Leadership (IL)Legitimacy - Lessons from Myanmar

Judging from the flurry of reports on the websites of major news agencies in the world, the recent events in Myanmar would have caught the attention of most people. This piece is not to cash in on the national tragedy in that beautiful country, hence, it has been delayed till things have quieted a little. Having been only once to Yangon, I do not claim to be a country expert. However, I saw general poverty and decay of infrastructure, that are not reflective of a resource-rich country like Myanmar. Yet, Myanmar is no different from countries run by dictatorships and juntas which have overstayed their welcome as rulers and provides important lessons for us who work with and as leaders in organisations.

Myanmar provides 3 classic lessons in leadership legitimacy (or in the country's case - illegitimacy).

1. How to stop people from giving you their consent to rule over them?

Leaders can come to power on the basis of a variety of reasons such as:

• Expert knowledge
• Charisma or Personal Attractiveness
• Access to power resources eg weapons, promise of rewards
  

However, these cannot yield legitimacy on their own. Because leadership legitimacy is not the same as coming to power. Legitimacy turns the power game into a relationship, because it is about consent to rule given by the ruled.

The military junta came to power because it had access to weapons and for a time, it could raise and wave the banner of champion of nationalism in this country of about 135 disparate, sometimes conflicting, ethnic groups. Due to years of economic isolation and mismanagement, infrastructure is in a poor condition, people impoverished, while only those with connections to the generals have flourished. How can the right to rule be extended by the people, if they can't be fed, clothed, and worse, detained, silenced and killed when they speak up against such conditions? (Oh, the Youtube videos of lavish weddings of regime leaders' children certainly don't help too...)
2. How to ensure that people are suspicious of your attempts to engage them in dialogue?
Effectively, since the last major people's uprising in 1988, the country has been run without a constitution. It was only a few days before the Saffron Revolution begun, that the long-drawn government-backed process of arriving at a blueprint towards democracy ended. (Even then, it's only a blue-print) The junta has also prevented the National League for Democracy, which won the military-organised elections of 1988 from taking power, and holding Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for the greater part of time since then.

3. How to make sure that you don't have external support?
ASEAN and the UN have been continually frustrated in their attempts to seek improvement in how Myanmar is governed. ASEAN-EU relations are in a stalemate, because of Myanmar. This is not for the lack of trying. The junta is just not interested in engaging with other parties that don't march to its drums. The latest act in sending UN special envoy Gambari to the north to watch a pro-government rally, whilst preventing him from seeing key leaders in the first 2 days of his trip is a case in point.

The people of Myanmar are friendly, gentle and courageous in facing their future. It is unfortunate that we can learn so much about leadership in a situation where there is so little.

Noel Tan

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Announcing...The new Trailblazer Trainers Forum

We've just created a link on the Trailblazer Trainers' website to our spanking new forum. We hope that it will be a useful resource for anyone in the learning and development industry.

Do sign up as a member and visit often: http://trailblazer.freeforums.org.

Noel Tan
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We're back!

Nope we weren't Cast Away, just away for some months, but we are now back. We spent the greater part of this year on the road - Myanmar, California and most recently, to China.

So we do have a backlog of article ideas for this blog. Keep coming regularly!

Noel Tan
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It's Official!

At the recent global Brain Summit of the Emergenetics Family in Sanya, China (Sep 22-25) it was announced that since 2005, Trailblazer Trainers is the largest user of Emergenetics and STEP profiles in Asia in our team, thinking and learning programmes.

We are pleased to continue our work with Emergenetics Asia and Emergenetics International to improve how people understand themselves and others better, how they can think better and learn more effectively.


Noel Tan
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Focus, Focus, Focus

In real estate, there is one maxim that is key - Location, Location, Location. In the same vein, we've decided to move our education-related articles to a new blog, http://thinking-learning-teaching.blogspot.com, creating a dedicated space that will meet the needs of our readers who are educators and parents.

http://crossingfrontiers.blogspot.com will continue to focus on Leadership, Team Excellence and Organisational Learning themes; familiar content to our corporate readers.

