Divided we fall

A short Thriving Leader from me this week from my coaching practice and therefore all views are my own.?

I had an entirely different piece lined up which can wait until next week.?

Here in the UK our screens have been filled with scenes of a society divided.? And countless debating programmes portraying how leaders take quite different approaches to resolving differences.

The UK is not alone.? It seems around the world views are increasingly polarised.?? Compromise is in short supply.? People troubled with a feeling of not being heard whilst not being open to listening.

Our workplaces are thankfully more peaceable.

Different perspectives can make for the most creative solutions but only when they are embraced, fostered, respected and harnessed for overall good.

And before we congratulate ourselves that in business, we’ve got this licked, it’s worth remembering that across the western world global employee engagement is in decline.

The quiet quitting phenomenon showed us that where people feel they are not heard in business, they don’t protest.??? They just silently disengage and eventually move on.

Being listened to and being heard are different things.

Listening is the easy part.

Some of us might even describe ourselves as good listeners.??

And hats off to you if you’ve ever said “my door is always open” and actually made it happen.

But being heard is a far higher bar to reach.??

Listening is the thing you do.?? Whether you do it well or not is up to you.

But being heard?

Being heard is a feeling, a sense, and emotion.? It’s far more powerful, it takes more skill, time and energy to achieve.

When people feel heard research consistently showed you get levels of trust, goodwill and positive intent.?? Sounds pretty good right??? Sounds so good that every leader should be absolutely awesome in invoking a sense in others of being heard?

If only.

When you train as a coach, listening is critical but so is helping your client be heard, because that’s where trust and intimacy lies.?? In my early training days I’d learn to paraphrase, often inexpertly adding bits I’d like to have heard.

I’d like to think years of experience makes me better at this now but it’s still fundamental to coaching and fundamental to leadership.

There are few shortcuts with being heard and yet it doesn’t stop many of us trying.?

We easily seek to save time and yet at the same time waste energy by creating situations that require effort to resolve because it would have taken too long to do it properly.? The most obvious false economy.

How many times have you witnessed someone go in to a debate all guns blazing, take no prisoners, stamp their authority, get the quick win only to find the sores they created fester long after they have left the scene.

This week has been hard to experience because you see the futility of people with a need to be 100% right.? 100% right eliminates any tiny possibility that there is something to learn from another perspective.?? It’s statistically improbable and never works.? But for so many people it is a default going in position.

Not just on the streets but in business too.

We went on negotiation skills training courses, we took on board Bill Ury’s “win-win” philosophy and then back at the desk, the moment time feels short we switch from negotiating to influencing.

We mentally shortcut what influencing really should be – opening minds to wider perspectives, and go for the lower bar of winning people round to our way of thinking.? And when that doesn’t work, we sink into calling the My Dad’s Bigger Than Yours cavalry.

We brush up against the ultimate and cardinal sin of seeing people who disagree with us as disagreeable.? From that point, there’s no going back.

We’re tempted to do this because it delivers short term results.?? But in the long term, far more energy is used restoring trust that need not have been broken.?? And all that time trust is being with-held, people are quietly quitting, not giving their all.

Two things will get you through this swamp.

Skills.? Values.

Find a leader with high skills and weak values and it is likely you’ll witness someone entirely competent at using their skills for their own personal gain and interests.

Find a leader with strong values and weak skills and they’ll be well intentioned but likely ineffective.

If I observe the world this week and think, what do we need in our leadership it has to be to excel in skills and values.?

Superior values comes when we put others before ourselves, that unless you own a company outright, you’re merely the custodian of an organisation, a guardian of talent, with a ?responsibility to leave things in a better place than you found it.

As leaders, in moving change forwards there is always the risk of crafting or sustaining division but we have to be at the top of our skills game in resolving it quickly.??

To recognise the superior value of bringing diverse viewpoints together.

To not be afraid to disagree but resist seeing those we disagree with as disagreeable.

Bridging that which divides us, in the pursuit of sustainable leadership.

Let’s hope for a more peaceable week ahead.