This week brought an interesting lesson in trust from the seats of leadership. It also heightened my awareness of politics inside a leadership circle of an organization. My role is one of leadership without authority, yet labels me a leader. This can be a perilous position at times.
Throughout the course of the past year we have attempted to lead change by engaging teams of people to come together and learn three things. As a change agent it is important that the teams we work with learn to run effective and efficient meetings, build relationships between themselves and others they intact with, and finally find a way to continuous improve their business. If these teams will come together and choose to play the entire organization will be better positioned to compete in our global economy.
The economy has thrown us a curve ball. This curve ball came in the form of “no more cash.” Our perfect plan for change with the right resources quickly dried up. This speaks to the notion of attempting to lead change with limit resources over the past year.
In anything we do, there are silver lining and piles of poop. Our silver lining has shown up in demand. Leaders, supervisors, and special teams are seeking us out to start their teaming process. In this light we have done good things. People want what we have to offer. The trouble is our ability to give it to them without a resource to make sure they are getting a quality product. Our pile of poop has become pockets of teams running off rogue and doing their own teaming thing. My fear is that the quality of what we deliver will be diminished and potentially tarnished to the point of others believing we are ineffective.
This brings me to my leadership lesson. While sitting with my coach and sharing my feelings he was wise enough to share his thoughts on leading without authority. My coach reminded me that a lot of what we do to influence others comes in the form of a “Jedi Mind Trick.” In order for our team to move forward and get better buy-in we would need to utilize this method.
Simply put, it was suggested that selling and idea, direction, or concept to leaders of influence require us to sell our thing as if it were their idea in the first place. Our leaders need to feel like they were the wise ones in the decision making process. It is the ability to use them to become your champion for an idea. The whole idea sounds as if it borders on ethics and I assure it only crosses the line of fine politics in action.
My action item for next week is to begin spinning our new thoughts on unlocking the resources gridlock we have encountered over the past year by dropping small nuggets of thought and idea around the leaders of influence we need as champions to make our culture change effort a smashing success. It is time to stop avoiding the politics of work and roll up my sleeves and join the campaign.
