Leading change is high stakes. Leadership in general is high
stakes. We don't spend a great deal of
time actually focusing on conversation and creating space
to engage in real conversation. And by that I mean we are
attending to getting below the surface level topic.
Hey everyone. My name is Henry Surya Virawan
and you're listening to the Technical Journal Podcast, the
show where I'll be bringing you the greatest technical leaders,
practitioners and thought leaders in the industry to
discuss about their journey, ideas and practices that we all
can learn and apply to build a highly performing technical team
and to make an impact in your personal work.
So let's dive into our journal. Hello everyone.
Welcome to the Techni Journal Podcast, the podcast where you
can learn about technical leadership and excellence from
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def slash tip or becoming a patron at techlygenal dot def
slash patron. My guest for today's episode is
Marcia Acker. Marcia is the author of Build
Your Model for Leading Change and the host of Defining Moments
of Leadership podcasts. In this episode, we discussed
building our own model for leadership and leading change.
Marcia first started by sharing the concept of a model and some
of the common challenges for organizations in making changes.
Then we discussed David Cantor's theories on structural dynamics
and functional awareness for understanding behavioral model,
which include the concepts of leadership, range, and
communicative competence. Marcia outlined what makes
communication so, so challenging and what we can do to achieve a
more effective communication with each other.
Towards the end, she shared the three different models that
leaders need to think about, which are Model for Leadership,
Model for a Living, and Model for Leading Change.
I hope you enjoy listening to this episode and learn insights
on how to understand and adjust your Leadership model that
eventually will allow you to lead successful change in your
organization. And if you enjoy listening to
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And I really, really appreciate it.
Let's now go to my conversation with Marsha.
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Hello guys, welcome back to another new episode of the
Technical Journal Podcast Today I have Marcia Acker here.
So she's gonna be discussing about making change, leading
change for leaders. So I'm so excited to have you in
the show, Marcia, looking forward for giving advice for
people for leading some changes in their organizations.
Thanks Henry. I'm excited to be here today.
Marcia, I always love to ask my guests to first share about
yourself, right? Maybe you can share some
highlights or any turning points in your career so that we all
can learn from your experience. Yeah, I would describe my career
journey as like part one and Part 2.
So I got my start. So I have two degrees in
software engineering. And so the first part of my
professional career was really on the ground with developers
and end users really trying to bridge the communication gap
between, you know, both of those groups of folks.
And so I have in my training, I think I had a really strong
training and process. I had a lot of orientation to
creating process, automating process, you know, a belief that
efficiency would happen if we could just define the process
and then improve the process. So I think I would describe sort
of the first half of my career as really passionate about
looking at ways to improve how we automate and communicate with
one another. But it was early in that sort of
first part of my career that I also was introduced to
facilitation skills. So I was working across many
groups. I would say they were often
politically divided groups of end users and trying to get them
to align on requirements or come to some alignment or agreement
on what they wanted to put into software.
And I stumbled upon facilitation skills and that really started
to shift my. I think that was one of my
turning points where I really started to see the value of
crafting spaces that people could talk with one another and
communicate with one another. And so I have a lot of passion
around facilitation. I wrote a book about it, but
that really set a part of my trajectory in the late 90s.
So around 9899, I was in a startup organization and we
began working with agile principals.
That was before we were calling it agile in the tech space, but
really started to be get and I saw things like pair programming
and user stories as a way I saw them as facilitation processes.
Like there were ways that we could start to change the focus
and not just be about looking at the process, but we could
actually begin to shift communication.
So that really set my trajectory to focus a bit more on
facilitation and left the startup and I went on to work in
a consulting firm and I had begun to shift over to the
process of change like really stepping back a bit from my
technical focus and really looking at how do we help
organizations change. And I ended up working with a
large organization on a huge change.
We were facilitating mostly the leadership team and it was
happening over the course of about a year and a half.
It was a very processed focused change.
I would say if I were to describe it to you today, I
would say my model for change at that time was very process
focused. If you define the process as it
is today, if you look to create what you want as a new process,
then people will get on board, right?
So I think that was a little bit of the the model for change at
that moment. And I noticed while I think the
change was relatively successful, they were able to
roll it out. One of what I noticed was
happening in the leadership team as they were trying to make
decisions, they reached a point where they just got stuck in the
conversation of what was going to change.
Primarily what I could tell you today is primarily because they
were so focused on process and at a point in that decision
making for the leadership team, it wasn't about the process
anymore. So many things were going to
change that they were going to make decisions, never going to
impact them personally, where their homes were located, where
their children were going to school, how connected they were
to extended family. That was happening at the
leadership level and it was happening for the people that
they were leading. And so all of a sudden, you
know, there was a really, there was a real human element to a
decision that needed to be made. But the process that we were
using to help them make decisions didn't really include
the human element. It was very process focused.
And so that was a moment in time.
I remember it very vividly. We were at a retreat and I was
like, we're just stuck. Like I I'm all out of
facilitation tricks and tools and techniques and I didn't
really know what to do. And so we ended up sort of
naming that to the group and asking them how they wanted to
work with it. But it was that moment that I
really can locate as a trajectory change for me because
my model at that moment was really missing the human
element. And the fact that we weren't
creating a space for people to talk about the impact of the
change, what they needed to consider or take into account
really then sort of pushed that topic off.
