Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps Read online

  UNLOCKING LEADERSHIP MINDTRAPS

  How to Thrive in Complexity

  JENNIFER GARVEY BERGER

  stanford briefs

  An Imprint of Stanford University Press

  Stanford, California

  Stanford University Press

  Stanford, California

  © 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.

  Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Garvey Berger, Jennifer, 1970– author.

  Title: Unlocking leadership mindtraps : how to thrive in complexity / Jennifer Garvey Berger.

  Description: Stanford, California : Stanford Briefs, an imprint of Stanford University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018050366 (print) | LCCN 2018058781 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503609785 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503609013 (pbk.; alk. paper)

  Subjects: LCSH: Leadership—Psychological aspects. | Complexity (Philosophy)

  Classification: LCC HD57.7 (ebook) | LCC HD57.7 .B46975 2019 (print) | DDC 658./092019—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018050366

  Cover design: Kevin Barrett Kane

  Cover illustration: Marina Zlochin

  Typeset by Classic Typography in 11/15 Adobe Garamond

  FOR NAOMI CATHERINE AND AIDAN JAMES, IN GRATITUDE FOR ALL I HAVE LEARNED FROM YOU AND WITH HOPE THAT THESE IDEAS WILL MAKE YOUR LIVES, AND THE WORLD YOU ARE INHERITING, BETTER FOR YOU AND BETTER FOR THOSE WHO COME AFTER YOU. I LOVE YOU MORE THAN THE MOON AND THE STARS.

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  1. The Five Quirks and How They Become Traps

  2. Trapped by Simple Stories: Your Desire for a Simple Story Blinds You to a Real One

  3. Trapped by Rightness: Just Because It Feels Right Doesn’t Mean It Is Right

  4. Trapped by Agreement: Longing for Alignment Robs You of Good Ideas

  5. Trapped by Control: Trying to Take Charge Strips You of Influence

  6. Trapped by Ego: Shackled to Who You Are Now, You Can’t Reach for Who You’ll Be Next

  7. Building a Ladder to Escape the Mindtraps

  Notes

  Selected Bibliography

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  In my two previous books, I have thanked the writers and thinkers whose work has so profoundly informed mine. Know that I feel grateful to you still, every day. As I write these acknowledgments from my new flat in London, I am deeply aware that the quality and texture of my relationships is fundamental to my writing and thinking. Bob Kegan and Bill Torbert, Bob Anderson and David Rooke, I treasure the time we have spent together and all I have learned from you and alongside you, not just from your theories but from your friendship. A special thank-you to my dear friend Doug Silsbee, who died before he read this manuscript; your ideas and your spirit weave through me and this book and will be with me for the rest of my life.

  My colleagues at Cultivating Leadership, the firm we began two books ago, have been a constant source of support and inspiration for me. These ideas have grown as the organization has grown, and the voices, ideas, and feedback of these treasured friends and colleagues have become part of who I am. Thank you to Anne Nagle, Carolyn Coughlin, Jim Wicks, Keith Johnston, Patrice Laslett, Wendy Bittner, and Zafer Achi, who lead the firm with me and shape the edges of our thinking about leading in complexity and the mindtraps we try to escape together. Blessings to Diana Manks, Joy Guilleux, and Rebecca Scott, the catalyst team that makes my life better every day; I’m not sure how you put up with me, but geez, I hope it keeps up. Thanks to Sue O’Dea and Tanya James, who encouraged me to expand the at-home section of the case study, and to Carolyn Coughlin for her companionship in ways of the mind and the heart. My gratitude to Kathrin O’Sullivan, who read an early draft and wrote comments that made my heart sing on days when my internal critic was drowning out the writing. Parker Mitchell is a colleague at CL and also a CEO of his own cool start-up; his questions about increasing impact 10× are sometimes exasperating and always incredibly useful.* I am particularly grateful to Wendy Bittner, who has read this book many times with a fierce passion and a fine eye and who, with Mindy Danna, Keith Johnston, and the rest of the client service team, has created a leadership program based on this book before I was even sure the ideas would make it into the world. My collaboration with Keith Johnston has changed me forever, and even though he did not coauthor this book, I hope that something of his rigor and his humor has made it onto these pages. Zafer Achi kept me on my toes, reading every page as fast as I could write it and encouraging me always to think bigger, connect the ideas more smoothly, push harder into one literature or another. His wise counsel made the ideas better, but it was his optimism that these ideas could change the world that was most precious.

  My clients are always my inspiration and in this book perhaps more than any other. Thank you for the constant support to make the ideas faster, more applicable, more helpful in the world. Particular thanks to Alison Parrin, Ciela Hartanov, Brian Glaser, and Karen May and all of the folks at the Google School for Leaders who read the manuscript in an earlier draft and offered ideas and inspiration. I am grateful to Stuart Irvine and Bob Barbour and the whole Lion team; Melissa McLaughlin and David Shenkein at Agios Pharmaceuticals; and Kirsten Dunlop at Climate KIC. All of you have inspired me with your leadership, which pushed to make these ideas come to life. Mike Vierow and John Lydon of McKinsey took a chance on these new ideas as we designed a mindtraps-based program for high-potential leaders across Australia and New Zealand. My coaching clients, hidden in the many case studies which follow, will remain anonymous here, but your struggles and triumphs have taught me more about leadership than any theory or book ever could. This book is from you and also for you.

