Michele Madore
Transcript
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 00:45
So, who is Michelle Madore? And why do you do what you do? And, maybe tell us your story, how you get…, where you are today.
Speaker: Michele Madore 00:56
Okay, who is she? She is someone who’s been through a whole lot of life experiences. And she is where she is today and exactly where she’s supposed to be. Based on those life experiences, and her journey through them. Why do I do what I do? I do what I do, because I love the human interaction, I love the humanity in what we do. I learned a long time ago, when I was, involved, long before Agile, Agile is just a thing that came into my life. It made sense when it did, it resonated with me. And it isn’t what any of this is about really, honestly could be called anything and, sometimes I wish it was called something else. But in my life and my journey. And as I worked in the corporate, world and did the whole climbing the corporate ladder thing.
I was involved in a lot of…, back in the day, a lot of acquisitions and mergers, and different cultures getting together. And honestly, I’ve felt the challenges, and sometimes kind of painful experiences of that. And so I had staff, I had people I had to hire and all that good stuff and realized very early on, it wasn’t about your technical experience. It wasn’t about how much you knew necessarily, well, that was important. The differentiating factor for me became in recognizing the ability for people to communicate to experience the humaneness that we have to experience and all of these organizational challenges. And so I got involved and interested in coaching back then, not long before Agile, I realized that I needed to become more of a coach as a leader and work with people and developing them. And so I became interested in development of people, back in the early 2000s
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 03:22
[Inaudible 03:22] Was there a specific event? You said there were a lot of events that kind of led to this was anything specific that you can reflect on? Or is it just more like combination of things?
Speaker: Michele Madore 03:33
Well, I can remember being in one of those acquisitions and feeling the in over my own head, it’s like, “oh, my gosh, I’ve got to start up a brand new division, because we just acquired a company, we don’t even know what we’re doing. We’ve got smaller clients and what this new company we acquired had, and how are we going to meet all these challenges.” I was responsible for client retention, and they have this big, audacious goal of 98% client retention. And immediately we were making some of our clients, new clients not happy by taking their service out, and all that good stuff that goes along with it. And, it’s hiring people, I was having a hard time, the culture where I worked was like a revolving door, you were as good as your last sale or you’re just replaceable, basically, that was the culture.
And I recognize then the need for shift in cultural experiences and the way…, we our belief systems and recognize a need for working with people’s thinking and their mindset shift. And I knew that I couldn’t tell them enough. I tried. I couldn’t teach them on but say it more times. And they would get it that it was the beyond that, and that only can come from more of a coaching perspective, more of a being curious with people meeting people where they are. So that’s really, I would say, one of the early events that sparked that when I felt like I wasn’t up to the challenge that was given to me. And I needed to work with my people differently.
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 05:22
Yeah. And that’s something that I see in organizations, but it’s that personal choice, to take a different perspective, or to say, “oh, I need to do this,” a lot of people just kind of stick to what they know. And stick to their identity. In a sense, I’m this type of manager, this is what I do, to take a step back. And to almost question your way of thinking about certain approaches, it’s requires awareness, requires that kind of…, a lot of times what we describe is awareness and conscious development. Could you maybe talk about that, how do you develop as a person in a sense, or how do you develop as in as a conscious or maybe talk about conscious integral leadership? But starting with the mindset, and if we look at the research over the years, I don’t know if you agree or not, but it all points to leadership and leadership mindset, and how leaders, especially executives, and organization, think about these things and how they behave?
Speaker: Michele Madore 06:34
Yeah. So that’s a loaded question. Well,
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 06:39
Simple. The simple question is, is how do we as leaders, help shift perspectives and help develop our own internal operating systems to see things differently?
Speaker: Michele Madore 06:57
Yeah, so you said something early on that really clicked, which is, when I was describing, you answering your question about what was shift for me what happened? How did I know that? And that was aware of that required awareness on my part, right. So this is a known thing, it’s nothing new and regulating, which is, awareness is always the first step in being able to change anything. So what gets us to awareness, and so everyone’s different, everyone develops different places, different times. Some people are more aware very early. I mean, you can watch a little baby’s, little children. I’m watching my granddaughter right now. And I love talking about her, of course, I’m watching her and I’m noticing how weird she is as a little child, and maybe I’m noticing more about little children because a grandchild and not a child. And so I’m in a different place in my own thinking with it. And so my awareness is really heightened right now with her. And I can see her, she knows she’s learning, what I respond to what people respond to her. And she’s aware she’s in this constant state.