What I would say is it pushed it offline and it made it sort of
undiscussable and then it sort of held that leadership team in
a spin cycle for quite some time.
It was really difficult. So today in part two of my
career, I am an executive coach and a leadership team coach and
I really focus on the skills of conversation and communication.
So why is it important to even make communication something
that we focus on? So I would, I would say today I
have a model around leading change that really emphasizes
the core crux of our conversations and how really
everything that we want to accomplish kind of sit on the,
it's sort of like train tracks, like conversation is what
propels us forward or holds us back and the way we're engaging
with one another. So that would be sort of the
highlights I think, of my career journey.
Thank you for sharing your story.
I think it's really interesting, right?
Started from the software engineering background and then
went into facilitation by chance and also now working on making
changes. And you emphasize a lot about
communication and building conversations, right?
And I think you also have a podcast called Defining Moments
of Leadership. So one story that you mentioned
just now seems like 1 defining moment of leadership where you
know it missed the human elements.
So maybe if you can share a little bit more.
Why did you start with this podcast?
What kind of guest that you invited the show to share with
the audience? So maybe a little bit about your
podcast. Yeah, thank you.
The podcast emerged and I don't. I never set out to do a podcast
that wasn't that was not on my bucket list of things to do.
But I realized, so I do individual leadership coaching
and then I also work with leadership teams.
But it was during the pandemic and I started to realize there
was this theme or thread across leaders that I was working with
a couple of things. One is I would say it's this
moment where we go, all right, I still have more.
I thought I was done with that, but I'm realizing I still have
more work to do to grow my leadership.
So the moment of thinking, like thinking we're done and then
something happens and we realized, you know, we've got
more work to do. I think the other part was
there's something really beautiful in my opinion about
honestly, the honor of being in a one-on-one coaching engagement
with a leader. And I would notice they'd show
up in those conversations as real, authentic, you know,
really genuinely caring, wanted to, you know, had good
intentions. And then often times not
everyone, but some of them go out to their teams and then they
get feedback in three 60s or some other mechanism that says
they're controlling. And so I just kept thinking, why
can't that person that I'm talking to show up also at work?
And that was the moment because I'm like, well, they're there,
but there's something about the system or the team, maybe their
own story that they're telling themselves that has them show up
differently with me than they do when they're leading.
And so I really want it to start to normalize that.
Leadership is ongoing. The development of leadership is
ongoing. Should you choose to accept it?
It's ongoing. And I wanted to normalize the
real sort of dips in our life. You know those moments where it
feels like it gets really low or it's challenging?
Because I think that those are the moments where we actually on
board, new insights, new learning and something shifts or
changes for us. And coming out of those dips are
new thinking, new ways of leading.
We show up slightly differently. And so I just wanted to
normalize the messy mucky middle or the dip that happens.
And so on the podcast, I'm really clear about invite real
leaders who are on the front lines leading.
They're dealing with all the challenges that come with
leadership. I think leadership in and of
itself as a highstakes activity these days.
And the ask is when they come on that they share one of those
defining moments and what it was like for them, what it was like
to be in it, what they were thinking at the moment, but also
what's the learning or the lesson that they took away.
So how did that, in a sense, help them define what their
model for leadership look like? So that's a little bit of how
the podcast came to be. And yeah, and and what I look
for on the podcast. Yeah, sounds like a lot of
things we can learn, right, defining moments of leadership.
So I think when you become a leader, or even if you're not in
the leadership position, sometimes we are forced into a
certain moments in our career where you need to step up and
make decision, right? It's too big from the front.
So hopefully people can also learn from your podcast about
some leadership moments. So for today we are going to
talk a topic about leading change from your latest book,
Built Your model for Leading Change.
So the first thing is about the title itself.
So maybe my first question, what do you mean by building a model
for leading change? What do you define as a model
here? So a lot of the work, the
research actually comes from a gentleman by the name of David
Cantor. He was located in Boston at
Harvard and in the early 70s actually started to do quite a
lot of research around communication.
And through that research he developed a theory called
Structural dynamics and it's theory of Facetoface
communication. Part of his theory is that
everyone of us are essentially building models, and models are
the way that we look at the world, make sense of the world,
and then take action in the world.
When I encountered David's work a number of years ago, I was
really struck by the idea. So remember my background.
I'm deep in process. Like I have a real love for
process. And there is, you know, I had
been at that time introduced to a lot of models, models for
building software, models for trust, building models for how
we communicate. And at that time also models for
how to be in a a coach, a leadership coach, a systems
coach. So I was really fascinated by
this idea that, you know, it was sort of like, of course we're
building our own models, but I'd really never looked at it
through that lens. And I had bet a colleague at the
time and I remember saying to her, you know, you said this
about team coaching. And I've really heard this.
And so I was like, you know, there's what you're saying and
there's what someone else is saying.
And I want to know which one of those is right.
