The Settle

April 18, 2010 by  

Picture 13My business is change facilitation and my sport is rowing. I’ve learned a lot about both from cox’ns who provide the inspiration for this 4th in a series of four posts about change leadership using social business initiatives as an example.

The first 3 posts were about:

  • Shifting the vantage point through willingness, not willfulness.
  • Releasing the fairy tale and attendant story-lines identified with what’s non-integral and non-sustainable.
  • Creating the conditions in which innovation and productive friction can take place by embracing different perspectives and individual lenses on the new direction.

This post is about execution and action which require one of the most important parts of a race or practice that the cox calls: the settle. A lot of business leaders get this wrong. They launch a new project with a racing start and push everyone to hold that pace indefinitely. But its the settle that results in purposeful attention, high quality and finding the optimal rhythm together. Just like in the racing shell.

Like cox’ns, business leaders facilitate the shift from urgent desire to unity and trust, through giving the right feedback at the right time. Doing so requires a multi-dimensional awareness, what you and your team sense, feel, believe and embody..not just what you know or want.

The settle can’t be confused with settling for less because its a moment by moment refusal to be less, especially when it hurts. It must be understood as the collective action that creates shared responsibility for aligning with the desired results. In social business, those desired results are some form of creating natural influence in your communities and networks and with your audience.

If you lead like a cox’n, that natural influence could show up as gold.

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Filed under: alignment, change leadership, inclusion, intention, intuition, multi-dimensional, Natural influence, rowing, self-awareness, shift, social business, trust
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