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 08:09
That’s a very interesting thing that you just made me think about. So being parent…, my wife and I are joking about how stressed we were with the first kid. And when you’re stressed, it’s very difficult to be aware. So now being a grandma, do you think…, what kind of…, what’s the relationship with being very stressed and being aware? And now being a grandma and just enjoying the moment and I’m assuming you have less stress than you have your daughter.
Speaker: Michele Madore 08:40
So first, let’s get something straight. We don’t say grandma,
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 08:45
Grandma.
Speaker: Michele Madore 08:48
We say “mimi” that’s just a silly word but that sounds like old. I don’t have the grey ban or anything. But yeah, of course, I’m not raising her and so I’m not in the heat experience of that. And so there is a different…, I don’t have something to prove. I’m not…, it’s a different way of approaching it. So of course, I can see things from a different lens. But going back to your other question, how do we get there? So a lot of times it comes…, awareness comes from what I said, I got into a situation where it was the Center for Creative Leadership calls in a heat perspective. So it’s like a heat. A heat is underneath you a fire burning up all the burning challenge, but there’s some fire underneath you. So we acquired this company. And fun fact, I used to work for that company we acquired before, so I had some experience and knowledge of them kind of knew what we were up against coming in. But all of a sudden I’m in a different role and trying to make this the sacral acquisition work. So I felt when I felt that heat or being in over my head, then I and then I had this new awareness. So think about the new…,talking about consciousness. So you asked, let’s talk about conscious integral leadership. What is that? So what is consciousness? I mean, because we’re conscious, we’re awake or alive, right? We’re conscious. We’re aware that we’re alive. So awareness and consciousness. And I think people think about these two terms. And maybe when they hear the word consciously, our consciousness, like this, I don’t know, fluffy thing or thinking that they can’t grasp. It’s not some weird experience or anything like that. It’s just the state that we’re in. So to give an example, we just had a snowstorm and ice storm here. And you’re up there in Connecticut, for you may have gotten the same storm, because I think it traveled that way.
Speaker: Miljan Bajic: 11:08
Exactly!
Speaker: Michele Madore 11:09:
Yeah. So yesterday afternoon, I found myself needing to go out and drive in that. And while even though they said “stay off the roads,” well, Michelle’s going to get on the road because she’s got something she’s got to go do for somebody and it’s across the highlight go on the highway, 30 minutes away. And so I was in a completely different awareness and consciousness than I would normally be had I not been in a snowstorm or a night storm. When I was driving, I was “all hands on deck,” both hands were on the wheel. I was aware of everybody around me, what was happening, I didn’t want the radio on, everything was just, and that is what…, I’m in a different element. Here. I’m in snow and ice. I can’t be on autopilot. And that’s really what this is about. I can get into this conscious awareness state, where I’m no longer on autopilot. Like you and I can drive on autopilot. And I can…, especially because I’m a mimie, and I’ve been driving for a long time.
So we can drive on autopilot, can a 15 or 16 year old drive on autopilot? They cannot. Well, if they do, they’re going to find themselves in a heap of trouble. The second some complexity hits the road. And so that’s what this is about, we’re on autopilot. All of a sudden, we’ve got new complexity of acquisition different cultures, we’re taking our clients out of service, we didn’t understand, the background of that company, we didn’t understand the pipes that were there and what we bought or anything, like so much I can talk about, and that complexity I found myself in. And mostly all these new human beings are involved. And I don’t know anybody is going to respond to something I might do. So it’s that heat experience that I found myself in and that leaders find themselves in that all of a sudden, they go, “Okay, I need to, I’m in over my head right now. And I don’t understand the context. I can’t just plan and here’s the solution.” It’s far more different. And so it disrupts their habit. That’s the autopilot something disrupts your autopilot. Oh, boy. Now what…,
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 13:34
Exactly it’s almost like, how COVID disrupted many people’s pilot in the sense and it’s almost like a lot of companies are finding themselves in that situation, where what do we do now? dealing with complexity, in your book and part of the integral, Agile transformation are the levels of consciousness, right? So, generally speaking, the more aware you are and the more that you’re being the more that you are able to deal with the complexity, the better solutions that you can come up with your teams, right? There’s a tight correlation between your leisure say, mindset and how you deal with the challenges.
What do you think from a perspective of today’s leaders, we thought you talk about the outer pilot. And now, where there’s a lot of complexity, it’s almost like all of a sudden everybody’s swirling on the road. The conditions are constantly changing. Those leaders are used to Nice sunny weather now are dealing with costly and rapid changes in the environment. Besides those challenges, how do you help leaders in a sense deal with that? Because that requires them assuming, coaching, but a lot of other things to help them deal with that turbulent?