And she looked at me and she said, well, it's just a
different model. And she's like neither or right
or wrong, it's just a different model and it's based on
different thinking. And I thought, huh, that's
really fascinating. So what I'd say, you know about
the new book, building a model. So for me, it really is about
taking a stand. I'm wanting all of us to begin
to think about how do we lead change, how do we lead what's in
our model. You've heard me even today
describe years ago, you know, having more of what I would have
called a process lead model for change, whereas I have a much
more behavioral and communication model for change
now. And that's not to say that
either or right or wrong, but what's really happened for me
over the years, even as I described my career trajectory
for you, has been an ongoing process of getting really clear
for myself about what's in my model, how I go about doing it,
why I go about doing it. And if you go on to social
media, I think social media is a great place to see what I would
call model difference or even model clash for that matter.
Pick anybody on social media who asserts something, you're yeah,
you're laughing, but it's like they assert something and then
here come all the comments. Well, I see it differently or I
disagree. And so actually in those
conversations, what I would say is if we zoom out of them,
there's likely two or more people in that stream of of
conversation that actually have different models for how
something happens. And I think the value and the
benefit of being really clear about having a model and really
knowing what's in your model is that, you know, Henry, if you
and I engaged in a conversation, we could talk about, you know,
how do you lead change, how do I lead change.
And I could tell you, well, here's my focus and here's what
I'm trying to change. Here's how I believe that thing
changes. For me, it's communication and
and behavior. And here's what I do to help
people make that change and here's why I do what I do.
So all of a sudden and then you could, you know if you'd done
some model building work and done some reflection on that,
you could also say that. And then now we can have a
really effective, what I would call a cross model conversation
where we can name things, make sense of them and really engage
in a very healthy discourse even about what's that about without
needing to sort of beat the other down.
So I think there's a essence or a kind of quality of
conversation that comes from being really clear about what's
your model and it keeps us out of this kind of beating down of
someone else or making somebody else wrong and us right.
In summary, like I think that's really what the Viewbook is
about, about building your model.
Right. I think you are right.
So whether we realize it or not, whether we understand what kind
of model we have, we all have our own models, right?
And we tend to pick it up maybe from childhood, from school,
from our past experience, from our managers, right, whoever
that we listen to. I think we all have these models
and it could evolve over the time.
Sometimes we are not conscious that we do have this.
Sort of a model in our head that sometimes cause a bias.
And I think in your book you try to advocate people to actually
build our own personal models by also maybe understanding other
available models out there, right.
So I think I love the idea, but in the first thing I would like
to ask you, right, because your book eventually talks about
leading change. What do you think are some of
the common challenges for organizations to lead change?
Because I believe all organizations want to change.
All organizations want to improve, but what are some of
the common challenges you think from organizations making a
successful change? I think there are two big ones.
Probably the biggest one that I see is that we do not make a
broad generalized statement. So it's not to say that there
aren't you know, pockets somewhere out there.
So if you're working in an organization that you're like,
well that's not true here, but I think broad generalization in
Business Today. We don't spend a great deal of
time actually focusing on conversation and creating space
to engage in real conversation. And by that I mean we are
attending to getting below the surface level topic.
So there's so many organizations I go into and the larger they
are, the more prominent this behavior is, is that we create
time boxes for meetings, so. There are organizations that
will tell you, sorry, we only work in 30 minute increments or
you know, our meetings are time boxed to 50 minutes so that we
can, you know, have 5 minutes on the either end of an hour.
So I'm not saying that that's bad and I'm not saying that you
shouldn't have time boxes for your meetings and that you
shouldn't try to condense the amount of time that we're in
meetings. But I also think we're fatigued
of meetings and in the broad generalization.
And I think that's happening because we come to places where
we gather together and we do a whole lot of other things, but
communicating with one another isn't really what we're doing.
I think, you know, remember I shared, you know, sometimes I
see a different version of leaders and one-on-one coaching
than I see when they show up with their teams.
I think that's because we're just all full of assumptions,
biases, the facade that we feel like we have to play or put on.
And so we show up to these meetings and we throw a lot of
sentences around. We move shells around on the
table. We keep it out of very surface
level. We move fast.
We try to get things done, wrap it up and then move on.
And I think a lot of times if you find yourself walking away
from a meeting going, I don't think I really agree with that.
Or, you know, I really see it differently.
But I didn't feel like I had space to say it.
So now I'm saying it to my colleague in a chat channel or
I'm saying it to someone. Over lunch, we're now I'm kind
of griping or complaining about it rather than really having an
opportunity to stay at the meeting.
I think that is the crux of what I call Groundhog Day
conversations. So it's a little bit like a
signal or a flag. If you find yourself having the
same conversation over and over again in your team or at work, I
think chances are you're staying on the surface level and you're
not getting to the real conversation.
So I really think that one of our greatest challenges in
organizations is to have a way and a language for navigating
the interpersonal group dynamics that are happening as we are
trying to do big things like leading change is high stakes,
leadership in general is high stakes and then introducing new
ways of work or wanting something to be different, I
think is also high stakes. So I think we don't have a way.
To talk about how we're communicating and I don't think
we create this space to talk about it.
Thanks for emphasizing this thing about communication and
the space to create that great conversation, right.
