How to Infuse Heart into Soul-Sucking Organizations
Heartless leaders build soul-sucking organizations.
Leaders learn how to think with their heads in school. But leaders who think with their hearts build vibrant organizations.
Results.
Leadership would be simple if results are all that matter and people were machines. It doesn’t take long to learn that results drive business but it’s people that deliver results.
Heart knows everyone isn’t you.
Thinking with your heart means adapting to others. You have Dreamers, Doers, and Feelers on your team. Show heart by adapting to their orientation.
- Talk plans,systems, and processes with Doers.
- Talk vision and new ideas with Dreamers.
- Talk relationships and feelings with Feelers.
(Everyone has all three orientations to varying degrees. Minor adjustments to another’s way of seeing shows heart and enhances effectiveness.)
Treating people the way YOU want to be treated frustrates them unless they’re like you.
Bring heart to work with proactive imagination.
I’ve started a practice that radically impacts my interactions. Before meetings I close my eyes and ask myself how I want people to feel. I actually see them in my mind.
Second, I play the interaction like a movie in my head. I imagine people entering the room. How I greet them is guided by how I want them to feel about themselves. I evaluate questions and comments through the lens of emotions they engender.
Sincerity, honesty, and transparency lift technique above manipulation.
Imagine how you want people to feel about:
- Themselves.
- You.
- Team members.
- Projects.
- Your organization.
- Customers.
- The future.
What will you do or say that fuels energy, rather than drains it?
Good will opens hearts.
Leaders with heart have unwavering commitment to the welfare of others. The order of good will is:
- Organizational success.
- Individual’s success.
- Leadership success.
You’re third on the list.
It takes heart-thinking to build vibrant organizations.
What does heart-based leadership look like?
How might leaders show up with heart?
Excellent, Dan. Make people feel VALUED and allow them to contribute by participation.
Dan,
Yes, yes and yes! Thinking with your heart takes patience. My 2018 word is patience. Knowing that your success will come later and it’s not about you is the key. Appreciate you!
Thanks Yanir. Patience is such a great word, especially for the topic of heart. Leading with heart takes patience with others and with ourselves.
Hi Dr. Scott. Making space for people to participate seems to be a way to show them that they’re valued.
Thanks for being here today.
One of your best yet Dan-this article reminds me to continue to build empathy and understanding for people i serve and hope to get in the best places according to their gifs, passions, and skills (gps).
John
Thanks John. Love the little acronym gps. Find direction by aligning gifts, passions, and skills. Cheers
The tripartite breakdown is great for operational perspective … at the “heart” of the triangle (center of gravity between the perspectives) is INTEGRITY.
Authentic leaders care about integrity before all else, it’s the one measure that can be respectfully and effectively applied to and across any perspective, and binds them together.
Integrity gets each perspective to give its due to the others, while giving proper/timely due to each in its relative successes, and each has to be managed differently.
Dreamers are the strategists/visionaries
(if we succeed, what will it look like … what is the VALUE CREATED that didn’t exist before?) These are the Mind-Over-Matter believers (if I can see it, it’s possible) who are the best open-ended PROGRAM managers/executives. This is the idealistic “heart” and soul dimension of the institution.
DOERS are the tactical-technical/realists (to succeed, these are the resources and approaches necessary to ACHIEVE VALUE). These are the Matter-Before-Mind believers (if I can make and control the right tools, it will work) who are the best closed-system (fixed scope/schedule/costs) PROJECT managers/executives. This is the grounded, empirical “brain” that all results ultimately depend upon.
The FEELERS are alternatively amused&frustrated by the extremes who can’t be comfortable in the same room (or the other’s worldview) for long – these are the politicians who necessarily navigate both worlds while believing primarily in neither, except that both are necessary for sustinence and survival, so both must be successful to REALIZE VALUE. This is the “guts” and glue, the instinctual gremlin of an organization that plays both sides against the other to get them wear down their excesses and ultimately get along.
Authentic leaders get the guts, heart and brain to work to consensus and ultimately align their efforts – which creates an integrity … a good for its own sake.
Wow! I love where you took this. I’ve been thinking about Doers, Dreamers, and Feelers for several years. Your insights added some language I hadn’t thought of before. The idea of integrity as the center of gravity for authentic leaders brings a unifying aspect to diversity. Very helpful. Thank you
FEELERS sound like the I’s in the DISC profile, or Mediators in Myers-Briggs. They just want everyone to get along. Sometimes they suppress conflict
DOERS. From Dave Snowden (Cognitive Edge, Cynefin Framework) I’ve come to believe there are two flavors. There’s the plan-and-control doer you describe, and there’s the figure-it-out-as-we-go doer.
I’m one of the latter. I thrive in Cynefin-complex situations. Those are ones in which the Dreamers can’t be specific about what they want, and we don’t know how long it’s going to take anyway. But we get the vision, and we’ll figure it out.
Plan-and-control doers, who shine in Cynefin-complicated situations, drive me even more crazy than do dreamers, because they want to see The Plan, and I feel judged for deviating from The Plan (which they sold to a dreamer).
One of the many things I learned from some leadership training last year was to adjust from “treating others the way YOU would like to be treated” – which I believe is “Golden Rule” many of us were taught growing up – to “treat others the way THEY would like to be treated”. This simple adjustment changes the entire perspective. Today’s blog took that concept a bit deeper. As an aside, I’ve changed the way I talk to my kids about the “Golden Rule”…thinking about “them” instead of “you” really changes the thinking and approach. Thanks.
Thanks Brad. I’m a little uncomfortable with saying the Golden Rule is wrong. I wonder if part of this is context and application. Treat others the way YOU want to be treated might mean treat people with their best interest in mind.
I want YOU to think about MY best interest. To practice the golden rule, I would think about your best interest. This makes room for treating people the way THEY want to be treated.
Thanks for the motivation to take a stab at exploring this topic. I realize it’s a bit off topic.
However, your last sentence really nails where it. It’s a simple shift. But difficult to execute.
Dan,
Key to remember its about them not us! “We the peole is all” yet Leaders still think its them and only them. Soon we all will get there!
Thanks Tim. So simple. Perhaps what makes it challenging is the decision to shift from me to we is a decision that gets made over and over.
Dan you’re right when you say “Heartless leaders build soul-sucking organizations”. But most of the people who build soul-sucking organisations aren’t actively heartless, they’re just clueless. Like Hanlon’s Law says “Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence”. The good thing from this is that incompetence is a lot easier to cure than malice!
Thanks Mitch. Your version of Hanlon’s razor is kinder and gentler than the one I learned. “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” 🙂
Your insights point to the importance and relevance of emotional intelligence. We don’t see ourselves the way others see us. We don’t understand how we are shooting our self in the foot.
How do you help someone see a weakness they have no interest in seeing? Perhaps tough feedback will help some.
Love the practice you shared here, Dan. “…how I want people to feel”. I try to do that as well as consider what I want them to learn and what I want them to do. If I manage all to communicate to all three areas that’s when I “feel” the best. 🙂
We know how Richard Branson of Virgin Airways or Howard Schultz of Starbucks lead their team to be the best in this competitive market. They induce the confidence to their team not with threatening words but with compassion and team work. I know there are gready management they give first priority for quick result by intimidating the staff with threatening of termination and get short term result and in the long term those companies collapsed and never regain to the initial successful stage because of failure in leadership.