The new blog is already up and running and will be a repository of articles relating to:

• Thinking Skills
• Learning Styles
• Brain-based Learning
• Social and Emotional Learning
• Co-operative Learning
• Collaborative Learning
• Character Education
• Outdoor Education

We hope that our newsletters and blogs will continue to be of insight to you, our readers. Do not hesitate to contact us with suggestions, comments and article ideas that you'd like us to pursue.

Noel Tan

(*All Text is copyright of Trailblazer Trainers Pte Ltd)

Deathly 'Silent' Meetings

Are your department or team meetings a monologue or a time for the Head to 'practise' his soliloquys? Meetings that are otherwise deathly silent, are an indicator of potential team dysfunction and poor team results. One can only imagine about how business bottom line and organisational morale are being hurt by such meetings.

Silent meetings are reflective of one or a combination of the following:

• an unwillingness to engage in surfacing potentially different views
• an apathy over the team's process, goals and direction
• unresolved issues from the team's past
• a mutual lack of confidence amongst team members in each other

Nothing much is exchanged, simply because the the group members basically want to end the meeting to end quick and for each to move on with the rest of their lives. The meeting is merely an inconvenience to get over and done with. If you think that's a ghastly thought, you haven't heard the half of it!

The veneer of consensus created by a lack of debate and an aversion for divergent thinking, sets the foundation for poor results. Ideas are not challenged and team decisions are not refined. Operational processes are based on nothing more than paper-thin assumptions.

Team or Department meetings are too important to be rendered 'silent' occasions. They are occasions when team members need to be engaged in active analysis, divergent thinking, informed critique of possible solutions, before converging on a solution. Such a process requires the team leader to be an active agent in building healthy collaboration, not what passes off as consensus.

Team leaders can do a couple of things to make sure that meetings lead to business decisions and results:

• Establish team norms & practices that celebrate openness and collaboration
• Keep meetings active and solution-focused, based on ready information rather than opinion
• Encourage a healthy appreciation of diversity through team and meeting roles
• 'Exorcise' the ghosts of the team's past if the issues are obstacles
• Ensure that members recognise that conflict can sharpen team commitment and hence not become the subject of aversion.

Noel Tan

Resident Philosopher

(*All text is copyright of Trailblazer Trainers Pte Ltd)

Trust and the Family Fabric

Brenda and I are Family Life Ambassadors with the Ministry of Community, Youth and Sports. As part of Trailblazer Trainers' corporate citizenship responsibilities, we are currently resource speakers with a social service centre, providing our expertise to help their clients on parenting and work-life balance issues that they are facing.

One theme that runs through our work is that trust is an essential element of success, regardless whether we are working with corporate teams, student leaders or families. Perhaps especially in the case of families, trust is most often taken for granted. If trust is the fundamental building block of business relationships, then isn't it an even more important pillar of family life?

When one can no longer possess a complete reliance in the integrity of another family member, the solution of other problems becomes inhibited, because communication channels are broken. Problems would simmer under the surface, occasionally surfacing, but never really fully resolved. If at all, these become flashpoints for further conflict. Every family fights over issues, but it is the one whose members still trust each other, that overcomes conflict and the emerging problems.

It is often said that trust is earned and like most meaningful things in human existence; that process takes time. Trust is essentially built on repeated experiences where spouses and children reinforce their belief in the integrity of the other family members. I leave you with a short list of seemingly-innocuous things that go a long way in building trust, which we have done in our own family:

• Keep promises we made to each other
• Playing fair during games
• Choosing activities that everyone in the family can be engaged in interaction at the same time (Television-watching doesn't really count)
• Role-modelling trustworthy behaviours
• Encouraging active interest in the specific interests & hobbies of others in the family
• Making time to have fun together

Noel Tan

Resident Philosopher

(*All text is copyright of Trailblazer Trainers Pte Ltd)

Essence of Decision for individuals

I remember 'Essence of Decision' well when I was reading for my Master's degree in Strategic Studies. It was and still is an excellent study into the Kennedy administration's management of the Cuban Missile Crisis in those fateful days of October 1962. That book remains on the required reading list of students of Strategic Studies, as it is a powerful analysis into a moment in history, when the world could have plunged into World War 3, if information, intuition and urgency of time did not converge as fortuitously for Mankind.

Less 'global' but no less dramatic are the situations of individuals and teams we often meet in the course of our work, who experience difficulties in coming to grips with making personal and team decisions. At the heart of these difficulties is the decision-making process itself.