Because, yeah, I believe many organizations when tackling
changes, they always comes from process, maybe introducing new
people right at the top, introducing processes, but
rarely also talk about the impact of the people or making
conversations so that every parties are listened to.
So I think thanks for emphasizing that.
So let's go to your model in the book, right.
You mentioned there are four models that people should think
about when they want to come up with their own personal model
for leading change. The four models are the
behavioral model, the model for leadership, model for living and
model for leading change itself at the end.
So maybe if we can go just a little bit one by one, right.
So the behavioral model, So why do you think it's very important
for us to understand about behavioral model and what
exactly is behavioral model for some people, maybe they are not
aware of this term? Yeah.
So behavioral model is what David Kanter would call our way
of looking at the way we are behaving with one another and a
lot of. What I talked about in the book
uses the theory of structural dynamics to do that.
So a way of looking at behavior is to look at the words that we
are saying when we are communicating with one another.
So looking at speech acts and the flow of those speech acts
and whether there are sort of multiple levels of our
communication, so the direction that we're studying in
communication, how we're relating to one another.
The things or the communication domains that we actually care
about and then David talks about sort of a force level is in our
behavior as childhood story. So what happened to us as we
were growing up that really influences our behavior.
So she hear me talk about leaders like they're different
in a oneonone than they are in a team.
A lot of that for all of us, myself included, will be how I
grew up and the stories. The old narratives that gets
laid down when I was younger about why I do what I do and
when I encounter someone else, how will I behave?
And then writing the new narrative that says actually,
you know, hey Marsha, you're not on the playground anymore, you
are an adult. This is not that same thing,
even though your brain might start to think it.
So looking at your behavioral model is having a language for
being able to talk about communication.
Being able to be aware of yourself in that communication,
but also being able to make sense of others.
And when I'm interacting with others, or even in a system or
an organization, how can we name the dynamics?
Have a morally neutral way of naming the dynamics.
So that gets that. Really thinking about your
behavioral model is partly do you have a language?
Do you have a model and a language for being able to look
at that in a neutral way? And then the other part is David
Cantor would call it functional selfawareness, but are you aware
of how you are behaving in the moment, the impact that you're
having on others and the difference between our intent,
which I think many of us have good intent, but we can also
have a negative impact. And so being able to take
responsibility for both our intent and our impact.
And so that behavioral model is. Growing yourself awareness to
the place where you're able to really be in command of yourself
when you're interacting with other people, right.
This is part of the book where I find it very, very insightful
and interesting, you know, understanding this model from
David Kanter, right. So I think when you mentioned
about intent and impact, sometimes we don't see it two
different things, right. We tend that we want to have a
good intent and creating good impact, but sometimes some
people interpret it differently because of the different models,
right. And you have mentioned a couple
of times about structural dynamics.
So I think this is also important, maybe we can't go
through all of them, but maybe high level, what is structural
dynamics and which part is your favorite from this structural
dynamics? Yeah, well it's based on David's
research of face to face communication and.
Without kind of all the background of how the theory
came to be, you know he talks about four levels of being able
to look at communication and of all the models around
communication that I have been introduced to or even aware of
my experience with sexual dynamics.
It is probably the most complete way of looking at the complexity
in some sense of the dynamics that are happening in
communication. So he talks about there being 4
levels. The first is the most visible,
and those are action modes. The 2nd is operating systems.
That's a bit about how the norms that we use to relate with one
another. Communication domains are the
language that we use that sort of indicates the things that we
care about or value, and the 4th level being childhood story.
And of all four of those, I think my most favorite one is
the action modes. Primarily because I think it's
easily accessible to people. You don't need to understand,
you know, a ton of the theory behind it and I think it can
have an impact just by getting started in that space.
So just as a really brief example, I would say all
communication, like even an hour dialogue back and forth today,
Henry, every sentence that we're saying can be.
Coded into one of four actions. So a move sets direction in the
conversation. So you've made several moves as
you've prompted me with questions, you know, where you
introduced the topic of the book that was a move, and then you've
moved us on to talk about the behavioral model.
So each of those are moves because they're taking our
conversation in a slightly different direction, right?
It's pointing to a different aspect or a different topic to
talk about. So moves are the first action.
The second does follow. So in many instances I am
following behind and supporting the direction.
If I were to make a counter move, I might say, you know,
let's talk about another model which would actually become the
third thing which is an oppose, an oppose offers correction in
the conversation. It pushes back and it says let's
not talk about the behavioral model.
I'd actually like to talk about the model for living next.
So that would be an oppose and a new move.
And then the 4th action is bystander and so bystanders, A
morally neutral comment about what's happening in the
conversation. So what the theory says is that
we need all four of those to be voiced and active in the
conversation in order for the conversation to be effective.
And yet, because we're humans in, you know, doing our human
dance in between one another a lot of times in teams.
Or with people that we work with on a regular basis, we can kind
of get stuck in certain patterns where we only use a couple of
those actions and we use the others less frequently.
And so when that happens, the key indicator will be having the
same conversation over and over again.
So if you start to notice in your team, you talk about one
thing one week and gosh darn, you know.
