Can You Hear Her Now? A Former Member of Parliament Shares Her Journey

Celina Caesar-Chavannes, Former Member of Parliament for Whitby, author of Can You Hear Her Now?, Senior Advisor, Cultural Transformation and Strategic Initiatives, and Adjunct Lecturer at Queens University joins the ILI podcast, Can You Hear Her Now?, This episode was produced in partnership with the International Leadership Association as part of their 25th Annual Global Conference held in October 2023. Dan Mushalko, Executive Producer, shared this article as a companion to the podcast. 

Link to the entire interview:

Listen to the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future via Apple PodcastsTuneInSpotifyAmazon MusicAudibleiHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

 

“Oh, my God: look at all the baggage I’m carrying!”

With that realization, Celina Caesar-Chavannes began rediscovering her true self – an authenticity buried under layers of external expectations and stereotypes laid on by society, by culture…and by leaders. Even as a high-ranking member of the Canadian parliament (Parliamentary Secretary to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, no less!), the -isms continued.

With that personal experience, she knows first-hand how much of our own potential we lose in trying to be people we’re not. For leaders, it means our teams can’t perform at their peak when our coworkers can’t bring their best selves to the office.

What can you do to uncover the potential of your “real” team? These steps will get you started:

1) Embrace your own authentic leadership.

Remember the proven maxim that your team watches you, copying your behavior as their real guide. Start by looking at yourself. Are you comfortable being and expressing yourself openly with your staff, or do you play a role or don a metaphorical mask when you’re in charge? Society and corporate cultures have various pressures for all of us; which do you have to deal with? Start looking inward, and you’ll be able to reach outward to appreciate the individuality of your team members, fostering even greater collaboration among them. You’re always a work in progress; so is your team. Grow together!

2) Navigate the inevitable power dynamics.

Power dynamics exist wherever humans gather. They’re not inherently bad; they can actually help us organize, problem-solve, and figure out who is genuinely best in which roles. They can also be leveraged to do great good! So, take a nice, hard look at your organization’s dynamics; knowing how to navigate them helps you create the inclusive, transformative environment that lets your team thrive.

3) Create inclusive practices.

Celina calls this the praxis of humanization – of moving from theory to the actual practice of humanizing your workplace. You’ve seen plenty written about inclusivity, including in this newsletter. The reality is that many businesses tout inclusivity and hold up its trappings but often have no meaningful metrics, follow-through, or buy-in from the C-suite. Yet, from morale to the innovation boosts diverse perspectives bring, the benefits are bountiful. The practical ROI question is: how much talent have you missed by excluding certain groups of people from your organization?

4) Cultivate emotional intelligence.

Re-read the very first line of this article. Then consider this: we ALL carry baggage. Developing your empathy and other forms of EQ allows you to see when people are dealing with a personal trauma, extra pressure, or just having a bad day. Shining EQ on yourself is important in developing your authentic leadership, too – when leaders don’t unpack their own baggage, they often cast it upon their teams. Those consequences are very real; last week’s podcast interview on law enforcement leadership pointed out that nearly all police chiefs bring major baggage to the job stemming from buried traumas experienced in their rookie days…which then contribute to some of the negative issues police departments are facing.

These are just a start. Celina has many more tips and personal examples in her book, Can You Hear Me Now? (available in hardback at https://amzn.to/494KzO9, paperback at https://amzn.to/49jrJmz, and audiobook at https://amzn.to/47QhWDm), and in our podcast with her.

The importance of humanization in leadership can’t be overstated. At work, an inclusive and transformative environment is essential in today’s professional and societal settings, especially if you want to attract and retain top talent. By implementing these practices, you can significantly enhance your leadership skills and bring about positive changes in both your personal and professional lives.

This article was adapted by Dan Mushalko from the Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future podcast episode Can You Hear Her Now? with guest Celina Caesar-Chavannes.

 

Thank you for reading Innovative Leadership Insights, where we bring you thought leaders and innovative ideas on leadership topics each week.

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Ready to measure your leadership skills? Complete your complimentary assessment through the Innovative Leadership Institute. Learn the 7 leadership skills required to succeed during disruption and innovation.

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You’ve Got a Lot of Nerve! A Discussion with Women Who Went First With Two University Presidents

Forging new territory is always hard. Forging it as a leader is even harder: your team, stakeholders, and critics are all watching you.

Now, imagine you are in new territory! For women entering the still-heavily male-dominated C-suite ranks, scrutiny and pressure are extra intense. Any stumble prompts mutterings of “What do you expect with a woman?”

Dr. Martha Piper, the first female president of the University of British Columbia, and Dr. Indira Samarasekera, the first female president and former vice-chancellor of the University of Alberta, share their experience on the podcast It Takes Nerve. This episode was produced in partnership with the International Leadership Association as part of their 25th Annual Global Conference held in October 2023. Dan Mushalko, ILI Executive Producer, shared this article as a companion to the podcast. 

Link to the entire interview:

Listen to the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future via Apple PodcastsTuneInSpotifyAmazon MusicAudibleiHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

You’ve Got a Lot of Nerve! (And That’s a Good Thing)

Our guests in this week’s podcast heard that kind of feedback. Martha Piper (University of British Columbia) and Indira Samarasekera (University of Alberta) learned to navigate such resistance and obstacles as the first female presidents of their respective universities. Those lessons can benefit all innovative leaders!

The Key:

It takes nerve, grit, and grace.

Nerve and Grit

These are two sides of the same coin, whose currency is determination. We all face obstacles, especially when we try to make an impact. When those setbacks happen, focusing even more sharply on your goal is important. It’s all too easy to be blinded by the emotions of the situation, but remembering the importance of your goal helps you see that your work is bigger than you. That can energize you to move forward. Staying on target despite disruptions, simple stumbles, or outright attacks is nerve in action. Your authenticity, courage, resilience, and personal experience all help fuel your innate grit. And the more you exercise your grit, the stronger it becomes.

