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Engaging with a Sense of Purpose: The 6 C’s of a Connected Leader, with Dan Pontefract, Chief Envisoner, TELUS
Hierarchy is important in an organization but not for the sake of hierarchy. Flat army really is as it sounds. I believe that organizations need a hierarchy but it needs to come from a position of flatness. The way in which I describe that is flat army. Army actually is from the Latin armada which a lot of people forget. And armada is quite frankly a flotilla. And so a flotilla is a whole bunch of vessels sailing together. Why can’t our organizations and specifically leadership think of themselves as perhaps captain of the flotilla but with a whole bunch of people working together to go from point A to point B? That’s flat army. Flat army doesn’t mean instituting leadership for the sake of leadership insomuch as you’re telling people what to do because it’s easier. It’s asking people what might we do in order to go from that point A to point B.
So for me at the end of the day leadership is a behavior, it’s not an act. And too many leaders have confused leadership for command and control as opposed to collaborative and coordinated.
Connect
The Collaborative Leader Action Model is really the six C model of invoking an open or transparent or even translucent sense of leadership. So really at the end of the day I think it starts with connect. We connect with people first both in an emotional level but on a transformational level. Who is it that needs to be here? Who has done this before? So if we just use the word connect we’re getting started in the right place. Often what happens though is that leaders jump to execute or create. They say go do this now. Or I want this done by yesterday. Or if you don’t do this your job’s on the line. Like this sort of territorial force that they think is the way in which they should be leading because either army tactics and command and control taught us to do that or Taylorism with a stopwatch and an assembly line saying do it better, faster, quicker in the early 1900s at Bethlehem Steel. Nonetheless let’s connect first.
Consider
But then let’s consider our options. So again have we done this before? Perhaps are there other people that need to be at the table for this? Has Asia done this before? Has New York done this before? Has Montreal done this? Like ask around. So you’re considering whether or not it’s been done or whether or not it’s a good idea. Then, you know, this is where hierarchy comes in. Sometimes a decision has to be made. So some C-suites by example and the Board will decide to acquire a company. Okay, that’s a decision. But sometimes a team or an organization can make a decision. Either way a decision is going to be made.
Communicate
How about we communicate what the decision is. That’s the third seat. So far you’re connecting with people. You’re considering your options. Now you’re communicating whatever the decision is to people that should know so that “they’re in the loop.” And again from leadership from a hierarchical in the office just by email perspective people are proactively communicating saying here’s what we think should happen. Here’s what’s going to happen. And so there’s that left in the dark, out in the dark sort of mentality. So those are the first three C’s.
Create
And then ostensibly you’ve got to act. You’ve got to create, that’s the fourth C, the result. So now you’re getting people together. You’re executing. You’re doing. And I think this can be done however in a more benevolent fun way. Again we’ve sort of lost the plot. Why we’re in work and at work. It can be done with a little bit of humor, a little bit of fun. But again we drive in the create or execute phase far too rigidly which create this disengagement in the organization. So although the fourth C is create the result. Far too often again it’s done with malevolence and for sort of profit and the sake of profit only. So we’ve created the result.
Confirm
Now ultimately we’ve got to confirm what we said we were going to do in the connect, consider, communicate, create stages is, in fact, what we’ve done. So you’re evaluating essentially. You’ve considered the people. You’ve communicated. You’ve created. Now you’re confirming. Did we do what we said we were going to do is what we’re doing?
So maybe I’ll bring up an example. If you are Volkswagen these days and you were working with Volkswagen inside of that team and through this process of articulating what diesel emission levels we would like to get to and what the testing would be. And then everyone was “in the loop” on what those testings would be. And then to find out after you’re being confirmed by various agencies in America and in Europe that, in fact, you have misled that particular test you’re not confirming what you said you were going to do because you’re confirming being unethical. You’re confirming a hierarchy and you’re confirming the state of leadership that is for not the benevolence of society or the organization but for the malevolence of profit. So that’s the fifth one. Nonetheless it’s confirm.
Congratulate
And then finally I’d like to see us in the organizations congratulate and/or celebrate our actions, our misdeeds, our mistakes, our goodness.
Like whatever the case may be unfortunately we just move on to the next thing so quickly. And so leaders because they’re so fastidious with we have to get this done yesterday mentality, let’s do more with less. We forget about the human heart and the human condition and humanity. We forget that we’d like to feel good in the stuff that we just finished doing and celebrate and congratulate one another on a job well done or something we’ve learned through the mistake that perhaps happened through that process.