Two weeks later it's you're back talking about it again and
you're going wait a minute, I thought, I thought we settled
this two weeks ago, but it's resurfaced.
I think those are indicators that there's maybe something
missing in the conversation and if you're able to separate the
what we're talking about, so if you're able to, you and I are
talking about model building for the moment, that's our subject,
that's our what we're talking about.
But if we felt like we were getting stuck in the
conversation, it would be helpful to separate out the
topic. And actually start to look at
how so mentally that looks a bit for me like starting to step
back and go okay. So how am I showing up in this
conversation? Is it working right now?
Or, you know, I might be following a lot and do I need?
Is there something that I'm not saying or is there some way that
I might bring another action that might be needed in the
conversation? So I think action modes are my
most favorite because they're easy enough to get started with.
And I think they are helpful enough to make an impact for
both individuals and a team in terms of how you're noticing the
conversation play out. Right.
So yeah, I think the most important thing about this
action mode she mentions for for us, we have to try to balance
it, I guess, right. Not to be stuck just in one
mode, right, Either like following only or it's just
moving only, Right. Because we tend to have this
dynamics between our interactions with people, right?
So I think that's really, really great.
For me personally, my favorite is the childhood stories, right?
So knowing your old narrative and try to build your new
narrative. So I think that is very, very
interesting because sometimes our behaviors, even though we
are really unconscious about certain behavior, why it was
there. So maybe sometimes you could
relate it back to our childhood experience or trauma, right.
So I think that is really interesting for me.
So let's maybe move on for people who are interested about
this structural dynamics. Maybe we can put more resources
later on in the show notes. But moving on from this
behavioral model, you have this thing called functional
awareness. And there are two things that I
picked up from this part, which is about leadership range and
communicative competence, right? Yeah, this sounds really
interesting. Maybe if we can elaborate a
little bit more about these two terms.
Yeah, I say. All the time.
Mainly because I think I used to undervalue it myself.
So I think This is why I say it all the time.
Awareness precedes choice, precedes change.
So much about model building in general is about building
awareness, but particularly in the space of building a
behavioral model, the whole point of it is growing your
awareness. And that is the work to do,
because awareness is the thing that precedes choice.
So the more where I am, the more in the moment I can catch sight
of something and then make a different choice than the one
I'm making right now. And that is where change comes
from. So awareness precedes choice,
precedes change. So leadership range is for me
about what we were just taught. It has its roots and what we
were just talking about. So for some of us.
It'll be really natural for us to step forward in our
leadership. So I guess one thing to to note
is that I see leadership as a way of being and acting that's
actually available to everyone. Everyone from a three-year old
can demonstrate leadership. So I don't see it as positional,
although I do absolutely think there are people who hold
positional leadership be it in their role or their title or
something. But I think leadership is an act
is available to all of us. And there will be some of us who
just naturally, I would call it lead from the front.
So they set direction, they are energized.
They're just sort of known to be vision setters that comes
naturally to them. And so their work to do will be
also stepping back and creating space for others, you know, so
that they are leading from behind.
And to also consider what it might look like to lead
together. So I think there is leading from
the front. I think there is leading with
others and this idea of stepping back in my leadership range and
creating space or supporting other ideas or getting behind
other ideas. So I don't see leadership as
one-dimensional. I think there's multiple aspects
to it and you know, if you're really good at stepping forward.
Then you're going to have to stretch like your edge is going
to be likely creating space for others.
And how do you help rewire your mindset around that?
Because a lot of times if we lead from the front, naturally
we will think stories like. Well, it's my job or if I wasn't
doing that, then I wouldn't be contributing or I wouldn't be
helpful to the group. And so that some of the work to
do and growing your range as a leader.
So that's the first concept as leadership range is that I think
there's a value in all of that. We'll have one that we do
naturally, if you're someone who actually naturally steps back
and creates space for others. You're very quick to get behind
and support other ideas or ask questions or invite other
voices. Your work to do is likely going
to be to also be the one that points and makes them move or
sets direction in some way. So there's stretches I think for
all of us and there's this need to bring range so that we're
able to change something in the moment that isn't working.
And I think that takes a great deal of selfawareness, so.
Leadership range is that first component, Communicative
competence, which that word really is a tongue tire for me.
I've had to really work on it. But communicative competence is
really the you know, I use the framework of structural
dynamics, but do I have the muscle to bring the different
action mode when I need it, or to operate in a different
operating system or communication domain?
So am I able to be fluent? In the conversation given where
the conversation's at or what's needed in the conversation.
Thanks so much for explaining about this leadership range.
I like what you mentioned, right?
The range here refers to sometimes you have to lead from
the front, sometimes you have to step back and leading from
behind and it could be together as well, right, Collaboratively
working on a certain direction. So I think for us leaders, you
have to think about what kind of range that you want to expand
to, not just always up from the front leading and making
decisions, but sometimes you can support other people to grow as
leaders as well. So I really love that concept
and communicative competence I think is about coming back to
the structural dynamics thing, right?
Understanding these four different levels and the
variations inside them and trying to be able to use those
concepts and map it to your communication styles or other
communication styles, right? So maybe regarding
communication, right? And you may have experienced
this in your, you know, coaching as well.