Based on our work in studying thinking preferences, decisions may not yield the results because the process has either:

a. taken in too much data, leading to a gridlock situation for the decision-maker,

b. taken in too little data, so while the decision is made fairly swiftly, it does not fully completely satisfy the situational requirements,

c. not taken account of current reality, so the decision is rendered impracticable,

d. not sufficiently bold or imaginative, so the decision's effectiveness is limited.

We use a 4-step model to improve individual decisions:

a. Firstly, gather the facts about the situation and analyse them

b. Brainstorm a few decision outcomes that are favourable or desired, within the constraints established by the facts

c. Select the outcome that is likely to yield the greatest benefits from the list previously brainstormed. Set up an action plan to achieve the outcome.

d. Review the plan and anticipate its effects on people and their reactions before implementation. If 'collateral damage' is not worth the implementation, then you might want to start from step (b) again.

Individual decision-making is tied closely to thinking styles. By using developmental assessment tools like the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument and the Emergenetics profile, individuals can determine their decision-making style and be coached to improve the way they arrive at decisions.

Noel Tan

Resident Philosopher

(*All text is copyright of Trailblazer Trainers Pte Ltd)

Surviving Toxic Leaders

Some months back, I came across Jean Blumen's book 'The Allure of Toxic Leaders'. In my browsing, she did a great job highlighting how and why people consistently (persistently) allow the rise of leaders of dubious morality, with charisma akin to that of Sith Lord/Emperor Palpatine of Star Wars fame, who manipulate and exploit the weaknesses of those who are around them. In Blumen's analysis, she identified individuals like the recently-deceased Kenneth Lay (of Enron infamy), Adolph Hitler as examples of toxic leaders.

I've had the opportunity to encounter with one such toxic leader over the past 1 year (certainly not one too few) in a community body that I was volunteering with. This person was distinctly a maverick, riding roughshod over the volunteers, who through their financial support, were paying his salary. His constituents, however, saw in him, the charismatic answer to all that was apparently wrong with the 'system'. To cut a long story short, he 'bit the hand that fed him', by taking about 80% of the constituents under him to join another organisation, without remorse, I might add.

The effects of serving under toxic leaders are immediately recognisable. The more important considerations is how to survive under them. Blumen suggests 3 key ways and we add a few more of our own.

Blumen proposes that:

• there is safety in numbers - count the costs of confronting such a leader. If you're not prepared for 'professional hara kiri', bide your time
• we should hold them accountable - where possible, document their decisions in black-and-white
• controlling oneself ie don't turn toxic yourself in the process

We believe that the Asian context, where 'group mentality' establishes the primacy of group norms over individualism, probably sees more people working and suffering under these toxic leaders in silence. Just 2 weeks ago, I was told by a friend about his ex-boss who would consistently zero in on a few individuals each year for 'special treatment'. Some coped so badly that they needed to seek 'psychiatric help'!

We suggest a few additional measures that should be considered:

• Gain clarity about what's fundamentally important to you - is it holding true to one's values or the security of a well-paying job? Tough situations create opportunities for seeking clarity and once that is gained, then strategies and plans can be made to align to mental perspective. Even if you are choosing the lesser of evils eg staying on in the job is not an option, then at least you would have gotten the resolve to see the situation through.
• Confide in someone who can lend a listening ear - Remember, a burden shared is a burden halved. Knowing that we are not alone in the situation does go a long way. However, it's also important to keep some perspective and not allow your sharings to become so malice-laden that you become toxic too.
• Have a sense of humour - Looking at a dark situation with humour can create a healthy 'distraction' from the trouble at work. You could also benefit from ther perspective-taking too, as you look for the funny moments in those dark situations. When humour and optimism develop, resilience is the result.
• Reflect and think about how this experience can make you into a better colleague and team leader, especially when you get into a new job setting. Learning about your own threshold, clarifying your values and goals are some opportunities that would lead to personal growth, even as you work under toxic leaders.
• Develop Plan B - Well, when push comes to shove, there's never any harm in updating that resume and being on the lookout for an alternative. You never know when an opportunity might knock, so it's good to get prepared.

Noel Tan

Resident Philosopher

(*All Text is copyright of Trailblazer Trainers Pte Ltd)