Speaker: Michele Madore 15:09
Yeah. So that’s a really important question that we need to be asking ourselves as change agents from whatever we call ourselves. So there’s this notion, we talk about it in the book and talk about horizontal development and vertical development. And that’s what we’re speaking about even as we’ve been talking about the perspectives, which is the thing that’s there that’s initiating this, like a wake-up call. And so going to some training for two hours as a leader or doing, some horizontal development. Horizontal development is just really building more competency, more skills, more knowledge. And so I feel like that’s one place where organizations are lacking in my experience. I still work with organizations, in addition to working with coaches and enterprise coaches, but that there’s still not an awareness. I mean, you just sometimes coaches come into my cohort program, and aren’t even familiar with the terms horizontal development and vertical development, and that there is a difference in the way they think about horizontal.
Besides, it’s competency, it’s more your outer game. So the leadership circle talks about the inner game and the outer game. And so does most of the leadership companies out there. But the vertical development is more about your inner game. And that’s building your thinking capability, recognizing your limiting beliefs, and your assumptions, being able to take different perspectives, because you’re working on that inner game. So horizontal development can happen more quickly. And it’s…, I can learn something I could build skill, but vertical development is a more longer term. And it does have to do with, you know, with stage development as well.
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 17:09
And it’s harder to measure right? In organizations were incentivized go take this class, learn about Scrum, learn about leadership, do this, all of that is mostly horizontal development, because it’s developing those skills, but being able to truly take a perspective of somebody that you disagree with, and understand their perspective and be able to see things through their eyes and through all senses, and come up with a solution that works for everybody not necessarily come up with a cool creative solution that works for everybody is lot harder. But when you look at it, its…,
Speaker: Michele Madore 17:52
As far as evolution, its development. It’s in the integral of coaching method that I’m trained and work in. We talk about this time where I’m working with my client and coaching my client, we’re using annimal [18:08] way of doing this, that’s their own structures and systems. And they’re all using all four quadrants. But we talk about this developmental cycle so much like we would experience going to the gym, I say this, everybody who’s really trying to grasp what this means, get a trainer, right? We think, “ah, you know, I’m going to get in shape.” And everybody’s doing this probably right about now, in the new year, we’re at 17th. So I’m kind of wondering how people are doing with those New Year’s resolution.
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 18:46
There’s still hope till the end of January, and then you realize, it’s like…,
Speaker: Michele Madore 18:52
You get a trainer, you go, you meet with your trainer, and they give you some exercises to do. Alright, I want you to go away, here’s your set, put it on paper for you go and go do these sets. And then you’re going to meet with him back in a week or two weeks, whatever it is, if you go back and you haven’t done any of those exercises, guess what, you haven’t developed any muscle. And this is the same thing with vertical development. It’s about it’s about developing new capability. It’s the inner capability, it’s the ability to think differently. And you’ve got to exercise that you’ve got to, their lines of development, we’re talking about this and like, what do I need to develop? What am I trying to do? And where am I falling short? o it could be my systems thinking capability. It could be my ability to just being in collaboration with somebody
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 19:51
Or emotional pain, intelligence or in the sense. I remember I talked about this in the sense that I thought I wanted feedback, I ask for feedback. And then I’m judging that feedback, I’m reacting to it. And not really looking at the feedback is just somebody else’s perspective. And somebody else’s. And there is some truth in and there’s some, but just even willingness, I guess the first step is to willingness to start acceptance on that feedback, and then going through the process of realizing, how do I react to feedback? So a lot of times leaders are…, first of all, they don’t want the feedback. So maybe just getting them to start thinking about wanting feedback, and then realizing, so what are some of the things that you do? There are a lot of leaders out there that they think, this is what’s worked for me, this is who I am, I think the other big piece is like letting go of your identity. this is who I am. And I’m not changing.
Speaker: Michele Madore 20:55
Yeah. so lots of places to go here. Letting go of identity. First, we have to notice what our identity is tied to, then awareness first, what is my identity tied to and so you gave the story of like, sometimes you get feedback, and the first thing you want to do is [tap] but defensive. Right?