Grace

There’s a myth that grit and grace are mutually exclusive – that graceful leadership is synonymous with weakness. That myth arose from outdated machismo in the executive gym. In reality, losing your temper is far easier than to muster the strength to maintain grace under fire. The ability to retain your internal balance: to express gratitude to your team, to see the opportunities in apparent failures, and to forgive; all these elements of grace create loyalty, authenticity, and true problem-solving. In short, grace makes your leadership stronger.

Upholding Principles

Here’s where utilizing your nerve and grit comes into play at each leadership level. When you’re in the spotlight, the temptation to cave under external pressures can be substantial. But truly effective leaders don’t lose sight of their values; that’s a significant factor in their long-term success. Hold on to your principles, filtering your decisions through that lens. Whether you bend to external pressure or not, you’ll face criticism and backlash – so you might as well stay true to your principles regardless. When your team sees this, it has the added benefit of boosting your authenticity and enhancing their trust.

Doctors Samarasekera and Piper delve into more detail in this week’s podcast, and add many examples from their own lives in their new book Nerve: Two Women Who Went First.

 

Thank you for reading Innovative Leadership Insights, where we bring you thought leaders and innovative ideas on leadership topics each week.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Ready to measure your leadership skills? Complete your complimentary assessment through the Innovative Leadership Institute. Learn the 7 leadership skills required to succeed during disruption and innovation.

Check out the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future on your favorite podcast platform, including Apple PodcastsTuneInSpotifyAmazon MusicAudibleiHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

PRESS RELEASE: Insightful New Book “Innovative Leadership & Followership in the Age of AI” Updates Leadership in the Digital Era

In an era where technology is driving the need for transformation at an unprecedented pace, traditional leadership models demand a profound evolution.

Innovative Leadership & Followership in the Age of AI: A Guide to Creating Your Future as Leader, Follower, and AI Ally is the latest addition to the renowned Innovative Leadership series. Authored by a team of experts in the field, this book is poised to revolutionize how leaders and followers navigate the dynamic landscape of leadership in the age of artificial intelligence.

 

Key Highlights of Innovative Leadership & Followership in the Age of AI include:

• Leadership Skills for the Future: Readers will gain access to practical tools, knowledge, and strategies that empower them to take their leadership skills to the next level and co-create the future.
• Technological Synergy: The book illuminates how leaders can effectively collaborate with intelligent systems to make informed and ethical decisions, embracing the full potential of AI.
• The New Followership: Leaders can strengthen their relationship with their followers by understanding the dynamics between leadership and followership.
• Ethical Implications: Leaders are equipped to navigate the complex ethical considerations of leading in an AI-driven world, addressing several issues, including algorithmic bias issues and hallucinations.

 

Authored by Maureen Metcalf, M.B.A., Erin S. Barry, M.S., Dan Mushalko, Devon Mushalko, and Neil E. Grunberg, Ph.D., contributing author and forward by Neil Sahota, CEO of ACSI, Labs, United Nations (UN) AI Advisor, IBM Master Inventor, and author of Own the A.I. Revolution. “Innovative Leadership & Followership in the Age of AI”, along with contributions from Michael Morrow-Fox, M.B.A., ED.S., is now available for purchase at major book retailers, both online and in stores.

 

Read the full press release for Innovative Leadership & Followership in the Age of AI here.

Available for purchase at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Coming soon to Audible.

Leadership Myths & the War on Truth.

Paul Gibbons, thought leader and futurist on behavioral science, culture, leadership, and the future of work, shares this article as a companion to his podcast Leadership Myths & the War on Truth

 

Listen to the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future via Apple PodcastsTuneIn, Spotify, Amazon Music, AudibleiHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

Change is painful, not just emotionally or metaphorically, but neurobiologically according to authors David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz — two credentialled neuroscientists. They say, “Change is pain. Organizational change is unexpectedly difficult because it provokes sensations of physiological discomfort.”

Moreover, they add that the inevitable pain of change is a “hardwired” function of the human nervous system and that “brains hate change.”

The narrative that change is hard is deeply interwoven into change management and leadership. You probably believe that because that is what is taught in every course on change. Moreover, it jibes with our intuition — we remember difficult life changes.

Neuroscience, we now hear, backs our intuitions up. Whew! There is a satisfying “click” when our intuition and new inputs accord.

The critical thinker double-checks their intuition, knowing that our minds are susceptible to priming and other biases. When we encounter the idea that brains hate change, priming guides our memory toward painful examples, like the breakup, the unfamiliar new school, or pulling up stakes and moving to a new city.

One cognitive bias, the positive-negative asymmetry effect, makes this worse. The psychological effects of negative events tend to outweigh those of positive events. We remember the breakup, the downsized job, and the stranger in the new school events much more saliently than a sunset walk with a loved one.

Business gurus are also adept at emotive metaphor — that is how they become gurus. “Brains hate change” is a metaphor because brains, as entities, do not “hate” anything. The brain itself feels no pain — there are no nociceptors in neural tissue (there are in the scalp, of course).

“Hate” is a narrative, and narratives are “added” to physiological sensations as a sense-making tool. The physiological experience of a roller-coaster ride is similar in a person who finds it thrilling (one narrative) and a person who is scared to death (a different narrative).

While this may seem hair-splitting, it matters because we have considerable power over narratives but considerably less over neurochemistry. While certain parts of the brain are activated when shown an image of a jilting ex-lover, those same parts (the putamen and insular cortex) share “circuitry” (another metaphor) with the “love circuit.” When “triggered” (another metaphor), we can create a hate narrative or another (say forgiveness or gratitude).

(This brief excerpt was from Chapter X of Change Myths: The Professional’s Guide to Separating Sense from Nonsense)

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Paul Gibbons was most recently a partner at IBM Consulting — a thought leader and futurist on behavioral science, culture, leadership, and the future of work. He previously advised PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), KPMG, and Deloitte on talent, culture, and leadership. He previously authored five books, most prominently The Science of Organizational Change and Impact, the first two books in the Leading Change in the Digital Age series. Those books birthed the conversation about change mythology. The first volume of his Humanizing Business series, The Spirituality of Work and Leadership, was published in 2021.

