Global Leadership and Coaching

Flourishing under intense pressure at work

Rachel Ellison

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351346191
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Psicología
• Categoría: Psicología industrial y organizacional

Global Leadership& Coaching: Flourishing Under Intense Pressure at Work is a unique and personal look at coaching, leading and working internationally, bringing together inspiring, original and dramatic stories of leadership from around the world. From war zones to refugee camps, prisons to hospitals, elite sport to supermarkets, each case study draws on psychoanalytic below the surface thinking to analyse, interpret and understand a leader's decisions, motivations and fears.

Rachel Ellison's inter-cultural approach takes us to Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, Sudan, Somalia and the Central African Republic, to Honduras, the Czech Republic, the USA and the UK. Global Leadership& Coaching presents a series of individual case studies from Ellison's own experiences working with senior commercial, public and third sector leaders across 35 different countries, cultures and organisational contexts. Compellingly written, this book explores the a diverse range of themes to consider when managing risk, danger and extreme emotional stress in some of the most hazardous and challenging work environments. Throughout the text, leaders share their stories of learning how to lead and develop others.

Accessible, engaging and original research, Global Leadership& Coaching: Flourishing Under Intense Pressure at Work is essential reading for today's leaders and aspiring leaders looking to develop themselves personally and professionally. This book is also a resource for coaches and coach supervisors. Global Leadership& Coaching provides contemporary, practical and applicable examples of excellence in leadership, for individuals and organisations seeking to develop a high performance, reflective and reflexive corporate learning culture, which enables employees to successfully navigate challenge, increase productivityand find joy in coming to work.

Chapter 1
Leading where it’s hot, dusty and dangerous

What commercial and public-sector leaders can learn about effective leadership from non-governmental development aid workers

People who lose the connection between the individual and the policy level can be sucked into one story… as I was. Our most effective leaders have compassion. They are moved by the story, not paralysed by it.

It is interesting to consider what it takes to work in a war zone. Or where extremes of climate, poverty or corruption make doing one’s job particularly difficult. Of concern is how leaders stay resilient and prevent burn out in themselves and in those they lead. How do leaders stay inspired and committed to their job? How do they achieve authenticity and insight?

This chapter is based on interviews with a number of former coaching clients working for an international non-governmental development aid organisation. Their stories take us to Somalia, Afghanistan and Honduras; then to the USA, the Central African Republic and Senegal.

I asked them two key questions:

• What does it take to be an effective leader where it is hot, dusty and dangerous?
• What can other leaders learn from leaders working with such extremes of human emotion and experience?

This chapter includes themes such as ego-free leadership, conflict, violence and belief in the customer. There are examples of collaboration, role modelling and deliberate but also inadvertent reward.

There are multiple opportunities to interpret what may be going on individually and organisationally through looking beneath the surface or taking a psychoanalytic approach. This chapter considers working with crisis, uncertainty, ambiguity and vulnerability. It looks at how leaders lead and develop others, holding in mind the vulnerability of their core customer – millions of the world’s poorest children. Many of these leaders carry high ethical principles, yet their work requires them to navigate corrupt individuals and failing systems.

I asked these third sector leaders what advice they would give employees working for big corporations, small start-ups and the public sector.

I encourage you to reflect on what inspires you about these stories and to ask questions of yourself and your organisation; to challenge yourself to lead differently and more effectively – from a human and a profits perspective.

Leading where it’s hot, dusty and dangerous: what commercial and public-sector leaders can learn about effective leadership from non-governmental development aid workers

As a coach to some of the most experienced non-governmental development aid workers in the world, I began reflecting on what it takes to be an effective leader working in extremely challenging environments. Thousands of aid agency staff are posted to humanitarian missions around the globe. Conditions can be physically and emotionally tough. Employees expect to spend whole careers moving from region to region, working amidst disease epidemics, famine and social disadvantage; they work in countries enduring natural disaster, political instability or civil war. They work with the poor. They work with the displaced. Such leaders are often highly values led, resilient and compassionate people. Inevitably, some third sector leaders are corrupt, disillusioned and abusive, but a great many of them display the qualities associated with ‘servant leadership’, constantly thinking what they can do to enrich, care for and help others, before benefiting themselves.

Somalia: ego-free leadership in a war zone

These are my people. I am responsible for them. I cannot leave. I am their leader.

Fatima stayed. The compound where she worked in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, was stormed by gunman, following two car bombs which went off outside the gates. Fifteen people died. Fatima and her staff were under siege for two hours. Fatima, a senior leader with regional responsibility for a team of local and international employees, was born into the Masai tribe in Tanzania but converted to Christianity. When crisis struck, she evacuated her international staff. Next on the list would have been herself. But she didn’t go.

