ODILE⁺

How self-awareness can help navigate and overcome interpersonal struggles Unraveling conflict is so hard. Business partners, colleagues, and friends; people will not like you, actually, they will try to do you harm. One moment, all is good, positive and looking good, and then, in a flash, all changes. Just like a carpet has been pulled from beneath your feet, what was no longer is. It can happen for no logical cause, well… none that you can locate. The phrase “sh*t happens” comes to mind. The impact of these changes can be profound and negative, it requires real mental homework to deal with situations like these. Dealing with people who are under the influence of a negative mindset can be dangerous, and this will happen in your professional and personal lives. Period. There’s no escaping from it, I am afraid. First, it is very important to understand that when dealing with people who carry dislike or even hatred for you, YOU are not the problem; there is no logic behind these feelings. Please, please, understand the context here: we are talking about typical personal and work situations, not something where you, or they, have committed some crime or somethin…

The need for continuous, simulation-based learning in developing soft skills Soft skills really mean nothing until something goes wrong… and then, boy, do you wish you had some. What do you mean “go wrong”? Well, you experience a crisis, with a client, or in your organization. These can range from small to full-on disasters. The fundamental difference in solving problems and dealing with small and big issues is the way your mind-is-set (see how I did that!). Your mindset is the fulcrum for whether you win or lose. This is an obvious statement and principal of sports — whether amateur or professional —, but it is also the mark of great teams and leaders. In business, we are often managed by people who are specialized in administration, who have no understanding of how performance is created and maintained. Arguments, disagreements, and being upset, are a fact of working in a team, group, or organization. It’s quite simple: stuff goes wrong… all the time. How you and your team manage these behaviors on a personal and social level will determine how you feel about your mission or job function. Handled wrong, it can turn you off; while, handled skillfully…

Challenging conventional wisdom in education and innovation You know what the problem with innovation is? Education! No way! The difficulty with organizational learning, or organizations adapting to change, is the conditioning that results from sitting in a classroom. It cannot be overstated how powerful a cultural phenomenon the schooling system is, and how much it affects how we think, talk, and act. The pedagogy utilized in this environment formats your future. Here lies the heart of the issue, because it is from this lens that you then interpret, assess, and value, future ideas and strategies. From the cradle to the grave, you carry these rules governing your experience. Exams determine the hierarchy of competence. Smarts, who has them, who doesn’t, determines your level on the ladder. Now, we are faced with something new, something very challenging, something that morphs from singular to plural, like from one instance periodically to a tsunami of change whereby technical, scientific, societal, and political, change threaten to overwhelm the stability of all our institutions. Then, our hard won principles, by which we live, are suddenly cats aside as the …

The risk of underestimating emotional, social, and collaborative intelligence It seems impossible. What does? Breaking habits. Why? Well, look at cigarettes: even with the most difficult presentation of the associated illnesses and messaging, people still continue. Yeah, but that’s a drug… so to speak. True, but I think the metaphor stands. Habits, over food, exercise, learning, speaking, thinking, activities that have controlled your past, and continue to map out your present, and future. So, imagine you are in a room of business executives; you have just finished a two-day workshop on the impact of AI and other technologies on your organization, as well as other impact points; it shows unequivocally that you as an organization need to change and adopt behaviors that you currently don’t have. What are you going to do? Nada! That’s what’s going to happen. Maybe some changes on the edges, just to give the impression that you are cognizant of the world moving in a new direction; but in truth, the team will return to what their habits have in store for them. Like the analogy of the frog being boiled in water slowly, they will stay warm and…

Using teamwork and leadership simulations to build confidence It impacts your future, it comes from the past, it dominates and owns your present. Fear is a name that cannot be spoken. Yet, it locks human potential in its grasp. I am not talking about the type of fear you get from watching horror movies; you know, the standard popcorn and jump out your seat shows. What I am talking about is a fear that dominates teams and organizations. What do I mean? Well, that fear is normally translated into passive-aggressive communication and conservative policy against making changes, in anything. Fear of the future, fear of change, fear of what’s coming, fear of the unknown; This emotion is palpable; you can feel and see it. Executives and teams display it; you can see it in their decision-making and strategic plans: they are disconnected from what happening in the outside world. The world we exist in is literally undergoing massive changes: climate change, scientific, technical, biotechnical, robotic, societal changes, are just a few of the headwinds we are experiencing now. And what are organizations doing to adapt to these changes? A two-day course on soft skills, an …

Teamwork and Innovation — Beyond the Newtonian Approach Embracing imagination and collaboration for organizational success What is your model of an organization? Is it a machine? A computer? Some mechanistic schema of inputs and outputs, where people are just parts, cogs, and wheels turning like a great clockwork engine? I would argue that this is the dominant model of organizational structure, which influences the psychological and sociological approaches of executives and managers in the execution of their jobs. Despite decades of “People are first”, “People are our resource”, and more people mantra rubbish, the hard, cold fact is that organizational learning has not evolved much from Taylorism, I have colleagues still doing time and motion for companies in the food industry, sounding like some Victorian workhouse. These organizations continue to scrape productivity from the bottom of the barrel with a stopwatch and clipboard. The dominant view of human nature is Hobbesian. People are not to be trusted, they will shaft you, steal from you, and always work less than required, unless you apply strict process of supervision and punishment. In these co…

The role of imagination in driving innovation How do people self-organize to win? That’s the question I asked myself and my colleagues as I played the new Season of Discovery relaunch of the World of Warcraft Classic MMORPG. Revamped with new abilities for each class, the Rune system has allowed Blizzard developers to experiment with hybrid classes and test the water for new content in their space. And from pre-launch to launch day… well, it was a real success. So my new question from a training and development perspective would be: How do you create content that people want to play and test themselves against? Because that’s key to the success and viability of being a game development team. Well, first and foremost, you need a team of developers who play. I can hear you laughing at me, but would it surprise you to know that many developers who create AAA games do not play the games they work on? That somehow the silo-based hierarchy of development can mean that development exists as an arcane science devoid of reality, separate from the business realities and players? I would argue that this mentality exists across many departments that are not in the…

Exploring the impact of personal viewpoints and experiences on innovation Continue reading on ODILE⁺ » ———

The Art of Self-Leadership — Cultivating Inner Mastery The power of emotional intelligence and soft skills in a rapidly changing world “Personal” and “Mastery” are not words we often put together. There is no part of our education system that issues us with a driving license for managing and controlling who we are. Instead, we are faced with a life journey of learning about ourselves. Who are we? How we manage our inner life is left to the confines of the self-help section at the airport bookshop. We don’t come with a manual, more’s the pity. Yet, right now, the biggest demand ever for personal mastery is hitting us, globally, bang smack in the face. All the while, our lack of attention paid to the development of soft skills and emotional intelligence has also created a worldwide skills-gap in that very domain. While Peter Senge has pioneered understanding the need for personal mastery, it is Alan Wallace and others who have outlined that our scientific materialist approach — which actually affects a considerable part of our cultural thinking — has made the topic of subjectivity taboo. We need to break these rules: they handicap our ability to innova…

Building teams for a rapidly changing world Continue reading on ODILE⁺ » ———