Leadership Lessons From the Playground

I’ve been reflecting on the overlap between my role as parent and my role as an Executive Coach and the leadership and Conversational Intelligence® growth opportunities that have appeared in both. Here are five leadership lessons that my son, my clients and I have learned as we have unpacked their stories of challenging dynamics in both the playground and in the corporate world.

Story 1: the playground collision

It was a Friday afternoon near the end of Term, and my six-year old son and I were enjoying the relaxed social atmosphere in the natural setting of his school playground. It was a rare break from my son’s usual after-school-care routine, and whilst he was tired from a term filled with activities, he was relishing the freedom of an early end to his day. 

The children had created a whole world of imaginary landscapes in the oversized sandpit for their stick-people characters to carry out very important missions: the goodies chasing and catching the baddies in all manner of gum-nut or clay pot vehicles. The game was important to my son – he was invested in it - and for the most part the children who had joined him were complementing his ideas within this six-year-old version of a smooth flowing workplace. Or so it had seemed.

Just as my son was running over to his school bag to add another exciting element to their imaginary landscape, he collided with another boy who was also running at full speed. The strength of reaction from both boys was such that all heads turned in their direction and I felt that sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach, wondering what the extent of their injuries would be. 

It turned out that the physical injury was mild – nothing more than a sore shoulder and chest. It was the instantaneous psychological interpretation of the collision that had caused the strength of reaction and was now causing the pain. As I extracted the story of what had taken place from my loudly sobbing son, his strongest emphasis was on “HE DID IT ON PURPOSE”.

Story 2: the work collision(s)

Fast forward several months and the environment is very different, but the context and dynamics are amazingly similar. The setting is a business with an audacious mandate undergoing significant and rapid change. The players are two very different Executives who are invested in achieving their business objectives and are giving their all to produce results in their best way possible. They collide, again and again, not physically of course, but in their views of what the best way possible means. The budget and resourcing implications of their different approaches adds to their reactive behaviours, because for both Executives, achieving the results is important to them.

There are other similarities between this story and the playground episode: the strength of these Executives’ reactions to each other impacts everyone around them, including creating a chasm between their working teams and tension at their peer level. Whilst their collisions are far removed from the sandpit, the stories they hold on to are similar: they are stories of goodies and baddies, with a major theme being assumed ill-intent from the other. 

Lesson 1: You are not a mind-reader - how you interpret other people’s intentions is a choice

I have struggled with my son’s insistence that ‘they did it on purpose’ when he has challenges with his classmates, because I can see how much it adds to his pain. In my attempts to assist him I have reminded him that he is not a mind-reader and can therefore never know what someone is really thinking. He’s taken that on board, as he does, and now he responds differently with “it feels like they did it on purpose”. I can’t and don’t want to argue with that, because now he’s owning and expressing what’s happening for him, which seems to be a step towards empowerment in navigating these conflicts.

With my clients it’s a slightly more sophisticated conversation as we explore the impact of assuming ill-intent on themselves and on the situation. Typical questions I ask are:

·       How does assuming ill-intent help you in this situation?

·       How will you approach the situation holding this assumption? 

·       What would be different about your approach if this assumption was not true?

My intention here is to loosen their hold on their story so they can use their discernment in a more empowered way. We all face times at work when someone’s intentions are not positive or constructive, and the challenge as a leader is to discern what that means for our approach to the situation, without expending all our energy and giving away our personal power to our perceived opponent.

Many of you will be familiar with the concept of MRI or ‘Most Respectful Interpretation’. It invites us to consider the most generous assumption we can make about another person’s intentions or what that person has said. Given we are not mind-readers, we have a choice in how generous we are with our interpretive assumptions.

A playground example is when a friend told my son for two days in a row that he would play a game with him the next day, but as each day arrived, he still didn’t play that game. My son’s interpretation was “John (not his real name) is a liar”. Have you ever tried to explain to a six-year-old that changing your mind about something doesn’t make you a liar?

The corporate example I’ve seen play out recently is with a Leader who has a reflective thinking style. He will agree to a course of action in a meeting, but later reflects on the conversation and the business implications. He then goes back to the relevant parties and puts forward a revised approach the following day. The MRI is that more elements have come to light, so the actions needed to change, versus the less favourable judgement that the Leader has recapitulated. This leads me to the next lesson…

Lesson 2: You have responsibility for 50% of every relationship you are in

The book “Approaching the Corporate Heart’’ by Margot Cairnes was my favourite book 20 years ago. A key message that stayed with me and has turned out to be a central theme in much of my coaching this year is this: we are all responsible for 50% of every relationship in which we’re involved. 

There are so many aspects to this responsibility, some more obvious than others. Clearly, how we behave and communicate, including in response to another person’s reactions to our words and actions, feature strongly in our 50%. Being conscious of these aspects are core to leveraging your Conversational Intelligence®. Perhaps less obvious aspects are the assumptions we choose to make about another person’s intentions and whether we choose to prime for trust, even in the face of distrust.