Where can my local staff flee to? This is their home, their country. They are not safe here in Somalia, but I’m not allowed to evacuate them to Kenya under our emergency protocol, because they are not classified as ‘internationals’ like the rest of my staff.

This display of leadership moved most who heard about it. Working in Somalia, Fatima lives thousands of miles away from her husband and children. She has rights. The right to try to protect her own life. The right to an organisational protocol for emergencies. Bombs going off right outside the office certainly counts as a hostile emergency. But Fatima still chose to stay put. To honour her idea of what leadership means for her.

Let’s consider whether Fatima’s behaviour was a brave example of ego-free leadership, or whether it was masochistic or reckless.

In a cultural reflection, members of the African Masai tribe have a reputation for being strong warriors. I wonder whether Fatima’s decision not to evacuate herself embodied an ancient tribal construct around staying with ‘your own people’ when under attack. Looking after others as you would like to be treated is also a Judeo-Christian principle. Doing the ‘right thing’ is part of collective or community responsibility in many other cultures too. We do not know for certain, but I hypothesise that for Fatima, despite her conversion to Christianity, deeper cultural traditions are in play.

The interpretation of Fatima’s behaviour as ego-free may, in fact, be faulty. Perhaps she was operating with her ego fully engaged. Doing good can also make you feel good; important, elated, even more ‘alive’. After all, if she evacuates herself to safety leaving most of her team behind, she may have to confront the inevitable fact that she is no longer a leader. At least, not a leader of this particular team. This may compromise her sense of self and her professional identity. Indeed, had she abandoned her team, as per her organisational protocol, would she have felt too guilty or too ashamed to lead that or any team again? Her decisions may be about pride.

There may be other ego-driven factors at work here. Perhaps Fatima remained with her staff out of loyalty to the idea of what leadership means to her, or because of the pain the act of leaving her team would cause her. We might also consider the systemic apartheid of which human lives are valuable enough to fly to safety and which are not. It would be difficult for any organisation to draw this line perfectly, for evacuating staff then calls into consideration protecting their families as well. The costs and logistics would spiral out of control.

I am curious about whether Fatima’s refusal to leave was a conscious or unconscious attempt to obtain recognition. Her decision to stay meant that she risked personal suffering or even martyrdom. As a consequence, she may now be famous in her organisation. Such individual acts of courage by its leaders may be stored in a corporate memory bank at HQ, or on the contrary, in very large organisations they may barely register, or be denied – stored safely out of sight. If inconvenient, memory of such actions or behaviours may even be required to evaporate.

Fatima’s humanitarian decision made within an organisation with a humanitarian remit comes with a dilemma. On the one hand her leadership is admired, but on the other, it may be imperative that the system does not appear to reward, praise or encourage via inadvertent or explicit incentive, such as role modelling, behaviours which involve danger or a risk to a leader’s life.

If Fatima had evacuated herself, she may have found it difficult to psychologically tolerate what she had left behind. Likewise, the staff she evacuated may have complex feelings about the colleagues who could not join them. Might there perhaps be some form of abandonment story in Fatima’s past that influenced her decision making in the moment? We may not know the exact thinking behind Fatima’s decision, but what is important here is to generate the inquiry.

Let us consider some additional beneath the surface or psychoanalytically informed ideas. I wonder if Fatima’s decision to stay represents the attachment she has to her work community or her work identity. Her lack of self-importance and her commitment to what is good and right, from her perspective.

It could be the opposite. An egotistical attachment to ‘me me me’. To being the saviour leader. A messianic manager who risks her own safety and even her career to save her people. Fatima may offer a symbol of female leadership, or even mothering. It could be that Fatima’s maternal instinct was squashed or sublimated, such that what we see on the surface is a leader refusing to self-evacuate. But what is subconsciously driving this is the instinct to care for the team – the team she may have even ‘given birth’ to. It is intriguing to consider whether we would arrive at a similar analysis had Fatima been a man. Senior leadership carries with it a version of parenting or shepherding, whether offered by a man or a woman. We do not know whether a man presented with the same dilemma would make the same decision as Fatima. Nor whether he would feel a similar level of emotional intensity at such a choice point.

