Leadership - A discussion of traits, characteristics, and current news of leaders.

Have you seen lasting change come more from tearing down a thing or from building up its counterpoint? Does one trump the other in a city dying for lack of transformation? Tom Melohn said … One way to encourage people to take risks is to reward them for it.”

Picasso, on the other hand advocated tearing down a thing,  before you can build up anything new. Completely tear it down, he insisted. Where do you stand? Do the most effective leaders you know, build up a thing, or do they tear down old structures, before they get revolutionary change?

The question might have crossed Joe Klein’s mind, when he accepted the Rochester’s Business Person of the Year Award last week at the Convention Center. Joe accepted the award and then attacked NY State and Rochester city leaders for "destroying our business community and residents". 

A prominent and well respected CEO at Klein Steel,  Joe, landed his company on Rochester’s top 100 businesses for 10 years in a row.

"I'm ashamed to live in Rochester and ashamed to live in New York state," he said Thursday in an interview. Joe’s cutting words are still buzzing all over today, as seen in NYCO’s blog and The DragonFlyEye blog and in many area newspapers and TV clips. 

The Special Business-Award-of-the-Year event, drew a record crowd of more than 1000 people to the Riverside Convention Center to hear E. Philip Saunders, founder of Sugar Creek Stores, Genesee Regional Bank, and several other New York business ventures. Guests also got an earful from Joe Klein at the dinner they paid top dollars to attend.

Here is my question: When it comes to the desperate changes needed if Rochester business is to survive, what’s best? Is it better to build up or tear down, in order to shake up new life?

Which one can move the Rochester, New York business community from it’s basal ganglia of corruption and stagnation, into it’s working memory, where renewal stands a chance to generate new seeds for growth? What do you think?

I was intrigued to read at Strategies + Business how change is connected increasingly to research about the human brain, and how places like Toyota use this research for gain. The article…The Neuroscience of Leadership by David Rock… author of, Quiet Leadership: Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work … and Jeffrey Schwartz… co-author of,  The Mind and the Brain … showed how successful leaders effectively change their own or other people’s behavior…. Has that been your experience…?

The authors found that change comes faster to those who “start by leaving problem behaviors in the past; focus on identifying and creating new behaviors. Over time, these may shape the dominant pathways in the brain. This is achieved through a solution-focused questioning approach that facilitates self-insight, rather than through advice-giving.” Does that discovery surprise you?

They tell the  story of Mike, a pharmaceutical CEO, whose direct report Rob, had hired three only of six new team members required in his goals. Rather than focus on Rob’s nonperformance, it was recommended that he focus Rob’s attention on “the new circuits he needs to create to achieve his objectives in the future.” Do you agree?

The authors made the suggestion, “ Mike could ask Rob, ‘What do you need to do to resolve challenges like this?’ Such a question helps the person redirect his insight that “he needs to remind himself of his annual objectives more regularly, to keep his eyes on the prize.” Then… in order to ensure ongoing success … Mike should regularly ask Rob about his progress.” Such reminders would help Rob to grow connectors for the goals he still needs to achieve.

There is more research evidence that “In a brain that is also constantly pruning connections while making new ones, positive feedback may play a key functional role as “a signal to do more of something.” The goal is to help a person return to the focus of an outcome as the most efficient way to worth with…rather than against the human brain…

Using these ideas… Toyota’s production system, engages employees at every level of the company to create an awareness of their process and through this awareness to improve what they do daily. At Toyota employees are encouraged to talk about possibilities for making things better, and are helped to “train their brains to make new connections.” What could such encouragement and daily awareness of how to improve what people accomplish…do for your staff…?