Warm hearts in Finland, psychological safety (yet again), leadership v.s. management, singing cabbages, and Irish dystopia.
Here are a handful of the readings, viewings, and listenings that have recently caught my attention and left a mark on my thinking.
1
Novelist Elina Hirvonen stepped in to de-escalate a conflict between an openly racist group and protesters at Helsinki’s Central Library Oodi. What can we learn from her?
From Policies for Convivencia, Tommi Laitio
I trust you will all read this piece by Tommi Laitio, but just to get you there, here are a few of my choice courageous leadership in action quotes from award-winning journalist, novelist and documentarist Elina Hirvonen, the woman at the centre of this story.
- I was not looking to humiliate anyone. I did not have a hidden agenda. I genuinely wanted to understand.
- This movement feeds from an Us vs Them mentality and I wanted to avoid that. I wanted to be clear that while I fully disagree with their positions, I have nothing against them as people.
- As an act of building a bridge, I brought a box of gingerbread cookies.
- The other thing I would mention is how we could build our skills for warm hearts and tough arguments. It seems that in our society we are going exactly the opposite direction. We are tearing each other apart. We should build resilience for respecting each other as humans to a radical level but still uphold tough debate when it comes to ideologies and opinions.
2
The Employee Advantage, by Stephan Meier
- Read more about it in Kirkus Reviews
- Interview with Stephen Meier in Author Talks: Why ‘really’ putting your people first pays off, McKinsey and Company
I feel a reflection post coming on about putting workers first.
3
Psychological safety is often misunderstood, particularly regarding comfort, challenges, and personal growth.
It takes courage for a leader to learn, embody, and to act with psychological safety.
It’s so important that I regularly share resources for it in this newsletter. But you already knew that.*
What is Psychological Safety, Psych Safety
Psychological Safety is the foundation for high performing teams and resilient organisations. When people on a team possess psychological safety, they feel able to ask for help, admit mistakes, raise concerns, suggest ideas, and challenge ways of working and the ideas of others on the team, including the ideas of those in authority. Via this honesty and openness, risks are reduced, new ideas are generated, the team is able to execute on those ideas and everyone feels included. Building psychological safety not only improves organisational outcomes, but it’s the right thing to do.
Psychological Safety and the Critical Role of Leadership Development, McKinsey and Company (again)
Our findings show that investing in leadership development across an organization—for all leadership positions—is an effective method for cultivating the combination of leadership behaviors that enhance psychological safety. Employees who report that their organizations invest substantially in leadership development are more likely to also report that their team leaders frequently demonstrate consultative, supportive, and challenging leadership behaviors.
Chances are your brain could do with a break from the screen.
So here’s an idea.
Print out this handy psychological safety cheat sheet from Ronnie Kinsey and make it yours with sticky notes, doodles (get out those coloured pens), your insights, and what you learn from others.
Give it a try. You might like it.
4
Leadership vs. Management: What it means to make a difference
Being a leader is not something you are born with, it is something you chose to do.
Seth Godin
This Seth Godin talk from a few years ago for the Nordic Business Forum goes to some pretty radical places and I like it.
My quick notes:
- our schooling taught us not to risk being wrong and not to take responsibility for our thinking or ideas (because they might be wrong)
- we haven’t really moved that far from being educated as compliant workers for the industrial age and our organizations prefer to hire people who are compliant
- taking risk and responsibility is how we learn and how we make change
- leadership is about seeking out and solving problems – even if they aren’t on the agenda
- we can be the designers of what happens next – not a pawn in the system
- if you don’t care enough to get hit, you can’t be a leader
- we don’t have to rely on managing by fear, shame, and anger
- excellent leaders make decisions but we spend too much time on making choices
- sunk costs are a gift you can say “no thank you” to
- if failure is not an option, then neither is success
- the world doesn’t always work the way we want it to, or expect it to, or how managerialism needs it to work
- the job of a leader is to have a compass and to create the goals, strategies, and map – in other words leaders have process
- the job of a leader is to connect, communicate, challenge, build a culture, and commit to where we are going
As you can see, I had some wow moments in this video. But the biggest WOW, was when I connected the dots between the rise and continued pervasiveness of professional industrial management – thank you Ford and Taylor – and the absence of psychological safety.
Don’t worry, we can can work on that challenge (see section above) and still tick all the quality control boxes, have meetings with agendas, get the doors open, and the quality goods and services out on time.
Seth Godin’s closing remark:
There’s this generation coming after us, what are you going to do for them? Where are you going to take them? Do you care enough, care enough, to lead us where we need to go?
5
Extras
- I talk with strangers. Regularly and a lot. It’s something I learned from my grandmother and like her, I really enjoy random conversations and the stories that people often share in snippets, and sometimes, if I’m lucky and have the time, in longer form. I pause and pay attention to these lives that for a moment swirl around me and yet exist whether I am there or not. For that moment, I’m just a happenstance beneficiary of their stories.
Forget What Your Parents Told You: It’s Time To Start Talking To Strangers, Kelsey Borresen, December 7, 2024, HuffPost.
- I finished the “How to Work with a Client’s Perfectionism” course through NICABM. It was one of those courses where one could just wade through the material or dive deeply. I took the deep dive with extensive annotated notes, reflection pieces, research, and integrating it into my whole-person approach for leadership coaching. It was very satisfying.
- Christmas holiday reading list:
- Hardwired for Happiness, by Ashish Kothari
- Leading Through: Activating the Soul, Heart, and Mind of Leadership, by Kim B. Lark, Jonathan R. Clark, and Erin E. Clark (a family endeavour)
- The Art of the Interesting: What We Miss in Our Pursuit of the Good Life and How to Cultivate It, by Lorraine Besser
- Prophet Song, by Paul Lynch (I’m thinking I may need the above books for a healthy balance while reading this Booker Prize Irish dystopia.)
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
- A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, because I really need to stop thinking that there are singing cabbages in the story (see Muppets Christmas Carol).
- Not yet known cozy cookbooks, bird stories, and prairie gardening how-tos.
The mince tarts and shortbreads are beckoning, but I will return to your inboxes on about January 8th.
Wishing you peace and happiness,
Babs
* Psychological safety is so important for our teams and organizations to thrive that I took the time to get a shiny certificate in it so that I can better support you to bring it into your leadership work.
You don’t have to do this alone, I’m here for this.