Why do you think communications are so challenging, especially
in this modern world where I think we all are exposed to
different kind of models, different kind of opinions You
mentioned about social media, why communication is so
challenging and what steps we can do to make sure that we can
have effective communication with others?
I think there are two things that make communication
challenging. I've come to believe that this
was true for me along the way, but I've come to believe that we
don't see communication as something that we need to
develop or build. I think we see communication as
something we do all the time, every day, and that we're
already pretty good at it and there's really we can tell
ourselves all kinds of stories. I get things done.
I'm generally liked by others. You know, I get hired.
You know, people ask me to come back for more.
So I think it starts to form this story that, yeah, I don't
see you. I mean, I need some other tools
or I need some other processes. But I don't really know that
communication is really where I would focus my personal
development space or even our collective development.
So I think that we think we do communication really well.
George Bernard Shaw. He's an Irish playwright and he
has a quote that is probably my all time favorite quote and he
says the biggest challenge in communication is the illusion
that it has taken place and I think that is what happens a
lot. So I think those times where we
have Groundhog Day conversations or we keep coming back to
something or we're trying to make something happen and it
gets stuck and it's just not moving forward.
And it can feel difficult or vulnerable or scary to actually
slow down and surface what might be the real conversation.
Or we have a story that that would just take too much time
and we've got to keep moving. So instead of doing that, I
think what we do is we resort to processes, tools and techniques.
We go searching for a new model, or we go searching for a new
process, or we look for a new facilitation.
Process that would help a group solve this.
Or we go looking for how do I navigate conflict.
And we did ourselves multiple books on how to navigate
conflict. So I think all of those are
indicators that there's something broken in the
conversation in the communication piece.
But we don't see that as a place where we should do any sort of
development or skill building. And so we go out looking for
other things. And you know, I think that just
it gets us caught in this sort of endless spin loop.
Thanks so much for your explanation, Marcia.
So maybe let's move on to the second model of your model for
leading change, right, which is the model for leadership.
So maybe if you can elaborate what kind of model that we
should think about for our leadership?
Here, yes. So I'll say just contextually a
little bit as we think about model building, what we're
leading towards is a model for leading change.
And if you think about that being kind of your direction, I
think about the three models of behavior, leadership and then
model for living assertive, sitting under your feet, it's
kind of your place of grounded confidence about what you're
doing. And so we've talked about models
for behavior and really the focus of having a way of reading
the dynamics between individuals.
And then I think this next component is, it's your
professional model. It's how you know, how will you
read, what does leadership mean to you, what would it look like
and most importantly, how do you grow leadership for yourself and
others. And so there isn't one right
way, but I think there absolutely is your way.
And in the process of model building, I think it's really
helpful David Cantrey is to talk about this concept of imitation
constraint and autonomy. So if you think back for a
moment, any time you've been introduced to a new model, so
even for some listeners today it might be I'm learning about
structural dynamics for the first time.
There is an aspect or or time when we are truly going to
imitate what we see someone else doing.
So it might be you've been introduced to this new way of
leading in a new company that you've joined.
It's different for you. So you really start to go, OK,
so how do I fit in and how do I imitate what I see happening?
And then at some point you are going to have an opposed to what
you are experiencing. That's the first sign that I
think you've entered into the phase of building your own
model. And so imitation leads to
constraint. Now, there are some parts of
this that I'm going to push back on and say that's not for me or
that's not how I would lead or it's not what I would do.
But here is what I would do. And then here's a place that I'm
going to actually start to invent or create an aspect or
I'd combine this thinking with these other things that I think
about. And that's the first place where
I think you start to build autonomy and how you think about
leadership. So I think there is the question
that we're really after is how will I lead and what does
leadership look like? It means to me.
So I like the way you explain about imitation, the constraint
and autonomy. I think in the beginning when we
are all like the junior leader, right, we always imitate, maybe
from our manager or maybe some idols that we look from outside.
Maybe, you know, people like Steve Jobs, Satya Nadella or
people like this, right? And also we try to come up with
our own style, so to speak, right?
And then in the end, when we are more experienced, I guess we can
have our own autonomy in deciding how we want to lead and
how to change, make a change, right?
And you mentioned the so-called the peer of model for leadership
is actually model for living. So maybe when we talk about
model for leadership, we are talking more about professional
or you know work life, Yes and. Model for living?
Maybe it's for personal. OK.
Maybe you can elaborate more. Yeah.
Well, first, yes, the professional model of
leadership. And then I think one of the
biggest aspects that David Cantor was after was we can't
just focus on our professional world or our professional
leadership without also a model for living is we'd be out of
balance. We'd be not aligned with where
we want to be. And so the big question that
model for living looks to answer is what does it mean to live a
life worth living and just let that question sink in.
Like, I think it's such a provocative question.
I've worked with leaders who actually push back on it.
Well, you know what? What would I mean to live a life
not worth living? That, You know, that could be a
little scary to think about. But I think it's a big, open
invitation to defining for each of us, what is a life worth
living? What is my purpose?
Why do I roll out of bed in the morning?
What's important to me? What are the values that I
really hold to? And what does balance look like
between the professional life and the personal life?