 

Thank you for reading Innovative Leadership Insights, where we bring you thought leaders and innovative ideas on leadership topics each week.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Ready to measure your leadership skills? Complete your complimentary assessment through the Innovative Leadership Institute. Learn the 7 leadership skills required to succeed during disruption and innovation.

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The Vulnerable Leader Equation

Jacob Morgan, author of Leading with Vulnerability: Unlock Your Greatest Superpower to Transform Yourself, Your Team, and Your Organization shares this article as a companion to his podcast The Strength of Vulnerability.  

Listen to the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future via Apple PodcastsTuneIn, Spotify, Amazon Music, AudibleiHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

My parents relocated to the United States from The Republic of Georgia, which was a part of the former U.S.S.R. They both fled at the same time because they didn’t feel safe or free, but they didn’t actually meet until they both arrived in Italy. My grandmother actually introduced the two of them! From Italy, they ended up in Australia and then in America.

My dad was obsessed with the “American Dream.” He changed his last name to “Morgan” to sound more American because nobody was able to pronounce his real last name, Mamisashvili, over company loudspeakers. 

He moved to the United States first to set up a life before my mom and I joined him from Australia. For several years my mom and dad communicated with each other by sending letters in the mail. He learned to speak English by watching the Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin shows with an English-to-Russian translation dictionary. He would spend hours each day looking in the mirror and trying to mouth out English words properly while he lived in low-income housing in New Jersey. 

He just retired from the corporate world after working for decades as an aerospace engineer, where he commuted an hour and a half to and from work each day (during Covid he worked from home). My dad still sometimes makes the commute just to play soccer with some of his co-workers; he’s 73. My mom is one of the top marriage and family therapists in Los Angeles, and they live 15 minutes away from me.

When you’re surviving like my family was, there is no room for weakness. You have to be strong and tough. My mom has always been more open and encouraging of vulnerability and emotion, but ultimately I grew up watching and emulating my dad, who doesn’t believe in a trophy for a second place. I remember one time, after a soccer tournament, my dad and I drove to the coach’s house to pick something up. I must have been around ten years old. We knocked on the coach’s door, and he handed me and my dad a trophy. My dad looked at the coach and said, “What is this trophy for, they came in last place?” The coach said that they were giving participation trophies so kids wouldn’t feel left out. My dad chuckled and said, “That’s bull****; you can keep the trophy,” and we got in the car and left. This was an important life lesson for me, and it taught me the importance and value of hard work, life doesn’t give participation trophies and it doesn’t care about your problems.  

My dad always told me that the world is a jungle and that as a man you always need to be strong and highly competent. Never show weakness under any circumstance, nobody cares about your problems so don’t share them, and always be good at what you do, or more specifically, try to be the best at what you do. 

That’s how I lived my entire adult life until a few years ago when I had a series of panic attacks.

Like you, I had heard of vulnerability and had an idea of what it was, but was it really that simple? I felt like most of what I was reading and seeing made it sound like if you just share your weaknesses and challenges then your problems will go away. Perhaps that’s a decent solution in your personal life but what about at work which has a completely different dynamic? At work you have hierarchy, employees, customers, deadlines, a boss, and the issue of money. And what if you’re a leader who is actually responsible for the lives of other people and the fiscal side of a business?

After interviewing more than 100 CEOs and conducting a survey of 14,000 employees in partnership with DDI, it became clear that vulnerability for leaders is not the same as it is for everyone else.

On August 20, 1991 Hollis Harris, then CEO of the struggling Continental Airlines, sent out a memo to his 42,000 employees. He acknowledged that the company was facing challenges and didn’t share that he had a way forward to turn things around. He ended the memo by telling his people that the best thing they could do was pray for the future of the company.

That was vulnerable, but where was the leadership?

If Hollis was a junior employee who worked in accounting, then those statements would have had minimal impact. Some employees may have taken notice, maybe some would have taken him out to lunch to ask him why he’s having a bad day, and he would have received some words of encouragement and support from his leader and life would have moved on. When you’re a leader the things you say and do carry more weight and have more impact.

Another such leader is Fleetwood Grobler, the President & CEO, Sasol Limited, a South African energy and chemical company with over 28,000 employees. When he took over as CEO the company was $13 billion in debt and was about to be taken over by the banks. He too had to address his employees but his message was different. He acknowledged the challenges of the business and admitted that he didn’t know the exact path forward. But, he said he has a vision of what the business can become and he believed in the talent of the people who worked there. He said that together they can rebuild trust amongst their customers and employees and if they work together to come up with a plan to achieve his vision, that they would be able to turn the business around…and that’s exactly what they did.

Fleetwood was vulnerable, but he added leadership.

A vulnerable leader is a leader who intentionally opens themselves up to the potential of emotional harm while taking action (when possible) to create a positive outcome.

To be a vulnerable leader you need two things, vulnerability and leadership. I call this The Vulnerable Leader Equation:

Too often we use vulnerability as a way to justify poor performance but the best leaders are able to bring together both competence and connection…leadership and vulnerability.

If you want to learn how to do that then check out my new book, Leading with Vulnerability: Unlock Your Greatest Superpower to Transform Yourself, Your Team, and Your Organization.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

After graduating with honors in business management economics and psychology from the University of California Santa Cruz, Jacob was excited to join the corporate world. At his first job he was told that he’d be traveling the country, meeting with executives and entrepreneurs, and doing all sorts of exciting work. A few months in, he was stuck doing data entry, cold calling, and PowerPoint presentations. One day the CEO came out of his nice corner office, handed Jacob a $10 bill and said, “I’m late for a meeting, go grab me a cup of coffee, and get something for yourself as well.” That was the last corporate job he ever had.

Today, Jacob Morgan is a trained futurist and one of the world’s leading authorities on leadership, the future of work, and employee experience. He speaks in front of tens of thousands of people each year and his content is seen over a million times a year. Jacob is the best-selling author of five books: Leading With Vulnerability (Wiley, 2024), The Future Leader (Wiley, 2020) The Employee Experience Advantage (Wiley, 2017), The Future of Work (Wiley, 2014), and The Collaborative Organization (McGraw Hill, 2012). He speaks at over 50 conferences a year including TED Academy which is one of the largest TED events in the world. In addition, Jacob provides advisory and thought leadership services to various organizations around the world.

