This tool is based on work developed jointly by Raj Chawla and Jolie Bain Pillsbury, and edited by Patton Stephens and Bob Pillsbury

In our last Newsletter, we shared the importance of being in "High Action and High Alignment" as a team and organization. This article shows the "what and how" of ten conversations you can have to generate greater aligned action if you aren't sure how to move in that direction. Let us know how your conversations go!

Conversations for Moving Towards High Alignment
Leaders engaging people to work together for a common result requires connecting different interests, commitments, and perspectives in a new way so that everyone has a relationship to each other and a shared result. Low alignment is a symptom of undeveloped relatedness.

Type of Conversation	Possible ways to start the conversation
1. Meaning	This is what is important to me and what I want to do with you...What is important to you? What matters to you? What do you want to do together?
2. Relationship	I'm not satisfied with our level of commitment and I'd like us to talk about it. I'd like to hear what you value about our working together. How can we build a cohesive working relationship?
3. Success	What is a successful outcome for each of us? What are our conditions of satisfaction for our work together?
4. Possibility	What can we create together? What is possible? What are the different options? What is open to us? What is our true potential? What haven't we considered?

Conversation for Moving Towards High Action
Mobilizing action requires addressing issues of pace, capacity and competency, and peer accountability.

Type of Conversation	Possible ways to start the conversation
5. Accountability	This is what I am contributing...In what ways are you willing to contribute towards our success? When are you willing to make the contribution? What are you willing to say yes to? What do you say no to? What are the consequences for each of us of taking this action? What's required of us that no one has yet taken responsibility for?
6. Commitment and Promises	What is your commitment to the results and the work so that we can meet our goals? What is your commitment to me so that I can be successful? What commitment do you need from me so you can be successful? What has each of us promised to do?
7. Action	Let's coordinate the timing and communication of our tasks in order to get this work done in time. This is how I am progressing on my commitments...How are you progressing on your commitments? Do you want my input? Do you have any input for me? What proposals do you have for who needs to do what when?
8. Results	What outcome do we want to see? How important is that result? What are we willing to do, stop doing, not do or change to achieve that result? Is this bottom line reasonable? What do others expect of us? What do you expect as a result of our working together? What do you expect that our work will produce? Who will benefit from achieving the result? How will we know if we have achieved the result? Who are partners who can contribute?

Conversation to Move Out of Low Action Low Alignment
The cornerstone conversation to move out of a place of both low alignment and low action is one that allows you or those with whom you work to reflect on their own personal power – the power to act and the power to forge relationships.

Type of Conversation

Possible ways to start the conversation

9. Personal Power

If you could move forward on your own, what would you do? What prevents you from exercising your power? What are your sources of power - From your own unique gifts, talents and experience? In your roles of both formal and informal authority? In the systems you are part of? If there were no constraints, how might you approach this? What do you need from us to support you? What can you give yourself permission to do? Is there risk you need to mitigate? If this is not a place you want to be, what can you do to make it meaningful? What do you need to do to leave?

Conversation to Sustain High Action and High Alignment
Once you are in a place of high action and high alignment, there are conversations of reflection and learning that can sustain this high level of engagement until the program results are achieved.

Type of Conversation	Possible ways to start the conversation
10. Reflection	What just happened? What did we learn? What should we do next time? Were our working assumptions accurate when we started? Isn't it time to stop and reflect? Which of the conversations that got us here do we need to have again?

By Raj Chawla, based on information developed by Raj Chawla and Jolie Bain Pillsbury

The work of a leadership team is to produce measurable results for the populations they serve. However, producing results is a complex and difficult task and requires leaders to act in what we call “High Action and High Alignment.” Achieving this state of “High Action/High Alignment” takes a lot work and often requires leaders to adjust their personal approaches to a given problem. This article describes these approaches and how to shift toward “High Action/High Alignment.”

The first step towards “High Action/High Alignment” is for a group of leaders to collectively agree on the result they are working to achieve together. Then, each leader strives to make their contribution toward achieving that result. The best outcomes toward achieving the agreed-upon result come when leaders are in High Action and High Alignment in their work, but this is not always the case.