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 21:19
Exactly
Speaker: Michele Madore 21:20
Oh, let me recognize in myself for so if coaches are listening to this, we first have to notice ourselves, because our way of being with our client. So if we’re trying to expose them to new thinking, so they get that heat experience, a feeling over their head. And the way we can enable them to move into something different is to say, to expose them to some different worldviews. However, if our worldview, or our place of development is here, and they’re already there, how do we expect to take them here if we haven’t gone there? Right. So if I’m getting feedback, as a coach, or as a person of change agent, if I don’t have the ability to recognize myself in the moment of receiving the feedback, like, objectively, oh, look at Michelle. Michelle is resisting this feedback right now. What is this about? Okay, I can acknowledge I’m resisting feedback, what is this about?
What’s happening for me in here, it’s a fear, right? Our identity is tied to a fear, a belief of find worthy if I can do that, or if I’m seen as this, which is tied to in the book, we call, “Socialized Mind,” my belief system, my self-identity, if it’s tied to what I believe others want for me, expect of me think of me, then I actually can’t operate from my own self authoring mind, because my belief is too closely identified with that.
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 23:06
So it’s almost like going back to your book in the framework, it’s like, if I’m in, in that reactive state, or even creative state, it’s hard to talk to somebody and get them to the integral or…, it’s you have to be able…, I talk about it in the sense of operating systems, if I’ve upgraded to that it’s easy to downgrade, but if I’m never upgraded to that operating system, it’s very difficult to quickly upgrade. So having an ability as a leader to meet people where they are…, and this is very important for coaches, at least from my perspective, understanding what is that perspective that the client is taking, and being able to talk in a language that’s familiar with them from that perspective, rather than…, this is where Agile coaches we start talking about Agile and this and all that. And the leader, that’s .orangereactive, all they care about is results, or whatever it is. So it’s easy for them just say go away you too theoretical, or you’re not talking my language. Maybe this is where a lot of organization this is why a lot of coaches work, what are some of the things that you’ve seen work when it comes to working with very egocentric, the reactive leaders, what’s the best way to help them see things from a different perspective and grow vertically?
Speaker: Michele Madore 24:48
So, first, I have to see the perspective with which they’re seeing it from that requires me to be to have to be able to look as rather than then at, and to let go of any attachment to anything I want for, what I think they need to do or where they need to go or the organization needs to do, I have to suspend that. So that’s why it first has to start without, can I suspend that? Am I so tired as my identities are tied to this outcome I want for this person, because he or she needs to be able to do this.
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 25:28
That goes back to awareness, I have to be aware that I’m actually doing that and not caging myself.
Speaker: Michele Madore 25:36
Keep going on that. But that’s how it starts. So it’s first they get the heat experience, that’s what that starts happening kind of initiate that place. And then the second thing is they have to be exposed to some new way of thinking, through training, through coaching, through something. And then so that’s kind of the who, who comes along. And so if I come along, as a coach, I’m exposing them to a different mental model. And we do that in Agile all the time we expose people to our agile ways of working. And then there’s, there’s more though, there’s the next step. And so noticing where they are, noticing where I am, and helping them to make sense. This is where integral sense making comes in, right? And my ability to help them make sense of their situation. In bring a different perspective from a more elevated sense making place. Now if I can’t go there, I can’t do it.
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 26:44
Yeah, so it’s almost maybe for people that are not as familiar with what we’re talking about, as far as sense making. And a lot of people are familiar with Canheaven. So like, it’s almost understanding like which domain you’re in. And your approach is going to be different based on the domain. So this is similar. We’re just talking about, I guess, domains when it comes to mindset, which domain or perspective you’re taking, right? Which is, would you say it’s similar? It’s not exactly the same, but it’s a sense making tool similar to Canheaven.
Speaker: Michele Madore 27:17
Yeah, I mean, we can…, everything goes through our own sense making lens, our own meaning lens. And so for me to meet, as you pointed out earlier, meet people where they are, it’s trying to understand how they’re making sense of it, and meeting them in that sense making place. And so, complexity, of course, is there for all leaders that we’re working with, and it’s the complexity they’re in, that’s important. It’s in so and when we begin to work with more higher level leaders, and that’s where we also can get caught, if we can’t go there. If we’re still here, if we can’t be more strategic, if we can’t enter into that world, then our ability to help them make sense of their own situations is very limited.