What does that even mean? And so it's an invitation to
help all of us think through. Like what does that life worth
living look like? Wow, I really love that
invitation question, right? What is the life that you think
worth to live, right? So live the life that is worth
living for us. So I think that's a very, very
big question for sure, right? Because for some of us, we may
go through the motions maybe with the business with all this,
you know, work stuff, family stuff and things like that.
And stop thinking about the kind of worth of life that we want to
aspire, right. So I think that's really, really
great. So having both of these now with
the behavioral model at the foundation, your last part is
actually model for leading the change itself.
So how can we play with all these different models and come
up with our own model for leading change?
Yeah. Well, I think clarity about
behavior and how it contributes to how we communicate with one
another. So the rails that all of our
interactions sit on, thinking about how I want to lead, what
that looks like, how I want to live and what the balance of
living and leadership look like for me, those are the foundation
that I stand on. And then this bigger question
about leading change. So in change, at the very
beginning of our conversation today, you would have heard me
saying early on my model for change was very processed like
like I had a belief that if I changed the process in an
organization, then all we had to do is communicate the process
and manage the change and then change would happen.
That's not wrong. It's just it's a older model for
me now it's evolved and the way I would describe my model for
leading change today is very behavior centric.
So I hold the belief that the thing, but I'm trying to help
organizations change is how they communicate and behave with one
another. And that when all of those, when
that action and that communication is fully online
and a team is able to navigate complexities and breakdown and
they're able to build the muscle of making it through a
breakdown, not to avoiding breakdown, then that is where
change starts to happen. And then I hold the belief that
it won't matter what that team or that organization encounters
in in the daily life, they can navigate change.
So that's just a little bit about my model.
I would also say this part of my model for leading change today
is the belief that change doesn't happen until people feel
heard and understood and once that comes on board then things
will move forward. So the model for leading change
for all of us, the question to be asking is what is the thing
that I am trying to change? How do I believe change comes
about. I think one of our challenges in
change and any team or organization or even at home is
we just set about, we see a gap and we say this is how it's
working today and this is how I want it to work tomorrow or six
months from now or nine months from now.
And we set a declaration. We might even paint a big vision
and get people to buy into it. And then we just set about
expecting it to happen. And I think that is the crux of
where things start to break down.
We learn things, things evolve as we start to try to make
something new happen. We encounter resistance and then
we don't want to work with the resistance or we don't know how
to work with resistance. So we just minimize it or we
tell people to just do your job or why can't you just do what I
said to do And all those things, those phrases that we can use, I
think because really good intentions.
But I think for many of us, we just don't know how to work with
it. So we've default to the do so
because I told you so kind of thing and let's just get on with
it. You know we're up to bigger
things here. I think every time we do
something like that, it's a little bit like sweeping the
real topic under the rug and then it then it just gets to the
point where the rugs so big we can't open the door, get in the
door. And now we've sort of got this
backlog of conversation. So we haven't had conversational
debt that we haven't had that we need to have and change just
becomes really stagnant or stuck.
So all that's my model and I'm really clear about it.
I understand why I do what I do. It helps me be clear about
making suggestions for a team. It helps me be clear about I
know when I'm going to do something that potentially
perturbs or frustrates or angers A-Team and I'm doing so with
really clear intention because I'm helping them to try to
change something. So I'm just a really big
proponent of for all of us both individually and collectively.
So if we're trying to lead change, what is the thing that
we're trying to change? How do we believe change happens
for that thing? In my case, it's behavior, but
for you it might be something entirely different, it might be
process. So then how do you go about
bringing change to that and what are the steps that you would do?
And when you encounter the real world, which will be full of all
kinds of different things, how will you adapt?
How will you adapt your model to account for some of the real
world scenarios that you encounter?
So that's the model for leading change is what are we trying to
change? The one other thing I'd say
about it is we can all have individual models for change and
for part of a team or we're leading an organization.
We've got to take the time to get aligned on what we believe
our collective model for changes.
Otherwise we'll have a leadership team who sees the
world differently. Each of them will likely see the
world differently and we'll be advocating for different things.
So if I was part of a leadership team and I'm advocating for
conversation and behavior, change first, and then the other
things will flow, That's my model for change.
If I'm working with someone who's up here and their model
for change is about process and their belief is that metrics are
indicators of organizational change happening.
The two of us, we've all been in organizations where we've
experienced this. The two of us on that leadership
team are going to be having a model clash about how change
happens. And we are going to be really
confusing for everyone else because one of us is going to be
asking for metrics and proof, the other is going to be asking
for behavior. And for those that we are
leading and that are working with us, the rest are going to
be super confused and frustrated.
So now not only do we have misalignments around what the
model for changes, but now we've got confusion happening across
the organization. And that'll happen only for so
long before people are just going to throw up their hands
and be like, look you all sorted out and let me know what you
want me to do or I'm confused. I don't know how to operate in
this. So I think we have a way of
wanting change to happen. I think all of us can agree that
change is constant. It's ever evolving.
I think we're at a pace with technology, particularly where
it's constant and fast. And if we don't find ways to
create structures to help us communicate with one another and
help us lead change effectively, we're really going to be left
behind. And I think it's going to give
you more difficult than it is today.