  Thank you too for those other friends who have read this manuscript in draft. This is the first book I’ve sent out to people in a Google Doc, and it was really fun to watch you all play with the language and interact with each other as you tried on new titles, new ideas, new phrasings. Thanks to Maurice Alford, Kerrie Ashcroft, Desley Lodwick, David Metherell, Cornelis Tanis, and Marco Valente. Margo Beth Fleming began two books ago as my editor and I’m honored to now have her as a friend. Thanks for your guidance and your support on this one, even though you’re off in another life yourself now. Steve Catalano, my new editor at Stanford, has been unfailing in his encouragement and delight in this project, which he loves almost as much as he loves sea kayaking. Thanks too to Jeff Wyneken who has copyedited these words with care, and to Sunna Juhn who makes sure none of the details are lost in the great sweep toward publication.

  And, in an unusual time, here is an unusual thank-you. I want to thank the team who has cared for my body as my ideas have found their way to the page. I sketched the idea for this book in my journal two nights before I was diagnosed with a local recurrence of the breast cancer I had had two years before. This book was written as I prepped for and recovered from four surgeries, and in the radiotherapy waiting room. Stan Govender, my surgeon, dazzled me with his combination of competence and kindness, although neither of us was particularly pleased at how many times we got to see each other in the operating theater. Mark Renneker and Keith Block have been my int
egrated oncology team, delving into the mysteries of cancer (why did it come back?) and helping me with the diet and life style that are intended to keep it away for good. They have offered me guidance and, more important, hope. The staff of the Wellington Hospital Blood and Cancer Centre and the Radiotherapy Department worked to heal my body and my spirit. Amazing what a cheerful “Good morning, Love!” can do to make a gray time feel a little brighter. Debbie Ingham, my GP, coordinated all of this with warmth and boundless energy. My dear friend Melissa Garber met me for almost every one of my radiotherapy appointments, making me smile when she could and just being there for me when I was too afraid to smile. How glorious to have a best friend finishing her PhD in clinical psychology when I needed it most! And, generally, my experience with the public health system in New Zealand felt miraculous to me. I am grateful to my adopted country and its doctors for their care and support.

  Jim Garvey read these words and offered his fine touch as a writer, and his loving touch as a dad. Jamie Council Garvey and Tamara Eberlein-Garvey were the inspiration for the book in the first place. I figured if I hadn’t yet written a book that you two brilliant women loved, I needed to remedy that (now I hope I have!). Catherine Fitzgerald was my introduction to these fields, and I feel unspeakably lucky to have a colleague, mentor, and mother all in a single person.

  Michael Garvey Berger belongs on most of the lists above but is in a place of his own as a colleague at Cultivating Leadership, a companion by my side at hospitals and in our living room, and a constant reader of seriously rough drafts when he probably wanted to be doing something else. If we had peered into this future on our first date thirty years ago, we would never have believed where life would take us. Thanks for traveling through complexity with me and showing me how growth and love can build both of us ladders to a new future.

  Finally, for my children, Naomi and Aidan, to whom this book is dedicated. You were crawling and scribbling when I wrote my doctoral dissertation, learning to read as I wrote Changing on the Job, and starting high school as I cowrote Simple Habits. This book will come out as you’re both at university. My books have grown as you have grown—my laptop on our dining room table a familiar companion. This is the first book you have read in drafts, the first book you have talked about with your friends, the first book that you tell me makes your lives a little better. There is nothing in my life I’m prouder of than you two. This book is for you.

  NOTE

  *If you’d like to try out Parker’s cool tools to help you hold on to the lessons in this book, use this link: www.chooseshift.com/mindtraps

  INTRODUCTION

  This book was born at a party in Seattle, when two smart women told me that my first two books had mostly taught them that complexity was too hard for them to understand. Epic fail on my part. Over the next months, I had dozens of leaders, breathless with overwhelm, ask me if I could synthesize everything I had learned about thriving in this increasingly complex world into something fast and pithy and easily consumed. The challenge was set.

  I reread my notes from thousands of hours of individual and group meetings in organizations. I pulled out every book and journal article I have read for the last decade, and I ruthlessly began to prune down to the most helpful ideas and practices I could find. I was surprised and delighted when they all began to take form as the five mindtraps which are the focus of this book. I found that our mistakes in complexity, while various (and variously debilitating), coalesce in these five ways that our biology conspires to mislead us.

  The Stanford Brief you hold in your hands is meant for you, no matter what kind of leader you might be. It doesn’t matter whether your leadership position is entry or executive, if it’s formally recognized or whether you’re just leading your life. If your life is feeling more complex, less predictable, and more confusing than it used to, and if you’re finding that your reflexes are sometimes leading you astray, this book is meant to help you understand why—and how to make changes that will make your life easier, that will make the increasing complexity your friend rather than your enemy.