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 28:14
But it’s tough, the challenges, at least that I see is that we have organizations that are dealing with more and more complexity, yet leaders are not vertically developed, I guess, enough to deal with the complexity. So we see a lot of Agile…, I don’t know what your experience been, but I would say close to 100% of Agile transformations that have not been success to what people expect, they’re better probably than where they were but there’s a lot of BS around what is successful and what is not. And a lot of that ties back to lack of executive leadership and the ones that have been part of that were more successful is really when the board and the like C suite is operating from a let’s just say higher vertical development perspective than…,
Speaker: Michele Madore 29:21
Yeah and imagine that because they’re more fit for the role or in the role their playing in that organization that time so they said a lot there and I agree, I think…, we’ve had the same top three reasons for year after year, why agile corporations are unsuccessful. What are we measuring success by, that’s another whole conversation but in general that’s what the surveys show and at the same top three reasons and the leadership is one of them. And yet we keep on doing the same thing over and over again, but keep on you know more training programs, if only the leaders would take this training, that’s not going to cut it, they’ve got to be a part of this transformation, they’ve got to, first of all make some connections between what they’re trying to do and their own leadership.
And so, I lead an enterprise cohort, I see Agile certification for in the expert place. One of the competencies that’s in that program is developing leadership in organizations. Now, that means horizontal and vertical. Horizontal, it’s easier for us and when we’ve attacked that if you know the integral framework, people have read the book, the books in our book, and Ken Wilber and all the books out there, there’s many books. We are we are very aware that we spend all of our time over here on the right side in like, frameworks, the lower right with scaled frameworks. And we’ve done that.
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 31:02
We talk about values and principles, but nobody embraces them, right?
Speaker: Michele Madore 31:07
Yeah, so here’s the thing. So then you have like, I just had a leader call me up and say, we’d like to bring you in, we’ve been doing the doing part of Agile, and everyone’s heard this. And now we need to do the being in because the problem is the doing isn’t how it’s supposed to be done. And we’re not getting the benefit of it. Because you can’t extract them, you can’t separate them, the doing in the being come together. And so if you do it from the intention at the, let’s just use the colors. So if you do a green practice, which Agile is a green practice, so if you do that, from an amber or an orange place, inner intention, it’s going come out exactly like that.
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 31:57
You coarse. And the good example would be like what you coarse people into doing that job where it’s just for the sake of doing Agile, rather than, co-creating something with them. That’s more context specific. Right?
Speaker: Michele Madore 32:11
So we have to do this vertical work with leaders where we say, this is a longer term. So part of the problem with vertical leadership development in Agile transformations, let’s set that as the context is, first of all, the connection hasn’t been made for many organizations, they don’t, like even enterprise coaches that come into my program are like, well, we’re having a hard time with this competency. Because leadership development is an HR or a different departments job.
And they are questioning like, why are you involved in this, you’re doing the Agile transformation that’s over there in IT? Why are you stepping in our sandbox, and then there’ this need to cross boundaries, do some boundary spanning and work with HR, whatever area does that but the connection aren’t being made. So we make all these grand statements about leadership and oh, Agile leadership is servant leadership that’s been going on since day I entered Agile, agile leadership is servant leadership. Well, if you look at stages of development, in know, in leadership, servant leadership is way the heck up there. And most tough leaders, most people in leadership positions management, even if you want to take the word leader and make it into a manager position, which is where the thinking is, most of them are in expert or achiever orientation. They’ve gotten they’ve gotten promoted. From there because of their expertise to the…,
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 33:49
Peter Principle, right?
Speaker: Michele Madore 33:53
Exactly! so what we say okay, so now you have to be a servant leader. Most of them are like, I don’t know what the heck that is. For you, this is the way I’ve always done, things always worked for me. So this way, I’m going to do it. And we just throw out all these words and terms. And don’t realize that the work is really over here, and the developmental and evolutionary piece of it.
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 34:17
So how do you do that? I completely agree. For a lot of coaches and consultants, it’s like, how do I work with these people without imposing right? My own views or forcing them to change and say you have to vertically develop. What are some of the things or maybe things that you would do when you obviously have to have access to these people, but…,
Speaker: Michele Madore 34:42
You got to get a seat at the table, of course. And getting a seat at the table has a lot to do with you. You have to be an instrument of change, right? And so there’s no one right or wrong way. Of course. I’m just going to throw some thing or two out Here, if I take anything, so I go in and someone says, here’s my situation, I just begin to look at it. First of all, so you look at it. And what I find out is, we’re not all on the same page for the most part.
