MindWare @F-L-O-W

Thinking Like A Leader @F-L-O-W using MindWare to reduce the negative consequences of individual bias.

This Discovery Program on "Thinking Like A Leader @F-L-O-W" is a part of Mike Jay’s Year-Long Guidance for Leaders System. Click here for more info to enroll in the entire program and get a Certificate from LeadU!!

How Does A Leader Think @F-L-O-W?

One of the most perplexing notions about leadership is surrounding the rational process of leadership judgment and discretionary decision-making with an uncertain environment. Read through this quick summary for context:

Executive Summary [From CCL: Future Trends in Leadership]

The Current Situation

The environment has changed – it is more complex, volatile, and unpredictable. The skills needed for leadership have also changed – more complex and adaptive thinking abilities are needed. The methods being used to develop leaders have not changed (much). The majority of managers are developed from on-the-job experiences, training, and coaching/mentoring; while these are all still important, leaders are no longer developing fast enough or in the right ways to match the new environment.

The Challenge Ahead

This is no longer just a leadership challenge (what good leadership looks like), it is a development challenge (the process of how to grow “bigger” minds)

Managers have become experts on the “what” of leadership, but novices in the “how” of their own development

Four Trends for the Future of Leadership Development

More focus on vertical development

There are two different types of development – horizontal and vertical. A great deal of time has been spent on “horizontal” development (competencies), but very little time on “vertical” development (developmental stages). The methods for horizontal and vertical development are very different. Horizontal development can be “trans-mitted” (from an expert), but vertical development must be earned (for oneself).

Transfer of greater developmental ownership to the individual

People develop fastest when they feel responsible for their own progress. The current model encourages people to believe that someone else is responsible for their development – human resources, their manager, or trainers. We will need to help people out of the passenger seat and into the driver’s seat of their own development.

Greater focus on collective rather than individual leadership

Leadership development has come to a point of being too individually focused and elitist. There is a transition occurring from the old paradigm in which leadership resided in a person or role, to a new one in which leadership is a collective process that is spread throughout networks of people. The question will change from, “Who are the leaders?” to What conditions do we need for leadership to flourish in the network? How do we spread leadership capacity throughout the organization and democratize leadership?

Much greater focus on innovation in leadership development methods

There are no simple, existing models or programs, which will be sufficient to develop the levels of collective leadership required to meet an increasingly complex future. Instead, an era of rapid innovation will be needed in which organizations experiment with new approaches that combine diverse ideas in new ways and share these with others. Technology and the web will both provide the infrastructure and drive the change. Organizations that embrace the changes will do better than those who resist it

Part of what I have discovered in more than 25 years of professional coaching and guidance relates to an emphasis on the leader’s ways of thinking.

There are several reasons for this.

It’s key, in my opinion, to find "prime leverage points" and "teachable points of view" and without a doubt, how a leader thinks…and how they think about their thinking is a key point in both.

An additional consideration of this "rational thought" process starts simply with our ladder of inference, and how we perceive data, process it into actionable behavior.

While such a simple process, it becomes extraordinarily complex in today’s noisy world.

Pretty simple process, right?

Yet, what happens in this process is an easy way to show how simple things become very complex.

One of the ways in which to understand thinking as leaders is summarized in

"Keith E. Stanovich’s excellent book What Intelligence Tests Miss: The psychology of rational thought. Noting that there are many different kinds of bias, Keith Stanovich proposes a classification scheme for bias that has two primary categories: the Cognitive Miser, and MindWare Gaps." – LessWrong

Mike will focus on, during this brief introduction and 4-session exploratory designed for thinking leaders, MindWare used in our ladder of inference and how in a few quick sessions we can dramatically improve the thinking that leaders model.

In this brief exploratory, Mike will help you review quickly how to assess your own MindWare, and whether or not it’s been "contaminated" by individual biases that you are subject to.

We will also discuss how the MindWare of leaders becomes "contaminated" and how these emerging biases sub-optimize how leaders think, and use rational thought.

You can register for this program beginning now, up and until March 6, 2013 for a fee of $197, and $297 afterwards. To get this program and 9 other programs for a "certificate" price, see our 2013 offer here.

More Info @F-L-O-W