 

Thank you for reading Innovative Leadership Insights, where we bring you thought leaders and innovative ideas on leadership topics each week.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Ready to measure your leadership skills? Complete your complimentary assessment through the Innovative Leadership Institute. Learn the 7 leadership skills required to succeed during disruption and innovation.

Check out the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future on your favorite podcast platform, including Apple PodcastsTuneInSpotify, Amazon Music, AudibleiHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

Integral Transformative Practice: Building The Resilience Every Leader Needs

Christina Grote, board chair of ITP International, and Pam Kramer, president of ITP International share this article as a companion to their podcast ITP: Building the Resilience Every Leader Needs

Podcast intro from “Faux Mo:” and ILI AI experiment

Link to the entire interview:

Listen to the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future via Apple PodcastsTuneInStitcherSpotify, Amazon Music, AudibleiHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

Many people feel the need to grow deep in their bones. We feel a longing to become deeper, fuller expressions of who we are. We may feel a calling toward a greater life, but don’t know what path to take. We may even feel guilty about taking too much time for ourselves. Perhaps we don’t know how to move forward with so many other important things to attend to—families, jobs, the routine maintenance that life requires. Integral Transformative Practice (ITP) was created in response to this need, this longing. Human potential pioneers and ITP co-founders George Leonard and Michael Murphy believed that the urge to grow and to self-surpass moves through both us and through the world, and that our health and the health of our world are deeply intertwined. The urge that powers our desire to develop and the universe’s evolutionary destiny are one and the same.

At the heart of ITP is the assertion that “we live only a part of the life we are given,” put forward by co-founder Michael Murphy in his magnum opus, The Future of the Body. Murphy points out that each of us can do far more and be far more than our upbringing and our culture have led us to believe. We are not the limited beings that the world tells us we are. ITP celebrates our gifts—our own unique genius—and provides not only a pathway to discover and use these gifts for our own growth, but also offers encouragement to contribute those gifts for the good of the whole.

Rooted in both Eastern and Western wisdom traditions, ITP is a long-term program for realizing the fullest potentials of body, mind, heart, and soul—a comprehensive set of rich practices that set the stage for whole-being transformation as well as positive social change. As we bring these four aspects of ourselves into harmony with dedicated practice using this “integral” or integrative approach, we gain access to our inner resources to progress to a new level of life, to be a fuller expression of who we are now and who we can become. Ultimately, we see our urge to grow and become whole—the energy that pulls us onward toward our fullest potentials—as a manifestation of the power of love. The spark of the divine, or source of it all, is waking up in us and through us.

Integral Transformative Practice holds a positive vision for humankind. With this hopeful vision comes a practice for living—balanced and resilient—in our times, a path that develops and integrates our many-sided nature, pointing us toward the realization of our greater capacities. Based on a foundation of love, ITP can assist us as we move forward into a greater life. The worldview of ITP draws from the wisdom traditions of the past as well as knowledge gained from scientific discoveries and inner research of the human psyche. This worldview offers a greater context for our lives, one of exploration and adventure. Humankind is seen as part of a universal evolutionary unfolding, and we each play our unique part in that unfolding. We can experience the joy of being fully ourselves and fully connected to the cosmic movement of which we are an integral part. Who we are and what we do matters!

Over the three decades since the inception of ITP, people from all over the world have taken up the practice and have shared their experiences with us. We often hear people describe transformations of both their outer and inner being. For many, the primary benefit is a greater sense of well-being through the balance and integration that the practice brings. People become more grounded—indeed, more relaxed and joyful—and able to more gracefully adapt to changing times.

ITP International public programs are designed to impart and reinforce integral practices for practitioners and leaders from all walks of life. Our workshops feature ways to bring forth the fullest expression of our individual strengths into everyday life and the workplace, especially when challenged and under duress. Through body-based, mindful practices such as balancing and centering, and blending (seeing the world from another’s point of view) leaders can navigate more successfully in connecting with others. The leadership qualities of presence, resilience and calm that we focus on in our trainings, pave the way for a harmonious, effective and enlivening work space.

Research is a key pillar of ITP, as the practice was created to evolve over time, making adjustments along the way to ensure efficacy and freshness. ITP has been the subject of research by the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) and more recently by researchers at Stanford University. The IONS study tracked practitioners for a year and found that the practice of ITP positively impacted overall health and well-being. Their results “suggest that involvement in ITP may lead to greater self-transcendence, greater psychological well-being, and in turn, improved physical health.” As one’s body, mind, heart, and soul become aligned and aimed toward positive transformation, a coherence between these aspects of the self develops, which seems to be a powerful factor in the results observed.

With a simple roadmap and an evolutionary vision, ITP orients us toward the realization of our fullest potentials and connects that transformation to a purpose that is greater than ourselves. Our existence is far stranger and more magical than we may realize. The door is open. We invite you to join us on this ultimate adventure.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

Christina Grote is the board chair of ITP International and has been a practitioner of Integral Transformative Practice since 2003. She is a licensed massage therapist and her interest in natural healing led her to explore ITP and include it in her work. She founded ITP Columbus in 2004, which continued for many years. She has designed and taught ITP workshops and planned numerous conferences with longtime friend, collaborator, and ITPI president Pamela Kramer. Christina lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her husband Jim.

Pamela Kramer is President of ITP International, a nonprofit organization that stewards ITP and the work of its founders, George Leonard and Michael Murphy. Pam is an ITP Mastery teacher, is on the faculty of Esalen Institute, and presents workshops at venues in the US and abroad. She is engaged in training ITP teachers, forming ITP groups, and bringing integral principles and practices to the workplace. Pam is an executive coach and consults with organizations and their leaders in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Christina and Pamela’s new book Living an Extraordinary Life: The Magic of Integral Transformative Practice is available now.