As I wrote in a previous article, neuroscience has shown that the trust networks in our brain can be activated at the same time as our distrust networks - even with respect to one relationship. Trust and distrust are not binary - they actually co-exist. 

Children seem to be better at living with this dual nature of trust. I’ve witnessed my son’s ‘trust resilience’ as he navigates sometimes strained, sometimes harmonious play with certain classmates by moving in and out of certain games.

The invitation for leaders then, is to tap into this extraordinary capacity of human beings as part of their 50% contribution to work relationships, including the strained ones. They can only do this if they’re prepared to let go of their binary stories of ‘goodies and baddies’…

Lesson 3: Getting stuck in your own story will not help you

This first two lessons are intertwined with this third lesson and draws on a model from Conversational Intelligence® referred to as the ‘Ladder of Conclusions’, featured in Judith E. Glaser’s book “Conversational Intelligence – How Great Leaders Build Trust and Get Extraordinary Results”. 

When we have a conversation with someone, the first level through which we process the conversation is chemical: we have instantaneous bio-reactions that trigger judgements within .07 seconds! This reaction can either increase the stress hormone, cortisol - and activate our protect/fear networks - or it can increase the production of oxytocin - the hormone of connection - and activate our trust networks. 

We move up a rung on the ladder by labelling our interaction as good or bad, depending on how the conversation made us feel, and we judge the person as friend or foe. 

Moving up the ladder to the level of thought, we put words to our feelings to make meaning of the interaction. At this level we can at times be making stuff up, or story-telling. 

We then draw from our past experiences and pull in other beliefs we have about the situation or person to affirm our thoughts. Our beliefs are closely aligned to our values, so at this rung we’re tuning in to what’s important to us and consequently, what’s at risk.

Once we reach the final rung of conclusions, we've essentially made up our mind and we're no longer able to listen to other’s perspectives. We set out to prove we are right. 

So, the next time you walk away from a conversation with a friend or foe mindset, there’s a chance you’re sitting near the top of your ‘Ladder of Conclusions’. What I coach myself, my son and my clients to do when we recognise this, is to seek to come down the ladder and look for insights for ourselves, whilst opening ourselves up to understand what might be behind the other person’s words or actions. In your next conversation with this person you then go back to the most important essential practice in Conversational Intelligence®…

Lesson 4: Listen, really listen

Listening is a bit like common sense, we all think we have it, or do it well, but in reality, we rarely question just what it is and how we stack up against the norms. Nor do we receive feedback from others as to the impact we have on them through our listening. 

Common ineffectual listening habits include listening to answer, listening with an expectation of what the other person will say, listening through a bias, or worst of all, pretending to listen. These listening styles tend to create distance between people and can even activate cortisol, the stress hormone mentioned above.

The most effective and impactful way to listen is to ‘listen to connect’. Listening to connect - rather than judge, accept or reject - takes the focus off ourselves and on to the other. It's about connecting to the other person’s perspectives or 'world' and exploring their world. It goes beyond listening to understand - which is more about listening to confirm what you know - and enables a more agile, emergent and deep connection with people. 

Lesson 5: Frustration and anger are clues as to what YOU need to do differently

Whilst Lesson 4 is about how you listen to others, this lesson is about how you listen to yourself. It also draws on many of the principles contained in the other lessons. 

Both the playground and the work stories involve people who are actively participating in their respective worlds. They’re working on things that they want to achieve, and when their desires are not met, or are seemingly thwarted, they feel frustrated, which in turn leads to anger. 

As David R. Hawkins wrote in his book ‘Power vs. Force – The Hidden Determinants of Human Behaviour’, anger can lead to either constructive or destructive action. The latter is expressed as resentment and revenge, “exemplified by irritable, explosive people who are oversensitive to slights and become “injustice collectors”, quarrelsome, belligerent, or litigious”. Does that sound familiar?

However, as David writes, “anger can be a fulcrum by which the oppressed are eventually catapulted to freedom.” 

I believe that to access the opportunity of this fulcrum and take constructive rather than destructive action, we need to listen to what our anger is revealing to us about what’s important to us. If we’re able to do this, preferably through a compassionate lens, we’re more likely to access multiple empowered choices. As we intentionally come down our Ladder of Conclusions, we may recognise that we’ve exaggerated the importance of our desires, or, we may get a clearer view of the gaps between our own and other’s maps of reality. From this view, we’re in a better position to take constructive action to close those gaps. 

Whether in the playground, or at work, leadership provides an ever-generous opportunity for growth. If we can take responsibility for our 50% of relationships by assuming MRI, releasing the hold on our stories, and listening - to ourselves and to others - we're more likely to be a Conscious Presence in the sphere that we’re in.