So I'm a huge advocate for defining your own model, but
also collectively as a leadership system.
How do we want to bring about change?
And so if we've got different models, let's sort that out
first and let's come to alignment on how we're going to
lead change here in this organization.
Let's have that model building conversation and now we can be
an aligned leadership team asking for things, setting
direction and inviting others into that process.
And it's going to work a lot better so.
Wow, really a great reminder for us leaders, right.
So not only the leaders model but also with the peers, also
with the people within the team, right.
The collective model that we want to adapt together.
And when there's a model crash, actually, yeah, sometimes they
may create like silos or maybe duality, right.
So you follow a certain stuff for certain leaders, but
different leaders is a different thing.
So I think that's a very, very good reminder for all of us.
And I like the book. It's actually a workbook, right?
It's not really just theories. And you know, just telling you
what stuff, but actually you go through the reflection looking
what kind of models that resonate with you maybe from
your past as well past experience.
So I think this book is really not just a theory book, but it's
a workbook that you can use to actually look and build into
your perfect model for the time being, right until you evolve
and get another model. So thank you so much for sharing
Marcia. As we reach the end of our
conversation, I only have one last question which I normally
ask for all my guests here in tech regional podcast and the
question is called the tree technical leadership wisdom.
So you can think of it just like an advice that you wanna give to
us listeners to learn from you. So maybe if you can share your
version of tree technical leadership wisdom, Yeah.
Well, I think that the 1st place I'd point all of us is to focus
on how we're communicating with one another.
So the idea would be when things get tough or difficult, can you
separate the what from the how? So the what is the topic that
we're talking about? How will be, how we're engaging
in the conversation. So I think there's just a
reflective piece to that is, you know, even if you take the four
player model, move, follow, oppose and bystand or all four
of those actions coming online or is there one action that I'm
getting stuck in, Am I stuck in oppose and I really could use
bystand in the conversation or am I stuck in move and I really
need to step back and Createspace for others.
So I think the biggest pieces understand the role that
communication plays in everything that we're doing and
whether it's moving forward or not.
And resist the temptation to go find new things and to actually
bring it back to how we're communicating and to be able to
separate your health from your what will be the first place to
to be able to catch sight of that.
So that would be my first tip. I think my second one would be
carving out time to slow the conversation down.
It's this idea that yes, we need pace in our organizations.
We need those 30 minute meetings.
They service a purpose and there also is real value in slowing
things down, building relationships, bringing the real
conversation in the room. So even in my company, Team
Catapult over the last several years, we have taken to
following our own advice. We've found it really helpful.
And once a month, the first Thursday of every month for 1/2
day is our dialogue space. So it's agendaless.
Anybody can bring any topic, and the goal is really to talk about
how we're working with one another so we resist the
temptation to talk about all the other things.
And that's probably some of the richest dialogue I have.
And it's become so valuable for me because there are times where
we can just get caught up and moving things forward.
I'm I'm can be just as guilty of that and I know that we've got
the space to slow down so it's really helpful to have it carved
out on the calendar. So I would just encourage
everyone to be thinking about how you carve out that time for
you. That sort of pace and cadence
works for us. I just had someone on my podcast
there and he works in two weeks sprints with A1 week
retrospective. So it's a three-week kind of
time box. So you know for them they move
at such a pace in their covering so much that the one week
retrospective where they actually create time to reflect.
So I think that's another example of how you might carve
out time. I think the third thing I'd say
is growing your leadership range is work to do for all of us.
So just noticing where your tendencies are and looking for
ways to change the range that you have your ability to bring
something different in the moment when it's needed and not
to be so stuck or believe that one version of that is the only
version that adds value. So I think it's ongoing work.
I don't think we're ever done with it and I think there's such
a gift in being able to have range, you know, leadership.
So this would be my free. Right.
I think that's really lovely. I love all of them actually.
The 1st is like focus on how we communicate, right?
I think sometimes we tend to. You know, maybe embody a certain
style all the way from childhood up until now.
But knowing this structural dynamics, right, knowing the
different options, different modes that people have, I think
it's really, really key. And I love the last one.
You know, as leaders, it is our responsibility to find the range
right? Don't get stuck into a certain
mode only. So, Marsha, if people love this
conversation and they want to follow up with you or find your
resources, is there a place where they can reach out online?
Yes, a couple places. The best way to connect with me
is through LinkedIn, so you can find me at Marcia Acker on
LinkedIn. And if you're interested in the
Builder model book, you can go to buildermodel.com and you can
download a free resource from there that'll give you kind of a
preview of both the book and what some of the journaling
prompts look like in it. And then if you're interested in
coaching for a leader or leadership team, you can find me
at teamcatapult.com. So those are a couple of places.
Thank you. I'll make sure to put it in the
show notes. Thank you so much.
I hope the listeners here today are inspired about building
their own model for leading change, becoming the leaders
that they want instead of just stuff from the situation.
So thank you again for your sharing, Marcia.
Henry, thanks for having me. It was great.
Thank you for listening to this episode and for staying right
until the end. If you highly enjoyed it, I
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