 

Thank you for reading the Innovative Leadership Newsletter brought to you by the Innovative Leadership Institute, where we bring you thought leaders and innovative ideas on leadership topics each week.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Ready to measure your leadership skills? Complete your complimentary assessment through the Innovative Leadership Institute. Learn the 7 leadership skills required to succeed during disruption and innovation.

Check out the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership, Co-Creating Our Future via Apple PodcastsTuneInStitcherSpotify, Amazon Music, AudibleiHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Innovative Health Care Leadership

The article was published in an Appendix to the recently released Innovative Leadership in Health Care book by Maureen Metcalf of Innovative Leadership Institute and Erin S. Barry, M.S; Dukagjin M. Blajak, M.D., Ph.D.; Suzanna Fitzpatrick, DNP; Michael Morrow-Fox, M.B.A., Ed. S.; and Neil E. Grunberg, Ph. D.  It provides healthcare workers with frameworks and tools based on the most current research in leadership, psychology, neuroscience, and physiology to help them update or innovate how they lead and build the practices necessary to continue to update their leadership skills. It is provided as a companion to the podcast with Eric Douglas Keene on Diversity Recruiting: Changes and Retention.

I have strong memories of an eye-opening conversation I had with some friends when I began work in a suburban hospital.  I met my friend and his wife for a snack at the hospital cafeteria when they visited for his routine physical.  I teased him about how nice he was dressed.  He looked at his wife and then back at me.  He smiled as he replied, “We have to dress up when we go to this hospital,” he said.  “Otherwise, the security staff wants to escort us to our physician’s office.”  After that conversation, I noticed several instances of African American patients, families, and staff receiving ‘special help’ from the hospital security staff.  I was taken aback at both the hospital’s racist institutional behavior and my complete obliviousness to the racism.

This section is about innovative leadership for JEDI.  Innovative leadership for JEDI refers not to STAR WARS mind control techniques, but the other JEDI—[Social] Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.  Innovative leadership for JEDI is the ability to impact individuals, teams, and systems to create a fair and engaging health care organization. For patients.  For families.  For health care workers. Of all backgrounds, genders, colors, and beliefs. The Innovative Leadership JEDI section is divided into three subsections.  Bias and health care, the health care crisis resulting from bias, and a pathway for leaders to address the JEDI health care crisis in their organizations.

Bias and Health Care

Our experiences are that most health care organizations and most health care leaders try to create a welcoming JEDI environment.  Most health care organizations and leaders truly value the principles of JEDI.  Research and experience, however, reveals too many health care organizations that are unwelcoming and un-inclusive.  In the absence of malice, how does a health care organization create an unwelcoming and un-inclusive environment? We submit the answer may lie in cognitive biases that allow organizations and leaders to believe a problem exists, but… “It’s not me and not us.”

Emily Pronin notes, “Human judgment and decision making is distorted by an array of cognitive, perceptual and motivational biases.” Most health care professionals receive training in statistical practices aimed at eliminating biases in clinical practice.  Pronin goes on to describe a phenomenon termed blindspot bias writing, “Recent evidence suggests that people tend to recognize (and even overestimate) the operation of bias in human judgment – except when that bias is their own.”

Banaji and Greenwald have further described the blindspot bias as a bias people can readily see in others but have great difficulty seeing in themselves.  Blindspot biases manifest in statements like, “I know there is a lot of racial prejudice in the world, but I don’t see color, only people,” or, “I know most people that don’t understand cultural norms can be offensive, but I understand respect, so I am never offensive in any culture.” When someone is aware that a phenomenon regularly exists in others but denies the possibility that it could exist in them, a blindspot bias may be the reason for their confidence. In the health care world, it is often misguided confidence that may dehumanize and disenfranchise others.

In addition to the blindspot bias, health care leaders can suffer from implicit biases. Harvard University’s Project Implicit describes implicit biases as, “attitudes and beliefs that people may be unwilling or unable to report.”  Project Implicit provides the example of an implicit bias as, “You may believe that women and men should be equally associated with science, but your automatic associations could show that you (like many others) associate men with science more than you associate women with science.”

Mission statements and Diversity Departments in health care organizations echo a call to deliver the highest possible care and adherence to the value principles of JEDI.  This in contrast to the many patients, families, employees, and communities suffering consequences of social injustice, inequity, lack of diversity, and un-inclusiveness. The combination of blindspot and implicit biases create a JEDI crisis in our health care systems.  A crisis that hides in plain view through a cloak of “not me, not us” beliefs.

The Tale of a JEDI Health Care Crisis

The evidence on JEDI and health care delivery highlights systemic failures on almost every level.  Below are a few health care statistics illustrating the breakdown of principles of JEDI for our patients, their families, and our employees:

  • During the first ten months of the Covid-19 crisis, U.S. data from the COVID Racial Data Tracker showed mortality rates 150% higher for African Americans, 135% higher for Indigenous American People, and 125% for Hispanic Americans than for White Americans. Bassett and colleagues reported that African Americans between the ages of 35 and 44 had nine times higher mortality rates than their White American counterparts.
  • Marcella Nunez-Smith and colleagues found nearly one in three Black physicians, nearly one in four Asian physicians, and one in five Hispanic/Latino physicians have left at least one job due to discriminatory practices.
  • Dickman and colleagues note the top one percent of affluent males live on average 15 years longer than the lowest one percent of poor males. Low-income families are in poor health at rates 15 percent higher than their affluent American counterparts.
  • Using U.S. Census Data, The Center for American Progress reports women in the workforce earn $.77 for every dollar their male counterparts earn. Women are often pigeonholed into “pink-collar” jobs, which typically pay less. Forty-three percent of the women employed in the United States are clustered in just 20 occupational categories, of which the average annual median earnings is less than $29,000.
  • The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reports that female physicians make up only 34 percent of all U. S. physicians.
  • More than 25 percent of African American women and nearly 25 percent of Hispanic American women live in poverty. Elderly women have poverty rates over double those of elderly men.
  • The Center for American Progress reports more than 10 percent of African Americans and more than 16 percent of Hispanic Americans are uninsured compared to 5.9 percent of White Americans.
  • African American adults over age 20 suffer from hypertension at the rate of 42 percent compared to 29 percent for White American adults.
  • In a survey of over 27,000 transgender respondents, Herman and colleagues reported, “In the year prior to completing the survey, one-third (33%) of those who saw a health care provider had at least one negative experience related to being transgender, such as being verbally harassed or refused treatment because of their gender identity.”
  • A survey of over 40,000 LGBTQ Americans aged 13 to 24 by The Trevor Project found almost half of the respondents engaged in self-harm. And 40 percent have “seriously considered” attempting suicide—in just the past year.
  • Ronald Wyatt reports, “The total cost of racial/ethnic disparities in 2009 was approximately $82 billion—$60 billion in excess healthcare costs and $22 billion in lost productivity. The economic burden of these health disparities in the US is projected to increase to $126 billion in 2020 and to $353 billion in 2050 if the disparities remain unchanged.”