First and foremost, we’re not even on the same page, there’s so many assumptions being made. And we’re never, we’re not checking those, we’re just all marching to the drum of our own…, the beat of our own drum, and, well, I got my agenda and you got yours, I can do the same thing as an Agile coach. I shouldn’t, but I could, and many do. So if I just go in, and I understand their problem context, it’s not simple, but we don’t have to make it hard. So if I find out what matters to people, or what they’re up to what they’re doing, what their challenge is, then I can look at it from an integral lens from the quadrant orientations where their focus is, because we all have our orientation, where their level of development is, as an organization or department or area within as a leadership team, if I’m looking at a leadership team, and basically, where do they stand on the current challenge they’re bringing to me. So let me give you an example. One of the leaders recently came and said, actually, the coaches were on the call, we’ve got a backlog. And in here’s what we’ve identified in the senior leadership identified that we need to empower more decision making, because we’re struggling as an organization to move fast enough to meet the demands, because there’s some inability in organization to make good decisions and make them fast enough.
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 36:54
So maybe just to connect to the framework to do the Agile transfer integral Agile transformation, this is a leader coming up with a realization, we need to change a policy, which is bottom right organizational architecture, to align more decision making. So I want to come back to this, if we look at the framework, that’s kind of what’s going on, right?
Speaker: Michele Madore 37:16
Yeah, well, it is. And you can look at it from any of the four quadrants, so empowered decision making Well, that, you go over the left side, and that’s a cultural thing as well. And decision making itself is the thing I do, it’s an actual exam, right? And I go, I do that decision making from my own mental model upper left. So I’m all over the place with just one thing, like empowering decision making. So if you see an organization and you’ve been working with them, and they seem stuck, or they stuck on, okay, well, we said everyone’s empowered to make decisions, why aren’t people making decisions? Well, let’s take a tour of the quadrants, and let’s start discovering that, what’s your culture like? You can’t all of a sudden make a claim, put it in an email and send it out to the whole organization and say, You’re not all empowered.
What’s everybody going to do? What really Oh, my God, what does that mean? And then everybody’s like, talking on the side? Well, all of a sudden, I’m empowered to make decisions. What does that even mean? I don’t know. There’s no guidance. So there’s no guidance all around, we can go all through the four quadrants of what does guidance even look like? What are my boundaries? What am I making the decision based on? Based on what? What if I make a wrong decision? What’s going to happen to me? So all my own belief systems are now kicking in like, I’m afraid in my own reactivity sticking, I’m afraid. You told me I need to do this. And this is what we’re all going to be measured on. I don’t know what that means, either. So, no, you’re either people are either Okay, fine. And they just make any decision or they’re stuck, and they’re not making any because they’re afraid.
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 39:04
So, something that I’ve been wondering thinking about, and I have my own kind of thoughts on above I’m interested to hear yours. So we talked about, like, in a sense, the we start with the mindset top left to do with, unless there’s this idea of change the structure, structural change the culture, with the example that you just gave, in a sense, it was a decision, personal decision, to in a sense, this centralized decision making that comes usually from a more…, once you develop through vertically, that comes more from a creative or integral that hey, you know, it’s not about me. It’s more about others, right? So there’s that growth from that perspective, that role now starts aligning with type of organizational architecture, they would see what you call past modern or maybe metamorn.
So it does the from your perspective, does it really come, the change in mindset requires the change in the system or does the? Because here’s the thing, right? I, I’ve been thinking about COVID. And the system actually change the, how we think about it and what we see. So what is, from your perspective what it’s all interconnected. But what is your thought on that? Like, is there that you know, one the influence is more than other, even though the interconnectivity is there.
Speaker: Michele Madore 40:31
So well, there’s we can think about this from different Holon levels, like if I’m just thinking about this as an individual, for instance, what I know, that takes that takes place in me as a person as a human being, is, something happens, like I talked about earlier, a heat experience on I feel something happens in my life. And there’s the happening, and then the way that I can shift is working with my belief system. So can I say that? Can I make a blanket statement that you should start with the belief systems first? No. Just you? I mean, yes. And no, yes. And oh, they’re all colorizing. Together, that’s why you can’t take apart the doing in the being of anything.
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 41:28
And so it goes back to that sense making like, when I work as a coach, I’m always looking at those four. And I’m always looking at individual team or, organization, and you’re always contextualizing based on what you’re seeing, you’re always balancing all of those, right?
Speaker: Michele Madore 41:46
Yeah. And you’re noticing what’s present. And so one way we’ve talked about the integral, agile framework is it’s a meta framework, for one, and it’s a way to see more clearly so that you can act more effectively. And so where some leverage, what leverage do I have right now? So as you pointed out, the system can create some thinking, and the thinking creates the systems, that culture creates, transformation of systems requires transformation of culture. And so I use an example of one client where, they read Frederick Lalo reinventing organizations, and I think I maybe tell the story in the book, and, and the sounds great. This is exactly what we need, because they had just gone through a heat experience. And they’ve had some big challenges, in organization, this is what we need this kind of structure. So they looked at the structure, the lower right, we need this.
