The Sense Makers

Here is a question that triggered a look into a personal value on how People are viewed.

I’m looking for case study stories of sales, marketing & product management teams leveraging AI to create an environment of stronger team collaboration, and ultimately tighter alignment to the customer and growth paths.

The question sounds very natural until you look at the word “leveraging”.  Here is a reply:

This is not a case examples but an unsolicited response to the language ”leveraging AI.”  As an engineer I understand levers and think they are brilliant. As a priest and psychologist I know the term leverage and find it unhelpful and often offensive when used in human systems as it implies “using force against somebody.” Leverage doesn’t not lead to collaboration.

Wouldn’t it be simpler and more humane to say “management teams using Appreciative Inquiry to create an environment of stronger team collaboration.”

Here is a similar use of language that causes me concern in today’s business world. In an attempt to humanize the work place, many business leaders talk of their employees as their greatest asset. That may sound very affirming until you think of what businesses do with their assets, they mortgage, leverage, broker sell, stretch, and strip mine their assets. Employees need to be way more than an asset in today’s world if they are to be valued and resourced to be their best.

What do you think? How would you have replied?

Make the decision where the information is

Our role as coaches is to bring our client, the executive, to a point of greater awareness of the systems, multiple sources of information and interrelated factors that need to be considered through various perspectives, maps or frames such as:

- organizational structure
– the human resources
– power differentials and politics
– symbols and culture

In his book Masterful Coaching, Robert Hargrove mentions that he follows five compass points to bring a client to insight and breakthroughs:

- In partnership with the client
– By standing in the future the client wants to create
– By prompting the client to start by reinventing themselves first
– By being a thinking partner with the client
– By expanding a clients ability to take successful action

It’s Hargrove’s “thinking partner” concept that helps to interrupt old frames of reference and bring new insight.

He offers some stock questions to help the coach to challenge the client’s thinking:
– “What leads you to that conclusion?”
– “Could you walk me down your ladder of inference?”
– “What is your reasoning process?”
– “Do you have any data to substantiate that opinion?”

Mary Beth O’Neill, also a coach, says “A systems perspective resists identifying a single element or person in a system as the root cause of the problem.”

She builds on Salvador Minuchin’s triangulation theory of family systems by introducing the impact of triangulation in which the coach can get sucked into the drama and lose all objectivity and personal power.

These triangles can cascade into multiple interlocking triangles and the coach’s role is to help the client see the “interactional fields” and “dances” within a system so the client can get a perspective and navigate a way forward with less stress.

The premise of Bolman and Deal in their book, Reframing organizations, artistry, choice and leadership, that a “primary cause of managerial failure is faulty thinking rooted in inadequate ideas” is a reminder of my responsibility as a coach:
– to help frame and reframe organizational and personal experience within the organization
– to help shift points of view and interrupt old and archaic frames,
– so that executive leaders see and act on new possibilities

And that aligns with Hargrove’s 5th compass point:

“Expanding a clients ability to take successful action”

Dene Rossouw