On Berger (2018):
About leadership
Direct quote from Berger (2018):
So much of leadership ability is about how other people experience themselves in your presence. A great leader has a presence that makes other people bigger.
Not sure how I feel about this one, but it sounds about right. It's not formulaic and shows what I've been experiencing so far. Also the episode throws some other useful insights about leaders.
- Great leaders amplify – they bring the best from people around them. In a way, they make the group better
- People aren't born leaders, they grow into the role
- Good leaders are curious about the world around them. Curiosity and not being blindly certain are essential
- A curious leader takes Whispers as signal
- Also to keep in mind: knowledge workers are paid to be curious. Otherwise we could be replaced by any search engine.
On being an adult
Adults have to cope with an ever-growing view of the world. They can choose to close themselves or embrace it. The Adult Development Theory offers a nice mental model to understand and face the challenges around an ever-more complex world.
Tough questions:
- How do we balance our lives and our evolution?
- Who am I being and is that someone I want to be?
- (When being hasty) Have I really seen that before?
- What's the different perspective I/we/you could have here? see Simple habits for complex times
- What different question could you ask about that (see link above)
Good patterns:
- Try to recognize your usual cues (meaning the ones for which you already have a pre-made answer)
- Try to recognize your bad patterns
Whispers as signal
There are whispers everywhere around us. People in our lives (both at work and personally) throw hints at us in indirect ways. Pay attention to those signals and try to figure out if there are any emerging patterns.
Simple habits for complex times
Berger references the 3 tenets in her book "Simple Habits for Complex Times" as good advice for dealing with complex systems. (see An overly simple definition of complexity according to systems theory)
- Take a different perspective
- Try to see systems
- Asking better questions
Seeing in systems
Berger mentions some hints to help us to think in systems:
- What patterns are we seeing (i.e., team dispositions are shown through patterns)
- Bad patterns HAVE to be broken
- Good patterns should be introduced by tiny iterations. Complexity requires tweaking, not big bang changes
Asking better questions
Asking good/better questions is probably a life-long endeavor. However, one can try.
Berger (2018) suggests the following:
- Notice your questions. When do I ask questions that I'll autofill the answers? Is that question really meaningful, or more of a habit?
- Try to ask questions that would make the person think or shift perspective
- Go after foundational stuff (the type of thing kids usually go for). Some people refer to this as rethinking stuff from first principles
- What different question could you ask about this?
- What different perspective could you have here?
This can also be applied to Mentoring, Coaching or raising children, probably...