So then they went about making a change. But the way they went about the change in general, their unconscious approach to change their autopilot way of going about changing the structure, created another whole situation with morale ended up going, the culture aspect kicked in, well, you can’t just change the structure without working with the culture, because the culture was like, Well, wait a minute, I no longer have direct reports, have I been demoted? Or wait a minute. Like, I don’t understand why you’re changing the structure. You didn’t explain this to me, so everything came out.
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 43:26
And the culture used to be that, your status is determined by how many people you have reporting to you, all of a sudden, you’re threatening my…,
Speaker: Michele Madore 43:38
Year. Exactly. That is exactly what happened. So you can’t say, Well, I can start with belief in mindset. And that’s always the place to start. Well…,
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 43:48
So maybe, to look at integral coaches, like when you think about Agile coaching, and things that you teach in your enterprise Agile Coach masterclass, sorry, is that what it’s called?
Speaker: Michele Madore 44:07
Yeah, it’s called. It’s called the Enterprise coaching. Master program.
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 44:13
Master program. So what are some of the key things in that program that you cover? Maybe just give us an overview that I feel is the…, going to helps people be more of a holistic integrative coach to be able to be a better sense maker to be able to be more effective with others?
Speaker: Michele Madore 44:37
Well, one thing I want to say before I jump into that is that as you’re doing this, as you’re noticing what’s present in there, and you’re just looking at and looking ahead as your client, we’re noticing where they are. You begin to notice what…, based on what they want to do. So, an integral coaching method that I use a client comes to me, I’m asking them what their topic is what their goal is. So in respect to the topic or the goal that they have, are, I want to be a more present coach or I want to whatever it is that they want to do, then the capability that they need to develop is based on that. So…,
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 45:21
So, that’s a really good…, Yeah, because this is where coaching…, if somebody says, I want to be more directive coach or leader, I want to make more money. A lot of coaches would judge that and say, that’s not the right way. And I think what you’re describing, and correct me if I’m wrong, is that you have to meet them where they are there and help them do that. It’s not necessarily where it’s your agenda to make them more vertically developed work, or whatever it is, right?
Speaker: Michele Madore 45:50
Well, it’s not, that’s one, that’s one thing about and the other thing is, they don’t necessarily develop all the capability in life that they don’t have. It’s what people saw as an organization, based on where they want to go what they want to achieve. That’s why just saying, Oh, we’re doing an Agile transformation, for what for? Why? What? what’s your pain? where are you now? Why do you want to do this, so when I can see where they want to go? Then my plan with them, like co-creation of a plan is about what capability do they lack in that they need to develop because they could be strong over here. And that speaks in the method speaks to the lines that some are more developed than others, but you want to develop the ones that are going to help them get to
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 46:34
The ones that are lost is the ones that you need to address to help you with that. Yeah. So, what are some of those lines? What are some of the things maybe that in general, coaches, is it just more like you have to…, almost comes back to an I don’t know, if you do leadership circle assessment, or some type of assessment? As a coach, understand, it’s almost like what type of challenges are you facing with similar leaders and what lines do you need to develop? So, you might have, let’s just say, 15 people in your class, each person is going to have a different…,
Speaker: Michele Madore 47:09
Exactly, person is going to come up with their own goal developmental topic based on the feedback, and also what they already know about themselves generally, so the feedback is just kind of…, and sometimes people don’t know that about themselves. And that feedback is there to bring more awareness to it. So alright, and we didn’t mention this transcendent include piece of integral, which is everyone thinks of just transcend just move to…,
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 47:39
Move to higher plateau, then.
Speaker: Michele Madore 47:41
Right, and then transcend, and include, it stands for transcend the limitations. That’s what you’re transcending not transcending all of you, you’re not saying I want to get rid of me, and I need to know, so we do this current way of being a new way of being in this integral coaching method, my current way of being, I have a lot of beautifulness about me, Michelle, who is she?, she’s got a lot of great stuff about her. And she’s got some limitations. So, based on where I want to go, what I’m trying to do with my life, or with myself, in my goal, what more capability do I need to develop? And what limitation am I transcending?
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 48:27
Exactly, that’s another thing where, limitation could now be something that was a strength before and just realizing that…, something that I consider, and that’s worked for me as a leader for a long time or a coach, in this context, it’s actually I need to transcend that in order to be a better leader or a better coach in this environment.