JEDI Innovative Health Care Leadership Action

Reading the statistics above and the myriad of statics available, we find it hard to deny a systemic failure of the health care delivery system and our health care organizations.  How did it get this bad when we have so many well-intended and highly skilled leaders?  Blindspot and implicit biases can cause inaction in an otherwise effective leadership team.  Leaders with blindspot and implicit biases do not disregard problems; they render problems moot through the belief, “not me, not us.”  We hope the shortlist of statistics above brings some awareness that “me/we” are both the health care problem and the solution.

Innovative health care leaders can change the course of social injustice, inequity, lack of diversity, and un-inclusion.  Using their influence, leaders can take an evidence-based approach to JEDI, learn/teach cultural competence, practice cultural humility, create support for diverse populations, and grow communities to change the course of this systemic failure.  We elaborate with some definitions and examples below.

Pfeffer and Sutton wrote, “A bold new way of thinking has taken the medical establishment by storm in the past decade: the idea that decisions in medical care should be based on the latest and best knowledge of what actually works.”  Pfeffer and Sutton went on to write while the idea of evidence-based care is almost uncontested, physicians only make evidence-based decisions 15 percent of the time.  This is certainly of concern for clinical decision-making, and it is an equal concern for changing the tide of systemic JEDI failures.

As leaders, we must ask, “How would someone with a blindspot or implicit bias know if women, minorities, or people of non-traditional identities are experiencing injustice, inequity, or un-inclusion?”  The answer is evidence.  Do job applicants with the names Julio and Jamal have the same employment opportunities as applicants with the names John and James? Do our women and minority workers make comparable wages to our white male workers? Do immigrant patients feel respected when receiving care?  Are our employees reflective of the community in which we reside?  We are uncertain without evidence. Without evidence, our instincts and experiences guide us; instincts and experiences which can be skewed by biases.

Innovative JEDI leaders (like you) are actively pursuing evidence that their organizations are socially just, equitable, appropriately diverse, and inclusive.  Evidence—accurate data that is analyzed and understood; confirms or denies the existence of JEDI.  If a leader does not have JEDI evidence, the “not me and not us” biases may predominate the institutional consciousness.

Cultural learning opportunities should be readily available in your organization. Cultural competence, the ability to recognize, appreciate, and interact successfully with people from other cultures, is essential for any healthcare professional.  In addition, Tervalon and Murray-Garcia observed, “Cultural humility incorporates a lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and self-critique, to redressing the power imbalances in the patient-physician dynamic, and to developing mutually beneficial and nonpaternalistic clinical and advocacy partnerships with communities on behalf of individuals and defined populations.”  Innovative leaders teach, support, and model cultural humility within their organizations.

We have had many conversations with health care human resource professionals observing, “We get minority candidates hired, we just can’t get them to stay.”  When diverse employees walk into a room with people who do not look like them, do not believe like them, may have preconceived negative ideas about people like them, it can be overwhelming.  Patients, their families, and employees need to feel the organization’s support, receive mentoring on the navigation of differences, and understand that their differences are vital for the community and organization’s strength.  Innovative leaders forge pathways of support for inclusion, mentorship, and engagement in their health care organizations.  Support groups, mentoring programs, organizational messages, and evidence gathering serve to support and retain diverse populations.

Innovative leaders look at the gaps in their communities and think about how to close those gaps.  In an article entitled, Physicians for Social Justice, Diversity and Equity: Take Action and Lead, Lubowitz and colleagues note, “Few orthopedic surgeons are minorities or female, and orthopedic surgery is not perceived to be an inclusive specialty. This is an obstacle to equitable diverse hiring.”  Despite the lack of diverse candidates in the profession, Lubowitz and colleagues passionately express the need to advocate, inspire, and continuously improve as a profession.

We agree. If there are gaps in finding physicians and other health care employees that are reflective of the community, start programs to recruit, train, and inspire the community.  Programs from elementary school to advanced educational grants can all serve to change a community.  Lubowitz and colleagues recommend, “In terms of minorities and women making a choice to pursue medicine and then orthopedic surgery as a desired medical specialty, we wield enormous impact and a most direct influence. We must consciously change our behavior and demonstrate that we are an inclusive medical specialty.”  Every innovative health care leader can demonstrate support for inclusion.

Most of us have experienced the patient that demands, “I’m sorry, but I don’t want a [Female, Jewish, Muslim, Gay, Old, Younge, Black, Hispanic, Other] physician.  This is my health, and I cannot afford to be politically correct.”  As if unsubstantiated biases are merely politeness.  Prejudice can be malicious hate or blindspot and implicit biases.  In any form, a lack of JEDI weakens the health care delivery system causing pain and suffering for the community.  Effective innovative leaders replace, “Not me, not us” with, “It could be me; it might be us” to ensure health care teams, organizations, and communities are just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive.