It would be understandable for any leader to feel torn in a situation like this, with both a desire to flee and feelings of guilt for doing so. Especially when escaping involves leaving others behind who are also in danger. This notion of feeling conflicted or ‘split’ appears in other case studies in this book. Splitting can be a defence against anxiety. But it is not usually a psychologically healthy option for the long term. The difficulty of making the right decisions, remaining resilient during times of stress or distress and staying whole as a person, rather than ending up cut off from one’s emotions, is a challenge for many leaders dealing with emergencies and suffering. That suffering can be corporate as well as humanitarian. We see later in this chapter that humanitarian aid can be needed in the dullest of offices, not just in conflict zones.

Another approach for Western readers of this book is to consider what is culturally embedded for many Asian communities and also in Eastern, Central and some parts of Southern Africa: The concept of the collective. One thinks in terms of the community first, rather that one’s own individual perspective. In Fatima’s situation there is the clash of the ‘I’ stance with the ‘we’; the ego ideal of making leadership decisions that feel like the ‘right thing to do’ versus what is corporately deemed appropriate behaviour. There is the collision of self-interest with concern for others’ needs. Fatima’s dilemma represents a kind of unintended apartheid – an emotional tangle within, as she thought about what to do.

A Western leader might have a more individualistic approach. It is also worth considering who makes the rules in Fatima’s organisation – and from what cultural approach decisions about emergency protocols are reached.

Perhaps Fatima unconsciously embodied the feelings of the colleagues she evacuated. We may never know what her ex-pat team projected onto her in terms of an expectation of mothering or protection. Nor how her local family of staff felt about her decision. It would be interesting to know if Fatima identified more strongly with her local Somali staff, rather than with the ‘family’ that is her organ-isation. It was a polarised choice. She couldn’t half-stay.

Somalia: ego-free leadership in a war zone

Reflections for leaders

• What do you think of Fatima’s dilemma to stay or to leave?
• When have you been forced to make polarised choices as a leader?
• Do you have an example of when you led ‘ego-free’?
• When have you stood by your people when ‘under fire’?
• Can you think of examples of metaphorical ‘martyrdom’ in your organisation?
• Attachment to community – what kind of community do you seek to create at work?

Reflections for coaches

• Dealing with an emergency – consider examples from work or home life
• Entangled decision making – compromise and guilt…
• Polarised choices
• Exploring the maternal or paternal instinct in a leader
• What communities is the client attached to?

Afghanistan: stripping off the grime that’s holding you back

Coaching is like cleaning your pots. If you scrub them really hard, so they’re really clean, they cook better, faster and more efficiently. It burns less energy.

[Indian proverb]

Ashima, who works for an international children’s aid agency in Kabul, evaluates the benefits to her of executive leadership coaching, linking it to an Indian saying. Ashima is married with two university age sons. Nearing the end of her career, this is the first time she has been offered executive leadership coaching. It is also the first time in her career that her professional learning has focused not on operational excellence but on developing herself as a leader.

This is what she noticed was changing: An increase in energy, efficiency, insight and presence. Because her day job was so busy, Ashima did not think she had time to explore her leadership style or her meaning and purpose in coming to work. At first she approached coaching like a chore:

It’s about stripping off the grime that’s holding you back from being more efficient and effective. In psychological terms, you have to be prepared to explore the uncomfortable side of your emotions, not stay at the transactional level of the day-to-day job.

Ashima leads an international team working in a conflict zone. It is a highly stressful foreign posting, where families cannot join. Everyone lives and works together in one of several international compounds. The buildings are surrounded by 20-foot-high concrete walls, laced with rolls of razor wire. Because ...

Índice

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements and thanks
• About the author
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1 Leading where it’s hot, dusty and dangerous: what commercial and public-sector leaders can learn about effective leadership from non-governmental development aid workers
• 2 A hero is someone who wins a war, not loses a leg: how a Paralympic coach led his diversely disabled athletes to gold
• 3 Stocking the World Foods aisle: the story of how a global supermarket manager had to relearn how to lead effectively, in a multi-ethnic context
• 4 Cooking for conflict resolution: an exploration of difference: how unexpected collaborations can foster greater innovation, creativity and success
• 5 Coaching across multiple cultures: confronting stereotypes in the coach-leader relationship
• 6 Leading behind bars: insights from inside. Leadership learning from a former prison governor who says in terms of crime, he could have ‘gone either way’
• 7 Location location location: how one client claims his leadership learning was transformed, because of the different places, buildings and environments in which his coaching conversations took place
• 8 Desires and defences: leadership in a refugee context
• 9 Communism cripples character: the story of how transition from political oppression to free democracy unleashed waves of innovation, capitalism, lies and laziness
• 10 Comfort and containment: an exploration of the architectural and psychological ‘spaces’ associated with an experience of being in a neonatal intensive care unit
• 11 Closing thoughts
• Index