Speaker: Michele Madore 48:51
So you’re transcending the limitations, but you’re taking with you what’s valuable, what you want to take what useful, what helping you, what serves you, and with organizations, the same thing, we’re not saying get rid of who you are an organization because they’ve actually accomplished quite a bit. They’re still around, what do you want to take with you and appreciative inquiry does a lot in this area, where it’s about the Appreciative Inquiry is what have we done, this worked, what do we want to keep, but what’s not working? What do we want to leave behind? And so that’s always the invitation is to look at that. And so in the cohort, they’re coming up with every individual comes up with their own developmental plan, right, based on where they want to go with their life and what capability they want to develop.
And then there’s the competencies that we’ve said, if you’re an enterprise level, if you’re working across an enterprise in a through Agile transformation, what are the competencies that that you need, really to be able to do this work and one of them, the one that I Start with is developing self as leader, developing self as an instrument of change. That’s the first one. Your coaching range is another competency. So, your ability to expand your range as a coach, or to work with more complexity to work with different types of leaders at different levels of the organization to have to have a professional coaching range ability to have better facilitation skills. So, there’s a lot of skill and competency as well as, vertical development. Yeah. And then there’s another competency that’s super important is developing leadership in organizations, which is what we’ve been talking about this most of this time.
So, you don’t if you haven’t done it for yourself, you’re not going to know how to do that. How do I begin developing leadership in an organization like, gosh, that’s such a hard thing to even think about? And it is the one I would say so far, and I’m working on co-work number six now. That’s the one that I think most people struggle with. It’s that one, and which, aligns with what we’re seeing from the surveys that come out of why do our transformations failing? It aligns completely what I’m seeing in the cohorts, the one that coaches are struggling the most with, is that one, developing leadership, oh, that’s not your job, or we don’t have time for that. Okay, we’ll take a class, no, understanding that my capacity as a leader is tied to my results.
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 51:42
Yeah, it’s almost that remind me of Keegan’s :kind of in over our heads”, like most of the leaders are just in over their heads, when it comes to divert development, and what they can deal with. And then the last thing that they think about is, is that inner development or developing that? Very quickly developing, there’s many…,
Speaker: Michele Madore 52:09
Achievement, right, and most organizations are so achievement oriented, it’s just “go go go” “do do do”
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 52:16
Where our society. So, this is another thing, which I don’t want to go down to. But our society is very achievement oriented. So, when you have policies, when you have markets that are all about numbers and profits, then that’s going to drive the type of behavior in organizations and incentivize those type of leaders.
Speaker: Michele Madore 52:36
So, if we can help, so that’s the third one, and I’ll just briefly name the other two, which is guiding the change process and guiding organizational agility. And so, one of those, the guiding the change process really speaks to the organizational change, organizational behavior, complexity piece of it. But the developing leadership in organizations is the toughest one for coaches. And so, it’s the place where we’ve got to get creative, it’s the place where sometimes it’s a sneaky little thing you’re doing, they don’t always even recognize I’m doing it sometimes. But how can I make…, have different conversations, I mean, that’s where it begins. It’s bringing awareness shining a light on their belief system right now and in how that’s impacting the results we’re getting. And so how do I begin to do that and have different conversations around it is, is really the first step?
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 53:31
Great. We’re almost out of time, and I know you have a hard stop. What would be…, maybe a question I didn’t ask or a message that you would like to share? What would you like to leave us with?
Speaker: Michele Madore 53:47
Yeah, I guess maybe what I was just saying a lot of things maybe I would want.
Speaker: Miljan Bajic 53:53
I feel like we could have this conversation for a lot longer than one hour.
Speaker: Michele Madore 53:58
And I’m sorry, I have a hard stop. But, honestly, it’s just notice where you are, if you’re a coach listening to this, or a person involved in change in your organization, just notice, where you are first, notice your own, like below the line experience with your client. And, maybe you feel like worn out. Maybe you feel like there’s no point to this. And just notice where you are, notice what you’re attached to and notice what you’re taking on. As if it’s yours to take on, as it fits yours to solve, because it’s not, no one person can change an organization, it requires the organization to want to change it requires the mindsets, the collective culture, and all we are doing is influencing. We’re there to influence, we’re there to be that …,When they have that heat perspective and that oh my God, I’m over my head were there to expose them to something new, a new way of thinking about something and meet them in their own perspective taking and if we can change, or turn a light bulb on slowly through those conversations. We’ve done some good work. We’ve done some good work.
