Organisations want to be extraordinary!

They want exceptional results from their people. So, they need to be creating an organisation where people can thrive, engage and bring their whole selves and creativity to the table.?I was fortunate to discuss this topic with Barry McNeill .

Barry is the founder of Work Extraordinary . His team works with founders and teams of scale-up organisations to become high performing environments where people can thrive and do their best work. He is also a Managing Partner of Semco Style UK helping leaders and change agents learn and embed the principles and practices of progressive, participative, autonomous organisations.

Barry stressed the importance of building teams which are liberated bring their thinking and ideas into the organisation.?He shared 'there is so much data covering the level of disengagement in the workplace. Too many people find their work-life joyless and experience a mundane and miserable job.

A job can be very transactional. Most jobs are a direct exchange of time and effort in return for a salary and a benefits package. A forward-thinking organisation will consider how to tap into the passion of its team and create engagement. Bringing people to life and harnessing that energy is vital.'

Barry works to help leaders to design and create organisations where people can bring their passion and energy and focus on doing their best possible work.

Leaders must enable others to bring their whole selves to work.?

The importance of being authentic and vulnerable should not be underestimated. Leaders must let go of their egos and be a genuine and authentic role models for their team.?

Barry began his career in talent and leadership development after a career as an actor. He moved into this area as it was important to him to help people to create an impact. Having worked up to a senior role in a global consultancy, he was asked to lead a global transformation project focusing on the professionalisation and quality of global consulting delivery. Shortly into this project, he had a light bulb moment: what should have been an opportunity to integrate the best approaches from across the global teams was in effect, killing local creativity and innovation. He knew that to achieve better outcomes, the route was to lead and drive more creativity and think about organisations in a very different way. Designing organisations to unleash creativity, instead of control and constrain.

How do we get people in our organisation to be more creative and innovative??

This is a fascinating challenge.?

Do you want an organisation of people doing what you want them to do?

This is the command-and-control structure, which stems from the industrial age.?

Or do you want people who are thinking and acting on their initiative?

Create leaders who create other leaders.?

Empowering others is so important. So rather than creating hordes of followers of people who are ‘yes people’, encouraging creative thinking and problem analysis is the way forward to foster new leaders who can think for themselves.

Encourage independence.?

As a leader, ensure you are working with your teams to encourage them to be independent and trust them to do their job well. Often this is a blind spot.

Barry shared his thoughts on this 'how the organisation is designed and how information and data flows through it is the basis for people working independently. So, what we do at Work Extraordinary is we start by playing around with the dynamics of why the organisation is set up the way it is. To unlock this, we don't bring in a prescriptive model or a blueprint because every organisation and context are different. But we find much of it comes down to leadership style.

Lack of leadership development?

The leadership styles originate from how those leaders were developed, from the earliest part of their careers. Internal promotions have, in many cases, been the next career step to becoming a manager.?

Often, we uncover that many leaders have not been through management development and have found themselves suddenly thrust into a management role.?

The role models they have seen or experienced will give them a view of what it takes to be a manager, and often it is about control. In many cases, all the infrastructure and systems that happen within organisations have management controls and approvals to sign off.?So this reinforces the view from those early lessons in your career development that becoming a professional leader must be based on control. As people progress through the tiers of the organisation, they will experience increased spans of control. So even the language we use to do it reinforces this idea about control.

Trust vs control?

Many leaders feel they must maintain control when they progress to senior leadership roles. Many have a real need for control in every aspect.?

?Barry shared 'This, to me, suggests that that trust balance is not right. There's not that trust in their people. Maintaining tight control over information and data needed to make decisions at the organisation's top doesn't make your team feel trusted and empowered.'

A command control environment is very ego-driven. Because whenever there is a presence of fear, it becomes a focus. Fear can drive leaders to think they can't trust someone to complete a task. They then put in controls to ensure they do it in a measurable way. So whenever there's fear present, that is a lack of trust. Fear is what activates our ego.

What is essential is to focus on creating a culture where everyone is comfortable and feels happy and secure within that organisation and able to speak out.?

Workplace culture

Working in an organisation can be very uncomfortable and painful if you feel that the cultural fit is not a good strong environment for you.

How do you find that balance between people who will be creative, speak up, feel safe enough, and want a commonality and connection?

I asked Barry how they deal with encouraging more diversity and disruption at Work Extraordinary.

'It's about finding connection and the higher purpose of the organisation. Exploring what that looks like and creating an environment and culture where people feel safe.

The team should be passionate and engaged about the purpose so that we aren't creating a kind of false harmony. Or where people are afraid to talk about things.?

The connection aspect is the social purpose of the organisation. The values should enable people to have very diverse opinions. They should be free to express that, and if the climate is right, they will be able to do so.?

We must change how we do things and how organisations are designed and run— creating a better world, a better place for everyone, and greater equality. The vast inequalities that sit within organisations are just wrong. Organisations can benefit so much by ensuring that they enable people to look after themselves.?

The future

Barry ended our discussion by sharing his thoughts on the future of leaders 'We are in an exciting phase, and leaders should be thinking through how they can design their organisation moving forward.?

It is crucial to consider the kind of future that we want to create. The time is now to be daring and to question and challenge assumptions. To steer away from the things we've always done because that's how we've always done it. Start to push ourselves to imagine what a different world could look like and create a new vision for the future.?

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