phase of
Appreciative Inquiry
, they
engage stakeholders in structured con-
versations that reconnect them with
their
positive core
—success factors and
best practices that best explain how and
why they’ve been at their best.
This search for continuity—
a collec-
tive articulation of
strengths that must be
preserved
—
does four key things
to ensure
a successful change effort:
1. It creates psychological safety.
Ex-
pressing, in dialogue with others, those
things that have most contributed to
our success gives us a sense of belong-
ing and being respected. This makes
the work setting less threatening before
we engage in imagining the future.
2. It creates positive affect,
which
stimulates a basic orientation toward
compassion and concern for the other.
Under conditions of positive emotional
arousal, people are more future-orient-
ed, open to change, and interested in
learning and development.
3. It uncovers a cooperative core of
practices and behaviors that can be used
for future collaborations.
Best practices
are usually the result of collaborative
effort, and remind stakeholders of pos-
sibilities inherent in
cooperation
and
col-
laboration
. When two participants speak
to the same collaborative out-
comes in a sharing and listen-
ing exchange, they confirm
the efficacy of their abilities,
and begin to imagine greater
achievements because they
see other stakeholders as
more capable as well.
4. It creates a holding envi-
ronment that encourages
experimentation and further
exploration.
Most
resistance
to change is
misread as
disagreement
with the pre-
ferred solution or as
ignorance
. It comes
from
fear of the unknown
or a
feeling of
disruption
. Reconnecting with strengths
that provide continuity gives people
renewed confidence and stability from
which they can embrace uncertainty.
When people search together for
continuity, awareness of the whole sys-
tem is enhanced. Concern for
me
gives
way to a genuine interest in
we
.
So,
begin
a change process by asking:
What is not going to change?
Search for
what gives
continuity
and
life
to the
organization when it is at its very best
in order to create positive dialogue, and
collaborative connections
to better imag-
ine future possibilities and co-create
changes to enact the
preferred future
.
LE
Ronald Fry is Chair and Professor of Organizational Behavior
at Weatherhead Executive Education. Visit
ACTION: Lead change by managing continuity.
Managing Continuity
I
S YOUR TEAM
ONE BIG
happy family
? Or
maybe you take pride in
being a
lean, mean, fightin’ machine
.
These familiar metaphors are used in
casual conversation every day to
describe business teams. But metaphors
are more than mere figures of speech.
When understood properly, they are
powerful tools for leading teams.
Ametaphor is the substitution of one
word or idea for another.
Business com-
petition, for example, is a
battleground
or
an
arena.
The substitution describes
vividly and concisely the essential qual-
ities of a thing. When we call a compa-
ny a
good neighbor
or
piece of the rock
, we
do not need to describe at length the
company’s reliability, its history, or the
customer service training of its employ-
ees. By substituting
good neighbor
for the
name of the company, we rely on com-
mon ideas about how good neighbors
behave. At a deeper level, however, the
metaphor you use to describe your
team is the
mental model
that shapes the
way you think about the team and your
leadership approach.
Obviously, the leader who pictures
his team as a
family
will adopt a differ-
ent style than the leader who thinks she
is in charge of, say, an
ant colony
. What’s
important is whether leaders are aware
of the metaphors that drive their behav-
iors. Each of us has a mental picture of
how an effective team functions, but too
often, leaders do not appreciate the
sub-
conscious effects
of these pictures on their
behavior and on their teams.
I offer
four principles
for working
with metaphors that will help you take
charge of your
mental models
, and teams:
1. Choose the right metaphor.
First,
ask yourself: Does your mental model
resonate with your team? Consider the
example of Alex when he took over
leadership of a specialized pharma-
ceutical R&D team. The team was
well-respected in the company and had
a reputation for high-quality work.
From the outside, this team had always
seemed to Alex to be tight-knit and
congenial; the members enjoyed work-
ing together, and he sensed they had a
great deal of loyalty to the team. Alex
looked forward to leading the team and
L e a d p o s i t i v e c h a n g e .
S
CORES OF ORGANIZAT
-
ions have achieved
changes once consid-
ered impossible. How? They
pay atten-
tion to the role of stability in the change
effort (managing continuity)
. They re-
connect their stakeholders with their
shared strengths to establish continu-
ity, and engage in reasoned choices
about which success factors from their
history are most important to carry
forward in the context of the change
topic they are addressing.
Continuity is connectedness, over
time, among organizational efforts.
It
links the past with the present, and the
present with future hopes and ideals.
Whether represented by best prac-
tices, proprietary technology, unique
distributor relationships, core values,
group norms, specific metrics, or other
features, continuity represents
what really makes us tick
. It cre-
ates a sense of pride or mean-
ing in our work, and ensures
our business model—and on-
going success.
At the individual level
, conti-
nuity creates pride, confidence
to act, ethical guidance, free-
dom to explore, and positive
emotional affect.
At the organi-
zational level
, it strengthens commit-
ment, creates psychological safety,
enhances decision-making, decentral-
izes control, provides mission stability,
and encourages a system-wide per-
spective. It results from appreciating
what has given life to the enterprise
when it has been most alive, success-
ful, flourishing, or effective.
Successful, positive change requires
stability.
No individual or system can
deal with
total disruption
or
uncertainty
.
To take risks, try new ways of doing
things, or engage in wild innovation,
we must hold on to something reliable
. Our
work with CEOs reveals that
they share
a common agenda
. Each attends to
nov-
elty
(innovation),
transition
(planned
change), and
continuity
(stability). The
first two items are no surprise—lead-
ers must address
change
and
innovation
in order to grow. The fact that they
also attend to
continuity
(stability) is
more surprising. In the
Discovery
8
M a r c h 2 0 1 2
w w w . L e a d e r E x c e l . c o m
Leading Teams
Choose the right metaphor.
MANAGEMENT
CONTINUITY
LEADERSHIP
METAPHOR
by Poppy Lauretta McLeod
by Ronald Fry