For example, a leader who is in “High Action/Low Alignment” works actively and independently toward the result, but is not interested in working collaboratively with others, sharing resources, or adapting strategies that others have found successful.

On the opposite side sits the “Low Action/High Alignment” leader. This leader is interested in building relationships and connections with peers and wants to support collaborative strategies, but often becomes so mired in collaboration or in building the “perfect plan” that he or she is slow to act or fails to act at all. This lack of action often alienates a high action individual who, in turn, may break away from the group to work alone.

A “Low Action/Low Alignment” leader observes what is going on without either acting or building relationships and is, in fact, a person who is not “leading” at all. This type of leader can come across as a “fence-sitter,” a behavior that often results in their exclusion from the process since it infuriates high action leaders and frustrates high alignment leaders.

What any work group or collaborative needs for optimal performance is high action and high alignment among all leaders on the team. These leaders can do both aspects of generating results: building strong relationships with others, including listening to their input, AND devising strong plans upon which they act.

If you find yourself in a group or on a leadership team that isn’t functioning well or achieving the results it has agreed to achieve, take an objective look at where you and other members fall in the “High Action/High Alignment” chart below. Your potential to achieve great things and the group’s desired results will increase to the extent that everyone moves toward higher action and higher alignment.

After an intense week of working with leaders in very complex situations, clear lessons for getting groups and enhancing leadership in groups to move to action have emerged for me. I invite you to add and challenge my insights.

Read more

 

 

After complaining about traveling too much and wanting to be home and in a place of stillness, I’ve gotten my wish and more. The blizzard of 2010 here in Washington DC continues. Heavy snow that shuts everything down, that creates a blanket of quiet outside and a glow inside.

It is in this space that I ponder the world and my role in it. I notice some shoots of emerging ideas trying to break through. And, I wonder if others, those who find themselves stuck in a snow storm – induced by mother nature or not – can notice, cultivate, and let rise new shoots of ideas and thoughts.

I’m not talking about the same thoughts that occur over and over again, like summer reruns on TV or old thoughts masking as new ones. I’m talking about ideas and thoughts that you are almost afraid of letting take root and grow. It is these thoughts that can scare you because you might have to shift who you are or what you do.

It is precisely these thoughts that need to be nurtured and supported. These are the thoughts that will shape the new tomorrow. The world can no longer sustain the same thoughts that got us to this point in time.  New shoots...

• The game of power and control seems so old and tired, lets try something new.
• What will it take for me (for us) to work for results that matter instead of results that matter just to me?
• Leading without leading...
• Local, small, sustainable, long-term --- not growth at all cost
• Why focus on old economic indicators such as housing-starts and manufacturing.  Aren't there other things that require focus and are more realistic to today?
• Science vs. religion, modernity vs. traditional...where is the integration?

OK, lets see if any of these ideas can break through the snow.

 

As I am reading Raj’s reflections, I am just finishing Adam Kahane’s new book “Power and Love”. I was struck by how one of the most powerful sources of power is relational power. In a quote from Edward Chambers, he says: “People who can understand the concerns of others and mix those concerns with their own agenda have access to a power source dnied to those who can push only their own interests. In this fuller understanding “power” is a verb meaning “to give and take”, “ to be reciprocal”, “to be influenced as well as to influence”. To be affected in another in relationship is as true a sign of power as the capacity to affect others. Relational power is infinite and unifying, not limited and divisive. It’s additive and multiplicative, not subtractive and divisive. As you beomce more powerful, so do those in relationship with you. As they become more powerful, so do you. This is power understood as relational, as power with [or to achieve and realize], not power over.” P.95

Power and love are therefore two strands of a braid that need to be in balance, power to achieve a purpose and love to unite and align what has been separate. As leaders, this is our job. We will naturally stumble as we are ourselves more comfortable with power or love. Some situations will leave us fearful to step into either, they will challenge us to be moving from generative power or love to their shadow degenerative side. And to not give up but to keep stepping in and to unite with others who can provide the balance is our work.

So, the stillness that let’s us recognize where we are in this balancing act, that let’s us come to a pause that allows our energy to refocus for our work and the relationships we need to realize our own and our larger purpose with others really is the cycle we need to pay attention to.