About the Author

Maureen Metcalf, Founder, CEO, and Board Chair of the Innovative Leadership Institute is a highly sought-after expert in anticipating and leveraging future business trends to transform organizations.  She has captured her thirty years of experience and success in an award-winning series of books that are used by public, private, and academic organizations to align company-wide strategy, systems, and culture with innovative leadership techniques.  As a preeminent change agent, Ms. Metcalf has set strategic direction and then transformed her client organizations to deliver significant business results such as increased profitability, cycle time reduction, improved quality, and increased employee effectiveness. She and the Innovative Leadership Institute have developed and certified hundreds of leaders who amplify their organizations’ impact across the world.

Photo by Piron Guillaume on Unsplash

How to Improve Your Digital Body Language

Erica Dhawan as part of the World Business and Executive Coach Summit (WBECS) series shares this blog and companion podcast Digital Body Language: How to Build Trust and Connection.

No traditional expert in body language could have predicted that today our communication would be nearly entirely digital. Modern communication relies more than ever on how we say something rather than on what we say. That is our digital body language. When the internet came along, everyone was given a dais and a microphone, but no one was told how to use them. We all just picked things up as we went along. And the mistakes we’ve made along the way have had real consequences in business.

Misunderstandings are rampant in today’s workplaces. And while poor communication habits may feel inevitable with colleagues, it can often come at the cost of a team’s potential to succeed. Each of us has different expectations and instincts about whether we should send a text versus an email, when to call someone, how long to wait before we write someone back, and how to write a digital thank you or apology without seeming insincere. These seemingly small choices create impressions that can either enhance or wreck our closest relationships in the workplace (not to mention in our personal lives). Most of today’s boardrooms, workplaces, and classrooms minimize the conditions necessary to foster and augment clear communication, leading to widespread distrust, resentment, and frustration. There are more far-flung teams. There are fewer face-to-face interactions. There is virtually no body language to read (even today’s video meetings are scarce of eye contact or hand gestures).

But how can we stay connected when a screen divides us?

The answer lies in understanding the cues and signals that we are sending with our digital body language, and learning to tailor them to create clear, precise messages. Everything from our punctuation to our response times to our video backgrounds in a video call make up signals of trust, respect, and even confidence in our modern world.

By embedding a real understanding of digital body language into your workplace, communication processes can provide both the structure and the tools that support a silo-breaking, trust-filled environment. Here are some strategies from my new book Digital Body Language:

The Medium is the Message

All communication channels are not created equal. Knowing how and when to use each one depends on the context. Every channel brings with it a set of underlying meanings and subtexts, and knowing how to navigate this array of hidden meanings is a telltale mark of digital savviness and––ultimately––professionalism.  If you’re stuck, ask yourself: how important or urgent is your message? And to whom are you communicating? If so, what’s better––email, Slack, the phone, or a text?

Punctuation is the New Measure of Emotion

In our digital world, our screens filter out the non-verbal signals and cues that makeup 60 to 80 percent of face-to-face communication, forcing us to adapt the emotional logic of computers. We’re rendered cue-less.

By way of compensation, our communication style relies on punctuation for impact. In an effort to infuse our texts with tone and to clarify our feelings, we might use exclamation marks, capital letters, or ellipses, or else hit the “Like” or “Love” button on messages we receive. But instead of clarity, sometimes our reliance on punctuation and symbols can generate more confusion.

My advice when it comes to punctuation and symbols: use them judiciously.

Timing is the New Measure of Respect

Face-to-face interactions require that both parties be available at the same time. This is less possible today, with most of us scrambling to keep up with our various inboxes.

This often means that communication happens at a slower pace. And in a digitally-reliant world, the slightest pause between messages takes on an almost operatic meaning.

The thing is, most of the time a non-answer means nothing at all; the other person is simply tied up, doing something else, didn’t notice she’d gotten a text, had her volume turned off, or forgot where she put her phone.

If you’re worried about your digital tone, one way to clarify your feelings digitally is through the direct, easy-to-understand language of emojis. While emojis may be a learning curve for some, they can be critical to enhancing workplace efficiency and cultivating a corporate culture of optimal clarity.

A phone call is worth a thousand emails

With so many written platforms at our disposal, we can also get caught up in asking too many questions in email or group chat. Phone, video, or live meetings safeguard us from asking one tiny question after the next, instead requiring us to formulate the right questions. If you just received a vague or confusing text or email, don’t be afraid to ask to request a phone conversation or, if possible, a video or in-person meeting.

If it’s a sensitive dialogue, requesting a quick call shows you’re being thoughtful. Instead of making you look indecisive, waiting for a few beats before responding to questions shows the other person that you are listening and taking your work seriously.

With hardly any face-to-face interactions with colleagues or classmates these days, there is virtually no body language to read. Understanding digital body language is essential for those of us who are committed to making strong relationships and making a mark, even in the swell of conference calls, emails, texts, and Zoom engagements. Not only can it enhance your interpersonal interactions and liberate you from the fear and worry that digital communication inspires but it can give you a competitive advantage on your team grounded in transparency and empathy.

About the Author

Erica Dhawan is a leading expert on 21st-century teamwork and communication. She is an award-winning keynote speaker and the author of the new book Digital Body Language. Download her free guide to End Digital Burnout. Follow her on Linkedin.

Photo by Gabriel Benois on Unsplash

9 Essential Leadership Books to Empower and Inspire

Whether you’re a veteran executive or a budding entrepreneur, harnessing the power of leadership will provide you the tools to inspire and excel in the corporate world. From emotional intelligence to innovation to business strategy and execution, these essential books on leadership cover every angle of a complex topic. If you want to get ahead in business, there’s no better place to start.

  • Humble Leadership: The Power of Relationships, Openness, and Trust by Edgar H. Schein and Peter A. Schein

 In this excellent and sensitive book on leadership, a father and son duo combine to explore leadership through the prism of corporate culture. Edgar Schein has been an expert on company culture for years and has expanded into questions of leadership based on an understanding that culture and leadership are two sides of the same coin. Viewed this way, good leadership is reframed as an act that reshapes culture.

 In Innovative Leadership, Metcalf and Palmer combine high-caliber academic business theory with real-world case studies to provide a compelling yet fresh account of good leadership. Executives, managers, and anyone else seeking insights into leadership qualities will benefit from this account that links leadership with innovation and forcefully argues that one cannot exist without the other.

