leadership

/Tag:leadership

Behavioural DNA of Leadership

Ambassadors  and Members of The Organizational Zoo Ambassadors Network (affectionately known as OZAN) used the Zoo Character Cards to explore the behavioural DNA of Leadership.  That is, which metaphors best represents the complex behavioural capabilities required to inspire others to follow you when the situation is ideal and the organization is performing well.   Clearly, a successful leader (consciously) adjusts their behavior when the context changes and this is the critical point of facilitating "Conversations That Matter" using the Zoo concepts.  The most...

Behavioural DNA of Creativity Part 2

The Organizational Zoo character cards were used to assess the which metaphorical "animals" (representing behaviours) supported or detracted from a creative environment at Creative Bangkok.  This activity was repeated at the HEC Creativity Summer School in Montreal in June 2015.  The Montreal group was larger (about 70 people broken up into 18 groups) and of a more mixed cultural background. Despite this there were strong similarities in the outputs of the activity. For example the strongest characters supporting a creative environment...

The Behaviours of Creativity: Insights from Creative Bangkok

The participants of Creative Bangkok 2014 engaged in assessing what “animals” (Organizational Zoo metaphor characters representing behaviours) supported creativity and which were detrimental to it. After a very quick introduction (because we wanted intuitive interpretation and creative open exchange of perspectives with minimal preconception) to The Organizational Zoo, participants allocated character cards into 4 categories for the context of generating creative environment: Expected (required for creative outcomes) Desired (not absolutely required, but a positive influence on creativity) Tolerated (not desirable, prefer not to...

Out of the box approach to behavioural impacts

The limitation of many psychometrics is the way they are used by some. Used well, they can provide insights into the preferences a person has “generally”, though this cannot be applied to all situations. However, they often are used to stereotypically categorise the person, with the implication that this may inform them what roles they may be best suited to. That is, applied in ways that puts the person in a box. This is dangerous given often this largely based...

8.23 a good time to collaboratively reflect

Umeå Univeristy host a weekly event called 8.23 each Tuesday morning to discuss a paper in development and to share ideas around what resident researchers are working on. I participated in this firstly as someone engaging around other's ideas and later as the facilitator of my own Organizational Zoo concept.  Both conversations led to stimulating exchange of ideas.  I believe that the concept of proactively engaging others to seek their perspectives though constructive feedback enhances the value and relationships for everyone...

12 Principles of Knowledge Leadership

Leadership is a subjective participation sport of perspectives and relationships. The more effectively you influence others to play with you, the greater your own success, and the more value you generate with, and for, others. Great leaders generate trust and act in an open and trustworthy manner. In doing so, they generate an environment in which people desire to be involved in decision-making and the implementation of value-creating actions. They interact in an open manner to solicit a range of...

Understanding and Mitigating Culture Clash

Culture is an interesting outcome of people interacting in specific environments and can be difficult to influence. The Organisational Zoo metaphor provides a simple way to understand culture as an outcome of: (i) What animals you have in the zoo (ii) Where they are in the hierarchy and (iii) How they interact with each other. The Zoo represents the organisation and each animal an individual behaviour (not a person as a whole). People are far too complex to put into a “box”. They behave...

Metaphor to assist knowledge transfer

Over the last few months I have been involved in a number of workshops using the Organizational Zoo metaphor character cards to engage people in conversations on how behavioural interactions impact knowledge sharing and relationships. These fun interactions draw on the diversity of behaviours, experiences and cultures in the room to generate shared insights that i believe would not have occurred if it were not for the creativity and "out of the box" interactions.  Participants have said that having the...

Career Path Metaphor

People often ask me about the origins of the cover image on The Organizational Zoo.   Although it is a LONG story, in short it took several drawings over several months to get the message right.  We wanted to portray the behaviours people encounter on their career path through a typical organisation. You can see the kid (naive recruit) about to enter the front gate of the zoo (organisation) and as one would expect the Owl (eternal mentor) ready to greet them at the gate....

Is your culture fruit salad or amorphous fruit pulp?

The recent media debates on multicultural societies and leveraging diversity stimulated my thinking about metaphors that fit this debate. As a lover of fruits, I thought when do I want and apple versus an orange or fruit salad? Why (or perhaps when) would I choose these individual fruits rather than simply blending them and get all together?  In many ways a culture is a blend too - some with a dynamic mix of many recognisable behaviours and values operating in...

Behaviours at Year End Break Up Parties!

Most organisations have some sort of "year end" breakup party just preceding the holiday season of their culture. A celebration of what has been achieved and what there is to look forward to in the following year.  These are the absolute best times to understand the REAL culture of your organisation.  As an example, over the next few days many organisations around the world will be breaking up for Christmas where there will be ample flow of alcohol and consequently...

The cycles of life: A metaphorical tradition

Many countries celebrate a “Festive season break up” in December or January/February. It may be the financial cycles of the organisation, the tradition of Christmas or Chinese New Year or any of a range of other natural cycles. I sometimes wonder whether we celebrate surviving another cycle or we are celebrating the beginning of the next cycle. We even count the cycles in terms of our age, they year of the XYZ, anniversaries, the decade of ABC, person of the...

Enhancing Professional Coaching with Metaphor

Performance is a big focus of professional coaching and behaviour is a big part of performance. A concept that stimulates a reflective dialogue about the impact of behaviour on performance is a useful interaction, providing it is done in a constructive manner. In coaching, there are a number of ways which metaphor can be used as it provides a creative mechanism to trigger novel ways to assess who we are and why we act the way we do. Behaviour has a...

From Lead Gunners to Gun Leaders

In Australia the slang term “Gunner” is a derogatory term for someone who is always shooting off ideas but rarely does anything about them. It comes from their constant verbal shots of “I am gunner do this and they are gunner do that…”. The lead gunner wants to look good by spruiking ideas, but knows that attempting delivery of their “great idea” is a risk. It requires action and capability they are not confident about, so they have handy a...

Boundary riders for creative innovation

Boundary Spanning Leadership, a book by Chris Ernst and Donna Chrobot-Mason from the Center for Creative Leadership was released last week has been an immediate success. It is in fact, a good example of its own philosophies in that it draws on a wide range of ideas from many contexts to support the research on which it is based. It also leverages the impressive networks into which the CCL authors have within their circles of influence to promote the ideas...