mind told him was good for the country, with the steep political cost it would entail. Dr Singh appears to have managed the tensions well - witness the passing of the nuclear deal in Parliament which meant his party had to make deals with unsavory political parties and elements. 
• Learning is a holistic process of adaptation to the world. From his comments and recent actions, the process of the PMs adaptation to the world of politics may not be complete, but he has adapted - and he has adapted well. (see above).

Based on the above characteristics, Kolb proposed a four stage learning cycle, which looks like this:

 This cycle gives rise to two continuum;

• The Processing Continuum: Our approach to a task, such as preferring to learn by doing or watching (the Active experimentation-Reflective observation axis)
• The Perception Continuum: Our emotional response, such as preferring to learn by thinking or feeling (the Abstract conceptualization-Concrete experience axis(

The PM's comment that one must have a "theoretical perspective while formulating views" clearly indicates his tilt toward the Perception continuum. As a man of compassion and learning coupled with his concrete experiences as the PM of a chaotic developing nation, does his statement at the lecture in Malaysia, indicate his coming of age as a politcian?

Time will tell.

Importance of Core Values

In a recent issue of the Corporate Dossier , Ed Cohen, the ex-chief Learning Officer at Satyam Computer Services reveals an interesting factor behind the downfall of the founder and Satyam, and its founder Byrraju Ramlinga Raju - the absence of defined core values. Since its inception in 1987, Raju had outlined the purpose of Satyam Computers as 'AICS Delight' (an acronym for Associates, Investors, Customers and Society at large) and this certainly seems to have worked for him in the golden years of Satyam's growth. He won several awards and honours including the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for Services in 1999, Dataquest IT Man of the Year in 2000, CNBC's Asian Business Leader - Corporate Citizen of the Year award in 2002 and E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2007.

But, according to Cohen, AICS wasn't enough and the company needed core values. Reason - the articulating of core values would create a conscious choice with a deliberate choice around the core values. The lack of core values coming down from the top, resulted in their being defined from the middle and bottom line and these core values defined at the lower levels, stood the company in good stead when the crisis hit. So even though Raju and Satyam were synonymous in the minds of his employees, when the failure happened and the initial shock had subsided, everyone responded with 'How can we save this? How can we pull it together? We have responsibility to our customers, employees investors, even to society.'

In this crisis situation, the 'AICS delight' mission statement would not have helped - the delight had gone out of the window with the scam revelations. It was only the core values defined at the lower levels (Cohen does not tell us what they were), that the risk of the company going bust was mitigated. People started planning scenarios of various possible arising situations and drafted a 30/60/90 days start-stop-continue plan.

A company's resiliency is sorely tested during a time of crisis and Cohen talks about the 'heart' the people of the organisation showed during the crisis. One of the 'heart' factors was surely the core values.

Leadership lesson: A company's core values shape the culture and define the character of a company. They guide the behaviour of it's employees and the way decisions get made.

Have you defined the core values of your company? And if you have, are you making sure they govern your own, as well as the actions and behaviours of your employees?