  • Primal Leadership: Unleashing the Power of Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis & Annie McKee

 Emotional intelligence was often neglected in the ruthless world of business – until it was popularized by this intelligent account of how emotional intelligence can be harnessed with real-world results in corporate environments. The leadership language of strategy and direction is just one element – Goleman et al demonstrate that the power of a true leader comes from their ability to inspire staff on an emotional level.

  • The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations by James Kouzes & Barry Posner

 “The Leadership Challenge explores the real-world outcomes that result from great leadership in business,” says Vanessa Ortiz, leadership blogger at Paper Fellows and Essay Help, “and it places leadership squarely at the top of a goal-oriented hierarchy.” This is a highly accessible text as the authors break leadership down into the “Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership”. These practices make the ultimate difference in the business of getting by or achieving extraordinary results.

  • The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz

Horowitz is one of the most respected entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and has demonstrated great acumen in running start-ups. So, he’s certainly someone who is worth listening to, and The Hard Thing About Hard Things is packed full of practical advice and sage-like wisdom so every reader will take a strong lesson away from his account. Anyone with entrepreneurial impulses will appreciate this book and with his trademark humor, it is an exceptionally readable account of what it takes to run a business.

  • If I Could Tell You Just One Thing by Richard Reed

By compiling the stories of 50 of the business world’s most diverse and remarkable voices in leadership, Reed creates an inspirational account of how to lead a business in any industry. As a charming addition, each profile is accompanied by an ink portrait of the character, ultimately creating an illuminating and enlightening account of each individual voice. Once combined, this book has something to offer every reader.

  • Disrupt-It-Yourself: Eight Ways to Hack a Better Business–Before the Competition Does by Simone Bhan Ahuja

Fear of disruption is one of the greatest enemies of innovation, and one of the major reasons why businesses are ultimately outstripped by their competitors in marketplaces. As an innovation expert, Bhan Ahuja is leading the fight against this fear of disruption and offers a combination of inspiring wisdom and practical advice to help you innovate and stay ahead of your competition.

  • Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek

You may remember Simon Sinek from his bestseller Leaders Eat Last and his newest offering is an equally fruitful read. In Start With Why, Sinek argues that true understanding is the foundation for a movement and people won’t back an idea without knowing “the why”. Sinek uses case studies to illuminate how you can articulate your reasoning and get everybody on board in corporate environments.

  • Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan

“Ultimately, a good leader gets results,” says David Scruggs, a business writer at Boomessays and State Of Writing, “and Bossidy and Charan are here to emphasize that there is no greater measure of leadership than execution.” The authors offer a road map to getting results in this unmissable business best-seller.

Few people are born with leadership skills -acknowledging what we must learn is the best way to grow as a leader. These must-read books will expand your knowledge of leadership and let you get ahead in business.

 

About the Author

Katherine Rundell is a writer at Academized and Write My Essay services. She honed her leadership skills by balancing her career with raising two children. Her further writing can be found at Type My Essay.

 

A Learning Mindset is the One “Killer App” We All Need

This blog is provided by Steve Terrell, President of Aspire Consulting as a companion to his podcast Learning Mindset for Leaders: Leveraging Experience to Accelerate Development.

In Learning Mindset for Leaders, I have attempted to distil some of the knowledge and insights I have gained over my 30+ year career in leadership development, including the deep research into global leadership development I undertook while earning my doctorate in the field. Through this research, I sought to understand how global leaders learned and developed the important competencies and skills they needed to become effective global leaders. The essence of the research results is what I now call Learning Mindset.

Learning Mindset is the “Killer App” of learning, growth, and development through experience. It is the master competency, the one competency to “rule them all.” It is especially important that global leaders have a Learning Mindset during challenging or difficult situations because those are the very experiences that offer significant risks of failure as well as opportunities for personal and organizational development.

Leaders with a Learning Mindset who encounter difficult challenges have a strong tendency to create value from the crucible of negative experiences. As a result, they create their own virtuous cycle of learning and performance, enabling them to learn more from their experiences, which in turn results in

their being more resilient and performing better in VUCA conditions. This leads to achievement of better results and reinforces the importance and value of the Learning Mindset.

A Learning Mindset is an attitude that predisposes you to be open to new experiences, to believe you can and will learn, and to intentionally grow and develop from your experience. The dimensions of a Learning Mindset form essential capabilities for global leadership and bear directly on global leaders’ efficacy in a crisis. Believing in one’s own learning and growth potential enables global leaders to face new challenges with confidence, tempered with humility. Openness to experience allows them to take in a wide variety of information and to process it with an appreciation of its potential value. Being motivated, willing, and desiring to learn focuses global leaders’ energies and attention on grasping new problems and sensing new possibilities. Curiosity about others urges global leaders to wonder how people in other cultures approach the pandemic, what they can learn from different points of view, and make new connections based on new insights. An attitude of discovery and exploration energizes global leaders to investigate the challenges presented by the coronavirus dilemma. Perhaps most important of all, global leaders with a Learning Mindset engage in experiences with an intention and willingness to gain something positive from every experience, including – and sometimes, especially – extremely difficult, thorny, and dangerous experiences.

When global leaders enact a Learning Mindset they are better able to envision and reach for stability beyond the volatility; create space to reduce uncertainty; understand and simplify the complexity; and eventually find clarity for their organizations amidst the ambiguity.

If you’d like to learn more about Learning Mindset, you can order the book Learning Mindset for Leaders: Leveraging Experience to Accelerate Development from Amazon here.

About the Author

Steve Terrell, EdD, is the President of Aspire Consulting, a management-consulting firm that specializes in developing leadership capabilities needed for success. Aspire helps clients Turn Vision into Reality, by defining the leadership capabilities needed to successfully execute the strategy, and by designing and implementing development solutions that build the required capabilities. Steve is a leading expert on global leadership, learning from experience, and Learning Mindset. His book Learning Mindset for Leaders: Leveraging Experience to Accelerate Development is a widely-used resource for leaders and practitioners who want to expand their ability to learn from experience.

 

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