  I learned after Keith and I wrote Simple Habits that the single case study that weaves through the text is the cilantro of business book ingredients.1 Some readers love the story and say it helps the ideas land; others hate it and prefer smaller examples to bring the ideas to life. In this text I offer both, so feel free to go with whichever ingredients are the most useful for your learning.

  If you’re one of the readers who needs to hear the main message of a book in order to decide whether it’s for them, here goes. In all of my research, writing, teaching, and learning over the last three decades, I have found that we humans are brilliantly designed—for an older, less connected, and more predictable version of the world. In today’s highly interconnected, fast-changing world, we need to take some of that brilliant design and purposefully reshape it to be fit for the unpredictable future that is unfolding. When we do this, we find that not only does the complex world of today seem less overwhelming, but we also solve problems more effectively, our relationships improve, and we even like ourselves better. Come see how.

  1

  THE FIVE QUIRKS AND HOW THEY BECOME TRAPS

  “Holy schmoly, it was a disaster!” Mark said, burying his face in his hands. “All those eyes were staring at me, waiting for the wisdom of the leader, and I totally choked. I can’t show my face out there again for at least a couple of weeks. We’ll have to come up with an excellent excuse for my absence. Maybe you could say I was called away to some impressive humanitarian aid effort? I could be wounded there and come back a hero! Then no one would remember what a screw-up I am.”

  “He asked you a tough question for sure,” Leroy said, looking for a place to sit down in Mark’s office amid the piles of papers and books on every surface. He gave up and leaned against the wall. “But I’m not sure your answer was quite bad enough to run away and join the circus.”

  Mark glanced up, with his more familiar half grin. “Circus—good thinking, my friend!” but then his face fell. “In the old days, there was no question I couldn’t answer! I was on top of every problem my team worked on. I knew every line of code and I obviously knew everyone’s name. I knew what had happened to each of them last week, and I had about a ninety-five percent accurate forecast about what was going to happen to them next week. Those were the glory days! Now it all moves so fast and we are so matrixed that I can hardly keep track of the reporting lines on the org chart—much less the names and work of each of the people. And questions like the one Rob asked today—”

  “It was Simon who asked that question,” Leroy interrupted. “Rob left six weeks ago to start up his own company.”

  “Damn!” Mark gave a little howl of distress. “Simon then. I don’t actually understand what his whole unit does. I have no idea why they report to me. There’s no way I can add value to his work or help him solve a problem. I’m the worst leader ever!”

  “You think you’re such a bad leader because you can’t help him solve a technical problem?” Leroy asked doubtfully.

  “Oh, don’t give me that HR voice, Leroy. I know you don’t think I should be working with my people on technical stuff, but honestly it’s the best way for me to help out. And then I get a team like this and can’t help them at all!”

  “I know you love old-school technical leadership, Mark. And I know you love using your expertise to solve really tricky problems, but I just don’t think leadership requires that these days. In fact, I’ve been playing with some ideas about how leaders need to be different these days. They’re counterintuitive but helpful. After this morning, maybe you’d be interested?”

  “You’re kidding, Leroy! Have you met me? Have you been to my house? I can’t even do intuitive leadership well—counterintuitive is way beyond my pay grade. Unless your counterintuitive ideas are about How to Time Travel So You Can Get All Your Shit Done, I’m out. I have to work twice as hard to stay on top of all this stuff as I used to—as yo
u can see in my disastrous performance today.”

  Leroy laughed. “Man, you are really beating yourself up for this. And this is exactly what I mean. There are ways that our internal wiring tells us to do one thing, when the smart leadership move is to do something totally opposite. Like your desire to master more and more details rather than get out of the detail game altogether.”

  “I know these new theories are super interesting to you, my friend, but you’re an HR geek. I’m just a computer programmer who suddenly found himself running a team too big for his brain to handle. I’m barely surviving here. I hardly have time to pick up lunch to scarf down in a meeting. Does this knowledge come in a liquid form?” Mark asked, rifling through a stack of papers on the chair next to him. “Or better, in a pill? I don’t really have time to drink. And anyway,” he said with a groan as he remembered the meeting he had just come out of, “I have that humanitarian aid crisis to deal with, so you won’t see me around here for a while.”

  Mark might remind you of yourself, or someone you work with. Leaders today are busier than they’ve ever been, and they are falling behind. It’s not only that the demands on them are so much more time consuming than they used to be (although that seems to be true). It’s that the nature of the challenges has changed in such a way that the tools and approaches of the past simply don’t work.

  In the past ten years, I have worked with thousands of leaders around the world on how to lead in complex, uncertain environments. I’ve become fascinated by what gets in our way, and particularly fascinated by one particular phenomenon: those times when our reflexes are exactly wrong. Such times seem to clump together in particular ways and create a perverse and seemingly inescapable trap: our human instincts, shaped for (and craving) a simple world, fundamentally mislead us in a complex, unpredictable world.

  It’s like having an old operating system for your computer that opened files when you tried to close them and deleted things when you tried to save them. The operating system of our minds has a quirk when we are working in complexity, and that quirk sets us on a course of action that is the exact opposite of what the situation really needs.