Unraveling a Breakdown

By Dede Henley, CEO of The Dede Henley Group.

I once heard that great leaders and great teams “fail fast.”  They get right back up, learn from the failure and get going.  We say you have to be willing first to unravel what happened.  Figure out what you were committed to really and course correct quickly.

We invite leaders to consider their “Conscious and Unconscious Commitments”.  We learned this from Robert Kegan and Lisa Lehey in their book, “How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work: Seven Languages for Transformation.”

Conscious commitments are what you say is important to you. Unconscious commitments are what your actions may reveal about what is really important to you.

First, let’s consider what a commitment does:

• A commitment guides our behaviors and actions. 
• A commitment expresses what we stand for.

Examples: 

• I am committed to more open and direct communication at work
• I am committed to supporting my staff to exercise more individual initiative
• I am committed to securing sufficient resources and additional personnel support so that each and every team member can thrive in their job.

What would you say you have been most committed to as a leader?  This is important both to know and to share. It can and does drive your behavior and your expectations.

Unfortunately, a breakdown or failure is an indication that you and your team have not lived up to your commitments.  Then, we must simply be responsible. 

Claiming Responsibility for What’s Happening or Happened

To learn, we need to reflect critically on our own behavior.  We need to identify the ways we have inadvertently contributed to our organization’s problems, and then change how we act.  First, we begin to identify what you are doing or not doing that prevents this commitment from being fully realized.  You admit, without embarrassment or shame what you are doing or not doing that contributed to the breakdown. You stay away from blaming others.  This step is crucial for your own learning. 

Examples: 

• I don’t speak up when people are violating the norm I value. Silently, I collude in it being OK to talk behind one another’s back.
• I don’t delegate as much as I could. I am often drawn into things that I should refer back to the employee who is in charge of that area.
• I can’t or don’t say NO! because I want to be liked or popular

Unconscious Commitments

Having identified the fear or discomfort of fulfilling on your commitments, we now take this a step further by framing the fear as an active commitment to keep the thing you are afraid of from happening. Kegan and Lehey call this your “Unconscious Commitment.” “I am committed to having things done my way,” or “I am committed to not learning things that will be disappointing or discouraging for me to discover,” or “I am committed to being loved and admired.”

Can you identify what you have been unconsciously committed to?  What may have been more potent in driving behavior?  This reflection will give you the keys to understanding the breakdown you experienced and ideally, prevent it from happening again.